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| ISBN-13: | 9781496959744 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 01/05/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 138 |
| File size: | 179 KB |
Read an Excerpt
Wealth Is Your Birthright
Talk To God About It!
By Ricardo Avelino
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2015 Ricardo AvelinoAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4969-4562-4
CHAPTER 1
START THE DAY SPENDING, END THE NIGHT BROKE
"Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one." Benjamin Franklin.
At an early age during my elementary years, I already started wallowing in the world of business. I began by myself selling candies and cigarettes along the streets and highways riding in and jumping down from running passenger jeeps and buses. Then I became the capitalist of vendors including those selling at the door of clubs and beer houses in the red light district of Pasay City where I grew up. This risky venture went on up to my high school days. When I reached college I decided to put up my own beer house that extended to a gambling den with billiards and card games including sinful vices not worth mentioning, but lucrative. The name of the game became a lot of people working for me for money.
I was then really making huge money at an early age as they call "picking apple" in return of investment even capable of putting up another branch or branches if financial management was properly handled. But most of the time I had no money left in my pocket. More often than not, I had no cash to pay the cases of beers delivered every night. Why?
In most nights, I left my bar under the care of my friend while I went to other gambling places like Jai-Alai and to race tracks on Wednesdays and weekends and woke up the next morning broke.
My life, then, have been starting the night spending and ending the day broke. I used to sleep at daytime and wake up at night time except on Saturdays and Sundays to receive the collections of my boys who went house to house getting bets on the winning horse races. I was earning day and night. Mothers around the neighborhood thought I have lots of money but what they didn't know, I earn to spend.
This scenario is common to many workers even today. They work hard 40-48/7 but when payday comes their hard earned money either goes to pay debts or to spending sprees. Everybody may know the consequences of spending beyond the means but many never learn.
Practical College Basic Accounting teaches the impress system of accounting to know and identify expenditures and to document the expenses in detail. Here in the United States of America having more debt increases credit score. The usage of debit card and credit card can help in applying the system but there is a needed self-control to identify needs over wants. The use of the plastic money or credit card is enticing but if lifestyle is uncontrolled, the plastic money can lead expenditures to go over and above the limit resulting to overdrawn or overdue accounts.
On the other hand, using budgeted cash money can avoid overspending and indebtedness because when the money in the pocket runs out it means all the money intended to be spent is already consumed. Using cash won't let your account slide past zero.
Hence, if you are a shopaholic always having this compulsive shopping urge even on items you can't afford, better leave your credit card at home and just bring budgeted cash. Money gives power and self-worth. But if you are always thinking and finding where to spend your money, that is entirely wrong. You are allowing money to control you rather than you ruling over it. Your true self-worth is not how much money you have or do not have but it is how well you can manage your money.
Charity is a noble trait. It is not wrong to help other people but lending money to someone whom you know has no capacity to pay especially if it is habitual, is wrong spending. Loving your neighbor as you love yourself is glorifying to the Lord but repeatedly committing err for generosity, when you yourself is heavily indebted and with many obligations to pay, is considered poor stewardship. Hence, give within your means but you can help raise the whole needed fund by sourcing from other people who can afford, such is a practical application as The Parable of the Talent. When you offer help follow what your discerning spirit dictates to avoid ending up being broke.
Can you picture yourself spending all your money to help others but denying your family's needs (e.g. payment of your children's school fees, food on the table or milk for your baby?) You appear like an irresponsible head of your household considered to have denied the faith and worse than an unbeliever (1 Timothy 5:8).
David Quilty in his writings made mention of celebrities who went from richness to bankruptcy with Donald Trump and the king of pop Michael Jackson on the lead followed by M.C. Hammer, Mike Tyson, Gary Coleman, Willie Nelson, Burt Reynolds, and Don Johnson of Miami Vice fame.
How did this happen? How else but by luxurious spending? No matter how much your income or personal net, never overextend yourself by taking on more debts to finance grander luxurious lifestyle than you can't afford.
Child wonder Gary Coleman's (Different Strokes) story is different. As a child star and being a young person, he entrusted his money to his parents. It is a dangerous gamble not to get involved in managing your finances. While Coleman aged, he could have talked to a financial advisor outside of his immediate circle. It is hard to believe family members ever stealing money from you but it always pays to be careful. Gary died in 2010 broke due to luxurious spending not by him but by his parents.
Quilty, also wrote of taking away lessons from the stories of the above-mentioned celebrities who went broke. A number of them were able to comeback learning from their mistakes. Donald Trump learned to separate corporate business funds from personal and limit liability. M.C. Hammer was able to put his life back together using better decisions. Willie Nelson negotiated with the IRS for a plan on how to pay his taxes by coming out with an album entitled "The IRS Tapes." If you can talk to the IRS, what would you have to offer?
Whoever or whatever is your lender, individual or a company, talk to them in negotiations and surely there is a law and there are still humans willing to listen and help like the IRS. Do not hide and ignore.
Gambling is no longer confined to Las Vegas as a sin city for casinos and gambling become rampant in almost every city. What used to be biblical and illegal are now legal. Have you seen children being brought to the casino's play park while the parents are inside engrossed playing the baccarat, blackjack, or playing with the one arm bandit better known as the slot machine? This is parallel to a father who asks his son to light his cigarette in the kitchen not knowing that silently the son is learning to be a smoker himself. Exposing children to casinos give them a psychological impact that it is fun to be in the gambling environment. The same is true to famous TV children's show that uses gambling paraphernalia exactly the same that of in gambling dens.
What does gambling have to do with our topic, spending? Well, gambling is spending in itself, the worst of its kind and worse than over spending. The true secret of increasing our net worth is to spend lesser than what we make.
It is not wrong spending our own money but what makes it wrong is when our first priority is to spend before considering the biblical benefits of giving, saving and investing. Making a list of expenditures including appropriating an amount to give to the church and others is budgeting. When you go to eateries with your family, you already know how much you should be spending, it should be the same when in going to a church, tithe or offering should already be prepared as well.
Aside from becoming broke, lavish spending beyond our means may tie us down to debts. A heavy loaner becomes a slave to lenders, debt bondage or a financial bondage. Unpaid loans may bring us to the prison cell, hence, it is too a physical bondage. Sometimes it may even lead to death like the unfortunate case of a friend, a policeman, who has been reported over world television news just this year to have shot to death four of his loaners. It appeared however that these borrowers have been paying through a middle man but the latter allegedly has not been remitting the payments. It is right and proper to pay our debts on time and to the right person.
We now live in a materialistic world. Materialism spreads like fire in every corner and it always involves greed. In most cases, it is a matter of misdirected spending priorities on luxuries, unnecessary gadgets, fancy foods, entertainment, unplanned trips and borrowing money to pay another loan. To make it worse, most borrowers have no job or business or expecting no income. Unbelievable but it happens.
I know of people who are now buried into loans that I am helping acting as their life coach and father being a pastor. When borrowing money, much more, if in big amounts, check the lender if it is under the Central Bank (BSP), or the Securities & Exchange Commission. Better to borrow from banks than in Financing especially if the Financing is seemingly hiding its basis of interest. Banks are transparent on everything and all of its computations while Financings which are under SEC like First Standard, allegedly does not and turned out to be still in use of the so called Rule of 78. Beware!
A business company allegedly continued to pay for the last eight months but when they checked to compute and pay it appeared that as if there was no payment at all deducted from the principal because of the Rule of 78. Vengeance is mine says the Lord!
"There is precious treasure and oil in the dwelling of the wise, but a foolish man swallows it up" (Proverbs 21:20).
Many were foolish spending it all then. How about you, would you like to be wiser or foolish as well?
"Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and pay your vows to the Most High; call upon Me in the day of trouble; I shall rescue you and you will honor Me" (Psalm 50:14-15).
CHAPTER 2THE TRUE WEALTH
"Now in my prosperity I said, I shall never be moved" (Psalm 30:6).
Wow, in my prosperity! In this verse, prosperity has worked an ill effect on the psalmist, it has made him self-confident and proud. Many among us have been in this situation and we tend to forget God when we are up there, heart lifted up and in the spirit of self- glorification. Sounds familiar?
How important is wealth to you? Does it bother you to be wealthy, are you bothered by other people's attitude towards your plenty or lack of money?
Many people say (or at least think or feel) that wealth is the most important thing in the world. They believe that without money people will not respect them. In fact, some Christians feel inferior because they are not as rich as their contemporaries. This makes them ask, "Does this mean my abilities are not good enough? Why is it that I am not making as much money as they do?" As a result of this thinking, they become moody, their relationships turn sour, their perspective in life dims, and their walk with God falters.
There are also those who believe that money or wealth is the root of all evil, so they embrace the vow of poverty. Do you have the same belief?
Look at the mirror, who do you see, is it not yourself in the image of God? Is it not that God is the Creator of all things seen and unseen? If we are created in His image, do you think it is His joy to see us suffer or is it His delight to see us in abundance enjoying life? Just like Paul, we may suffer in following the Master but still I firmly believe that God is not a sadist to enjoy His creation suffer or falter.
Self-worth, however, is not measured how wealthy we are or how poor we are as a person or how much money we make or we have. It depends on who we are with God and who He is to us. It has nothing to do with our education either or how much we know or how popular we are. The Pharisees have all these things and the Lord Jesus spoke very strongly to these men even calling them "hypocrites" and "brood of vipers."
KJV Dictionary defines "subdue it" as exertion of superior power and bring into permanent subjection, while Dictionary. com says to bring under mental or emotional control. Hence, I believe when God says "Fill the earth and subdue it" and have dominion over ..." God is entrusting the earth to us, His creation as his stewards to manage. The goal of life, therefore, is not to accumulate wealth and possessions but to be stewards of God's wealth for "He owns all the gold and silver of the world" (Haggai 2:8). We are to handle God's resources as faithful managers guided by His eternal financial planning and management principles.
"He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much. 11 Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? "Luke 16:10-11
As Christians, we are the children of the King of kings. We are fellow heirs with Christ Jesus (Galatians 4:7). God loves us. He considers us so precious that He was willing to give up His life to save us. This simply means that our true wealth (sense of self-worth) is based on our one-on-one relationship with God and not on the amount of money we have or we don't have. "Be a delight to the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart" (Psalm 37:4).
CHAPTER 3WEALTH & RICHES
"It's good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it's good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven't lost the things that money can't buy." George Lorimer
What comes to your mind when you hear the word wealth? Do you think of dollar money in the bank, expensive jewelries such as gold and diamond, luxury vehicles with private helicopters and planes, a yacht, a mansion, stocks, bonds, life insurance?
Online Merriam Webster Dictionary defines riches as large amounts of money and possessions or things that make a person rich, while, it defines wealth as abundance of material valuable possessions or resources and abundant supply. At first glance, being rich and wealthy are synonymous but a close observation will show that wealth is not only a valuable possession, but it has abundant supply. This means, therefore, that when you are involved in an activity that generates a lot of money, you are rich, but when you create a system of activity for others to generate money, then you are wealthy.
Historically and biblically, wealth is the ownership of properties that people could see and touch. Such are cattle e.g. herd of cows, sheep, bulls and oxen and also camels and lands and personal property. These are what we call today as tangible assets.
When God created man in his own image and in the image of God, He created male and female, God gave man tangible assets with a command and a blessing, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over ..." (Genesis 1:27-29). God would like us to manage the wealth of the earth as stewards since the very beginning. Hence, wealth is our birthright. When we take a fruit off the tree, plow the earth, harvest a crop or cut down a tree for its wood (in short, when we work) we are exercising our right of dominion or ruling over. Our right of dominion must be in accordance to our mission as man and uttered by God, "to tend and keep it" (Genesis 2:15).
Wealth is our birthright and the Bible teaches us to work that if we don't work, neither should we eat (2 Thessalonians 3:10). Most employers and businessmen respect and compensate good working attitude. Generally, he will be financially rewarded as a result. Likewise, the lazy person will not be rewarded. "The sluggard will not plow because of winter; so, he will beg during the harvest. And have nothing" (Proverbs 20:4). Our welfare state has produced a slothful spirit in many and bred an attitude of "Let the Government keeps us." We are afraid to excel in business because we don't want the disability or the social security money that we receive be removed, not realizing that we have the ability to multiply in much more than the meager amount of welfare, if only we believe and desire to. When our food stamp and government care was removed I praise the Lord for it means we are on our way to prosperity. What is impossible with men is possible with God.
Nowadays, wealth is often expressed in intangible assets, which is defined by Investopedia as an asset that is not physical in nature. Corporate intellectual property (i.e. copyrights, patents, trademarks, business methodologies), goodwill and brand recognition are all common intangible assets in today's marketplace. Gold, the measure of wealth through the ages is based on opinion as well as a value of a stock comes from investors' collective opinion about the stock, illustrated by sharp speculation on both increases and decreases.
Tangible or intangible, however, assets may become a liability.
However, we should recognize always and first that whatever we have comes from God. We did not bring anything with us when we were born. So, we cannot bring either wealth or riches or anything with us when we die. We are mere managers (stewards) of the wealth entrusted by God to us.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Wealth Is Your Birthright by Ricardo Avelino. Copyright © 2015 Ricardo Avelino. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Dedication, ix,Bank Of The West, xi,
Foreword: Engr Julius Reyes, CEO, Royal Team, World Financial Group USA, xiii,
Foreword: Bishop Windsor G Cabrera, Gospel of Christ Fellowship International, xv,
Acknowledgement, xvii,
Prologue, xxi,
Endorsements, xxv,
Chapter 1 Start The Day Spending, End The Night Broke, 1,
Chapter 2 The True Wealth, 8,
Chapter 3 Wealth & Riches, 11,
Chapter 4 Wealth Vs Poverty: A Spiritual Battle, 15,
Chapter 5 Financial Planning & Stewardship The God's Way, 27,
Chapter 6 The Challenge Of Giving, 30,
Chapter 7 The Power Of Saving-The Profit Of Investing, 44,
Baby Boomers, 52,
Buy & Hold No Longer Holds?, 54,
Retirement & Inheritance Can Be Tax-Free Did You Know That?, 57,
Walt Disney et al, Dream Come True Because of ... Life Insurance, 65,
Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT), 70,
The Business Side, 70,
Chapter 8 How Much Is Enough, And When?, 76,
Chapter 9 Have Fun: Pay Yourself Spending, 84,
Chapter 10 Rest, 89,
Filipino American Society Inc Of North California, 97,
Bonus Chapter, 99,
The First Surrogate Motherhood, 103,