On the Use of money and spending

Here are some great principles from Randy Alcorn on the use of money and spending:

1. Realize that nothing is a good deal if you can’t afford it. $120 thousand dollars sounds like an excellent price on a house worth $150 thousand. Eighty dollars seems like a great deal on barely used skis that cost $400 new. But if you can’t afford them, it simply doesn’t matter. It’s always a bad choice to spend money on a “good deal” you can’t afford.
2. Recognize that God isn’t behind every good deal. Suppose you can afford it. Does that mean you should buy it? Self-control often means turning down good deals on things we really want because God may have other and better plans for His money.
3. Understand the difference between spending money and saving money. Saving is setting aside money for a future purpose. Money that’s saved stays in your wallet or the bank. It can be used for other purposes, including your needs or others’. Money that’s spent leaves your hands and is no longer at your disposal. Let’s say you find an $80 sweater on sale for $30. You buy the sweater—how much did you save? If you said $50 you still don’t get it…Show me the fifty dollars you saved. It doesn’t exit. Keep “saving” like that and you’ll soon be broke!
4. Look at the long-term cost, not just the short-term. When you buy a nice stereo, you’ll end up buying lots of CDs. When something breaks you get it repaired. When you have an old car you don’t care about a dent. When you buy a new car you’ll fret about dents and buy insurance to fix them. When you’re given a “free” puppy immediately you’re spending $20 a month on dog food, and the next thing you know you’re putting $1200 into a fence and paying $400 to the veterinarian to stitch up his wounds from a dog fight. Within a year or two, you may end up spending several thousand dollars on your free puppy. Count the cost in advance-everything ends up more expensive than it appears.
5. Pray before you spend. When something’s a legitimate need, God will provide it. How often do we take matters into our own hands and spend impulsively before asking God to furnish it for us? How often do we go buy something-whether we consider it a “want” or a “need”-a week or a month before God would have provided it for free or at minimal cost, if only we’d asked him?

Often we either buy what we want or forego what we want, when there’s a third alternative: ask God to provide it for us. If He doesn’t, fine-he knows best. But why don’t we give Him a chance?

Waiting eliminates most impulsive buying. Many things that are attractive today hold no interest two months later. Look at garage sales and you get the picture. Setting a waiting period gives God the opportunity to provide what we want, to provide something different or better, or to show us that we don’t need it and should use the money differently.