The End of Babylon, Personal Peace

I've mentioned that The Richest Man in Babylon is a bit of an odd book for me. After all, I'm a religious man and Babylon is not exactly highly looked upon by Christ. On the other hand, when you look at the history of Babylon you can see why it would come to symbolize worldliness, and why someone seeking to become financially independent might want to learn from the "lessons" of Babylon. The final portion of the book gives yet another repetition of the principles, this time is a slightly different fashion: now it's about paying off debt. Here's the plan:

1) Pay yourself 10% for savings (and invest it wisely when appropriate).
2) Live off of 70% or less of your total income. This may require serious changes to your budget.
3) Pay your debtors out of the remaining 20%.

Again, these are good principles, and hopefully you're in a position where you can make such a plan work -- or even better, hopefully your not so far in debt that you need to use 20% of your income to pay that down! (Don't we all wish that was the case?) If you don't feel that you can implement "The Plan", then make the changes necessary, whether that be moving to a smaller place, taking a second job, or something else. I do get a chuckle out of the final sentence in the book, which I want to quote as well:

"The eons of time have crumbled to dust the proud walls of its temples, but the wisdom of Babylon endureth."

The above statement is a wonderful contrast to one of the talks I listened to while painting my office this morning (more on that in a separate post). Elder Cook's talk, Personal Peace: The Reward of Righteousness, is much more in line with what I think of when it comes to wisdom that endures. It's not the money I earn or the words I write  that will be around in another 100 years (though potentially these words will still be around long after I'm gone -- not that I expect many to read them). About the only things I can truly leave behind are my legacy and my posterity, and hopefully both of those will be things that will make the world a better place. Here's a few good quotes to ponder:

"What are the sources of peace? Many search for peace in worldly ways, which never have and never will succeed. Peace is not found by attaining great wealth, power, or prominence. Peace is not found in the pursuit of pleasure, entertainment, or leisure. None of these can, even when attained in abundance, create any lasting happiness or peace.... Peace is not just safety or lack of war, violence, conflict, and contention. Peace comes from knowing that the Savior knows who we are and knows that we have faith in Him, love Him, and keep His commandments, even and especially amid life’s devastating trials and tragedies."

I admit that I arranged the above quotes slightly differently from where they appear in the talk, and as always I commend the whole talk to anyone that reads this. It's not that we should avoid wealth, power, or prominence in life; in fact, being "provident providers" for our families is a topic we have heard many times from the pulpit over the years. However, we should make sure we first seek God's will, and then if we seek these other things it will be for the intent to do good.

Have a great day, and may peace be with you all!

The Richest Man in Babylon and Faith

Ha! How's that for a heading? You're probably wondering what on earth faith and Babylon might have to do with each other. Well, I'll tell you.

After finishing Seven Habits yesterday, I turned to doTERRA's Book of the Month reading list. Back in November last year I purchased the first four books on the list, and I quickly finished the first two (Making the First Circle Work and The Slight Edge). I enjoyed both books, but so quickly did I finish them that I found myself ahead of schedule, and I thought I'd branch out into reading other good books like Seven Habits. It was a sound idea, but unfortunately I got off track and now instead of being ahead on my reading, I'm several books behind -- books which I already own! And thus, I decided I would now work on catching up, so I started reading The Richest Man in Babylon today.

First, let me say that I recognize that there's plenty of irony in a blog that's devoted to inspirational quotes to start talking about Babylon (aka The World, Evil, Wickedness, etc.) The focus of the book is financial -- keys to acquiring wealth and good practices that will help you to do so. Interestingly, at least the version I have is written in pseudo-Olde English (e.g. thee, thou, thy, thine, dost, doth, etc.), but there's a problem: there are a ton of typos!

I'm an editor/writer by trade these days, and I can't believe how many major errors there are. I hope there's a better version of the book that fixes the errors, and in truth I'd be happy if they just ditched the Olde English stuff and spoke straight modern English -- this book isn't scripture, so the use of such language just feels really forced and at times silly. So any quotes that I take from the book are going to be translated by me into modern English. And despite the name of the book, there are still many good principles to discuss. The first key to becoming wealthy is simply this:

"A part of all you earn is yours to keep."

That might seem obvious, so this principle is best illustrated with the following exchange between a poor man and the richest man in Babylon:

---

"But all I earn is mine to keep, is it not?"

"Far from it. Do you not pay the garment-maker and the sandal-maker? Do you not pay for the things you eat? Can you live in Babylon without spending money? What have you to show of your earning of the past month, the past year? Fool! You pay everyone but yourself. You labor for others. You could just as well be a slave and take what your master gives you to eat and wear. If you kept one-tenth of all you earned for yourself, how much would you have in ten years?"

"As much as I earn in one year."

"You speak but half the truth, for every gold piece you save is a slave to work for you. Every copper it earns is its child that can also earn for you. If you would become wealthy, then what you save must earn, and its children must earn, and its children's children must earn, that all may help to give to you the abundance you crave. A part of all you earn is yours to keep. It should not be less than a tenth, no matter how little you earn. It can be as much more as you can afford. Pay yourself first."

---

Basically, the book has an allegory of the richest man in Babylon, and it teaches financial principles using this man as an example. There are seven steps given to becoming wealthy, which translated into our language and modern world are this:

1. Start saving now, at least 10% of your income.
2. Budget appropriately, and eliminate unnecessary expenses so that you can live on 90% of what you earn.
3. Invest your savings in interest bearing accounts and similar items.
4. Invest in steady and safe ventures rather than big risk, big reward schemes.
5. Own your own home!
6. Get life insurance and plan for your retirement.
7. Improve yourself and gain additional knowledge.

There's nothing really mind-blowing in that list. If you're like me, you've heard all of this before, but let me ask you this: have you actually done these things? I know I haven't done most of them, at least not as well as I could, but I'm working on the first and third, and I plan on doing the sixth as soon as we're in a good position to do so. If you haven't made plans for how to do any/all of the above, start now!

Faith

So what does all of the above have to do with Faith? Two things: first, I have faith in the principles outlined above, and you don't have to use those principles with the sole intent of amassing great wealth. Five and six can easily be focused more on your family than on wealth, and all of the process can be with the goal of becoming unburdened from debt so that you can help others. The second aspect of faith is that I listened to Elder Holland's talk again, Lord, I Believe.

I love Elder Holland's talks, and this one is no exception; I used it for my home teaching spiritual thought tonight. After discussing the scriptural passage in which the man tells Christ, "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief" Elder Holland provides these three points to ponder. I'll end with these as well:

1. When facing the challenge of faith, the father asserts his strength first and only then acknowledges his limitation.
2. When problems come and questions arise, do not start your quest for faith by saying how much you do not have, leading as it were with your “unbelief.”
3. When doubt or difficulty come, do not be afraid to ask for help.