Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Financial Peace

Where does happiness come from?


Does it actually work like this? Can having money make us happy and bring us deep satisfaction? That was one of the topic's of our class yesterday and it was based mostly by a talk given by Stephen W. Gibson, a professor at BYU.

A couple of his points stuck out to me, and helped me understand the nature of money a little better.

First: God wants to bless us financially, but like the other blessing we receive from him, they depend on our obedience to principles He teaches us (pay tithing, stay debt free, have a rainy-day fund).

Second: Be your own master. You cannot consider yourself a free person until you are free of your debts to other people. That money isn't yours while you owe it to someone else.

Third: That once the basic needs are met (food, housing, clothing) with maybe a little extra, people are happy. And while having lots of money can buy you things that bring temporary gratification, it rarely changes any lasting satisfaction. This is in contrast to people who can't meet their basic needs who are always worrying about where dinner's going to come from.

There were several other good points, but these were the ones that stuck out to me the most. I think that money can bring us peace when we have control of our finances. That while we are in charge of our budget and we aren't in debt than we're in a good situation. So does money effect our happiness? Yes, when we're constantly worried about where money for food is going to come from it's hard. But once those fears are gone, we can relax and focus on what is most important.

-Shayla

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