Seriously Souled 10-day journey - Money by Stacey Anbar final

[Music] i'm so excited to be here with you and one of the topics that we're going to talk about is money it's actually a really fun topic when you start learning about it properly um and it's something that not a lot of people will talk about and money is one of those things that could either be a blessing or a curse and so what i thought we'd talk about for the next couple minutes is how to make it into a blessing i'm gonna use this beautiful book called the garden of riches so here's the first thing let's see what it says here it's up to you so if somebody said to you it's up to you what do you think that would mean let's see what it says a person might argue what do you want from me i don't have the money i am unable to get out of debt i remember a long time ago feeling like this i felt like it wasn't really um something that i had in my control and you know what's interesting is we're coming up to rosh hashanah and on rosh hashanah it talks about something very important when it comes to money it actually says that we are given the amount of money for the year on rosh hashanah and we actually don't have any control over how much that is so it's really interesting right before rosh hashanah if you find out that you're losing money unexpectedly like a whole bunch of things happen which has happened to me where you're writing checks or your car breaks down or you need something unexpectedly then that actually was meant to be if you find out that you're getting extra money that's also really special and that has a lot to do with the fact that hashem is making up for what was lost throughout the year so it's really important to change our mind um to being solely responsible for that and realizing that hashem actually designates a certain amount of money to us and what he does is he lets us be the managers of it he says to us okay i'm going to give you this amount and i'm going to see what you do with it i'm going to see how many mitzvahs you do with it how you take care of it because at the end of the day what the torah says is the money is not really ours it's just given to us to manage which is really really interesting we must make an iron-clad commitment to do everything in our power including spiritual actions such as prayer and repentance in addition to taking the necessary physical steps to repay our debts in full that sounds kind of scary but i'm going to break it down further as we go along when god sees that we are fully committed to doing the right thing and are taking action to do the right thing he will assist us in accomplishing the correct things and help us to repay our debts in full meaning if in our hearts if we dove into hashem to help us that we understand that we don't want to be in this financial situation we want to be able to give more which means we have to get out of debt then he's going to do whatever he can to help us on a practical level someone who owes money should accept any job no matter how menial he should also lower his expenses live on a modest budget and spend spend money only when absolutely necessary in short he should even sell the shirt off his back to repay his debts so debt is a very very very very important thing in the torah it actually says a long time ago when we had the temple that if you had debt you were not allowed to go meaning that the husband was not allowed to go to the temple if he had debts he had to spend his time and his energy getting rid of the debts first and then he was allowed to go so it says in the torah that debt is actually not a good thing what happens with that is we feel crummy about ourselves and it makes us feel sad and depressed and that's one of the reasons why myself i decided to go into a journey of learning more about my finances and understanding what a proper budget meant and also living below my means which is something that is very very difficult nowadays okay so here's what i was talking about before hashem decides your standard of living these banking inventions are the tools that the evil inclination uses to undermine a muna and trust in hashem everyone must believe that hashem sets the limits of his livelihood and that he must make do within these parameters so basically when we go into debt we're assuming that we don't have enough and that hashem hasn't given us enough which is why we sign up for all kinds of credit cards now there are some obviously some very very practical things that we have to understand if we don't have the money and we need to cover our four walls so our four walls would be considered and this is not from the book this is for me um our housing our transportation our clothing and our food that would be called the four walls then we have to do other things to get those means covered but the four walls does not include gucci and louis vuitton and lululemon sweatshirts all those things that i used to spend a tremendous amount of money on when i didn't have the money to spend um we have to reconsider what's really really really the necessities included in our four walls everyone should be happy with his lot and live within the means that hashem provides neither overspending for himself nor for his household and certainly not chasing after luxuries many people live lifestyles way beyond their means because of the social pressures of pride and prestige they fall into a spiritually and materially destructive path as they go further and further away from hashem and his torah so here are my challenges for you for this 10-day journey when it comes to finances number one reconsider your financial situation and hold yourself responsible for if you're in debt but also understand that hashem wants to help you get out of it so start educating yourself on what the torah says about finances and the most important part of this challenge is being happy with your lot understanding that what we're given is what we're given by hashem and wanting more and having envy and jealousy which is a totally normal thing to have and i've been there and i've done that it's normal but it's not healthy so the second part of this challenge is to really make a list of all the beautiful things that you have and it helps put things into perspective that we are actually given a tremendous amount but sometimes we don't appreciate what we have so maybe our activity for this 10-day journey is lining up all the things we have mentally and imagining what that looks like and making a list a list of all the beautiful things we have so that we can kind of try to reframe our finances and think you know what i don't need to be spending so much on this and number three the third part of this journey is to obviously give sadaka so if you haven't given sadaqa in a long time now is the time it's almost for shoshanna and it would be a beautiful time to give somebody who needs it ladies it's been a pleasure as always this is the book the garden of riches if you're interested in learning some more from me please please reach out i'd be happy to still learn with you and i hope you enjoy the rest of your journey bye [Music] you