finances on Well-Being

In recent years, I (Smith) have been leading a study called the “Science of Generosity Initiative” at the University of Notre Dame, in which I (Davidson) have been deeply involved. In that study, we h...

There has been a paradigm shift going on in neighborhoods in the United States since the end of WWII. For decades before the 1940s, neighborhoods were places where people were known and were active. W...

Those who give, receive back in turn. By spending ourselves for others’ well-being, we enhance our own standing. In letting go of some of what we own, we better secure our own lives. By giving ourselv...

LeBron James will undoubtedly be remembered as one of the greatest players in basketball history. His stats are consistently jaw-dropping, despite competing in a sport that is usually dominated by you...

For what good would their prosperity do them if it did not provide them with the opportunity for good works?

Work supplies the physical, psychological, artistic, and religious needs of communities extending to the ends of the earth. Furthermore, through work, we create abundance out of which we help meet the...

Gregg Easterbrook wrote about this in a 2003 book called The Progress Paradox. Easterbrook’s subtitle was How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse. He describes how affluent we have become—​​​bett...

“Those born to wealth, and who have the means of gratifying every wish, know not what is the real happiness of life, just as those who have been tossed on the stormy waters of the ocean on a few frail...

In his landmark work, Habits of the Heart, the sociologist Robert Bellah describes thee distinct orientations people take with respect to their work. The first orientation is to see your work as a job...

When we find worth by our affluence, it promises rest but brings stress, increasing demands, and a greater devotion to a god that will never love us and always forsake us.

The last ten years, Americans have reported a steady decline in overall life satisfaction, despite the fact that average income per capita increased by 5.5 percent. We got richer, but became less happ...

People are usually better in adversity, than prosperity. A prosperous condition is not always so safe. True, it is more pleasing to the flesh - but it is not always best. In a prosperous state, there ...

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.

Westerners have a complicated relationship with money. We don’t like it when wealthy people receive special treatment or look down on the rest of us as riffraff. But many (can we say most?) of us aspi...

Ultimately it is economic prosperity which makes possible for billions of dollars to be devoted to the less fortunate.

Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that is "finding his place in it," while really it is finding its place in him.

Material success is no measure of spiritual health. Nor is apparent affluence any criterion of real godliness. And it is well for us that the Shepherd of our souls sees through this exterior and takes...

The twenties are a time when one asks, What will I do with my life? What is it that I really want in exchange for my life’s labors? Most denied that the key desire of life was for material wealth; t...

Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfac...

An attitude to life which seeks fulfillment in the single-minded pursuit of wealth - in short, materialism - does not fit into this world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, whil...

I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the ma...

The only thing wealth does for some people is to make them worry about losing it.

It’s hard to tell what brings happiness. Poverty and wealth have both failed.

In Essentials Unity; In Non-Essentials Liberty; In All Things Charity

Peace is a fruit of the Spirit, not a byproduct of accumulated wealth.

That only is worth my having which I can have forever. That only is worth my grasping which death cannot tear out of my hand.

Looking through the lens of Holy Scripture, human work must be seen first and foremost as value contribution, not economic compensation. We can have a flourishing, fruitful life even if we don’t get a...

Leader: Happy are those who find wisdom, those who gain understanding. People: For her good profit is better than getting silver, and her return is better than fine gold. Leader: She is more preci...

The soul is a spiritual thing, riches are of an earthly extract, and how can these fill a spiritual substance? How man does thirst after the world, but, alas, it falls short of his expectation. It can...

Material wealth is either a window through which we see God or a mirror in which we see ourselves.