Hard times coming? - my solution

The more I look at the current situation, the more I believe that we may be headed for 1930s-style economic hard times. I am not certain, but I think that the odds are better than 50-50 that this is so.

If this is the case, then what should I do now?

I recently read an article by Dr. Gary North (www.garynorth.com) which I think expounds it pretty nicely. He puts forth the idea of thrift as the right personal economic paradigm for hard times (& for good times, too - but the payoff really comes in hard times).

Thrift is defined (very generally) as living on less than you make.

And there are 2 steps that (Dr. North proposes and I agree) develop thrift:
(1) Pay God first - that is, give to you local church before you pay any other bills.
(2) Pay yourself second - that is, put a significant chunck of money into some sort of savings plan ... after you give to the church, but before you pay any other bills.
North suggest 10% of gross income for each of the above items & that sounds like a pretty good number to me.

I have practiced both of these steps to develop thrift for several years now. I pay my bills pretty much every payday, and I symbolicly write the check to my church (& to the missionaries that my wife and I support, ...) first - right under the paycheck deposit in my check register. This reminds me that I am paying God first. (Actually, this is all done online nowadays -direct deposit & online billpay - but I still list the entries the same way in my check register.) And I have money taken directly out of my paycheck to go into a savings program.

Now, my savings program is not doing so well right now. Yours probably isn't either. But that is not the point. The point is that I have gotten into the habit of thrift. And I have (ask my kids...).

Also, it would be difficult to quantitatively prove that I have received an adequate ROI from my giving to the church. But that is not the point. The point is that the money is all God's anyway and this is the way he has told me to allocate it. And if I live the way he says, then I can quit worrying about economic hard times that might be coming. It is easy to prove that God provides an abundant (much more than merely adequate) ROI. In fact, the term ROI is inadequate. The truth is that God is my security. With Him, I am doing fine. If I was without Him, I would be the poorest of the poor. And this situation will only be exacerbated if and when we experience economic hard times.