Family Finances

Running an economy on members rather than money

03/06/2023

Gn 12:1-4a The LORD said to Abram: "Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your father's house to a land that I will show you." I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. All the communities of the earth shall find blessing in you." Abram went as the LORD directed him.

One of the lessons I learned early in life was about family finances. That is, how my family manages money, and we didn’t have much so it didn’t take us very long! Now, my family emigrated to the U.S. when I was seven years old, and like most immigrants, we were poor. My mom loves to remind us how she arrived in New York with only $10 in her purse. Today, though, my parents live on the golf course of the Springdale Country Club, and my mom has a little more than $10 in her purse. I think it is $20.

My parents are a living example of the American dream and how faith in God, hard work, and a family-first philosophy can help you to be successful in this life. I have nothing but admiration for my parents and countless other immigrants to this country who came with very little money, but with lots of faith and family values.

But I also learned that there are other ways to look at family finances. That is, the way we think about money here in the U.S. is not the way we think about money in India, or in most developing countries. In developing nations, people see their real wealth as their children rather than as their checking accounts. And I am not speaking metaphorically or symbolically, but rather very much economically. In other words, children are not just an expense item we spend money on, they are an asset class from which a family grows financially. How so? Well, in an agrarian society the children work on the farm. And they are free labor!

But more importantly, your children were your retirement plan. In India, we do not have Social Security, or 401k’s, or investment portfolios to provide income when parents are too old to work. Instead, children take their parents into their home and care for them until they pass away. That is why most developing nations have never heard of nursing homes or retirement communities.

By the way, that is why most families also had lots of kids. So that by the time you are old, at least one of those kids still loves you and will take care of you. In other words, this is what family finances look like beyond the borders of the United States, where the economy runs on the number of children rather than on the size of your checking account.

This sense of family finances may also help us understand the first reading a little differently and more deeply today. God calls Abraham and sends him to a new land, the Promised Land. But God’s blessing wasn’t just the land, but also countless descendants. Later God would explain that Abraham’s descendants would be like “the dust of the earth” (Gn 13:16), or “the stars in the sky” (Gn 22:17).

In other words, when Abraham heard God promise him “countless descendants” he did not think like we Americans do, “Oh no! How am I going to feed all those hungry mouths?” That is going to be so expensive. Children, according to Abraham’s reckoning, were not an economic expense or liability, but rather a windfall, like winning the lottery.

Indeed, the etymology of the word “economy” is not the flow of money in a country, like we typically think. Economy comes from two Greek words “oikos” meaning “household” and “nemein” a verb meaning “to manage.” In other words, the original sense of an economy has less to do with money in a country and a lot more to do with the members of a family, a household. In Genesis God taught Abraham the original meaning of family finances.

Here’s my last point about family finances. Did you know this original meaning of an economy, based on members and not money, is how the Catholic Church operates at its best? That is, traditionally Catholic families ordinarily had many children, maybe eight or ten was considered normal. Well, from those children came the future priests and nuns who ran our churches and taught in our schools.

And how much salary did we pay those priests and nuns? Well, we paid them a pittance. Why? Well, because all our parishioners were poor and raising huge families! We didn't put money in the collection plate, we put our children in the collection plate. But notice how we operated under a different kind of economy. Our household management of the Church was not based on money but on members. And having lots of children was not considered a serious liability but a huge asset.

My friends, there is more than one way to think about family finances. Most of the world is starting to think of an economy the way we do here in the United States, where it’s more about money than members. And we even operate our family finances according to the same model. And that is too bad because we are abandoning the originally meaning of economy, which is both more Scriptural and more spiritual.

Praised be Jesus Christ!