Canadian Personal Finance Blog

I was kicking around writing a post about the Financial Apocalypse and whether I could find a really good bible passage from Revelations that might fit what has been going on in the Financial Markets this week and then point out that this might actually be a sign of the Apocalypse (mostly tongue in cheek of course), but I have written enough about this economic cluster flop enough for one week, so let me write about something that we all need to have, and that is Hope.

Romans 12:12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.

Hope is what makes me get up in the morning, and what lets me sleep at night. Hope is what makes me believe that I will find a job soon. Hope is what got me through a very tough summer where I could have easily fallen into an ocean of self-pity. Hope helps me realize that I have far too much and should be thankful for all I have, for my family and my good friends.  Hope is hard to hold onto sometimes, but anything worthwhile or worth doing is hard. It’s easy to give up, it’s much harder to keep going.

Hope will be what turns this whole economic mess around as well. There will be changes, things may not get better over night or even soon, but they will be better eventually. I am not giving any advice here, I am saying have Hope and believe in the good things that will come.

Be joyful and have hope too, life is a gift, unwrap it and enjoy it.

Luke 6:1-11

Then said Jesus unto them, I will ask you one thing; Is it lawful on the sabbath days to do good, or to do evil? to save life, or to destroy it?

Is is right to work on Sunday (or Saturday if you are Hebrew or Muslim)? I’ve asked this a bunch of times with mixed responses. I remember the days when all stores were closed on Sundays except a few pharmacists and the Perette’s (now I am showing how old I am). In that day, Sunday was a day to do not much, by act of law (you couldn’t do much else).

In the past 15 years, the advent of Sunday shopping has caused every day to be a shopping day, and Sunday’s “day of rest” tag seems to have gone by the wayside, but is it wrong to shop on Sunday? I don’t think it’s a wrong thing in the spiritual side of things, as long as you have time to meditate or observe your sabbath in some way, so that you feel renewed. 

Do I work on Sundays? Yes, I have and do usually doing things around the house, some shopping and maybe even career work as well, but I try not to do it too often, I like the idea of one day where you try to relax and contemplate about life. 

Do you work on Sundays (or on your sabbath)?

It’s easy to think of Charity only in monetary terms, because that is how many of us think of what charity is, giving of our monetary wealth.

I was cleaning up a few broken links when I came across a posting I did about Christmas and what Christmas Giving means, which featured a broken link to the Shepherds of Good Hope (a local mission in Ottawa), so I fixed the link, but I also had a look at the web site and what they need help with.

The Shepherds’ do want monetary donations, no doubt, and they make it relatively easy to do that (using a clearing house for charitable organizations, which allows them to them take credit card donations). They also are looking for clothing, bed linens and that sort of thing, but they are also looking for volunteers to help them out. 

This one is a hard one, it is very far out of my “comfort zone” to volunteer for this kind of community service, but given the amount of spare time I have, I am thinking that it might be a better use of my time than sitting and worrying about finding a new job. We shall see.

What is charity to you?

Proverbs 21:5  The plans of the diligent certainly lead to profit,
    but anyone who is reckless only becomes poor.

That works for me as a Sunday thought, and I like it. Financial Planning is something that needs diligence and your undivided attention, and if you are reckless in your planning you will most likely be poorer for your lack of diligence.

I have been guilty of acting quickly or without enough information and every time it has cost me money. If you are doing something that you are not sure you should be doing, when it comes to your finances at least, most of the time, you shouldn’t be doing it.

Do the diligence, make the plan and stick to it.