Money for Mormons 101

During the week a friend put a link on her Facebook with the title “Shopping on a budget”.

Now, in my journey towards financial independence and education I’m regularly reading the business section of the newspaper, the ASX website is in my favourites list and I often click on links like the one above that are money/budget related. The articles take me across the world, from Sydney to the New York stock exchange or even China. I just never expected to be heading to Utah and into Mormonism...

The article my friend posted led me to a set of articles regarding Mormon family budgeting. 'Cos I'm curious, a few links later found me at a pamphlet by Elder Marvin J Ashton called “One for the Money: Guide to Family Finance”. I waded through the faith-specific messages and past the description of strong gender roles that apparently accompany and are necessary for both good finance (?) and happy Mormon families to find some fairly sensible messages. There are 12 Mormon guidelines of which 8 I feel are relevant to me (with slight amendments). These are:

• Pay an honest tithing*
• Learn to manage money before it manages you
• Learn self-discipline and self-restraint in money matters
• Use a budget
• Make education a continuing process
• Work towards home ownership
•  Appropriately involve yourself in an insurance program
• Understand the influence of external forces on family finances and investments

It seems basic money-sense transcends faith because these really are very sensible. My regular reader(s) will know that I already follow a few of these. The others I will explore on a personal basis as this month proceeds. Of course, I will try to keep you up to date....


* I am familiar with tithing (not personally of course) so I googled it for more information. Members give one-tenth of their annual income to the Church. I guess a secular parallel is giving to charity so that's the direction I am going to take.