Spending

I’m passionate about stewardship. I believe the Lord entrusts each of us with certain talents and treasures to be used for His Glory and His Kingdom. Niki and I often joke that after being disciples of Jesus, we are secondly disciples of Dave Ramsey. We both write often about budgeting. We love to give. But I still haven’t perfected the balance of when to buy something and when to wait. Buying material things is very much a spiritual matter with lots of gray area. Some purchases are no-brainers. If your wife is sick, buy her the medicine she needs. If your car is out of gas, put gas in the car, man! These are easy things. Many purchases aren’t just about essentials. There are countless opportunities for us to use our discretion on buying things, because we have more money than we need for meeting just our needs. I tried to find a good set of questions for helping Christians process through making purchases for our wants, and my somewhat limited search turned up few helpful results. So, I’ve created my own list of questions that I hope aid believers in stewarding well what the Lord has given us. I am not a perfect money manager for God. But I want to grow in this area. ...

Budgeting is like a magic trick: everyone is impressed when they see it done but few have the guts to try it for themselves. Prepare for the tricks of budgeting to be demystified as we pull back the curtain to enable you to make your own cash-flow plan with ease. There are a lot of tasks here, but they all fall under three main steps (via The Prestige)–the Pledge, the Turn, and the Prestige. The Pledge **Committing to changing your financial reality. ...