The Familial Engine

I get paid to spend time thinking about other people's business models and how they spend their money - how to grow their top line, decrease their costs, increase the bottom line, and how to spend that bottom line.

Sometimes I'm so busy thinking about other people's money I have little time to think about my own. In fact, I'm ashamed to say that I haven't truly balanced a checkbook since we left for Africa - too many moving parts and Quicken on a computer in a storage unit.

Lately I've given a fair amount of thought to our family's business model, which isn't much different from anyone else's. I envision our business model like a large funnel sitting over a sink with four holes. We pour my income into the top each month (at least what Uncle Sam allows me to pour - there's a decent leak in that pipe). We then run our family month to month, paying the mortgage, food, etc. The liquid that runs out the bottom of the funnel is what's left after we're done. For some, no money runs out. In fact, some have to throw a bit of extra liquid in the top off of credit cards just to make ends meet. *knocks on wood*

We then get to choose which sinkhole to let those meager drippings enter.
1) We can buy something we've really, really wanted, like a new board game or plasma TV.
2) We can give it to someone that really needs it a lot more than we do (feel free to paypal me if I'm that certain someone for you)
3) We can save it for later - retirement, college or a rainy day.
4) This is going to sound like #3, but I keep it separate - we can build assets with it. When you build assets in #3, you invest in a 401k or whatever. In #4, you invest to try to move your life toward working your assets off, instead of what most of us work off. You try to make a living less by the hour or the month and live on the golf course while you're lemonade stand pays the bills. (for more detail, read Rich Dad, Poor Dad - I haven't read it but know this is what it's about)

The nice part about numbers three and four is that the sink has storage containers under those holes - it doesn't hit the sewer unless you sell corn (another story). You could say #2 is a container as well - what comes around goes around. If you follow the pipe under #1, you usually find the end of the pipe either in my game closet, a garage sale or the DI.

I'm not proud about the drippings out of my funnel. I'm also not proud of where those drippings fall. I think where you put your drippings, and how voluminous they are will vary over time. It's fairly irresponsible to give away everything and not have something for a rainy day. It's fairly boring to not spend on some things you've really, really wanted. But here are three parting thoughts, two from C.S. Lewis and finally one of my own (I couldn't find my favorite from C.S. Lewis that says that our charity should force us to live below those with similar means):

"I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare..."

"Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours."

"At the last day I believe we won't be asked how much we chose to share; we'll be asked how much we chose to keep."