Money
I’m beginning work on a book on stewardship. Except I don’t want to call what I’m writing about “stewardship” for two reasons: 1) Stewardship means a lot more than money, but I really want to talk about money and don’t want to shortchange stewardship of gifts, the earth, relationships, and all the rest. 2) We all think we know what stewardship means: fundraising. Even though we acknowledge it means all this other stuff – about the earth and our talents and all that – we still think that it comes down to money and, more than that, fundraising.
And it doesn’t.
So I want to talk about money. And about faith. And about God. And about us. So to sort through some of this, from time to time I’m going to share some of the interesting things I come across that seem helpful in this quest to talk about God, Money, and Us (Hey, maybe that should be the title. 🙂 )
Up first is one of my favorite writers and thinkers, Seth Godin. On his blog a week or two ago, Seth suggested that one of the reasons we make poor financial decisions is a) that we think about money in terms of numbers and b) numbers are meaningless.
Wait, did I – I mean he – really say that? That numbers are meaningless? How can that be, we organize so much of our lives around numbers?
Exactly – we use them so regularly and frequently that they become functionally meaningless. Numbers represent something – a quantity of some thing – but on their own, or surrounded only by numbers, or separated from what the represent, they become an abstraction, a symbol without a clear referent.
Oddly enough, money is very much the same – it’s a symbol that represents other things – in some ways it represents all things (at least all things we believe can be purchased) because it is a medium of exchange. But as we’ve moved from bartering – an actual thing for an actual thing – to a physical medium – gold, silver, cash, coins – to just numbers, money has also become an abstraction. It’s a symbol that, separated from its referent (that which it symbolizes), means almost nothing. So, as Seth points out, we’re buying a car and because we’ve already committed $30,000, when the dealer suggests a $500 upgrade for a better stereo we plunk down the extra cash – or, actually, we don’t plunk down any cash but just sign a form filled with numbers (and that’s the problem) – when we’d never pay that kind of money for a better car stereo (or maybe any car stereo) in everyday life.
So what’s the solution? Surprisingly simple: substitute concrete experiences for the numbers. You think you want the stereo? Then how many trips to Starbucks will you need to skip, Seth asks, to pay for it? Then decide whether you still want it.
I found his article incredibly helpful in making money – something that’s both very important to us and terribly abstract – easier to think about. I hope you do, too. I’ll put the first few paragraphs below and invite you to follow the link to the rest of his post. Or you can just go there right away. Either way, enjoy…and think!
Making big decisions about money
We’re bad at it. And marketers know this.
Consider: you’re buying a $30,000 car and you have the option of upgrading the stereo to the 18 speaker, 100 watt version for just $500 more. Should you?
Or perhaps you’re considering two jobs, one that you love and one that pays $2,000 more. Which to choose?
Or…
You are lucky enough to be able to choose between two colleges. One, the one with the nice campus and slightly more famous name, will cost your parents (and your long-term debt) about $200,000 for four years, and the other (“lesser” school) has offered you a full scholarship.
Which should you take?
In a surprisingly large number of cases, we take the stereo, even though we’d never buy a nice stereo at home, or we choose to “go with our heart because college is so important” and pick the expensive college. (This is, of course, a good choice to have to make, as most people can’t possibly find the money).
Here’s one reason we mess up: Money is just a number.
One of our former office managers told me she used a concrete formula when thinking about church expenses. Because she knew our oldest living member faithfully wrote a small weekly check to the church, she asked herself “How many of her offerings am I spending?”. Whenever there was a choice to be made about what to get at OfficeMax or whether to upgrade a particular item, this metric was in front of her. Much more meaningful, I think, than the annual budget guesstimate that usually rules such matters.
I would think that Fear plays a large role in most of our major or discretionary financial/spending decisions.
I used to give talks to service clubs on a book called “The Millionaire Next Door”, by Stanley and Danko, 1996. May be out of date, but I doubt it.
Also, “The Energy of Money:A spiritual Guide to Financial and Personal Fulfillment” by Maria Nemeth, Ph.D. is interesting. I don’t agree with all she says, but I found ideas that were useful in helping people find a new way to think about money.