Laziness brings on deep sleep, and the shiftless man goes hungry. Proverbs 19:15
In other words, get to work. Too many people expect everything in life to be given to them. Right now we have more people than ever living off the government. Help in bad times is one thing, laziness is another. You have to actually work hard to succeed.
As the Proverb says, the shiftless man goes hungry. Dave Ramsey puts it this way, “Get out of the cave, go kill something and drag it back.” You have to get out there and work hard if you want to succeed in personal finance. Laziness on the other hand is just going to lead to heartache and despair.
Now this is going to step on some toes, but I believe many of the people fired in this last recession deserved it. Many of the companies that cut salaries used the recession as an excuse to trim the fat. In good times many of these people would have kept their jobs, but in a recession companies get an excuse to get rid of people who aren’t performing.
Unless the companies went out of business completely, the really good employees kept their jobs in most cases. I watched companies like Microsoft layoff 5000 people as they reported billions of dollars in earnings. They certainly weren’t going to go bankrupt if they didn’t let them go, but the recession gave them the excuse to get rid of people who were not performing. This is good for the company, but not for those people.
Unfortunately, many of the people currently out of work don’t even want jobs. I know some are truly trying hard and struggling to find work, but many simply don’t want to go back to work. This is an actual conversation a small business owner I know had recently:
Unemployed person: You aren’t hiring are you?
Owner: Not at the moment.
Unemployed person: Good, can you sign this for me saying I came looking for a job?
Seriously. Many people are happy collecting their unemployment check while they sit at home watching TV. Proverbs 10:4 says that lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth. If you want to win at personal finance you have to get out there, kill something, and drag it back to the cave. People like Jeff at Deliver Away Debt who have been working overtime and multiple jobs to get out of debt. If you need some inspiration take a look at his blog. He is really killing it. That is how you succeed. Sitting at home collecting an unemployment check doesn’t cut it.
If you missed it, check out the whole list of principles in my intro post – Proverbs Guide to Finance.
{ 3 comments }
Unfortunately any time there is “free money” available there are those who would take advantage of it and feel entitled to do so. That’s why the Bible says that the poor are to be helped but also says let he who does not work, not eat. The gleaning system in the Bible was a way to help those in need. Limits on the time benefits are received and auditing are the best methods to cut back on this abuse. If states and local gov’ts would set up independent auditors this would create many jobs and pay for itself.
In this society, everyone wants to remove the blame from themselves. They will tell you all about their circumstances and hardships, but never about their mistakes or just plain laziness! We have millions of people who are taking advantage of an extremely flawed government system – and they are also hardening the hearts of others toward those who are really in need!.
We have systems in place to try and mitigate the consequences of laziness that God teaches!
Ah free money. If only it really were free. The thing all of this keeps reminding me of is that you always get more of what you subsidize. Right now we are subsidizing unemployment to the point that it is just silly. As a result we have continued to have very high unemployment.
Comments on this entry are closed.
{ 2 trackbacks }