A confession to the mortal sin of avarice

_OkGo_ said:
Well it is hard to confess to something that requires a deity to judge your actions.

But adding knowledge/experience or anecdotes to help others in financial need would generally be the opposite of greed.


Well none of that is greed unless you intend to acquire it by unfair means or at the expense of others.
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When it comes to commandments I've broken 1, 3 4 and as a divorcee I've broken 7.

5, 8 and 10 are open to question.

And 6, yea I forgot about that. :D

_OkGo_ said:
Well that's a different sin altogether, that's envy
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The Greeks had the 7 deadly sins. The Christians actually had 8 so talking about the 7 deadly sins is probably a sin. When you die John the Ascetic will kick the backside off you, though some pope did change it back to 7 so maybe you'll be alright.

Edit: It was Pope Gregory (who else I hear you say).
 
bill_cash said:
I was doing some self reflection the other day and realised how often throughout the day I think about money: how much money I have, how much money I will have at a particular time/in different scenarios, how I could make more money, how much money I have in relation to my peers, etc. etc.
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Assuming you have acquired your money legally, you have obtained it by (a) work; (b) luck or (c) inheritance. Leaving out luck and inheritance, and assuming you are not a monopolist or indulged in market rigging or equivalent practices, you got your money through honest labour, i.e. your money is how society rewarded you for the goods or services you produced, or contributed to the production thereof, in a free market economy. Your money is the reward you have received from society for being good at your trade or business, i.e. for fulfilling other peoples wants and needs. So good for you. By your work you have contributed to the growth of society's welfare. And you have been rewarded for that with money. If you end up with more money than you expected, it’s not greed. It is more likely you mispriced the value of your work; or you are good at money management; or you are parsimonious.
 
Does it not ultimately come down to Maslow's hierarchy and as you move through life, you move from the various stages such as food and water to safety and on to self esteem and self actualisation. Personally I think I am somewhere between those latter 2 at this stage in life but there was a time when finding money to pay the rent was more important.
 
Bill's brother Johnny was more fun. :)

I do get where he's coming from; I will admit to checking my pension balance more than is healthy or necessary, and then vaguely fantasising about early retirement. Probably neither helpful nor useful activity but not sinful either.
 
Very interesting question Bill_Cash.
You probably paid tax on a lot of the money you have. So you indirectly gave some of your money away already to those less fortunate than you.

If you still feel anxious or guilty about having too much money you could give some away to a charity or charities.

Tithing is another suggestion that I have heard about. You give 10% of your income or wealth away to charity. I am not sure if that is 10% of your gross or net income.
I suspect it is 10% of Net income. I'm not sure how the 10% figure was arrived at, but 10% of even a low income is still quite a lot of money that one would feel the pain of giving it away.
 
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Leper said:
I think the OP should learn the first rule of having money:- Money is of no use until you spend it.

But, try telling that to many who underwent a Money Makeover on this forum.
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There is a corrollary to that as well, don't spend it if you don't have it and the add on- assets are not necessarily money. There were a lot of paper millionaires during the Celtic Tiger with million euro mansions who were spending like there was no tomorrow but forgetting about cash flow. When the value of the asset dipped, when they could no longer get the cash to manage their debt- they got into trouble.
 
bill_cash said:
I was doing some self reflection the other day and realised how often throughout the day I think about money: how much money I have, how much money I will have at a particular time/in different scenarios, how I could make more money, how much money I have in relation to my peers, etc. etc.

Money is obviously an important element of life and needs due consideration but at what point does the scale tip into greed?
Do you consider yourself greedy in either your thoughts or actions with respect to money?

Personally, I don't think people would consider me greedy as my actions are (I think) not generally greedy. However, I feel my internal thought processes are needlessly and probably unproductively focused on money as an end in and of itself.
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I stand guilty alongside you.

I once wrote in a previous post that I sometimes get fed up of thinking about money and working out the best way to save for my pension, leave money to my kids etc etc. A reply came back that said that behind my comment lay sadness. It really wasn't sadness, I really was just fed up thinking about money. You can't cover every eventuality and I had a pain in the butt trying to.

So yes, I stand guilty beside you. But I'm hoping I won't end up in hell.

There are better and much worse things you could be doing with your time in my opinion.
 
thedaddyman said:
There were a lot of paper millionaires during the Celtic Tiger with million euro mansions who were spending like there was no tomorrow but forgetting about cash flow.
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And now there are lots of millionaires in their million euro homes with their (multi) million euro pension funds who don't think they are rich. From one extreme to the other.
 
David McWilliams has a new book coming out on September 12th called "The History of Money". Personally I think he is a bit of a chancer and I never read any of his books but he has redeemed himself somewhat with his rejection of crypto - I thought that nonsense would be right up the street of the man who called for us to ditch the euro during the crisis.
Anyway, I have a serious question. Kindle are offering a pre-launch price of £13 which they say will be £12 cheaper than its launch price of £25. Now money means a lot to me so can anyone advise whether this is a genuine discount? I presume Kindle will increase the price to £25 on next Thursday, which I definitely would not give to David.
 
The library is a great option....join for free or a few euros and if the book isn't there when you look you can order it and you will be told , roughly, how long your wait will be. They will send you a text..
 
Duke of Marmalade said:
David McWilliams has a new book coming out on September 12th called "The History of Money". Personally I think he is a bit of a chancer and I never read any of his books but he has redeemed himself somewhat with his rejection of crypto - I thought that nonsense would be right up the street of the man who called for us to ditch the euro during the crisis.
Anyway, I have a serious question. Kindle are offering a pre-launch price of £13 which they say will be £12 cheaper than its launch price of £25. Now money means a lot to me so can anyone advise whether this is a genuine discount? I presume Kindle will increase the price to £25 on next Thursday, which I definitely would not give to David.
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So I looked at Kindle today. McW's book still available at its "pre-launch" price of £13, a week after its launch, so that was a con promo. Anyway got quite a long preview and I am embarrassed to say that I was persuaded to cough up the £13.
 
@bill_cash

Forget the Jesuitical conscience examining.

Your job involves consideration of managing money for your employer/clients. As a parent, the same skills must be brought to bear on your own household's welfare. It is an ongoing endeavour as new challenges emerge and events expose new opportunities - all of which need to be monitored and managed to secure the business' or household's future. Need I say that it is a very worthy endeavour ? Is it not self-evident that Mrs Cash cannot be a sunshine mommy to her brood if beset by worry over money for much of her time ?

Beyond this, I would only say that, in the workplace, I feel that professionals like accountants should not allow themselves to be merely harvesters and squirrelers of money for other divisions of the organization to expend. They ought to assert a strong say in the human objectives of the enterprises engaged in and offer clear guidance on what is and what is not a good activity for an organization to engage in. Too often we see almost a natural expectation that financial directors ought to simply focus on "delivering the business plan", "mollifying the bank manager" and "toughing" against the manifold demands for cash from everyone else in the organization. It is important for FDs to show that they have a human vision too for the organization they serve.

On non-workplace money matters, I find Purple's decision to favour memorable holidays over lissome personal transport to be the kind of wisdom we should all adopt.

I trust you do too, Billo.
 
Salvadore said:
As a friend of mine often says, money doesn’t buy you happiness but it takes the sting out of misery.
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To continue the theme... money doesn't buy you happiness or solve all your problems, but lack of money can be a cause of unhappiness and problems.
 
Saw a car sticker with the prayer:- Dear Lord let me prove that a Lotto Win won’t change me . . .
But, seriously there’s nothing wrong with being poor, but it’s awkward.
 
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