Chapter 3: How can Money Help or Hinder? 1. Choosing our Goals

The financial ways of a household help or hinder success. Many families make this side of their life a real expression of mutual regard and of team-work. Some have difficulties caused by outside factors over which they have little control, but are like good sailors taking the waves with skill. Whatever the circumstances, there will be need for planning and efficiency. In some families financial troubles come by the way of thoughtlessness, but in other cases troubles over money are merely symptoms of deeper disharmonies that lurk beneath the surface.

In a practical spirit the family must study how to make the best use of material things, meeting its needs wisely, living within its income, avoiding debt, providing for security, planning for advancement, and using financial experiences as projects in cooperation.

One of the easiest roads to trouble is the effort to make an impression. Among all forms of freedom one of the most helpful is freedom from the notion that if the Joneses are extravagant we must keep pace with them. Emancipation from such folly is a form of growing up and is very helpful to peace and harmony. People must have the courage to live simply.

The family should consider its scale of living, not as an end in itself but as a means to higher ends. Some families needlessly sacrifice ease of mind to a misguided struggle for wealth, thus becoming so busy, so burdened and so anxious that there is little room in their lives for love and fellowship. Thus they make themselves poor by sacrificing the greater values for the lesser ones.

Many a couple starting at the bottom have worked their way together and taken necessary hardships in the spirit of a lark. A sense of humor certainly helps. William Rainey Harper, the great first president of the University of Chicago, said that there were times during the first five years of their marriage when neither of them could mail a letter because they did not have enough to buy a stamp. But they had a wonderful time. Poverty is not the greatest handicap, and riches are not necessarily a boon in marriage. It is necessary that the material needs be met, but an even greater need is to recognize that material things in the family must be used with mutual consideration. Thus they serve as aids and means to a more complete life.

The homemakers must choose their goals wisely and work toward them with skill. The home is a setting for love and fellowship, and people who have these things get a good return for their efforts, while lacking these their money is wasted whatever else they have.