"Love, and do what you will." --St. Augustine

I am the least moral person I know. Let me explain.

One of my favorite books is A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle. In that book, Tolle quotes St. Augustine's "Homily Number 7 on the First Epistle of John," reproduced below in it's entirety, in which Augustine preaches, "Love, and do what you will."

Augustine (354-430 AD) was the Bishop of the city of Hippo in what is modern-day Algeria. His simple precept is a far cry from what the Roman Catholic Church (and most Christian denominations) are today, with its complete incorporation of ethics, morality and judgment, a result of the adoption of Aristotelian philosophy in the thirteenth century via the writings of Thomas Aquinas, most notably Summa Theologica.

"Love, and do what you will," is the original Gospel with a capital G. Jesus taught people not to judge.

The problem is, you can't have a conception of morality or ethics without judgement. Most people just laugh this off, thinking, "That can't be what Jesus really meant. He just meant to say, 'don't be a judgmental person,'" as if this answers the question. What is a judgmental person? Where do you draw the line? Judgment is judgment and Jesus didn't misspeak.

Use Daily Affirmations to Strengthen Self-Confidence

The core principle of Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, the granddaddy of all success literature, is the building of self-confidence through twice-daily affirmations, a process Hill called "auto-suggestion." He says quite pointedly:

Taking inventory of mental assets and liabilities, you will discover that your greatest weakness is lack of self-confidence. This handicap can be surmounted, and timidity translated into courage, through the aid of the principle of autosuggestion.

Your problem, in other words, is a lack of self-confidence, and here's how to fix it. And fix it, it does.

The Case Against Coupons

There's nothing wrong with coupons. Families use them to advantage; and the larger the family, the larger the advantage.

But Brett Arends, in his article posted to Yahoo! Finance, "Doing the Math on Coupons," part of a continuing series on Financial Fitness, goes overboard in his appreciation.

Citing statistics provided in a press release from a company called Inmar as his source, Ardent says that on average each coupon saves its redeemer $1.44. Estimating that each coupon requires about a minute to find, clip and file, that would be a savings of $86.40 per hour of work. And since this savings is tax-free, figures Ardent, he feels justified in rounding up that number to arrive at a rounder wage rate of $100 per hour for coupon clipping. Not bad.

Now I have no bone to pick with the statistics, nor with Ardent's calculations. But Inmar is a company that provides promotional services, including coupon operations, to retailers and wholesalers. They have a vested interest in promoting coupons.

Let's look inside the computations to see if Ardent's numbers are helping Inmar along.

If we estimate that each coupon redeemed saves on average 10% of the purchase price (the average is actually about 7%) , that would mean a family would have to purchase $864 in groceries each week to redeem all that they clipped. That's $1.44 x 10 x 60 = $864. This seems a little high for all but the Duggers, doesn't it?

So it's more likely that coupon clipping once a month, or even less often, will suffice for most people. It's a tiny part time job, nothing like the net of $1,200 per year projected by Ardent.

If coupon clipping is something you enjoy doing for yourself or your family, that's great. I say do it. But for many of the rest of us, it's a tedious practice, one better employed as something of a last resort rather than a lifestyle choice.

Photo courtesy of Copy Cop.