A confession to the mortal sin of avarice

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.

Well that's a different sin altogether, that's envy

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).
 
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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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.
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.
 
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.
 
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.
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.
 
You'll get it for a euro in a South County dublin charity shop if you're prepared to wait a few weeks....or in a library.
 
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..
 
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.