The Financial Steward Hat

Sun, Sep 20, 2009

Financial Stewardship Life provides the opportunity to wear many different hats. Wouldn’t you agree the stage of life you’re traveling through has something to do with the hats you’re currently wearing?

As a child, you might wear the teammate hat as you run across the soccer field. Sometimes, you might wear the friend hat when someone close to you needs help or you just want to spend time with people with whom you have common interests. At work, you might wear the hat for your role, but also wear hats for other roles as you increase your realm of responsibility and help others. As a dad or mom, you wear an important hat. It’s a hat that provides the opportunity to care for, raise and guide a child in life. And as a husband or wife, you wear the hat that of a life long friend and partner.

Our responsibility to manage money

At some point along the way, we are given the responsiblity to manage money. We put on the financial steward hat. The responsibility is discussed in 1 Corinthians 4:2 (NIV).

Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.

When was your first money management responsibility? Typically, we might think about our first job during our youth, or when we leave school. But, in reality, maybe it’s when we were given our first allowance. Although, we might have had parental guidance at that time we were still responsible for making a choice.

Unknown to me at the time, I was required to to wear the financial steward hat when I took a job in high school washing cars. I remember being excited to receive my paycheck each week and run out and buy something. At the time, I didn’t know anything about financial stewardship. All I could think about was spending for myself. Saving or giving, as a financial steward, never really crossed my mind. I guess I didn’t wear the hat too well then.

Always be a financial steward

The financial steward hat is really a responsibility we can’t deny as a youngster or an adult. As a parent, it’s our responsibility to teach our children. And as an adult, it’s our responsibility to manage what we’ve been giving wisely, or faithfully.

We’re supposed to always wear the hat, but sometimes we forget to put it on in the morning. I’ll bet you can think of a few times when you wish you would have had it on. I certainly can. These times usually resulted in putting wants before needs and they always resulted in slowing me down towards my quest to financial freedom. In fact, if you add the expenses from these times up for me, our family would have been a lot further down the financial freedom path by now. Oh well, we all have to move forward and for me, I now have the opportunity to teach what I’ve learned.

It’s our choice to be good financial stewards

As the day begins, it’s our choice to be wise managers of what has been entrusted to our care, or poor managers. We have to be conscious of our decisions because they can have long-term impacts. Sure, the mismanagement of a few dollars each day may not impact us much in the short-term, but over a month, or a year, the mis-management of a few dollars a day can result in delay in paying off debt and reduce what can be saved and invested.

It’s really easier to be wise, in my opinion. Although, it’s not easy! We all fall into the temptation of coveting what our neighbor has which can lead us into the race of material pursuit. That’s a hard race to run and by the way, it never ends. I would rather not run that race. Yes, I will have some nice material things, but only if my plan can afford them. And never from the use of “want it now” leverage or credit. The choice has to be conscious. For it to be conscious it has to be in our thoughts daily. Otherwise, we’ll leave our financial steward hat at home.

How do you remind yourself of the financial steward hat you must put on and wear daily?

Photo by Paul Stevenson.

Tags: Stewardship