Control Your Expenditures

       Well here we are dealing with the next or second step to financial stewardship.  I want to have some type of order in terms of principles, but in my reading and observations I forgot a very important step that may be needed to be added to the first step, and that is while you are paying yourself first, you need to have a bank account or some means of saving.  As I stated before most of these principles will be coming for The Richest Man In Babylon, and his timeless principles took place in ancient times, some hundred or more years ago, so his terminology or vocabulary was a little different.  The richest man in Babylon said this, ” you need a purse or bag to put what you save into.  In other words, open up a bank account or some kind of storehouse that is not associated with your everyday cash flow or budget, that way you can keep up with how your money is beginning to grow without any hinderance. Dont get me wrong, I know the bank is not the best way to grow your money, but right now it is the best way to save your money.  Later on we will talk about some vehicles to grow your money. 

       Now that we have that out the way, on to the second step, and that is control your expenditures.  As Arkad, the richest man in Babylon was talking to his students he said something very profound, and it went like this, “what each of us calls our ‘necessary expenses’ will always grow to equal our income unless we protest to the contrary”.  In other words, he was saying  done confuse your necessary expenses with your desires.  Often times we have  more desires than our earnings can gratify.  As Arkad continued to talk to his hungry students he then says, study thoughtfully thy accustomed habits of living.  This is where I want to end this blog, we must carefully look at our spending and see where we are spending unnecessarily and reduce or eliminate that expenditure

The First Key To Prosperity

The Riches Man In Babylon, written by George S. Clason is a great book for understanding the keys to wealth and prosperity, as I was reading this book I was so drawn in by the truths or timeless principles about prosperity and wealth.  Even though this book is set in ancient Babylon it is so relevant to today.  When you open the book, on the second page you will find the phrase, “Money is plentiful for those who understand the simple laws which govern its acquisition”.  I truly believe thats what separates the rich from the poor, just to simply understand the laws of money.  In this book, the character Arkad was considered the riches man in Babylon, he was so rich until the King of Babylon wanted him to sit with men in the country and teach them the keys to wealth. I want to deal with the first key in this blog.

The first thing you must understand if you are to achieve wealth and riches, is that you must pay yourself first. You will not believe how hard it is for people to understand that concept, especially for those who are living from paycheck to paycheck.  I have learned that bills will always be there whether you have money or not so the key is to live off of 90% of your income, so that means you have to save 10% of what you bring in.  Now I know you are saying thats impossible because your check is gone before you get it.  Think about it this way, if every week you were given $500 for your bills, but you took 10% of that which is only $50 a week.  At the end of the month you would have saved $200 and at the end of the year $2400 dollars.  Thats not bad when you are only taking $50 off of the top to save.  That $50 is not going to put you in a hole much more than you already are, and it probably won’t make a difference in meeting your needs.  My philosophy is, if it can’t meet your needs, then its your seed.

Let me put it this way, a farmer does not survive by eating the seeds, what he does is plants and waters the seeds, and then eats the fruits that are produced from the seeds.  What am I saying, you have to at some point save a little so you can have some thing to invest or plant.  I am going to end with this phrase from The Riches Man In Babylon, “you have to learn how to acquire money, how to keep it and how to use it”.

Stay Tuned for step 2……

Are You A Financial Steward?

G. Murray Jr.

As you can see the title of this blog is Financial Stewardship, and so we can be on the same page, I want to define what that means.  If we take the word stewardship, it is defined as taking responsibility and care of what has been given to you or placed in your possession.  Financial refers to the concept of time, money, risk and how they are interrelated.  So if we place these to words together, financial stewardship is defined as taking responsiblity and care of your time, money, risk, and management of how they work together.

This is the start of many blogs that will be dealing with that very topic, if you read the About Page you will see that my only objective is to educate, equip, and empower individuals to reach financial freedom.  This blog is not about how to get rich quick or how to make a million in one year, but it will teach you the fundamentals of financial stewardship and how to build wealth.

The next few blogs will be discussing the book, The Riches Man in Babylon. This book gives the basic necessities on how to become a good steward of your finances.  They are 7 basic principles that we will be discussing in the weeks to come, so stay tuned for some great dialogue and insight.