Financial Peace

January 25, 2015

This morning, pastor Joe finished up his month-long series on how as Christians we manage our money, and it got me to thinking. Linda is the budget person in our home. I am absolutely no good at it. She says, probably correctly, that if our finances were up to me, we'd have been broke years ago. The fact that we are retired with savings in addition to Social Security and our pensions is tribute to her financial wizardry. We are able to be generous in a large part because of how carefully she has handled the checkbook for over 40 years. But pastor Joe made me think about our money and our giving, wondering what more we could do. So this evening after an unusually quiet afternoon, we sat down together to go over the budget. It just about made my head ache.

Linda has categories for everything, and since we each have Social Security and pension money coming in, certain amounts out of each of those sources are earmarked for different things, all neatly laid out in columns in her ledger. Some categories like taxes, savings, or her Christmas club, have an income stream from more than one source, so they appear in multiple columns. There are additionally, separate pages that show the totals in monthly income, and expenditures. The reason I meander through this explanation is that I don't understand a bit of it. Were it up to me, I'd dump all the income into a single pot, and withdraw from it as needed. Anything left over would be my savings, if indeed, anything were left over.

There was a time in our lives when we lived pretty much hand to mouth, and had credit card and car payment debt, but twenty years ago when we had our first sacrificial giving campaign for our new church building, God put us on a track to financial blessing that hasn't ceased. We were able not only to give more than we thought, but at the same time, paid off all our debts except car payments, bought a house, and began working with a financial advisor who assured us that we were on a good track for retirement. God has been more than faithful, and one of the ways he has demonstrated that faithfulness to me has been in the wife he gave me. I am so grateful tonight for this woman who works hard at our finances, and has blessed me at this stage in our lives with the results of her years of hard work. Thank you, Lord; and thank you, Linda!