Money principles from the church bulletin

Our church bulletin this week had a bulletin from Focus on the Family. The bulletin contained some money principles from a Christian perspective:

• Debt can sentence you to a lower standard of living in the future.  Quite true: if you pay off only the minimum balance on your credit card, you end up paying for things twice.  You won't have as much for retirement.
• The Bible does not say God is obligated to bail us out of debt.  Many debts were repaid on the cross for us, but not our personal financial obligations.   “… the borrower is servant to the lender” (Proverbs 22:7)
• Lenders will push as much of the risk to you, the borrower, as possible.  As an example, if you've gotten a mortgage, all of those fees that you paid protect the lender, not you.
• If you are married, you and your husband or wife should be in complete agreement regarding borrowing decisions.  This implies a couple of things.  The person who wants to get the loan should discuss with the other.  The other person should understand what is involved, and if not, should learn what is involved.
• You can spend money any way you want, but you can only spend it once.
• One guaranteed good investment is to pay back all your high-cost debt.  I agree 100%!  Check out some of the great debt-reduction blogs on the sidebar, or browse issues of the Carnival of Debt Reduction for discussion on this from those who know.
• In many cases, the temptation to use credit cards can overwhelm both your common sense and your spiritual convictions:  Merely putting a credit card in a potential user's hand will lead the person to send a third more than originally planned.  This is likely the reason fast-food restaurants started taking them.  The fees they pay cut into the transaction quite a bit but the extra items that the people order when they buy with credit makes up for this.
• Always wait at least 24 hours to buy something you want after you first see it.
• If you can't afford to save in order to pay cash, you can't afford to buy it on credit (housing is the exception to this rule).  True for the first part.  The exception isn't an exception 100% of the time (I wouldn't be buying in most parts of California right now).  But what about cars?  They're just about a necessity for most people so I'd probably give you slack on that one.  The point with borrowing to buy a car is that the car is a depreciating asset, and you'll be upside-down on the loan from day one if you buy new.  Could you pay cash for a used car?  “It may be ugly, but it's paid for!”