The Prodigal Son and its Money lessons
Written by R. A. Stewart
The parable of the prodigal son may have been first told over two thousand years ago but its lessons are timeless and are worth noting. In this parable a young man asks his father for his inheritance while his father was still alive. The Father then divides his estate between his two sons, and then the younger son,the one who asked for his inheritance gathers all of his things and goes to a faraway land where he fritters away his inheritance on loose living.
During this time the younger son had more money than he ever had in his life but was not responsible or mature enough to handle all of that money. In fact he was just a baby with too much money.
As so happens when young people get a lot of money, he became arrogant and displayed his wealth with his generosity.
He had lots of friends when he had all of this money but they were not true friends as we will discover later on in this story.
We sometimes hear stories of people who won the lottery, then were broke a few years down the track. It is important for people to learn how to handle their money from a young age. This is called, “Financial literacy.”
Learning to be an investor is part of being financially literate. Some people are good at saving but they save to spend, not to invest.
Back to the prodigal son.
When one is living beyond their means the result is debt and with interest repayments on top of that financial disaster looms. The prodigal son, the younger of his father’s two sons, spent all that he was given and had nothing coming in so that it was only a matter of time before he was left with nothing.
The parable puts it this way, “There was a famine in the land”
This means that he was living in poverty. The money was all gone so what did he do?
He got himself a job working among the pigs. He wished he could eat what the pigs ate but no one gave him anything.
Strange; he had lots of friends when he had lots of money but as soon as he needed help, no one would help him.
You will only find out who your real friends are once you hit rock bottom.
Next thing, something happened inside the mind of this lad because he came to his senses. In other words, The Penny Dropped.
He figured out in his own mind that if he returned home then he would be better off than his current circumstances.
The main lesson from this story is that despite all of the stuff offered by the world system, it only leads to emptiness. There are things which he will never get back and that is time that he never spent with his family. His behaviour was a stain on his reputation. There are some things which money cannot buy; a good reputation and time with his family. It is all very well, going out and exploring new opportunities and working hard to make a life, but these things need to be kept in its proper perspective.
