Investing
I’m often asked, “If you don’t believe in usury or think that corporations are a good idea, how do you invest your money?”. My answer is generaly found to be a little out there. While most people these days care very little about creation stewardship, they are VERY conserned about financal stewardship(so long as it means them reaping a healthy profit). Now I believe that we need to invest, its just that I think we need to rethink what kind of investing we do. Agrarian investments look different than industrialist ones, and to the industrialist, they probably don’t look like investments at all. Instead of investing our money so that we will have enough to “retire on” we should be investing in real tools and property that free us from needing all that money “to live”. Instead of making sure we have enough money to live off of or keep us in the nursing home we should invest in way of life that makes those things nonexistant. When we finally realized that usury was a real sin that we needed to get away from, the only money we had out at usury was in some I-Bonds. What did I reinvest it in? Gold?, silver?, nope….I bought a new rototiller. I invested in our ability to grow more of our own food. I invested in the soil, becouse molboard plowing this hill side is not good for the hill side. Agrarian minded folks should be investing in their farms, in their families ability to live outside the system, in their children and the children’s future. Now I realize most folks have a lot more money to consider what to do with than I did with my $500 life savings. But that just means you have a lot more resourses to build with. Invest in something that will free fiture generations from wage slavery and the helplesness of not being able to provide for themselves. Stop thinking about retirement, as if its an entitlement. Six days you shall labor says the Word of God. It dosen’t say “untill you are sixty-five” after that. When we are old we should labor a little less while our kids labor a little more. Invest in a family tradition of multigenerational faithfulness and give the next generation the tools to do it, then Lord willing you won’t need a million dollar nest egg.
October 11th, 2007 at 5:44 am
Thanks for sharing those thoughts, Scott. Lately I’ve just been thinking about how pervasive the worship of “passive income” is. Go to any Christian book or seminar and chances are that passive income streams are going to be billed as a big key to “success”, and people just take it as gospel, probably because it is so appealing to the flesh and we love to wrap carnal thinking in a Christian wrapper.
October 11th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
So how are people, like me, to gain the money necessary to begin an agrarian life. I am 18 and to live as an agrarian was one of my earliest childhood fantasies. This dream has continued to stick with me and has been tested by time, proving it to be genuine. I am 18 studying Human Services in community college, I chose this as a major because I wasn’t interested in anything else and the schooling is free (Delaware=Socialist but somehow we maintain low taxes, I don’t get it either…). A job in the Human Services sector will not yieald the financial resources nor time I need to begin an agrarian lifstyle. Why is investing in the stck-market a bad idea? What should I do?
October 12th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
A patrimony is a great gift, even a quater of an acre patrimony with a caravan is a great gift.
It’s funny that the most precious commodity in circulation is ‘time’. and that time investment yields the greatest return. indeed the only way you can get time back is when those who you have spent it on decide to spend some on you.
As a family that expenditure is the only one that will yield very real fruit, fruit that will last.
I think that as an aspiring agrarian you make a very important point , without an inheritence how can you buy your freedom short of courting mammon. Hard work , scrimping , denial and saving for your future rather than speculating seems the most prudent way forward. also setting your goals realistically, how little do i really need to get through the eye of the needle .Your plight shows how so important it is that Fathers plan now for the future of their sons and grandsons.
October 13th, 2007 at 4:50 am
Hi Troy
You may want to find an organic farmer who would employ you and teach you the trade. The experience learned would be far more valuable than the pay. There are also old farmers out there who have no children interested in farming who might let you work toward ownership. There are many possibilities out there, none easy, but nothing worth having is gotten easy. What are you doing now? Could you grow a garden or raise some chickens….even at a neighbors place if not your own? I promise you that if you work hard, and show a true interest, people will be glad to help you along. You need to find those people and build realationships with them. The most important thing of all is to seek first God’s kingdom and trust Him in the whole matter.
October 13th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
Thanks for the advice
October 13th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
Hi Scott,
Thanks for giving us the link for the book on usury; my husband was so excited to read it and finally flesh out what he believes in that area. Jim’s ideas on things seem a bit crazy to me at times, but then we seem to continually bump into people like you that have the same convictions, and we don’t seem so far off the wall after all!
October 15th, 2007 at 4:51 am
Hi Lynn
Glad to hear Jim found the book useful. I’ve heard positive feed back from several folks about the book. It is encouraging to see so many people giving this some serious thought.
“Jim’s ideas on things seem a bit crazy to me at times”—– I’m sure Leah knows how you feel