CashMoneyJesus: About Eric
Hi. I blog about topics and issues at the intersection of Personal Finance and Faith. What does this mean, specifically? Well, for me it means finding the balance between…
Giving v. Saving - Do we give more to those in need or save more back for our families? “Charity begins at home”, right? right? Of course it’s not that simple. Both sides deserve a portion of our attention and money. But what portion does each size get, and how can we work toward reconciling this?
Spending v. Saving - Why put off buying what we want now for putting yet another couple dollars in savings? What fun is that? Plenty of people feel guilty when they spend more than they have. But I’m sure there’s people who feel guilty for never spending anything over the bare necessities on themselves or their family in favor of saving it all for a financial doomsday. Life is short though, and money in savings isn’t much use to you if you happen to get clocked by a bus. Where’s the balance?
Giving v. Spending - Who’s more important to us, ourselves or those in need? This obviously isn’t a very fair question, and for the majority of people it requires an answer somewhere in the middle. We want good things, things beyond the essentials for survival. We also want the people in our community and our world to not thirst, starve, and freeze to death when we could have given some of our excess. How do you reconcile this? This will be a fun topic to discuss, I’m sure of it.
Frugality v. Excess - Most Personal Finance bloggers would say they try and live frugally, but where’s the line? Frugality in practice looks radically different depending who you look at. Frugal for some means no car/crappy car, same clothes every day, rice and beans every night. Frugal for others means not going out to eat for lunch every single weekday, only 2 or 3 of them.
Financial “Wisdom”/Prudence v. Trusting God - Another fun one. Nearly every guide for the financially clueless tends to start with an emergency fund being setup so that when something horrible happens (job loss, death, car wreck, you get the idea) you don’t go bankrupt trying to weather the storm. Is that in line with what Jesus taught and how he lived? Sure, that probably seems extreme. But what about hundreds of thousands of dollars in retirement accounts? At what point is it “too much”?
Credit Cards vs. Cash-based - This one is near and dear to my lil’ ole heart. As a former proponent of using credit cards for the free perks (ONLY if you can pay it off every single month, no exceptions), I’ve since converted to cash only/as much as possible, I look forward to talking about this. What is the place of the credit card in the life of a person trying to be socially responsible in the world today?
Social Responsibility v. Lowest Price/Most Convenenient - Speaking of social responsibility, how do you balance your purchases and services you use? You can weigh this a hundred different ways. We could be talking about only using organic produce as it’s better for the environment. We could talk about not shopping at “big box” stores as they put our neighbors out of business. We could talk about credit card companies oppressing our fellow man with their draconian policies. Hell, we’ll probably talk about all that and more. The bottom line of this one is: what premium are you willing to pay over the lowest price to be at peace with God and yourself? For some, it’s 0$ (lowest price prevails), for others, it’s 10%. For others, it’s double.
I think that’s enough for our first year. These topics are completely open-ended, and I’m not expecting one “right” answer for any of them. I look forward to hearing all of your perspectives as we address each of these.
