Money Release: Making, Saving, Investing and Debt Management » money

5 Ways to Manage Your Money Wisely

Vic — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 05:22:37 +0000

Money is valuable. We need it to conveniently move and live in this world full of economic transactions. Thus, we need to manage our money wisely so that we can always enjoy financial freedom. Managing our finances should be started as early as now to avoid pecuniary problems and escape from being trapped in various debts and loans. The following are five ways that will help you manage your money intelligently.

1. Plan and stick to that plan. In managing your money, you must have specific goals. These include your definite financial objectives, such as increasing your income and savings or reducing your expenses to a certain amount or percentage. In order to achieve each of your goals, you must have strategic procedures which include your steps to reach those goals. Also remember that like all plans, a financial plan or a budget should be one that is S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound) plan. In this way, you will be assured that you have a definite and achievable financial mission with the required strategies to accomplish it.

2. Put your things in order. Everything that is in chaos is unmanageable. This is the same with the tangible and intangible things around you. Thus you need to organize your stuff and activities to save time, as well as money. Remember that time is gold, and that every time lost is money lost. Just imagine if you spend an hour looking for your lost car key you’ve misplaced in your messy room. If you are earning $20 an hour, then you have already lost that amount dealing with your cluttered way of living. To manage your money, you must organize your stuff and tasks to make your life smooth, optimized and productive.

3. Choose the people whom you will be dealing with. Peer pressure is one of the major factors that influence our financial decisions. If you go around with people who are extravagant, it’s likely that you will also become one of them. If you also mingle with people who are financially irresponsible, unreliable and love to rely solely on your pocket, then you will be in a big economic trouble. Thus, you need to wisely choose the persons whom you will be with. You should choose the right friends and activity partners to be with. This way, you can prevent negative pressures and influences that cause you to use your cash and other resources impractically.

4. Motivate yourself. This is the most powerful way to manage your personal finances. All your plans, procedures and tools to achieve your money targets will depend on your principles, attitudes, values and habits. If you want to reach your financial goals, you must learn how to motivate yourself. If you want to realize your target income, you should be more diligent. Furthermore, if you want to reduce your expenses, you must be humble and patient to resist spending on things that are beyond your needs. Remember, that planning and budgeting are futile if you will not have the passion to execute and accomplish them. Hence, to optimally manage your money, you must know how to direct your whole personality into it.

5. Track your records. Lastly, tracking will give you lots of advantages in effectively managing your finances. This is the monitoring and controlling process of your financial management. Without records, you cannot gather important financial data to be used in analyzing and formulating the best economic decisions. Therefore, you need to keep records of your economic activities, such as your cash flow and statement of income. These records will help you determine your financial strengths and weaknesses. These will also give you important data, such as the things you need to continue and the areas you need to improve. Moreover, those pieces of information are useful in detecting financial risks. These early warnings will give you the ability to prevent them in an efficient manner.

Conclusion:
We don’t need to be so smart to manage our personal finances wisely. Becoming wise is becoming diligent and passionate in collecting data and knowledge that we need to analyze and come up with the best financial decisions. Then, these raw data must be organized into specific procedures and objectives. Finally, we must be equipped with the right values, attitudes and habits to execute those steps, achieve our goals and maintain financial success.

Top 10 Reasons Why People are Stuck in Debt

Vic — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 16:13:38 +0000

If you are stuck in debt, the immediate action you should take is to understand why you have fallen into that kind of situation. This is to acquire mental awareness which you can use to start battling and winning over your debt. In other words, you must know your enemy to succeed in defeating it before it can totally ruin your whole life. Before it’s too late, you must do something to get out from debt. Thus, you must reflect on the following ten reasons which grab people’s feet into the credit trap.

1. Not building an emergency fund. Without an emergency fund, people are defenseless against debts and loans when emergency situations occur. This happen when they suddenly loss a job, suffer unforeseen business losses or incur unexpected medical expenses. Having no fund for these unanticipated events, they resort to borrowing. That is why it is always a must to save money and put up and emergency fund for rainy days.

2. Failure to stay fit. One of the main reasons why people are stuck in debt is their failure to maintain a healthy body and lifestyle. Sickness doesn’t only mean additional expenses, but it also means lessening of your productivity and income opportunity. Hence, doing regular exercises, maintaining the right diet and having enough rest are important ways to escape from being stuck in debt.

3. Being so material. Enjoying too much pleasure (drunkenness, gluttony, smoking and the likes) and preferring material over spiritual things causes poverty. Often, they become addiction and become the main reason why people get trapped in debt.

4. Failure to identify debt problems. Many people usually notice debt overload when it is already on its worst stage. This usually happens when they don’t monitor the movements of their borrowings. Here, they don’t have an early prevention schemes to cure the early symptoms of getting caught in debt.

5. Dishonesty. Another reason why debt becomes severe is people’s dishonesty. This includes reporting false statements about one’s financial condition and performance to different agencies and individuals. When people don’t report credit problems to loan agencies such as banks, they may get loans which are beyond their capacity to pay. Likewise, by submitting fraudulent tax returns, they eventually suffer civil and criminal liabilities.

6. Lack of financial planning and budgeting. To have a greater chance of not falling into the snare of debt, we must have a plan to avoid it. This is just like having a light to brighten our dark ways ahead. Personal finance planning, particularly budgeting, gives us guides and the right steps to smoothen our way to our financial journey. It can also be used for monitoring purposes by comparing actual to budgeted financial figures. Unfortunately, these tools are habitually ignored by most people.

7. Gambling. Gambling debt is not just a mere financial problem, but it is also an indication of addiction that causes personal problems. One of the major reasons why people fall into debt is their false hope, and gambling is one common example of this risky kind of hope. Often, gamblers rely on their winnings to settle their growing financial obligations. And because of the very tiny chance of earning from gambling, they eventually suffer from bulging debts.

8. Not acquiring professional growth. Our comfort zones do not always bring comfort to us, especially when it comes to winning against debts. If gambling is taking too much risk, not stepping outside one’s comfort zone is not taking any risk. Both of these behaviors will not help anyone get out of debt. Thus, we need to take extra courage, initiative and diligence to find rooms for improvements. If you are an officer or an employee, you may acquire additional education, certifications, and skill enhancements to boost your professional market value and increase your worthiness to demand higher salary or wages.

9. Maintaining lot of credit cards. Unlike debit cards which use the bearer’s own money, credit cards are loan cards. This means that the more we use credit card, the more we owe money. Credit card debt is one of the common debts we can find in a person’s list of financial liabilities. Therefore, we must not overuse those cards, but instead use our cash as possible as we can.

10. Procrastinating payment of debt. A person’s negative habit affects his whole life. It can damage his professional, emotional and financial aspects. One of the bad habits that can cause such harm is procrastination. Many people are not focus and passionate in paying their debts and loans. That is why they loss the habit of settling their financial obligations on time. Consequently, they are permanently stuck in debt.

Conclusion:
Getting out of debt may require us to seek for additional knowledge and understanding of the facts. As listed above, we must formulate the right attitudes and values that will lead us to do the vigorous actions needed to achieve our financial freedom. We should also understand that personal finance is only one of our life’s aspects that can be affected by our negative habits, such as procrastination, dishonesty and lack of self-control. This means that we should concentrate on improving our entire personality to develop our life as a whole. If we can entirely develop ourselves, we can also develop our financial aspect, which is only a part of it.

How to Save Cash by Spending Money

Victorino — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 05:35:12 +0000

How to save cash by spending money? Is this question sounds absurd to you? I hope it doesn’t, because this is for real and it is one of the forgotten ways to save your cash and the money you have in the bank. To save cash, we don’t just think about money, we also need to consider time. Moreover, in considering time, we don’t just recognize the short-term outcome, but we also need to identify the long-term results. We should understand that not all cash savings we are doing now can save as money in the near future. On the other hand, we should also remember that not all cash spending we are doing today can exhaust our money in the long run.

Many people actually fail to save money because they are afraid to spend it. Some businessmen even become bankrupt because they keep so much money. Why are these events happening? Those people who are worried of cash outlay are the ones who don’t pay their dues and obligations on time, such as monthly bills and loan amortizations. This practice causes them additional fees, surcharges and penalties. The results are additional liabilities beyond their original payables. Those business owners who keep too much money out of greed are the ones who escape paying their actual income taxes and other financial obligations. This behavior results to audit investigations which cause big loss to the business not only in monetary terms, but also in terms of integrity.

To really save cash, not only in the short run but also in the long run, we need to spend money wisely. We should consider the permanent things rather than the temporary. Thus, we need to settle our financial obligations so that it may not bring us additional expenses that will dwindle our savings in the future. Who wants to be penalized, and who wants to pay money in excess of what is originally liable? Of course no one wants it.

We can also save more cash in the future if we will avoid becoming too frugal. This means we should avoid buying cheaper goods just to have instant and temporary savings today. Purchasing cheaper stuff can be meant acquiring low quality goods. The disadvantage of buying cheap and low-quality merchandises is that they don’t really serve us in the long run. Yes, we can save money by paying less, but we can become losers when it comes to their usability. Just think of buying an expensive brand-new car versus buying a cheap and secondhand car. Of course we can save money by acquiring the used vehicle because we will be paying a cheaper price. But will this help us save our money in the coming days? I don’t think so. The repairs and maintenance can be an expensive recurring expense if we will be riding in a secondhand car. On the other hand, buying a brand-new vehicle will require us to spend a larger amount of money now. However, it will save us more pennies by avoiding the hassle of continuous repairs expense. What it makes feel better is that we will be driving a new and a more comfortable car.

Money Bible Verses: On Saving and Emergency Fund

Victorino — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 04:48:50 +0000

Saving money seems to be an easy task. But the reality tells the other way around. The truth is… it is difficult to set aside money. This is because we do not only encounter controllable temptations to spend money, but also we often face uncontrollable circumstances that lead us to use them. These unmanageable circumstances include our routine necessity to buy our daily food, unexpected medical expenses, unanticipated repair expenses, and other expenditures we must not ignore. Thus, it is just wise to save money for these kinds of events we don’t expect to happen anytime in the future. We call this amount an emergency fund. This is a fund we set aside for the exclusive use of our emergency needs in an unpredicted future. There can be confusion whether saving money is wise and biblical, considering that saved money, which don’t earn interest, seems to be unwise. There are also claims that investing is far away better than saving. With these, let us find out what the Bible says about saving money. The following are passages from the Holy Scriptures pertaining to saving bucks and setting aside for an emergency fund:

1 Corinthians 16:2
On the first day of every week each one of you is to put aside and save, as he may prosper, so that no collections be made when I come.

Proverbs 6:6-8
Go to the ant, sluggard; consider her ways and be wise; who having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provides her food in the summer and gathers her food in the harvest.

Proverbs 19:2
Also it is not good for a person to be without knowledge, and he who hurries his footsteps errs.

Proverbs 21:5
The plans of the diligent lead surely to advantage, but everyone who is hasty comes surely to poverty.

Proverbs 21:20
The wise man saves for the future but the foolish man spends whatever he gets

Proverbs 27:12
A prudent man sees evil and hides himself, the naive proceed and pay the penalty

Proverbs 30:24-25
Four things are small on the earth, but they are exceedingly wise: The ants are not a strong people, but they prepare their food in the summer;

Ecclesiastes 11:2
Divide your portion to seven, or even to eight, for you do not know what misfortune may occur on the earth.

Conclusion:
The Holy Bible which is full of wisdom clearly is a reference of purpose. Every acts and teachings we can find in the Holy Books are under a great purpose. Therefore, we can say that the righteousness of saving and setting aside money depends on its purpose. Yes, investing can be better than saving, but saving under a good purpose can be better than a risky investment. Saving money for an emergency fund is recommended for this uncertain world. Saving money for the future of your children (educational fund) is also wise. But saving money without a clear purpose is dull. Saving money can also teach us self-discipline – a virtue that gives us great results in our lives. It also orients us to patience and prudence – two virtues that keep us away from financial troubles. Hence, let us be disciplined, patient and prudent persons. Let us save money with a great purpose. If you love your family, you won’t give them a gloomy future. Finally, if you honor God, you should always see to it that you always bear fruits for your people to be picked.

Personal Finance Tips #7: Educate Yourself

Victorino — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 16:08:58 +0000

Knowledge is power! That is why if you want to strengthen your personal finance, you need to gain knowledge. Our seventh personal finance tip is to educate ourselves. Education doesn’t only mean you need to go to a school or a university to acquire it. It also includes education outside from schools. Education can also be our personal asset that cannot be robbed from us by any theft – though it can be shared and make yourself useful to the community. Knowledge or wisdom can be acquired from listening, reading, experiencing or from reflecting one’s self. It serves as our light in every direction we are heading. It also makes our market value increase. When you are an employee, you are considerably more valuable if you got a master’s degree or a prestigious certification than if you are not.

As we can be our best assets, we need to improve ourselves. We need to increase our market values. But how can we do that? We can do that by increasing our knowledge and education – formal or informal depending on our necessity. If you are an employee, it is just advisable that you get higher education (master’s degree, certification, etc.,) to aid your promotion. If you are an entrepreneur, you can also get higher education like MBA or the like, attend trainings and seminars or just conduct your own research to develop your business.

The fruits of education are these: if you are an employee, you can get a higher salary and if you’re an entrepreneur, you can bring your business into progress. Moreover, if you don’t have the both (business and employment), you can gain the capability to have one of them or both if you become educated. Knowledge also brings skills. Skills can give us opportunities to earn money and solve financial problems.

Education helps us reinforce our finances. It can also boost our earning capacity, orient us the discipline to control our spending, and teach us how to save and invest our money. Sometimes our financial world is dark and uncertain. But because of knowledge, we have light and calculations that give us almost precision. Therefore, education cannot be ignored. It should be prioritized just like how we prioritize our selves. There are many books that can be read. There are many reliable articles on the Internet where you can get the wisdom to manage your finances. We should not stop from learning. We should not stop and claim that we are already wise. We should be like that if we don’t want to be called fools. Remember that foolishness can lead anyone to shame.

Wise people are humble. They also live in modesty. These attributes keep them away from excessive expenses and unwanted debts. Apparently, foolish people are boastful and live in extravagance. Consequently, they lose most of their money and they fall into the trap of debt. By having wisdom and knowledge, we can have the information and cautions we need to plan strategically. We can set effective procedures that will help us achieve our financial goals. Finally, we can learn the principles and behaviors that will fortify our personal finances.

Personal Finance Tips #6: Forget the Money

Victorino — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 15:42:10 +0000

The title of this article may sound absurd. How can we become financially stable if we forget or ignore money? But what most of us don’t know is that too much attention on money can bring us financial disasters, and even a whole life problem. Many people have loved money more than anything else. They even sacrifice their real treasures and assets for money. They have forsaken their loved ones and even God for the love of money. Other people give up their integrity, honesty and good name just to not lose money. Aren’t they aware that the love of money is the root of all evil? And evil can lead us to destruction – even financial destruction?

Now, why I am saying that one practical personal finance tip is to forget about money? I’m telling this, because I want everyone to focus on becoming great instead of concentrating on money. The Bible even said, seek first the kingdom of God and all these things be will added to you. This means let’s seek first for greatness rather than things which do not last forever. Becoming great is a combination of being humble and one who serves God and His people. But how can greatness (humility and service) can help us stabilize our personal finances? Simply, if you become great, you will bear greatness.

By becoming great, we can avoid financial troubles – even long-term and permanent troubles. In earning money for example, when you work great in your business (serving your customers well, treating your employees the right way, and becoming responsible to the government), you will be assured that your financial condition and operation will have a bright future. Just imagine if you will just concentrate on money. For example, if you deceive your customers to have bigger profits, give unjust compensation to your employees just to cut your cost, and practice tax evasion just to save more money – what will happen? Do you think you will prosper? But of course you can be financially successful. But that will only be temporary. You customers will not return to you, your employees may leave you, and the IRS may impose tax penalties on you. The consequence will be a great financial tragedy for you and your business.

How about if you are not a businessman? Let us say you’re an employee. The virtue of greatness still applies. If you concentrate in doing great to your job, performing well and having the best results, there will be a huge chance that you will be promoted and will receive incentives and bonuses. Thus, helping your financial capability to be strengthened. Moreover, if you will not boast and will stay humble, you will be exalted and win bunch of good friends. These true friends that will be yours will help you in any aspects of your life, including the financial aspect of your life.

If you wish to get out of debt, greatness also applies effectively. Often, people, because they don’t want their money (even their last money) to leave them, they don’t pay their debts responsively. A responsible person does his promises, including his promises to pay his dues. That’s why if you want to really extinguish your liabilities, you should do great in doing your vows. You should not just focus on keeping that money in your hands, but you should concentrate in preserving your word of honor, as well as your credit score, which are beneficial to both of you and your creditor.

Therefore, concentrate on becoming great in everything you do. Sometimes or even most of the times, you must forget that money. Be great and be righteous, and money will not leave you – even if you will not focus on it. Don’t hold your money too tight, so that it may flow freely, and return to you voluntarily – giving you the freedom you have first given to it.

Personal Finance Tips #5: Be Diligent

Victorino — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 08:08:28 +0000

When it comes to delivering wisdom to my readers, especially on money and finance, I often refer to the Bible. I believe that the Holy Scriptures, which already existed thousands of year ago, are filled with powerful wisdom that if practiced by us, will make our lives better. Its passages can also guide us to better financial living and better management of our money, as well as our debts. Now, in my fifth personal finance tips series, I am introducing diligence as an important virtue that will help us achieve our financial success and freedom. I’m telling this because diligence, according to the Bible can bring us the wealth that will stabilize our financial condition.

”Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth.” – Proverbs 10:4 (NIV)

Diligence is important as an action is important to accomplish every task or plan. Intelligence is good. Yes it is good because we need to be wise in making our financial planning and in designing our steps and procedures in managing our personal finances. However, this wit is inadequate without putting them into actions. Using our brain is good, but without using our hands, it can never be better. Even if we have the confidence in our hearts to succeed in our financial life, it will only come short if we will not walk the talk. Remember that faith without deed is dead.

Our financial program is composed of a good plan, nice goal and a series of effective steps to achieve that financial goal. In this program, the steps are very important – and we can only walk all the steps if we are constantly diligent. We need to do what we think. We need to realize what we feel. We need to work for the things we want to achieve. The debts we want to extinguished must be paid by our earnings. These earnings should be the fruits of our consistent labor. If we only think of repaying the money we owed, but never work for the money we will be using to pay off those debts, we will just find ourselves still slaves by lenders.

In saving money, our actions play a very important role. It is our hands that hold, make and or spend our money. In order that we can save money, we should increase our income by working more. We also need to control our hands not to spend excessively.

In investing money, especially when we invest it to our business, diligence is our key to success and prosperity. If you will refer to your financial statements (balance sheets or statement of financial position and statements of income), you will find in your balance sheet that equity increases when your income increases. If your equity increases, your asset may also increase, and your liability may be decreased. Take note that the statement of income, which is also known as the statement of performance and results of operation, reflect a company or an individual’s performance and results. This just means that the success of a business or financial activity indeed lies on our performance and results – which are the manifestation of our works and our diligence.

Personal Finance Tips #4: Value and Importance

Victorino — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 17:24:42 +0000

Here is another personal finance tip I want to share to all my readers. In an objective to attain financial stability, we need to take a good look to our personal finances. We need to stand firmly for the achievement of our financial goals. We just not need to plan, set goals and do the steps to achieve those goals. We need to give those things a great importance. We must value what we think, what we feel, and what we do to our personal finance. Every task we made and every goal we target, we must think and feel how much they are important to us. We must put an essence to all things we do. This essence exists when we put value to those things.

Many people, although they have a good financial plan and procedures to achieve their financial goals, still fail. One mail reason is… they don’t perform their very best. They take those plans and steps slightly, and sometimes they take them for granted. This happen because they don’t stand on the things they have laid.

All plans must have a goal. This goal must be an important goal for someone not to take it insignificantly. Hence, in every plan and goal we make, we must always ask ourselves – why are we doing this plan? Why do we want to achieve those goals? How important it is to achieve them? By assuring that a plan and its goal are very important to our lives, we can also assure that we will do our best to execute that plan and achieve its goal.

In setting up our emergency fund, we should also put some value on this fund. Because if we won’t, we might just lose it. This must also apply to all the funds and allowances we build. We must hold them tight, protect them, and nurture them – as if they are very important to us. We can also think of some important things to become the reasons why we are doing these financial activities. These things can be the most important people in our lives. They can be our love ones, our children particularly. The educational fund you are building up can be very important to you, because you love your children. The emergency fund you keep can also be very significant to you because you don’t want your family to face financial troubles in the future.

One major personal financial goal you can desire can be your release from debts. This goal must also become very important to you. This means, you need to become serious in eliminating those amounts you owed. You need to pay them on time. This also means you need to do your best effort to find and earn money to repay those debts.

By putting pure value on everything we do, we can set ourselves on fire and attain success on those things. Remember that what we don’t hold firmly – can fall from our hands. Thus, we must stand on every plan we create, in every steps we make, and in every goal we want to achieve. We must place a great importance on them. We can do that by linking them to important things in our lives, like our love for our family and other loved ones.

Personal Finance Tips #3: Be Honest

Victorino — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 04:56:06 +0000

Honesty is known to be the best policy. However, only few people practice it. Seemingly because being honest may give you some instant troubles. People tend to depart from honesty to escape some of life’s immediate troubles. What they don’t know is they are just pushing their selves into bigger problems which are even long-term rather than temporal. Persons who are fun of hiding in the darkness instead of in the light are the people who always fall into the trap of financial troubles, as well as in the claws of debts. They are the ones who usually don’t achieve financial freedom and the ones who often become slaves of lenders. Honesty, though difficult and requires a lot of patience and self-control, is an effective virtue that can help us achieve our financial liberty and get us out of debt.

So how is your personal finance doing? Do you have many debts and don’t have financial stability? If yes, what do you think is the problem? Have you been an honest person all these years? Maybe you have obtained a loan you know you can never pay? Or you have not done your vows or promises to pay your debts, resulting this to double your debts because of interests and penalties?

A simple piece of dishonesty can bring a person lot of financial troubles. People who can hardly say “no” or refuse or resist a thing that should be resisted often slide into a whole financial mess. I remember one person who didn’t have enough money in his pocket or in his bank account. He was encouraged to have a grand birthday party by his friends. Because the man cannot be true to his self, he did not say no to them and he gave his vow to realize that party. Consequently, he resorted to creditors and owed money he could never afford to payback. Eventually, the party happened and the increase in his liabilities also occurred. With that story, we can tell that should he became honest to people and unto himself, he should have escaped lots of debts.

Dishonesty is also common in paying taxes. Many people, who wish to save their money, don’t pay the right taxes. They resort to tax evasion which is a great practice of lying. These people gain temporary financial relief because they don’t pay bigger current taxes. However, as the IRS conducts audits, these people are caught with more penalties. That means more expenses which result to additional financial burden.

To strengthen our personal finances, we should also strengthen our attitudes and behaviors. This includes strengthening our virtue of honesty. As we all know, the truth will set us free. The truth and the light can give us financial freedom and stop us from becoming slaves of our creditors. Honesty is difficult to practice, but if practiced constantly, will truly help us in gaining our financial stability. Therefore, let us embrace in our everyday conducts that honesty is still the best policy – even in our financial policies.

Money is not the root of all evil

Victorino — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 09:21:43 +0000

Is money the root of all evil? No it’s not. Many people believe in this great misconception. That’s why most of them somehow have a bad feeling about it – about money. Seemingly, money can be the reason of many fighting. Money also seems to be the motive of theft, corruption, prostitution, fighting, and other negative actions. However, if we will do a thorough research on the origin of this notion, which is the Bible, we can learn that the saying “money is the root of all evil”, is indeed a misinterpretation. If we will refer to the book of 1 Timothy 6:10, we will read the following:

^“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” – 1 Timothy 6:10 (NIV)

From the above passage from the Holy Scriptures, we can clearly learn that it is not the money that is the root of all kind of evil – it is the love of money. Who can love money? It can only be us. We people tend to love money. We sometimes value money more than anything in this world. People sometimes sacrifice time for their family and for God for money.

Now, how true it is that peoples’ love on money can be the root of all evil? Just think of all evil you can think, including greed, lust, pride, murder and envy. Do you think all of these evils can be produced by a person’s love on money? Yes they can be its fruits. One man’s love on money can make him greedy. A woman who loves money more than her dignity can do prostitution. Likewise, a person who put money first in his heart can be proud and envious, and in worst can kill his fellow men for the love of money.

The truth is, we cannot love money and God at the same time. We can’t serve God and His people and serve money at the same time.

^“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.” – Matthew 6:24 (NIV)

But money is not all that bad. If we will become constantly faithful to God, He will give us the wisdom and understanding that will give us health and prosperity.

“My son, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commands in your heart, for they will prolong your life many years and bring you prosperity. “ – Proverbs 3:1-2 (NIV)

Money is not at all evil. It was invented as a tool to give convenience to humankind. It serves as our medium of exchange to ease the exchange of goods and services. It also acts as a unit of account to facilitate measurement when we buy the things we need. Money also serves as a store of value to help us save our possessions in a more technical way. It can also use to easily pay our debts. Hence, let us stop accusing money as the root of all evil. Let’s look first upon ourselves and ask seriously – do we love money?