Many people today want to take the Bible and throw it out the window. They don’t want to hear anything about it. The problem with this is that there is a lot of non-religious everyday wisdom that is to be learned from reading it that is not being learned because of people wanting to avoid it entirely.
One of these stories that we can glean from is the story of Joseph and Pharaoh. The abridged version is as follows:
Pharaoh had a dream that troubled him deeply about seven
fat cows and seven skinny cows. He tried to find someone to
interpret his dream with no success. Finally he had Joseph to
interpret his dream. Joseph told him that it meant the land
was about to go through seven years of plenty followed by
seven years of famine. Joseph then told Pharaoh that he should
store up food and water during the seven years of plenty so
that there would be enough food and water for everyone during
the seven years of famine. Pharaoh was so impressed by this idea
that he put Joseph in charge of this “storing up” process during the
seven years of plenty. During the seven years of famine, they
ended up having plenty for all of Pharaoh’s people and the
surrounding people as well.
This small story has a lesson that many have missed and because of this are paying the price today. The story teaches the lesson of the importance of the storehouse for when times are bad.
DON’T BECOME TOO FAT
During the good times, both individuals and corporations in
American corporations became fat with ballooned wages, benefits, and too many full-time employees. We have the money, so let’s have two or three people to do one person’s job. Let’s dull out most of our profit in bonuses and pay everyone way more than the job is worth. Let’s not be concerned with the cost our vendors are charging us or how much the annual sales convention is going to cost. Let’s live it up because it will always be here. Right? Wrong.
BEWARE OF THE CREDITOR
Again, both individuals and businesses alike have become overcome with debt. Individuals have racked up credit card bills, car loans, and high mortgages with the thought that interest rates would never increase and jobs would always be around.
Even companies have jumped in the creditor band wagon. Each year profits are spent instead of reinvesting in the company. Because of this, large expenditures often are financed to expand the company or even replace aging equipment. Take advantage of the banks money because high profits will always be here.
PLAN FOR SKINNY TIMES
What Joseph & Pharaoh did that we have not done is plan for the skinny times. We have been blessed with many years of “fat times”, but we should know that “skinny times” do come sooner or later. What shape would we be in now if both individuals and the business community had only planned for skinny times?
We needed to have kept ourselves lean. This can be achieved by asking ourselves “Do I NEED this?” before every purchase. So what if your neighbor has it and you want one too? Is your neighbor going to pay your bills if you would lose your job? Does your child who is either going to grow out of their clothes in three months or rip them on the playground need $80 jeans? Businesses can continually monitor their full-time employees’ work loads to ensure that they do not have employees that are under utilized. They can also continually monitor expenses and keep a conservative lid on wages and benefits.
We needed to avoid the creditor. Most people have to finance their homes, but if you can only afford an $80,000 home, only buy an $80,000 home. Throw the credit cards away. If you can’t pay cash, you don’t need it. This forces people to save and makes you more critically preview your purchases. Businesses should be reinvesting their profits into the business and saving for the lean times. This prevents the need for lines of credit. Lines of credit is not “taking advantage of the bank’s money”, but it is like playing Russian Roulette. One day you will lose.
REAP THE BENEFITS
Planning for the skinny times will allow you to reap the benefits during the skinny times. If you have saved up enough money to pay 2 years of your expenses, you would not need to worry if you lost your job tomorrow. Your mortgage would still get paid, your children would still be fed. What peace of mind would that bring to you?
If businesses curtailed spending and reinvested their profits, they would have enough to cover their expenses during lean times. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to increase marketing spending during lean times to gain market share during a time when your competitors are struggling because they did not plan? What peace would everyone in the organization have to know there was enough to pay expenses and payroll to get the company through the tough time?
