The Prudent Spender

Spending. We all do it, and many of us feel guilty about it. Should we really spend that much on movies or eating out or vacations?

Zooming out a bit, spending incorporates everything we do with the money we earn. We can save it, we can give it, we can use it to retire debt, or we can spend it on lifestyle needs. All of these are forms of spending, and the Prudent Spender brings them all into focus as a generous giver, a wise saver, and a cautious debtor.

Everything we earn goes somewhere. The key is knowing and controlling where it goes. But many who have tried budgeting have found that it just doesn’t work, for a couple of reasons. First, the typical budget is all about restrictions – trying to spend as little as possible. It’s kind of like financial anorexia. The problem is that the misery associated with such restrictive living inevitably leads to wasteful binging.

The second issue is that budgets are often set with no reference to reality. We imagine what we could get by with in a particular category – without any real data to back up our thinking.

God provides us resources to use for his glory and for our enjoyment. But he expects that we’ll be able to account for how those resources are used. Join us as host James Lenhoff discusses keys to spending in a way that’s life-giving and God-honoring.