Everyone needs to eat.  Grocery shopping is a fact of life for everyone.  Here are some great ideas on helping you to stretch your grocery budget.

We live in a consumer driven world.  Advertisements come at us fast and furious.  Here are a few simple steps to help you avoid unneeded expenses and gain resistance to the consumer mentality.

Lewis Tappan and the Amistad Slaves

by Randy Alcorn

Excerpted from a message given at John Piper's Pastors' Conference in Minneapolis, Feb. 2004.

Lewis Tappan

Lewis was raised a Calvinist, but became a Unitarian. Later he had an encounter with God in which he returned to the faith of his childhood, a changed man.

The Tappans determined to use their company's profits for Christian causes. Their business funded and managed various evangelical societies that distributed Bibles, tracts, and Sunday school materials. They founded the Magdalene Society, which ministered to unwed mothers in New York City.

Are you considering the purchase of a new car?  Lets be honest here.  We have been conditioned to think positively about shinny cars.  A new car brings prestige, respect, honor, envy – these are just a few of the messages sent to us by an endless stream of Madison Avenue commercials.  With messages like these ringing in our heads sometimes any excuse will do in convincing ourselves “I NEED a new car!”

Let’s look at some of the “reasons” we “need” a new car.

By Ellen Strohm
With some coffee shops charging nearly four dollars a cup for their brew it is time to start thinking of alternatives.  If you were able to cut 3 coffee stops a week, you would save over five hundred dollars this year!  However, many coffee shop addicts are frustrated trying to duplicate the taste at home.  Here are some basic steps to insure a great cup of coffee at home:

For many people, spending money becomes an addictive behavior similar to alcoholism or gambling. With compulsive spending, the true enemy is within. We need to replace our preoccupation with short-term gratification and make our spending decisions from the long-term perspective. We must replace our self-indulgence with self-control, which is a fruit of the Holy Spirit's work in our lives. "Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control" (Proverbs 25:28). Without self-control on the inside, our lives are made vulnerable to an infinite variety of assaults from the outside. The following guidelines are designed to help you exercise self-control in your spending, that you may become a better steward of God's resources and free more funds to use for kingdom purposes:

Wishing for a raise?  You can get a $100 a week raise, or you can trim $100 per week in expenses.  The results are the same.  Ben Franklin said “Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.”  To give yourself a raise identify and eliminate small expenses.  Here are some ideas to get you started:

When I was a child about half of the kids I knew had an allowance.  The money was given, we were told, for doing our chores.  Most of our parents used this allowance as a tool to teach many financial lessons.  The idea of delayed gratification, choosing between wants or desires, and interest on savings all were learned through allowance.  Nowadays it seems very few give an allowance.  Oh, parents are paying plenty.  Money for school events, sports teams, music lessons, youth group activities, etc.  If a child wanted to be involved in everything he could easily spend in excess of $100 a month just on activities!  When children get to high school it could be a few hundred for an individual banquet or prom!