Sometimes the poverty we experience is SELF-INFLICTED.  We live beyond our means.  We use credit and go into debt.  This is economic clutter and must be cleared away. The word "poverty" means "the state of being poor," "deficiency in amount" and "unproductiveness."  More often than not, poverty is the result of poor stewardship on our part.

Begin living "below" your means WITHOUT giving up the so-called abundant life [your current standard-of-living].  Abundance and prosperity come when you begin living with excess rather than debt, worry and interest payments.  This is a process and takes time, but begin your journey today.

 

Now one might claim other contributing circumstances and they may be valid.  I know they were with me.  If it is a lack of education, get more education.  If it is lack of job prospects, get to a place with better job prospects.  If it is debt, get out of debt.

At least one of you reading this will tell me he or she can't leave their current job or circumstance.  Really?  How did you get that job and/or circumstance in the first place?  Create new circumstances!!  I am not implying that you pull up stakes tomorrow and move to another state.  What I AM telling you is to formulate a plan.  Make it a 12, 24 or 60-month plan, but MAKE IT!!  Begin the process.  Get rid of the financial clutter!  Also get rid of the excuses that are also making you a slave to your current circumstances.

Physical Clutter
We, in North America, have WAY too much stuff.  Maybe it is the same for our brethren in Europe and elsewhere.  All these possessions are the by-product of a materialistic, hedonistic society in which live.  Mankind surely does not realize that when he rejected God, he created a void in life.  We spend a great deal of life filling the void with possessions...stuff.  Most of it is clutter that actually grinds on us mentally and emotionally, as well as physically.  I know this from recent personal experience.  Eighteen months ago I moved from a 3,000 square-foot house to a 1,100 square-foot apartment.  I ordered up a nine cubic yard dumpster and just about filled it with all the physical clutter from my life.  Well now I am doing it again in preparation for my move to Utah.

There is an age-old question that goes, "If your house suddenly caught fire, what would you grab on the way out the door?"  Let's modify the question and see what can be done to get rid of the physical clutter in your life.  I am using a company called ABF - U-Pack Moving for my move to Utah.  They offer something called the Relocube.  This is a free-standing, moving container seven feet wide, six feet deep and eight feet high [6'D - 7'W - 8'H].  That is 336 cubit feet [12.4 cubic yards].  How many of these would you need to hold all your personal and household possessions?  I am not talking about your spouse, children or live-in mother-in-law or father, just you.  How many relocubes would it take?  There is not necessarily a correct answer here, but one might conclude that if your answer is four or five, you might want to take steps to get rid of some of your stuff.

Interesting word "stuff".  One of its definitions is "useless items."  Much of our possessions are things we accumulated over an entire lifetime or marriage.  You have probably not used, touched, looked at or needed many of your possessions in years or even decades.  GET RID OF THEM.  The slang definition for the word "stuff" is habit-forming drug.  In a large part, this is why we have so many possessions.  Acquiring them, keeping them and storing them has become a Western society HABIT, if not obsession.  Remember when all those self-storage complexes first began springing up all over the place?  It was the result of some smart entrepreneur finding a way to get rich off the public's "drug addition" to STUFF.