The best method for raising financially responsible children is for the parents to be financially responsible themselves. You cannot teach your children what they should do if you yourself don’t do it. You first have to get your own financial house in order. Children don’t do as you say – they do as you do. They study your every move, and unfortunately, plenty of parents pass on some very damaging financial practices.

Children who watch their parents ring up huge credit card bills buying luxury items and taking vacations they can’t afford tend to dig the same financial holes themselves as adults. A child who sees bills pile up unpaid is getting a damaging lesson in managing money – one they may struggle all their lives to overcome.

Another way you can ruin your child’s financial future is by spoiling them. Many people seem to have convinced themselves that showering their kids with everything they want is good parenting. They lose the ability to say no to anything their child asks for. Then when that child gets out in the real world on a low starting salary, they have no sense at all of financial restraint. They still expect to be able to have everything right now. Of course, credit card companies are happy to assist them in getting what they want right away. It doesn’t take long for a child who has been spoiled their whole life to find themselves buried in $5,000-$10,000 of credit card debt.

Along those same lines, you shouldn’t buy your children something every time you take them with you to the store. It’s not a matter of being able to afford to buy them something, but rather an opportunity to teach financial restraint. Buying toys and gifts for your children should be reserved for special occasions (e.g. Birthday, Christmas, etc.). If you simply buy everything your children wants, you are not only taking away the “specialness” of gifts, you are setting up your kid to be a financial wreck. The children who get everything they want when they’re young end up struggling with debt the rest of their lives — simply because they were never taught moderation and living within one’s means.

Of course, parents can also teach their children bad financial habits by spoiling themselves as well. Very few families seem to know how to live within their means. They seem oblivious to the risks of spending more than they earn. In fact, they seem more concerned about the perceived shame that might come if they tried living within their means. Keeping up with the Joneses has never before been so pervasive in our culture. It’s impossible for you to teach your children how to handle peer pressure if you can’t resist it yourself. Spending money just to impress someone sends the wrong message to your children.

Of course learning how to manage money is something children have to learn by experience. Giving children a lecture about how to handle money is not enough. Children need to learn and experience it.

One great way to teach your children about earning and managing money is by giving them a regular allowance. This gives children first-hand experience in learning how to manage money and appreciate the value of their hard-earned dollars.

In addition, having an allowance will help children set financial goals and learn how to live on a fixed-income/budget. It will require them to make choices about what they will spend their money on. They will have to learn to balance what they have with what they want. They also learn that everything has a cost associated with it. Just because it’s advertised on television doesn’t mean that you can afford it.

Of course a child shouldn’t be paid for every little thing they do around the house. Each child should have regular household chores that they are required to do because they are a contributing part of the family. Then there should also be additional tasks and responsibilities for which they are paid an allowance. These tasks provide children with an introduction to the notions of work and receiving payment for the level and quality of the work they do. An important part of giving an allowance is that your children learn that if they don’t do the work and just as importantly, if they don’t do quality work – they don’t get paid.

Allowances can also be useful tools for teaching your children about other values. For example, teaching them that the first 10% of what they receive belongs to the Lord. Requiring them to deposit a certain amount each month in a savings account teaches them about frugality and long-term planning. Helping them to decide whether to wait to buy something later rather than right away shows them about the value of patience and delayed gratification. An essential part of becoming a responsible person is learning to delay gratification. Yet popular culture encourages – and profits from – people seeking immediate gratification. Teaching children to delay gratification, through the use of allowances, will make them more resistant to the messages of “Gotta have it now!” with which popular culture bombards them, and will help them grow up to be financially responsible adults.

How much you decide to give as an allowance will depend upon your individual financial situation and the age of the child. It shouldn’t be such a large amount that they are never required to make any tough financial decisions and it shouldn’t be so little that it doesn’t allow them to practice financial responsibility. As the child gets older, the amount you give should increase.

It’s important that children learn that money does not “grow on trees”. Just because you have checks in your checkbook or credit cards in your wallet does not mean you have money to spend. An essential part of fiscal responsibility is learning to live within one’s budget. Your children have to learn how to respect money and use it properly. Money is not just a means of buying popularity or happiness. The most important lesson you can teach your children about money has nothing to do with how much you can get, but rather how to use what you do have.

Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.

Creditors have better memories than debtors.

There never was a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.

If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher’s stone.

He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.

A man may, if he knows not how to save as he gets, keep his nose to the grindstone.

He that waits upon fortune, is never sure of a dinner.

He that lives upon hope will die fasting.

It is the eye of other people that ruin us. If I were blind I would want, neither fine clothes, fine houses or fine furniture.

If you would like to know the value of money, go and try to borrow some.

Time is money.

Who is rich? He that rejoices in his portion.

In this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes.

To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions.

A penny saved is a penny earned.

Buy what thou hast no need of and ere long thou shalt sell thy necessities.

He does not possess wealth; it possesses him.

A small leak can sink a great ship.

It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.

Our necessities never equal our wants.

Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.

Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow.

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

Rather go to bed with out dinner than to rise in debt.

Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.

There are two ways of being happy: We must either diminish our wants or augment our means – either may do – the result is the same and it is for each man to decide for himself and to do that which happens to be easier.

Never take a wife till thou hast a house (and a fire) to put her in.

It is only when the rich are sick that they fully feel the impotence of wealth.

Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.

Gain may be temporary and uncertain; but ever while you live, expense is constant and certain: and it is easier to build two chimneys than to keep one in fuel.

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.

God helps those who help themselves.

The use of money is all the advantage there is in having it.

Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is.

Necessity never made a good bargain.

He that displays too often his wife and his wallet is in danger of having both of them borrowed.

Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.

There are three faithful friends – an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.

He that rises late must trot all day.

It is a grand mistake to think of being great without goodness and I pronounce it as certain that there was never a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.

Money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has the more one wants.

The doors of wisdom are never shut.

Just a few years ago would have spent money without even thinking or maybe I should say they would buy things on credit without thinking. Now those same individuals are rediscovering how to save money and reduce their monthly expenses. Unfortunately, while many of your monthly budget items are fixed expenses, one of the biggest expenses that you can control is your grocery budget.

Students of Christian finance will know that the Bible has always taught good stewardship. Even Jesus in one of his most famous parables said:

Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord. Matthew 25:21.

We at eChristianFinance.com believe that the financial principles of the Bible are timeless and have put together the following 10 tips for consumers to save money on their monthly grocery bills.

1. Don’t shop at just one store. You actually save money by shopping the best prices at multiple stores.

2. Always shop with a list. It’s a known fact that consumers spend as much as 30% less.

3. Bring a calculator with you when you shop for multiple reasons. You can calculate the price difference between large quantity items versus smaller sizes. You don’t always save money buying in bulk.   You will also get to the cashier and know exactly how much you are spending.

4. Shop store brands over name brand items. You can save as much as 60% or more.

5. Clip coupons. Check your local newspaper or use sites such as www.smartsource.com, www.coupons.com and www.retailmenot.com .  Use both the store coupon and the manufactures’ coupons whenever possible for maximum savings.

6. Check your local grocery store ads for sales and plan your meals accordingly.

7. Shop stores lost leaders. Stores will routinely drastically discount certain items in order to draw more consumers.

8. If something is a great buy stock up. 

9. In order to save money your kitchen pantry must be organized you will loose money by overstocking.

10. Be sure to plan your meals ahead. By planning ahead you will be less likely to eat out.

A lot of users will go to priceline.com and do searches for plane fares/hotel bookings and when the web browser spits back some prices and options they’re content with that. Well, yes, you can find a decent deal that way but if you want the really good deals you need to be willing to dig a little deeper. The absolute best feature of priceline.com is the “Name Your Own Price” option. This is where you can put in your own bid on what you think is a good price for your hotel, flight, rental car etc. This is very appealing to the savvy negotiator. This isn’t like haggling with a greasy salesman over a badly used car, this is price negotiation at its finest. You sip your coffee and calmly type in a price; priceline.com does some magic and if you’re lucky (and shrewd), you’ll get yourself a steep discount on the perfect vacation.

Here’s how it works: airlines don’t like flights with empty seats and even if they only get a small amount of the normal fare its still better than flying with no one in that chair. It works the same way with hotels. So priceline.com will submit your bid to most of the major airlines/hotels and if someone out there is needing your money badly enough they’ll match you up. A perfect union. Move over matchmaking.com and say hello to Priceline! Advantages? Absolutely! Disadvantages? Yeah, there’s some. Let’s take a closer look.

I’ve used Priceline for several years now and over time I’ve saved thousands of dollars combined on my travels. Last year my wife and I took a two week trip to Europe. I used Priceline for all my hotels, the end result? I was staying at 4 and 5 star hotels most of the time for under $100 a night. While we were in Europe we met some tourists that were spending more than that to stay at dubiously titled hostels. The main advantages of using the Name Your Own Price option on Priceline.com is the money that you will save. I’ve found that most times you are able to save at least 40-50% on hotels over Priceline’s already reasonable rates and usually 70-80% off of the hotel’s normal asking rate. (In Venice, Italy we stayed at a 5 star Hilton for $115 a night while the normal room rate was $495).

Using Priceline.com’s bidding feature is very simple. You just select “hotels”, type in the city that you want to stay in and enter the dates that you would like to stay there. Once you select “Search Hotels” and Priceline will return several hotels back to you. This listing of available hotels will have room rates and star ratings that you can purchase directly if you wish to stay at a particular hotel. If you’re willing to be a little more adventurous however, you can step up to the bidding process. On the top right hand side will be a little box that says, “Name Your Own Price.” This is where the fun begins. Clicking that box will take you to a new screen with a few necessary options. You’ll get to select the general area that you’d like to be located in; this way you can ensure you’re in the right area of town and not miles away from the places you’d like to visit. Once you select the area, you can then select the star rating of the hotel that you would like to stay in. I almost always select 4 star or greater since these hotels are the ones that will offer the greatest discounts off their normal rates. Finally, you have to enter your bid. Priceline will indicated the median retail price for hotel in the areas and star rating that you’ve selected. General rule of thumb that I’ve used is that you can typically get your stay at least 50% off of that median price. You can bid lower, of course, than that and sometimes still get a match but it just depends on how willing the hotels are to negotiate. The longer your stay though the more you’re going to save by getting a lower room rate. The main advantage of course is that you’re saving a lot of money and you’ll probably end up staying at a much nicer hotel than you would otherwise stay at. The disadvantages are that you don’t get to choose precisely which hotel you are staying at, you can’t just say “I want to stay at a Hilton on 3rd and main.” Generally speaking though, the cost savings are greater than any hotel loyalty rewards points and the locations are close enough that they represent no problems. When I recently stayed in St. Louis, MO I wound up at a Hyatt Regency directly across from the Arch which was where I wanted to be in anyway.

The airlines work in a very similar way although there are some significant differences that can make the “Name Your Own Price” less attractive than it is for the hotels. All you need to do is simply enter where you are flying from and where you want to go and then follow the same procedure for naming your own price. The drawback is that you can’t specify the times that you’d like to fly out at or the time you’d like to fly back, you can only choose days. This means if you have a tight schedule you need to keep, you might not get what you want. You could fly out anytime on the day you select (morning, midday or evening). Priceline does guarantee some things however. They guarantee you will get to spend at least 24 hours at your destination (i.e. they won’t fly you in at midnight on Friday night and ship you out at 11am on Saturday morning), but beyond that its somewhat up to the mercy of the airline schedules and availability. Again, just like the hotels you won’t get to select a specific airline that you’d like to fly either. Also, this isn’t available if you need to fly through multiple cities. Beyond that though, if you’ve got some freedom in your schedule then the name your own price for airlines is a wonderful idea that can save you a nice wad of cash.

The one area I wish Priceline would expand is to include the name your own price feature is their Vacation Packages. You can use this to put together an all inclusive vacation package to a certain city (Airline, Hotel and car). Unfortunately, they don’t have a name your own price option for these packages. However this might be something that they introduce in the future. So there, now you’ve learned a great way to save at least 50% (usually) on all your hotels and flights, maybe you can afford that little getaway after all. Time to check out Florida!

I checked out Quizzle.com and found it impressively easy to sign up. When the first log jam of free credit report sites started cropping up a few years ago, the navigation and registering process was anything but easy. You typically had to sign up for a trial membership, enter credit card payment information and social security numbers in order to gain access to your “free” credit report. Once signed up, if you didn’t remember to cancel the trial membership after a couple of weeks then you’d be stuck with a nonrefundable monthly fee. There’s none of those shenanigans at quizzle.com. They don’t even need your social security number – that was a pleasant surprise to this writer.

Quizzle is a very simple website that caters well to the services it provides. It’s well designed with nice flowing navigation chains that lead the user directly to the information they need. You can first get a basic overview as to what Quizzle is; I’ll quote from their website:

Your home, money and credit go hand in hand in life, so we created a tool where you can manage it all.

At Quizzle, you’ll get access to helpful tools and information that will help you make smart decisions about your life, including:

• Free Credit Report
• Free Credit Score
• Credit Improvement Tool
• Home Value Estimate
• Home Loan Recommendations
• Personal Budget
• Advice on How to Improve

The free credit report and credit score are the main reasons most users will want to check out Quizzle but the additional services and advice Quizzle offers is worth checking into. Quizzle has another page providing answers on why users would want to use Quizzle versus other websites. Having used Quizzle’s services, I can agree entirely with the answers they provide. It is fast, it’s secure, it’s free, no credit cards or SSN information required, and it’s simple. If I were writing a set of requirements for a free credit report website, I would have laid out something exactly like what Quizzle is. Quizzle is steadily gaining some popularity, being profiled by several big businesses and popular websites such as Yahoo, the Wall Street Journal and CNN. This is not a fly by night operation.

Enthused by what I found, I quickly launched the registration process. As I mentioned already in this review, the process was easy…mind numbingly easy, which is the way registrations should be! No complicated questions that you have to rack your mind over, no SSN required, no pulling out of your wallet to locate your credit card. Just enter your name, email address, some basic financial information and a simple CAPTCHA code to prevent spam bots from messing up a good thing and you’re done. After completing the information you’ll be sent an email to complete the registration process. Just click the link in the email and you’re in like Flynn, so to speak.

This is where the real fun begins. The Quizzle main page breaks down your financial situation into three major areas: Your Home, Your Money and Your Credit. Quizzle will assign a basic letter grade to each area from A down to F as well as an overall composite financial score from 0 to 100. Most users will be interested in the Credit Report and Score. Click on that section and your credit report will open up. On the credit page your credit score will appear in big bold numbers right at the top, no searching through layers of meaningless garbage, just a simple score right out in the open. I did find some variance in the score given to me and the score given to my mortgage company. After checking my credit via Quizzle, I called up my mortgage company for a refinance quote as I’d needed to check into that anyway. Quizzle gives you the highest of the three credit companies. Most lending companies will use the middle of the three so you might find a slight difference between Quizzle and your bank, for example. Next you can view your credit report. This is where you can find a detailed breakdown of your open and closed accounts, negative balances, and public records and even past inquiries into your credit report. If you’ve never viewed your credit report before, it’s definitely worth doing. For starters you can make sure that there’s no negative balances that you were unaware of (that $5 fee that you forgot about 3 years ago went to collections and suddenly trashed your credit? You want to know about those things). Additionally, you can also make sure there’s no accounts open that you were unaware of. I found that I had two American Express accounts open when I only thought I had one, that was a surprise to me and I was able to sort it out with American Express. I can’t stress how important it is to be aware of your financial situation; this kind of detailed credit report will help you be more in control than ever before.

The second major section of Quizzle’s scores is the “My Money” section. Although perhaps not quite as beneficial as the Credit section, there’s some value here for most users. Quizzle offers a handy budget that calculates your income and quickly shows your gross versus net and minuses your debt. Once you fill in the additional living expenses you’ll have a complete monthly budget that can help guide you towards financial stability. Throughout the Quizzle website there will be simple help links that will provide suggestions for improving either your money or your credit if it’s subpar, some of it is basic advice but some can be fairly insightful.

The last section of Quizzle’s scores is the “My House” section. This is another place where Quizzle comes through very nicely for the user assuming they have a mortgage. Although it initially confused me by showing a zero available equity for my situation, if you check how this is calculated it makes sense. You can edit your goals by choosing between trying to pay off your mortgage as quickly as possible or by reducing your monthly payment to the lowest amount possible. Quizzle will calculate your refinance options based on the current rates, showing options between 30 year fixed, 15 year fixed and a 5 year ARM (Boo!!!). Quizzle will show how much money that refinance would save or cost you per month. I found the estimates given were very accurate, falling almost exactly where my refinance mortgage broker quoted me after an application. Also of note, Quizzle’s refinance quote includes your taxes, insurance, closing costs and PMI in their calculations, how nice is that? You don’t get deceived by a low principal and interest quote only to be disappointed at what the final monthly payment winds up being! Score another one for Quizzle.

All in all, Quizzle provides a neatly compact, simple and enjoyable browsing experience. Users of all backgrounds and financial goals will find something of value here. The simple layout and quick access to vital information gives it a big step up on all the competition. Right now, Quizzle looks to be the best credit report site on the web. In an era of stiff competition, it’s unusual to see someone head and shoulders above the crowd. Check out Quizzle.com today for your free credit report and score.

King Solomon was likely the richest man of his day. He lived in a massive palace (1 Kings 7: 2) that few could even imagine. He received annual incomes of gold, silver and other precious items. Yet none of Solomon’s wealth came because he prayed that God would bless him financially. In fact, Solomon prayed that God would give him neither riches nor poverty.

“Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me:” Proverbs 30:8.

However, when Solomon prayed for wisdom, God also blessed him with wealth & riches.

“Wisdom and knowledge is granted unto thee; and I will give thee riches, and wealth, and honour, such as none of the kings have had that have been before thee, neither shall there any after thee have the like.” 2 Chronicles 1:12.

God blessed Solomon with great wealth, but also gave him wisdom to know how to use that wealth. However, in today’s world many of us lack the wisdom we need to handle the finances that God has given us.

Most individuals will be faced with several major buying decisions in their lives – such as when they buy a house or a car. These are the types of major financial decisions that you should not only pray about, but it would also be a good idea to counsel with someone like your pastor as well.

In recent years, too many people have been quick to spend money without even pausing to consider the potential consequences. Unfortunately, Christians have been just as hasty to spend money without regard to their role as stewards of God’s money. As a consequence of hasty spending decisions, millions of individuals have found their world crashing in on them over the last year.

Of course praying over the major decisions in your life seems obvious and I’m sure many of you reading this article have already done that. But after praying about which house to buy or which car to purchase, do you pray about how you should spend the rest of your money? It’s not just the big-ticket items that you should pray about, but also the little ones.

While I’m not necessarily advocating praying over whether or not you should buy a hamburger at McDonald’s or not, it is important to remember that God requires you to be a good steward over all the finances He has given you.

Are you spending money on things that you know God wouldn’t approve of?

If Jesus were paying your bills or setting your budget, would He make the same choices that you are?

As Christians, we are striving to live as Jesus would live. This is easy to translate into our church attendance, our relationships with other saints of God, our relationship with the world, but it is just as valid with our financial lives as well. We should even be striving to spend our money as Jesus would.

I have to believe that if we as Christians would pray more about how to spend our money, we would make much better spending decisions. We would likely have less debt and more peace as impulsive buying is replaced by prayerful consideration.

Financial incompatibility often is the result of radically different approaches that people have towards money. Although psychologists have many different groups that they like to categorize people into, for financial purposes most people fall within one of two categories: savers and spenders. You probably already know which type of person you are and usually you perceive your spouse as being in the opposite category. This is because opposites attract and is not always a bad thing!

Savers are often attracted to spenders because they see them as generous, fun-loving, adventurous folks. Spenders are attracted to savers because they think of them as grounded, fiscally responsible individuals. Having both a saver and a spender in a marital partnership can help achieve a good balance. Savers can end up living a miserable existence because they can’t bear to part with any of their money. Spenders can get so deep in debt that they can’t enjoy the things they spent the money on in the first place. There has to be a balance achieved between the two. Savers have to realize that financial security doesn’t demand stashing money in the bank to the exclusion of everything else. Spenders have to realize they can’t just buy anything and everything that they take a fancy to. So don’t despair if your partner has a different financial outlook on life than you. God put you together for a reason!

So what makes one person a free spending spirit and another a frugal saver? In most cases, people simply follow the example of their parents. Financially irresponsible individuals have probably grown up watching their parents make the wrong decisions as well. They simply never learned how to do things the right way. However, regardless of the type of person you are there are some actions you can take to help you get your financial house in order:

Develop a budget
A budget is a good first step in defining financial limits and long-term goals. A detailed budget forces you to balance income with expenses, while allowing you to make adjustments as needed. Constructing a budget should accommodate the needs of both partners, even if one is a spender and the other a saver.

Set long-term goals
Couples often spend more time planning their family vacation than they do discussing their long-term financial goals. So you first need to sit down and agree on your big-picture goals – things like saving up for a down payment on a house, funding a retirement account, or paying off the mortgage ahead of schedule, etc. Then set up a schedule to achieve those goals.

Share decision making
Develop guidelines for making major purchases, starting with how you decide what to buy and when. Going out and buying a big-ticket item without your partner’s knowledge or consent is definitely a recipe for disaster: Decisions on major items should be arrived at jointly – where to go for vacation, what type of new car to buy, etc.

Live on one paycheck
In 2005, 51% of families had both the husband and wife employed outside of the home. However, even with two-incomes many of these couples live paycheck to paycheck with total disregard for the future. Taking this approach can be the beginning of future money problems that can strain your marriage. Saving one of your paychecks can help build-up a nice down payment for a house or the expense of having children or just an emergency fund. You may not always have that second paycheck coming in. So even if you have two incomes, try to get by on only one paycheck and save the other.

Create a wish list
Both you and your spouse should sit down and create a wish list of things they would like to do or have. These items could be regularly occurring (going out to eat once a week) or they could just be one-time events (vacation to Europe). The challenge for the spender is to realize that they can’t immediately have everything on the list. On the other hand, a saver shouldn’t try to force a bare-bones existence on a spender. There should be items on your list that you can compromise on and there should be others that are joint goals that you both want. This is a long-term list and some things you may not be able to achieve for several years, but it will at least give you something to work towards. An additional benefit is that it helps you understand what is important to your partner and what they value the most. You may be surprised that some things that don’t cost that much are actually valued very highly by your spouse.

Have the spender pay the bills
If one person tends to be the spender in the family – have them pay the bills each month. This way they get a better understanding of how much money is going out each month compared to the income you have coming in to pay those expenses. It’s easier to spend money when you never have to worry with how those expenses are paid. If you are the one having paying the bills and you know there isn’t any money in the bank account, hopefully that will be a deterrent for you not to spend the money in the first place.

Set priorities
Spending time with your family should always take priority over trying to earn more money. Nothing can strain a marriage more than having one party always working late into the evening or working weekends just because they want to have more money. Having a higher standard of living isn’t just measured in by the size of your bank account.

Spending allowances
It might be wise to set aside some money each month to feed the spender’s need to burn cash. The amount should be budgeted, but there would be no need to keep track of where the money goes. This satisfies the saver by keeping the spending within limits and gives the spender some “free” money that they can use on anything they want.

Grow Up
There’s a message in your quickly evaporating checking account balance – you’re not a kid anymore! You’ve got to begin thinking about things like a mortgage, insurance, saving for college, retirement, etc. No longer can you afford to buy anything that you take a fancy to. Your responsibilities have to take priority over your wants.

Start Saving
It seems that few people these days actually save any of the money they earn. In fact, beginning in 2005 and continuing into 2006 the U.S. personal savings rate has actually been a negative amount. So collectively, we are spending more money than we earn. This is a very disturbing trend, because just 20 years ago people were saving more than 10% of their income. It’s never a good idea to spend every dollar that you make. Set a reasonable savings goal each month and stick to it, even if it’s only $100 per month. You can even set up automatic deposits from your paycheck.

In conclusion, you and your spouse have many decisions to make, which means plenty of opportunity to disagree with each other. How you’re going to handle your finances is one of those key decisions that you can’t afford to just avoid. The simple truth is that money issues are with us every day. If you aren’t in financial sync, your marriage could be in deep trouble. Harmony in financial matters can help lead to harmony in other aspects of the marriage.

The Bible talks of money as a “defense”. It has many obvious benefits and when used properly can help further the work of God. So it is very important that God’s people know how to make use of money for His glory. Even if no one else on the planet does, surely the children of God should understand the proper use of money. According to John Wesley, the proper use of money involves gaining all you can, then saving all you can, so you can give all you can.

Gain All You Can

It’s true that a Christian’s goal in life should never be to try and attain great riches. There are certainly too many people that focus their entire lives on gaining wealth and despite whatever material gains they may achieve they often end up losing their souls. However, there are also individuals who never seem to grasp that we also have a responsibility to provide for ourselves, our families and for the work of God. Paul said if a man provides not for his own household he is “worse than an infidel”. 1 Timothy 5:8. 

One of the criticisms of the generation that is entering the workforce today is the lack of work ethic that was prevalent in earlier generations. Even in today’s bad economy, it’s surprising how frequently individuals will give up good paying jobs because the work is too “hard” or just to be able to do something that is more “fun”. However, in order to gain all we can, we must exhibit a work ethic and industriousness that far exceeds that of our worldly peers. 

We have a responsibility to make the most of our earnings potential. For some that may require getting further education or certifications, things that may require significant effort, but can pay off by providing higher income potential. However, a Christian should never pursue employment that would put their health, mind, or soul at risk. There are some careers that a Christian should never pursue, regardless of how lucrative it may be. 

“Gain all you can by honest industry. Use all possible diligence in your calling. Let nothing be done by halves, or in a slight and careless manner. Let nothing in your business be left undone if it can be done by labour or patience.” 

Save All You Can

While many people are happy to try and gain all they can, Americans as a whole have really struggled with the principle of saving anything at all (much less all they can). In large part, even our current economic recession was necessitated by individuals spending more than they earned with no regard to actually living within their incomes.

Of course the Bible has always taught the principle of savings. “There is treasure to be desired and oil in the dwelling of the wise; but a foolish man spendeth it up.” Proverbs 21:20.   

In the mid-1700’s, John Wesley proclaimed that the people of his generation were simply wasting money by spending it “merely in gratifying the desires of the flesh.” 

“Do not waste any part of so precious a talent merely in gratifying the desire of the eye by superfluous or expensive apparel, or by needless ornaments. Waste no part of it in curiously adorning your houses; in superfluous or expensive furniture; in costly pictures, painting, gilding, books; in elegant rather than useful gardens.” 

Unfortunately, excessive spending in order to maintain a luxurious lifestyle is even more prevalent today than Wesley could ever have imagined. That only makes his words of wisdom even more relevant for today. Let the world frivolously spend their money with no regard for tomorrow. However, let us as Christians be a light to world even in how we use our money. 

Give All You Can

While there are plenty that are willing to try and gain all they can and some that are willing to save all they can, there are few that are willing to give all they can. However, you can travel across this nation and see beautiful church buildings, hospitals, and universities all that were built because there were individuals that took John Wesley’s message to heart. Major universities like Vanderbilt and Duke where started because of large Methodist endowments that were made possible by men that “gained, saved and gave” all they could. 

This principle of giving is clearly highlighted throughout the Bible. “There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.” Proverbs 11:24. Some people love money so much that they are willing to work multiple jobs and save money meticulously, just to watch it accumulate in their bank account. However, if you don’t use money properly, you might as well not have any in the first place. 

John Wesley advocated that after providing for your own needs and the needs of your family, then you should be able to use some of the money that you have saved to “do good to them that are of the household of faith” and “as you have opportunity, do good unto all men.” This goes beyond your tithes and offerings. All that we have belongs to God and we will be required to give a full account of our stewardship before Him.

“I entreat you, in the name of the Lord Jesus, act up to the dignity of your calling! No more sloth! Whatsoever your hand findeth to do, do it with your might! No more waste! Cut off every expense which fashion, caprice, or flesh and blood demand! No more covetousness! But employ whatever God has entrusted you with, in doing good, all possible good, in every possible kind and degree to the household of faith, to all men!”