When my children were young, I walked them through various things to help them understand money. There were five elements of their financial education. Each time we met we studied a text of Scripture and drew out important principles. We reviewed three financial terms. We memorized a verse of Scripture. We filled out a personal financial statement (like the one you do for a bank). Finally, we prayed together. Here are some notes from some of our sessions in the year 2000. At that time, Kelly was 15, Blair 13, David 8, and Claudia was 6 years old.

Day 1: 01-03-2000

A. Read Luke 10:25 to end: Good Samaritan Principles

1. He had time: he stopped what he was doing. To be generous, a person must be able to set aside what he is doing.

2. He took pity: he had a soft heart. His heart was prepared. You won’t see opportunities unless your heart is prepared. A person’s heart is a reflection of what he spends his time on. A person that spends too much time on entertainment, business, TV…will not have a heart prepared.

3. He has excess resources: he paid the man‘s expenses. One should have margin in financial life to be ready for these opportunities.

Main Principle: If you would manage money, the management of your heart is the first priority.

Memory Verse: “The next day he took out 2 silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. Look after him he said and when I return I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have ” (Luke: 10:35)

This teaches us the importance of creating excess through spending less than you make.

B. Pray together

C. 3 Terms

Diversification: If you’re keeping all your eggs in one basket, you’re not diversified. Good investors make sure their money is divided between 8-12 stocks so that if anything terrible happens to one company, they won’t lose too much. You also want to diversify your holdings over different industries. You wouldn’t want all your money in automobile companies, because that industry might go into a long slump.

DOW: Short for the Dow Jones Industrial average, which is a measure of how 30 of America’s largest companies are doing. TV news announcers often report on how “the Dow” did during the day.

Ticker Symbol: All companies that are publicly traded must have a ticker symbol for their shares. This is so that the company can be identified with just a few letters. Thanks to the ticker symbol, you don’t have to say or write: “Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing” you can just say MMM. Other examples are CLS for Celestica and FLEX for Flextronics, and MSFT for Microsoft.

D. Review our objectives

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Day 2: 02-05-2000

A. Fill out personal financial statement

B. 3 Terms

Portfolio: A collection of investments. For example, your investment portfolio might be made up of stock in a dozen different companies. Or it might have some bonds, some stocks, and a mutual fund. Your portfolio might also include six dozen baseball cards, a motorcycle, or $75.00 in the bank – anything of real value.

Shareholder: You are a shareholder if you own stock in a company.

Dividend: If you divide the dividend a company pays each year by its current stock price, you get the dividend yield. Many companies pay money to their shareholders sometimes once a year and sometimes more than that. So a stock trading at $50.00 per share, which pays a $3.00 dividend per year has a yield of 6%. (3 divided by 50 = 0.06 or 6%.)

C. Read Luke 19:12-26. We are looking after our master’s money

Psalm 24:1: “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it…”

1. Principle: God owns it all and we are taking care of his resources.

2. All received an amount, as do we.

3. The King said: Put this money to work until I come back” vs. 13

We should put our resources to work.

4. God gives resources on earth, and they are to be used for heavenly purposes.

5. When God gives us something, he expects us to improve upon it. Gifts, talents, time – these are our most important resources.

“If you want to do something for posterity, you must get of your posterior.”

What are your goals? I want us to think about what areas we are in the process of improving.

D. Pray together

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Day 3: 03-18-2000

A. Fill out personal financial statement

B. 3 Terms

Assets: the things that you own that have value like a house or a car or cash or stock

Liabilities: Money that you owe to others. This could be a car loan or home loan or credit card debt.

Cash flow: The cash you have left over after you pay your bills. This can be used for giving, investing, buying something, or saving.

C. Bible Study
2 Corinthians 9:6-15: Sowing sparingly produces poor results and is a poor and disobedient use of resources.

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Day 4: 07-10-2000

A. Fill out personal financial statement

B. 3 Terms

Return: This is the money you make on your investments. Savings accounts at banks, for example, offer low returns (they pay little interest), while some stocks can offer spectacular returns.

Correction: If you hear someone talk about a “correction” on a business program or the radio, she means a drop in the market. A bit correction is a crash. The word correction is used because people sometimes think the market has grown more than it should and is due to be corrected, to get to what they think is should be.

Conservative Investing: A conservative investor is someone who is afraid of taking on too much risk and who sticks with safer investments – perhaps government bonds instead of stocks. The opposite of this is aggressive investing, where an investor takes on a lot of risk hoping for a big payoff.

C. Bible Study

Contentment: Dissatisfaction with what you have been given will divert you from ministry.

Matthew 4:1-11, Matthew 6:19-33, Hebrews 13:5-6

The love of money will steal contentment from our hearts and cause us to be dissatisfied with life.

Keep your life free from the love of money: One must “keep” keeping his life free. The love of money will make us a slave, but God wants us to be free. Be content with what you have.

The reason we can be free and achieve contentment:

1. God will never leave you – The Lord is near.

2. God will never forsake you.

3. God will be your helper.

4. God will protect you from the harm of man…“I have overcome the world.”

Time of prayer and worship for God’s kindness to us in offering these things to us and for his desire for our freedom.