Take Care of Needs Before Wants

C.V. White Quote: (Spending all you have available to spend on your wants leaves your needs starving and screaming for help, “He who borrows humbles himself before people.”)

Take Care of Needs Before Wants

Adults need certain provisions in order to live comfortably.  They are shelter, clothes, food, transportation, phone and utilities to name a few. These are needs that are necessary.  They are show stoppers and are not something you can just set aside for another opportunity.  People usually, but not always, take care of their needs by becoming gainfully employed.  However, some people fail to understand the adult principle of “first things first” and do not spend their money on the show stoppers. They do not give their money the correct assignment.  They will spend their  income on other things like gadgets, electronics, extra clothes, entertainment or travel. When that happens, they have to go after someone else’s money (borrow) to take care of their needs.  Usually, it is family and friends first and if that fails loans. 

Having to go into someone else’s bank account to take care of your needs, when all you have to do is take care of them first before you did these other things is a childish behavior. That is what children do.  Children will sometimes ask to borrow certain things because they do not understand what borrowing means. They think that it means give me this or that.  They do not have anything to pay it back with because they get all of their assets from their parents, whoever that may be at the time. 

Parents teach them how to ask for things correctly.  Adults must already know how to correctly get the things that they need and want.  They must have the attitude of always being in position to lend money,  not of always needing to borrow it.  They must be good stewards of what comes into their hands. Taking care of your needs is the beginning to building an attitude of abundance that leads to the ability to be able to be the lender not the borrower. It is difficult to get people to help you when they can see that you have not been a good steward over what you have. 

Why should they make the sacrifices they need to make to take care of their show stoppers and then let a person that does not pull from their assets?  Most of the time, they will not help you continually. You may get help one or two times but eventually they will say no and at that point you must learn how to make first things first in your life, especially your finances.

When Does Loan Me Mean Give Me?

Deuteronomy 28:12 - The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend too many nations but will borrow from none. NIV

C. V. White Quote: (When you fail to plan financially you plan to go into someone else’s checkbook.)

When Does Loan Me Mean Give Me?

Some people have not learned the difference between a loan and a gift.  Lend me and give me are two different things. The difference is a life skill that should be learned as a child. 

Have you ever heard a child say to a parent loan me a dollar or let me hold a dollar? It may be a different statement depending on what state you live in but for a child it literally means give me.  They know if they say lend me it is different from give me. But they are thinking that they will have a better chance of getting it if they ask for it as if they were going to give it back.  They know that they do not have any income except an allowance if their parents are parents that give allowances if not; they have no way to give it back. Therefore, they know that their parents have that information as well.  If their parents do not teach them the difference between loaning a dollar and giving a dollar, they grow up to be adults with that kind of understanding.  Adults are expected to have the desire to pay back money or any item that they borrow, however persons that were not taught the difference as children, still ask to borrow when they really are asking for it to be given to them.  Once the loan transaction is made they are very relaxed about giving it back if they ever do. 

This is more common among family and friends but some people have this attitude when they borrow from institutions.  If you ask some of them that do this, they may say something like I am not working to pay bills I am working to live.  The truth of the matter is that you are working for the lender if you borrow.  What you are literally saying to a person or to an institution when you borrow is “I am committing my future earning to you and when I get my check you get yours first”. If that is not the understanding that a person has they do not know the difference between borrowing and giving.

Sometimes people will have the money to pay their debts but they do not because they are still operating out of the mind of a child expecting adult results.  The adult reality is that if you go to family and friend too many times to borrow money or anything else and do not make a practice of paying it back they will not continue to loan you things, and when you really want a genuine loan there is not one available.