On my 10th birthday my dad took me, and my $20 to Cabell Federal Savings and Loan and we opened up my first passbook savings account. If I remember correctly, that $20 earned 6.2% interest. I remember how exciting it was to save money and to see that the money I put in earned more money by just sitting there. Michael Banks wanted to spend his tuppence feeding the birds, but if I was the boy in Mary Poppins, I would have tendered my tender to the bank to earn compound interest.
I was reminded of the joy I used to get from compound interest when I was filing my 2013 tax return, and was reporting my earned interest income – which, although my primary savings account is much larger than it was in 1972, was not sufficient to purchase a Venti Chai Latte at the Starbucks across the street.
As we will be in the market for a new car sometime this year, I will not complain about interest rates. But I do wonder about our consumption based economy which seems engineered to punish thrift. When I was changing my retirement account a few years back, I said to my financial planner, “I just want my money to be insured and to keep pace with inflation.” “You can’t do that,” he replied. Thus the only way to make money is to risk money. I’m not comfortable with that. What’s the difference between a broker and a bookie?......No, that’s not a joke, I really want to know.
When my great-grandmother, Laura Grate, passed we found that she had stashed away thousands of dollars in her bedroom closet. “How quaint,” we all thought. She had raised her daughter during the great depression, and had no trust for banks. She had no more confidence in the FDIC than she did that men actually walked on the moon. She was only one of many of her generation that stashed away their savings in the lining of mattresses, in coffee-cans under the floor-boards, or mason jars buried in the back yard.
I am reconsidering the foolishness of that. It might be wisdom after all. If my money isn’t going to make any interest anyway, isn’t a mason jar in the back yard safer nowadays than a savings account? If your money is in a mason jar in the back yard it is safe from hackers and identity thieves – which is not true for the cash you have in the bank. Think about that for a moment.
Of course, if we all buried our cash in the back yard, our back yards would not be safe. Thieves would be at them every unguarded moment. Assets, liquid or otherwise, can only be held at risk and with vigilance. This is true whether our wealth is stored in a jar, in a vault, or in the cloud.
The point of all this is obvious.
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust corrupt, and thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor dust corrupt, and where thieves do not break in and steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (Matthew 6.19-21).
Also: Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance imperishable, undefiled and will not fade away, reserved for you in heaven, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed at the last time. (I Peter 1.3-5)
The only things we know are sure and ours to keep are the things we have from God.
