Week # 11

  • What is your attitude toward money?
    • My attitude towards money has changed as my circumstances have changed. When I was young, Money was a means for me to have fun and more money usually meant more fun and more fun things. When I moved away from my house, It had less to do with fun and more to do with a necessity to keep the lights on and food in my mouth.  The biggest change in my attitude towards money happened when I got married and had kids. Once I was married it was "Our Money" and we have always had this attitude in our household, regardless of if one person was not working or not. I think in this way money became something sacred. We only spend it on what we need and plan it out because it's so vital to our family unit's existence. Expensive items are never purchased without approval from my spouse and we find most our our "fun money" goes towards our children's entertainment. If I had to put a word to our family's attitude of money, It's sacred because we try to use it modestly.
  • How can your view of money affect the way you live?
    • Our view of money affects the way we live by making us review transactions and plan out the way we spend it. We have a budget we try to keep to and this means meal planning and planning activities for the family with the budget in mind. We have enough money coming in that the budget can be flexible but we make our best effort to keep within the bounds of the budget.
  • What rules are recommended for prospering?
    • Seeking the Lord for help on the temporal stuff then having hope in him.
    • Keeping the commandments
    • Have a budget and money plan that keeps us self-reliant
    • Seeking Knowledge and increase in intelligence
    • Seek to better understand the spiritual laws like tithing that promise blessings of wealth.

Lessons Learned

As we learned about balancing work life this week, I thought about my dad, who had his own construction business. He always took me and my twin brother to the construction site with him. Without realizing it, it made me realize a few things. 

  1. My Dad works really hard to support our family

  2. My Dad was really skilled at his craft

  3. He was crazy for trusting 2 rowdy kids alone with nails and leftover construction materials. 

Going out there really helped me appreciate him and as an adult who has a family, it’s helped me with the confidence to tackle a lot of jobs most people wouldn’t even try to attempt. As I’ve had my own small business, I’m always trying to include my kids. Recently I’ve been taking my 2 oldest kids with me and my son, who is 7, handles processing all the sales, while I make the food. He’s earning money, which makes him feel good, I get him out of the house and my ultimate hope is my children will see what I’m doing and realize they can turn anything they love into a source of income. 


My first year with my business I jumped feet first, which was a blessing and a huge mistake. It was a blessing because It was hard, made me learn fast, and helped me establish an effective routine. It was a mistake though because I started the business about a month after my 3rd child was born. My wife was exhausted every night when I came home and as the owner of the business, there were lots of opportunities that took me away from my family. As I’ve run the business part-time the last few years though, It’s been a blessing though because that son who was born the same time I started my business has grown with the business and I think is more connected to it than my other children. 


The other thing this week that has had a large impact on me was the “pursuit of happiness” paper we read. I had never thought of how so many things we perceive true when it comes to happiness aren’t really correct when you look at longitudinal studies. 


Lessons Not Yet Learned

The hardest thing this week was reading all the materials in the module and keeping up with “A Hero's Journey” For me it’s challenging because I need to take notes as I read things but with the holiday and kids running around a lot this week, I was unable to focus as much as I would have liked.

Personally I think the idea of happiness vs satisfaction and fulfillment will be something as a family, I will struggle with for a long time. 

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