Wednesday, February 5, 2014

February 5 - dfree® Devotions for Financial Freedom

Verse
These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you get up. Deuteronomy 6: 6&7 NIV

Thought
Anything worth knowing and believing is worth sharing with our children. The family was designed to be the primary transmitter of values and the main venue for human growth and development. When our families are functional, parents are more than sponsors for children who simply pay the bills. Rather functional parents are the shapers and molders of children in ways that children don't even recognize until they are grown and mature themselves.

In too many families conversations concerning money are limited to children requesting the things they want parents to buy for them and parents telling them what they cannot afford to buy. That is not the kind of discourse that God recommended to people concerning teaching children God's laws and Godly values. The instruction was to impress God's commandments on our children and to have important conversations with them morning and evening. That is great advice concerning money also. We should include finance in the content.

If we teach our children how to save money, create and use budgets, invest for retirement, make wise consumer choices, insure our assets, give money away and make other financially responsible decisions, it is likely that they will heed our instruction and mimic our behavior when they are on their own. Of course, that assumes that we are doing those things ourselves! Whatever we are doing and however we are living, we are teaching our children to do exactly what we do.

It is time to expand the conversations with our children about our finances. The earlier they learn, the healthier they will be.

Prayer
"God, give me the right words to say as I teach my children about our family finances. Amen."

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