Hello, my name is Gary Shotton. And today I’m going to talk about freedom. Well, all of us so want to enjoy freedom. We’re not in jail or in bondage, but I’m going to talk about it in the light of being free with the way you handle your finances. Now I’m not in any way going to try to convince you that my ideas are perfect and you shouldn’t listen to someone else. You should be listening to a lot of people. And I’m certainly not going to tell you that you just be casual; and just waste your money and just be free like throw it around I mean that’s the farthest from the truth. But I am going to talk about it in a way that I think that it’s not bondage. That the way you handle money you don’t fall into the trap of being bound and bondage.

And every day of every year you’re always thinking I can’t spend my money, I can’t spend this, I can’t spend for this. There’s an enjoyment that needs to become with money but it also has to come into control. So, and no one has to agree with me at all on this, I’d love to hear some comments back with your input and back on this. Well, as a young married couple they might need to sign up for some budgeting classes and decide what their food budget would be and their rent budget is and their utilities and then stay right inside those guidelines. So, that way you can have a little bit extra is budgeted for some fun and enjoyment and that’s a good way to go but that was never my style. I’ll be honest with you. From my family we do pass on a lot of what we learn as a family. My father and my mother were very good farmers. And they lived what I called a budgeted life. They had built inside of them habits that were very consistent with conservative and conscious of everything that was spent but not in bondage.

When my dad saw something that he needed or he could see that it would pay back or buy a new pickup truck he wasn’t bound to a budget. He would go ahead but was very budgeted minded. Well, that’s where I want to come from. I want to encourage you to think about this to not live in bondage to some budget that for all of your life will hold you in captivity. Well, the idea behind this comes from the reality that we have to train ourselves to think. I’m going to go as far to say in this topic that we want to think like God thinks. We want to be a God-minded person even in our budget; and even in what we do in life. And so, I don’t ever see God actually holding us to some kind of bondage. In fact if you think about the difference of the Old Testament and the New Testament they were learning and this is an example. They were learning how things ought to be because they had the Ten Commandments and a long list of rules.

Well, they were bound to those and those were good rules. Those rules never did go away but they are not in place like they were in the Old Testament because when Jesus came we have a new look at thing he taught us. How to look from the inside, learn from him, learn the word of God, learn how the Spirit of God works and then we’re naturally living a life that is consistent with God’s will for our lives. Maybe I could explain it well when we talk about food. You know I’m not a skinny person and I’ve had my ups and downs in my way. Once again I wasn’t and I’m still not one of those that convinced that I can get on a particular diet. Oh I have this diet and all. And you can hear all kinds of things I’ve read them and tried a little bit and it never worked for me. And again this could work differently for other people so please don’t be offended if I’m stepping on some toes. But there’s diets like only eat beef, only eat meat, all you eat is the most beef and bacon. And wow! that sounds interesting. And there’s another diet that I heard about that you just eat grapefruit, just all kinds of grapefruit. And then there’s other diets that are more close to home which I have experimented with, you don’t eat any carbs. Carbs are bad. Well, you know I tried some of that and at the end of the day I was in bondage. And I was always conscious how many carbs? And of course there’s the calorie counting, oh you can’t eat more than this; because this is a calorie. That’s true if you’re going to approach it from a loss standpoint.

But here’s my suggestion. Could you approach eating by learning what is good and healthy to eat and what in general is not good to eat. And I will tell you almost everybody that I know knows that heavy sugar is not good to eat. In fact I have an advisor that says that we should actually become (and I’m working at this) becoming accustomed to having no sugar. There are other sweeteners. So, this is not about food. Please, please bear with me. But it’s an example. Is I could go through life and I could budget and diet and budget and diet and budget and diet and at the end of the day I was in bondage to those all of my time. Now, on the food part of it if I learn what to eat I can honestly have abundance of almost the right foods and I can adjust myself to the foods that are healthy for me. And I can learn about food, and I can have actually changed my habits and my desires for certain food. So, I don’t even want something that’s bad for me.

Well, here’s how it works with the finances. Rather than being too tight with what you spend now you have to get started with this and as you become God-minded and conservative-minded you can actually have anything and everything you want. But you just cut out those things that are not good for you and you don’t even think about it in a way that oh I can’t have that. And when you have an opportunity to have a good time or something comes in special you’re not checking your thought pattern and say well, I can’t have that because it’s not inside my budget. Well, if you have a budgeted style. A budget of lifestyle then you can have certain things. You can have an enjoyment life and live in a way that you’re not in bondage. Well, I hope this makes sense. I have lived this way all my life. I actually was asked from a panel what I did about budgeting and it caught me off guard because I said I am not the typical person that has this well-defined amount of money I can spend for food, amount of money I can spend for rent or mortgage. I’m just not that person. I’m a person that has some freedom in the way I spend my monies, but never do I spend my money wastefully.

In fact if you kind of make a game out of it, you’re kind of having fun at it, without being cheap. By the way I tip my waters. So, I’m not being cheap. But when I go out to eat I’m conscious of where a good place is, to get a good meal. And I go there and I enjoy the meal and I stay away from the grease bound full of bad food contents and a poor price to begin with. I live and work in what I call a budgeted life. Both food and finances and even other things, I don’t have a hard and fast budget of what I’ve got to do like read the bible every year. Well, that’s good. That’s wonderful, but did you put that as a law and a rule? I asked the question did you enjoy reading the bible. Did you learn from something from the bible? Did you apply what you learned from the bible rather than just check off? I got that chapter read what about making it happen in your life? Well, I’m drifting off a little bit here. But I hope you understand that I want the best for you and I want you to have an enjoyable life in abundance and not be in bondage. Thanks for being a part of Inspiring Better Business.