Wednesday, June 17, 2015

How to Be Rich

Andy Stanley has written a book with the title "How to be Rich" based on 1 Timothy 6:17 where it says, "Command those who are rich in this present world..."

I hadn't read the book yet but I got to thinking that compared to many people we are rich in this present world.

Did you know that if you make $48,000 a year, you are in the top 1% of the wage earners in the world.  The average income in Olmstead county is $62,000 per year. I'll bet you didn't even know that most of you are a "one percenter".

What difference does this make. Here are three reasons this is important...

  1. If we know where we stand economically in the overall scheme of the world then we might see ourselves differently in terms of our responsibilities to manage the wealth we have been given. Did you know that this same average Olmsted county resident will have over $2 million dollars flow through their hands in wages in the course of their life time. If they invested just 15% of this income over the length of their career they could have over $7 million dollars to show for their efforts. This is a significant responsibility.
  2. What could you do to help those less fortunate than yourself. Since you are rich you might want to think about that. We like to give extra produce to our local food shelf. Reed and I took a full pick-up full of winter squash to the food shelf this fall. They said it would be distributed and used within a week. Wow, is that fun or what?
  3. If we are rich, it helps us to understand contentment, we can learn to control our lifestyle and our spending to be more compassionate and generous.
Something to think about.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks again for helping our food shelf!
    Food Shelf staff

    ReplyDelete