Financial Freedom

Recently we had a Relief Society weeknight meeting that focused on becoming financial independent. Brother Richie spoke, and he is here at BYUH on a mission in the School of Business after many church callings such as MTC president in Africa, a mission president, etc. etc. He is also one of the wealthier members of the church and personally finances, along with a few other members, the prizes for some of BYUH contests like the one Tim had in the School of Computing, where they gave students $1,000 worth of cash. These contests were held in other departments such as English also. Anyway, his remarks were very interesting and he claimed he began his knowledge of money handling by studying the little book “The Richest Man in Babylon” by George Clason. I was interested enough in his talk to purchase this book on my Kindle device and have read it now. In this blog I will pass on some of the concepts I gleaned about becoming financially free. The book is a story occurring in Babylonian times and quite interesting as well as short so I recommend it.

First principle: “A part of all I earn is mine to keep”. As soon as you earn any money, (after paying tithing) save at least 10%. Do not touch this savings for anything.

Second principle: Everything you save is a slave to work for you. The child of what it earns is also a slave to you and should likewise be put to work in a secure investment situation as well as the grandchild, etc. and so on.

Third principle: Do not go to a brick layer for advice about jewels. Go to an expert in the field of whatever you wish to invest in. Don’t assume that you yourself are an expert in the investment field either (unless of course you are).

Fourth Principle: Control expenses. Expenses always grow to equal your income unless you budget and plan. Don’t confuse needs and wants. A budget helps you realize your most cherished desires by defending against casual wishes.

Fifth principle: Make your home a profitable investment. Own your home, borrowing if necessary as it is better to regularly pay a mortgage than rent. Improve your home with gardens and flowers, etc. (not out of the 1/10 you save, but the other 8%)

Sixth principle: Guard your treasure against loss. Investments need to be secure, loans should have collateral equal to or above the amount of loan- either item, land, signature of services, etc. If there is no property, then get a co-signer to vouch for your person that the debt will be repaid. The principal should be safe, reclaimable if necessary, and where you can collect a fair rental. Gold flees from the person who tries to get impossible earnings or follows alluring tricksters or their own romantic and inexperienced desires

Seventh principle: Insure a future income for your family in case you get old or die. Regularly put a little away and invest it for reasonable growth, such as life insurance.

If you have debts then make a plan to repay. Still pay tithing, save at least 10%, then live on six percent and divide the remaining 2% between all of your creditors until slowly you have repaid all your debts. Debts are your enemies to be fought against but creditors are friends who trusted you to loan you the money, treat them well and with respect.

Remember the soul of a free man sees life as a series of problems and goes about finding solutions to them, while the soul of a slave whines “What can I do who am but a slave?”

The story of course teaches these principles by things that happen in the lives of the characters, but I was trying to boil it down a bit although mine is undoubtedly less interesting. Of course being from Babylon the story doesn’t say anything about tithing but I thought that an important addition.

The Glass Bottom Boat

Several years of living in Hawaii had not found us taking advantage of the open water tour of Kaneohe Bay on the glass bottomed boat. Saturday seemed like a good time to try it. Actually, we were going to go on Friday since it was Prince Kuhio Day and therefore a state holiday, but after enjoying a sleep-in and then calling the place at 10:30 A.M., we had already missed the last tour of the day. We decided to schedule for Saturday. The tour requires a minimum of four people, but there were several already reserved for 11:15 so we joined that group.

We arrived a few miniutes early and were able to board shortly after paying our $17 a person fee. The crew was friendly and so were the other passengers, who happened to be several children and their parents and both sets of grandparents. That, of course, made us wish our grandkids had been here to tag along.

A few minutes into the bay we stopped and watched the fish and corals through the glass panels in the bottom of the boat. One of the staff came snorkeling up under the glass and startled me a bit since I was not expecting to see people on the bottom. His goal was to feed the fish so that they would gather under the boat and we could see more. The coral was pretty and we did see serveral species of fish swim by. We probably spent about ten minutes doing this.

Next we were ushered topside of the boat so that we could watch the waves and stop again to feed the fish and see the green sea turtles. We each were given a slice of bread and it was fun to watch the little fish swarm to the crumbs we scattered on the surface. We actually saw four turtles swimming in the area. The picture included in this article is one of them. The turtle is the dark area in the front of the picture.

The crew had us stay topside and told us about the 52 reefs in Kaneohe Bay. My big disappointment in this trip was that we never went to another spot or got to watch anymore fish on the bottom through the glass before we were docking and it was over. The whole thing lasted an hour but I really felt like it should have included a few more minutes of bottom watching. All in all, it was a fun trip, but a bit on the expensive side for what we actually got to see.

The Tsunami That Wasn't

Of course I'm grateful that the predicted tsunami following the 8.8 earthquake in Chile did not really materialize on Oahu. But after "much ado about nothing" including evacuating for several hours it would be nice if someone explained why all the hub-bub over a 3 foot wave. Three feet is like a normal wave here, we see them everyday.

Well, someone did explain it all and I thought you might want to know too. In Hawaii's "Star Bulletin"on February 28th, Jim Borg explains that the phenomenon at work is called harmonic resonance. He says the perfect example is the Slinky, that little metal spring toy. It takes two people with coordinated effort on each end to get the slinky vibrating in rhythm. If either person is out of sync the whole thing becomes unruly without focus or energy.

In 1960 an earthquake at the same place in Chile but with a harmonic resonance of 30 minutes between waves synced up easily with Hilo on the Big Island and the resulting Tsunami killed 60 people there. This time the wave harmonics were 20 minutes and Hawaii was out of sync.

The awesome power of a Tsunami comes from the towering height of the waves as they reach close to the shore. For this reason many boat owners quickly moved their boats out about a mile on Saturday so that they were not destroyed by the onslaught of waves. You should probably know that tsunamis are not just a single wave, but a series of waves of varying heights. Even this weekend a few people took their surfboards out to try the waves but that is a deadly activity. Going toward the beach is also very dangerous. The rule is if you can see the wave it is too late to escape.

We are so thankful this one did not have our name on it, or should I say our rhythm to it. Believe me there was enough excitement waking up to sirens blaring and moving with our 72-hour kits to higher ground to make me feel like I got my money's worth.