11.21.2006

I wanna be rich.

All right, I'll admit it... I wanna be rich.

This is entirely motivated by a drive to be taken care of. My father was a blue-collar working stiff his entire life, and no one recognized his talents because he didn't have money. He couldn't get money because he was a blue-collar working stiff. He was in quite the catch-22, and were it not for obedience to the sacred law of tithing, I feel compelled to admit that life would have been much harder for us growing up. He took care of us, but I know he wanted to do better as far as temporal things go.

It's not like we ran around barefoot collecting cans for money. I wasn't hungry or cold, but I could tell we didn't have much. We didn't have a lot of presents under the tree. We also didn't have the nicest things. I know that my parents wanted to give us these things, but just could not. I don't blame them, not one bit. I'm glad they underlined the lesson that if you don't have the money for something, DON'T BUY IT.

Now the list of things I learned from struggling, and the list of blessings that came from it are a topic for a post of another day. I don't want to buy my children the latest and greatest of everything, but I want to have enough money that taking a child to the dentist doesn't worry me and keep me up all night. I want to be able to laugh that my stupid 16 year old got his first speeding ticket-- not worry that I can't pay for it. I don't want to have my wife sew clothing for them instead of getting new school clothes. I don't want to worry that my car might not get me to work in the morning.

I want to make sure we're safe. (And I want a freaking HUGE fish tank, but first things first, right?)

4 comments:

hairyshoefairy said...

What is it with guys and fishtanks? We left ours when we moved to Cali and DH keeps talking about getting another one that bigger, stronger, faster, better. What's up with that? :)

Kermit~the~Frog said...

C'mon, hairyshoefairy, your husband has a mummified piranha! We're not talking about a normal person here.

Once kids are no longer babies, it's more expensive to sew their clothes than it is to buy them from WalMart. Sad but true.

Study hard, young Padawan. EEs usually make decent money. But my parents did finance some things--like our braces.

hairyshoefairy said...

True. True.

Frank said...

synthetic fibers man. If you are not too active, those things will last a long time. Never by cotton, it shrinks and is more expensive in the long run.