Here is an article I’ll post that resonated with some, not all of the issues that led me from it.

http://leavingfundamentalism.org/leavinghurts.htm

For some, the experience is a whole lot more painful and personal.  For me it has been the implications of my life direction these past 8+ years that has caused me the most pain, along with the rather large consequences to my community, family, and friends.

Again, most of these posts are more to put down on paper/make sense of why I am going the way I am going, and find it harder (not easier) to return to my once held beliefs.

Till next entry.

1. Give thanks

2. Be ready for change

Again, nothing new or groundbreaking, and we’ve heard this all before – but personally these two things are the old “steering wheel” I have left during this confusing time in my life.  To the first point, I do not ever need to manufacture thankfulness, and I think we have serious problems in our life when we have to “make up” what we are thankful for.  It can be as simple as health, the friends we have, the family we have, the provision we’ve been given, what we are learning, what we unlearning etc. or as complicated as the trials we have made it through, are going through, are going to be going through.  Associating painful things, and hard things with thankfulness is not as hard as it seems.  One of my favorite things to do is the smile through a difficult time, call it drama if you want, but it’s something I really love to read about in stories (both real and imagined), when the hero or heroine is able to find a bright point in an impossible situation.

Oh, and the smile has to be an actual smile, not some plastered smile that one of my middle school teachers had that was just unnerving to be around.

To the second point, change is inevitable, necessary, and many times, very painful.  My relationships, my faith, my circumstances are in constant levels of flux – more than I am comfortable with.  In the midst of this it is easy for me to throw the towel and just latch on to the first thing that seems solid.  Very very few things reduce to solid these days, and that is part of my search right now.  It is a strange sensation to be in a kind of limbo on big areas of my life, and to realize that I won’t be landing right away – to have a dose of uncertainty, and to live with it.

Now a question I have been thinking a bit about – in regards to change, what is the mature way of dealing with change in our lives?

I just find it interesting that I wrote this tiny thought in college, and find myself revisiting this particular entry a lot recently in my current circumstances.

Proverbs 30:

7 “Two things I ask of you, O LORD;
do not refuse me before I die:

8 Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.

9 Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
and say, ‘Who is the LORD ?’
Or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonor the name of my God.

(Taken from www.biblegateway.com NIV)

It’s from the bible, and although I take issue with some passages, this is NOT one of them.  I think it mostly speaks for itself, the very rich and very poor think the most about money, the former because it’s hard to manage that much, even to give it, and the latter, because they need to survive.

So in one sense, it’s nice to be middle class, because obviously the bible supports middle class living as the optimal way to live.  But I do hate golden retrievers.

The  good advice says that money can never be THE spotlight, but it needs to be respected, it can’t be lacked to an extreme (or you WILL make it the spotlight), and it can’t be ignored.

Money is amazing.

It gives us food, shelter, provides clothes, feeds families, allows us to indulge in luxuries, allows us to entertain ourselves and our friends, gives us freedom from work, freedom to pursue things, to have some measure of independence, to attain almost any material possession, and almost any service we require… if the price is right.

Money should be worshiped.

How many things offer that?  How can money not be worshiped after we see all that it can do?

The short of it is that not many things can top what money offers.  To many money is a God, is worshipped, is acquired, and I cannot fault those who choose that path.  It makes SENSE.

Everyday we take things in our lives that do a whole lot less than what money does and put it on a pedestal, who’s fooling who?

Again, I am working through issues of personal faith myself but this Scripture is spot on I have to include it:

Matthew 6

24“No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

(Taken from www.biblegateway.com NIV)

I am still working through the God part, but I sure as heck know enough about money to know it is not my first choice of God.  It’s a dead end.  That’s enough for now.  The question for those who believe in God, what does that verse mean to you?  For those that don’t believe in God, how do you personally make (or don’t make) money a thing to be worshiped?

You wake up one morning to find that your bank account has 100k added to your name, sans any obligation to Uncle Sam.  What changes?

The next week you find that your bank account has an additional 100k added to your name, and again, Obama loves you and will never tax that money.  What changes?

Finally, the next week you find that your bank account has an additional 800k added to your name, and now Santa is broke.  What changes?

Obviously, this thought experiment is nothing new, and simply an exercise in the “utility” of money.  But I’ll use myself as a primer, in an effort to answer a question that has staggering implications to how I live my life and the decision paths I have before me – what does money mean to me?

Here are my preliminary answers:

The first 100:

1.  I would immediately pay off any outstanding credit card debt, student loans, basically any debt of any kind.

2.  I would then immediately park an amount if I haven’t already into short term savings (a bank money market account, very liquid but still earning marginal interest), somewhere around 6-12 months worth of living expenses for emergencies

3.  I would then put the maximum (I think $5000 for this year 2009)  into a RothIRA if I haven’t already.

4.  I would take advantage of the maximum contribution to my 401k if applicable to my work

5.  I would set aside an amount that I would give (10% is a starting point) to charities or initiatives for the community, family

6.  I would park the rest into some form of savings (CDs, investment accounts)

7.  I’d buy a sushi dinner

The second 100:

1.  I would repeat steps 5 and 6 from the first 100k

2.  I’d consider an investment in real estate (home)

3.  I’d buy a sushi dinner

The last 800:

1.  I would repeat steps 5 and 6 from the first 100k

2. I would seriously consider how best to allocate the funds I have available for step #1, which to me is a lot harder than it looks

3. To be honest, I am ill prepared at the moment to handle that large of an amount.

I guess for me, the serious point of marginal utility is somewhere between the 1st and 2nd 100k.  The first 100k is just disgustingly beneficial, in that I am out of debt completely, I have a measure of prudent security from losing my job or doing a career change, or traveling etc. and I have a foundation of financial independence.  By security, I mean the luxury of not having to live paycheck to paycheck.  Leaving debt, and leaving the paycheck to paycheck lifestyle is so grossly beneficial it is worth my time to sock away this amount where I am in life.

The 2nd 100k is a lot different.  It is significantly worth “less” to me and the only real difference is that I would consider buying a home.  What surprised me is how little it would affect me in terms of things I’d want to do (travel, teaching, volunteer, service, hobbies).  It does NOT give me more options, just more money.  Granted, if I plan on starting a family, these savings would of course be useful, but the marginal utility of it is a LOT less than the scraping by days of getting that first 100k.  This surprised me.

Lastly, the last 800k confuses me even more.  In one sense, I’ve adopted a reasonable lifestyle, and 800k will definitely tempt me to “upgrade” that lifestyle to fit the amount of cash I have available.  Like sushi?  But in terms of happiness and freedom to do things (I was not hindered after the first 100k) it is hard for me to envision significant change in what I do.

I will add a footnote to the last paragraph.  I would never have a problem with this problem of “excess”.  But I also don’t trust myself with these large sums.  Quite frankly, saving money is so psychologically ingrained in me, to not squander it, to pinch pennies that “excess” to the degree of nearly a million would greatly upset these habits.  I would inevitably upgrade areas of my life I deemed to not be worth the money saved (Shopping for sick deals at a supermarket (Whole Foods > Kroger) or hunting for low gas prices would simply be a retarded use of my time if I had this sufficiently large sum in the bank).  But what else will change?  Human nature has a tendency to make a beast out of these things.   I really don’t know how I would handle this amount right now right here.

I am in a position in life where the first goal is almost attainable within a reasonable time (SOON), and I deem the cost of my time and energy worth it.  But after that, I need to do some serious rethinking about where my time and energy should be going to.  I find that after that 100k point for me, I need to demphasize the pursuit of money into other things.