My wife, Amy, is very supportive of my efforts to write.  In an effort to help me focus, she recently asked why I am writing this blog.  This post will explain and respond to her question.

Throughout high school and my freshman year of college I had plans to become an accountant.  Yet after a Mormon mission to Mexico, I felt to change majors in college and get into the helping professions.  Choosing to major in social work was a real leap of faith.  Social work is not typically a lucrative career and I wasn’t sure I could sustain a family on a social worker income.  Nevertheless, I went to see the college advisor and requested that he sign off on my change of major.  He looked and me with a smirk.  “So, you want to be poor the rest of your life do you?” he asked.  It gave me pause and made me question my feelings to change course in my studies.  Then a thought came, “God will provide.”  I took the leap of faith and have not looked back nor regretted it.

While not exactly living lucratively, I live within my means and am comfortable.  I consider myself a “wealthy guy in the things money can’t buy.”  I subsequently obtained a master’s degree in social work and I have dedicated over twenty years of my career to helping people find greater happiness.  It has also been my privilege to manage or supervise dozens of other therapists who have also dedicated their careers to counseling others.  It has been an honor to engage other professionals in leadership councils designed to cultivate talent and performance improvement in other professionals.  I have also had the blessing of serving as a bishop in two Latter-day Saint wards (congregations).  These experiences have helped me better understand what it means to be wealthy as well as in poverty in many different ways.  Wealth and poverty encompass many dimensions of one’s life.  Many, many people impoverished with problems as well as solid souls simply seeking self-improvement (by the way, those two populations often consist of the same people) have sought counsel with me in both professional and ecclesiastical roles.

This blog is intended to share some important things learned within those various roles as well as my life experience.  I will share several effective and enriching principles, patterns, and processes.  The blog will also caution and counter the materialistic philosophy that money is the primary answer to life’s challenges.

This blog is really about enrichment and wealth, but not necessarily about money.  It is about expanding the understanding of wealth to include things money cannot buy.  In a materialistic world that often defines a person’s value by their temporal prosperity, prestige, and prominence, this blog is intended to be an alternative and fresh perspective that will amplify awareness of your “net worth.”  This awareness will enable you to build upon and increase your net worth.  Your awareness of the simple truths of self-reliance will expand, thus promoting your development of gifts and talents that are hidden from a materialistic perspective.  You will have an increased ability to avoid traps that result in helplessness, hopelessness, isolation and despair.

Latter-day Saint wealth is more than money. If “the love of money is [indeed] the root all evil,” (1 Timothy 6:10) then ignorance of your existing wealth and the fear of “not enough” are seeds to that root.  Your wealth is both innate and developed through life experiences.  It is certainly not limited to what you find in your wallet and bank account.  In most certainly includes thing money can’t buy.

Please respond and share your own observations of things money can’t buy, share this blog with others, and/or follow the blog by clicking on the link at the top of this page.  Also, please take this simple 10 second survey and share something you believe money can’t buy.