Personal Money Tips

Lately the economic barometer in my country is rather bearish. Not that things are all that bad, it just a feeling of sluggishness. Talk about a slow economy is on everybody’s lips. This is due to inflationary pressure caused by the increase in fuel cost, raised interest rates and recently announced electricity power rate hikes.

Of course the impact of all these increase will be felt, since these are basic necessities and will affect everyone sooner or later. However, I think that a significant portion of feeling malaise is just a state of mind. Why do I say that? I’m sure that some sectors of the economy are affected but not all. I just came out of Baskin Robbins ice cream store. BR was swamped by people. Being an imported brand, BR ice cream is rather pricey and it is not a store I frequent. To give you a better idea how much a premium they command, a hand-packed pint of Baskin Robbins cost over $21, versus home grown variety that cost anything ranging from $7 to $12 a liter.

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Most people learn new things all the time but take some time to apply what they have learnt. In many cases, studies have shown that it you don’t take a new action to implement the things you have learnt within 3 days, you would have forgotten more than 60% of what you heard.

So, the call to action is something you need to do. In sales, they call it asking for the order. Without a call to action, the information you have learnt or given somebody would be wasted effort. So as a famous tagline reminds us to Just Do It, here is a reminder to create an effective call to action in terms of blog traffic.

I was just checking the dashboard of my Wordpress blog and I noticed this link from blogher.org. BlogHer.org is a blog network for woman bloggers.

Although there is a cute logo that says the site are still in beta, I think this site is up and running as any normal site. I was surprised that my blog was listed up with the likes of Suze Orman, Dave Ramsey and many others.

I was speechless to say the least. It was linked to my article on tithing and Maria Niles gave quite a few other examples on tithing as well as resources if someone were to tithe. I think she did a great job of researching the topic on tithing before posting.

On the same article, Avis Thomas-Lester writing for the Washinton Post wrote about the concern on prosperity ministry. I think we have to be careful about being induced to tithe out of obligation or guilt.

Avis Thomas-Lester writing for The Washington Post explores the tradition of tithing in the black community. African American tithing practices have helped push Prince George’s county in Maryland into the top five charitable giving counties in America.

Thomas-Lester’s article does cast a concerned eye on the growing popularity of “prosperity ministry.” Prosperity theology can crudely be described as God wants you to be rich.

Do not be pressured by so call prosperity teaching. If your heart is not ready, then don’t give! Tithing should always be from the heart, free will and not under compulsion. Give cheerfully, give a smaller amount if that’s all you can afford, but don’t give grudgingly. If you want to give, don’t let others know about it. The Bible say,” do not let your right hand know, what you left hand gave.”

You can read more about the article she wrote here.