Inconspicuous Consumerism

This week we read, “United in Building the Kingdom of God” by L. Tom Perry. It had a similar message to the article we read last week by Elder Wirthlin. Elder Perry talked about riches and how easily one can give in to pride when they have material wealth. I thought about myself and wondered how I would keep myself grounded if we came into large sums of money. Right now we live fairly conservatively. I personally believe that we should not be flashy with our money and focus on buying the big brands and what is “in”. I wrote a paper about inconspicuous consumerism last year. I really believe that life is so much easier for many different reasons if you do not advertise the fact that you have a lot more than you really need to survive. For example, as I did my research for the paper I wrote I found a dissertation that included an interview with a few people who had gone to jail for robbing others. When asked how they chose their victims, the inmates consistently answered that it was all in the appearance of the person. They said you could look at someone and tell quite easily if they had money.  We send a message to others whether we intend to or not with what we are wearing, driving and living in. I also think we start to send a message to ourselves when we spend our money on the vain things of the world. We tell ourselves that we are better, that we deserve what we have and that those who do not must be lazy or doing something wrong. That is why it is so important to be comely and not vain. We can and should use our excess fund to help others on this journey we call life.

As far as an update on the $100 challenge, I have been learning that it is so very difficult to launch even the smallest of businesses with everything else that is going on in my life. I am so impressed with the successful entrepreneurs that I have gotten to know. It is an undertaking to carve out time from family, church, work and school to run a business. I have been knitting up my product and now have a little inventory and was going to go with it but I don’t completely love the pattern I have created. I am looking at my product with much more scrutiny than I would normally because I intend to sell these to customers outside my family and I want to put out something that an unbiased customer would be happy with. I am redoing my pattern and adding just a basic square or round bean bag in addition to the egg. I will post pictures next week.