The Recession Is Over? And Financial Principles To Live By

By Heather, CPA (Balance With Purpose)

We have all felt the down economy in one way or another, whether it’s through loss of a job, a pay freeze, drop in value of stock portfolios, or increased expenses.

According to a NY Times article dated October 16, 2009 titled, "By Some Reliable Measures, Recession is Over," the recession is in the past. Don’t you want to leap for joy at hearing that headline? No? Me neither. Why? Because I’m skeptical.

I actually heard the news of the recession being over while I rushed around the house one morning last week getting my family ready for the day and trying to get myself out the door for work. That very same day I learned that a dear friend of mine’s husband lost his job.

I’m not usually a pessimist. I’m not. I always try to see the brighter side of life. The glass is always half full, and I always listen to my mama who tells me that “everything will work out for the best, and according to God’s plan.” I believe that everything WILL work out for the best according to Him, but I don’t believe that many Americans will feel relief from an ending recession quite yet.

Where finances are concerned, my husband and I have grown together, learned together, and made mistakes together. Through those growing pains and mistakes, we have come up with a system of making decisions and managing our money that works for us. It’s not perfect and we still suffer at times from unforeseen expenses – like the time our chimney/roof leaked over our master bedroom for more than two years despite repeated costly attempts to repair it or the time I left a job with no replacement job lined up (yeah, we still laugh/cry over that one). But we do learn from the tough times and modify our plan accordingly.

In order to survive tough financial times, whether personal challenges or worldwide recessions, we have come up with a few simple principles to live by.

Strive always to live debt-free. By debt, I’m mainly talking about personal debt. I’ll talk about this issue in a later post, but I believe whether we’re living paycheck to paycheck or feeling blessed with positive cashflow, we should always be moving toward a debt-free way of living.

After paying God, pay yourself next. Before money is spent on the house, groceries, utilities, clothes or other necessities, we should put some piece of our paycheck – even if it feels small and insignificant – into savings. Save for a rainy day. Save for a disaster. Save for retirement.

Talk about it. According to a Crown Financial Ministries Biblical Financial Study, “there are more than 2,350 verses on how to handle money and possessions” in the Bible and that “Jesus Christ said more about money than almost any other subject.” I was raised in a home where we did not speak of problems concerning money. But now that I’m an accountant, I talk about money problems every day. Why shouldn’t we talk about money? If Jesus talked about it as much or more than any other subject, it must be an important subject that he wants discussed.

I hope that you’ll join me in discussing the above issues and much more in future posts.

Heather Sunseri is a Christian, wife and mother of two young children. She has worked as a CPA for the past 15 years for thoroughbred horse farms and in public accounting in Central Kentucky. She spends her free time as an inspirational writer and enjoys the little things in life from long bike rides in the country to homemade pizza and family game night.