Spending Money

Tesa and I are trying to teach the boys about spending money wisely. It is hard because even we have to work on our spending habits. Josiah has a bank that has three compartments in it, one for savings, one for spending and one for charity. Noah did not get the fancy bank so he is using washed out peanut butter jars. This is the first day that we tried this and I wanted to teach them about putting money in each of their banks accordingly. We got all of their money out of their "All" detergent bottles and put it on the floor. Then I would take ten quarters and put them in front of the bank and have them put one into "Charity or Church" first then one into "Savings" and the rest they could do with as they pleased. Noah caught on right away that the rest could go into "Spending." Josiah was a little more generous by splitting up the rest into the three banks equally. Of course Noah had something that he wanted to purchase right away, so he knew where he wanted it to go.

After they were done putting their money into their banks we took a look at how much was in each compartment of their banks. Noah immediately wanted to take his out of spending and put it into a container to take to the store. Josiah had some birthday money so he didn't want to take it out of the spending but rather just the money that he received for his birthday.

During this whole time Tesa was nervous about a couple of different things; first and foremost was that all of the coins were on the floor with Dahlia very close, then there was the aspect of what are they going to spend their money on. This is where the thought of the day comes into play.

I was thinking as Tesa said "You don't want to see your children spend their money on things that are only going to hold their interest for a couple of days. Then the things are just going to sit around the house." I thought of this and as she was saying it I had the thought that God was speaking through her by saying "Phil watch where you spend your money." I am sure that it is very hard for God to look at me and watch where I am spending my money. Because it is not even MINE! It is HIS! He wants us to use His money in things that will take care of us for the daily needs and also to further His kingdom. The money that we spend here on earth is only for a couple of days when compared to eternity. We are just going purchase something then it will all be burnt up. We should spend our money on the eternal souls of those that are around us. True that He does want us to enjoy life and to have the necessities but that does not mean that we should have the extravagances of life. We should be out of debt and able to help those around us but it is very hard to be in debt and help when we are the ones that are struggling to pay the interest on the things that we thought that we needed today but couldn't pay for today.

Our church's goal as well as Phil and Tesa's goal is to be out of debt. Just think of the things that God could do with the interest that we pay the creditors.

We want our children to never have to take out a loan for anything. I am glad that we are starting today!