Prosperous people think and act with long range goals in mind. Today’s labor may not pay off for years. Job was a man who learned to look at the long term picture. He lived 140 years in God’s blessing after the devastation he experienced. We will be more prosperous today by thinking about paying next year’s bills. The mind set on the long term produces patience today. Poverty thinking focuses on today’s need.

In our rental property business we learned it was to our benefit to think long term. When we first started we did not take adequate time to screen the renters to make sure they had a history of paying their bills and had a desire and the resources to stay in the apartment for a long time. Instead we quickly tried to fill the vacancies so we did not miss one month’s rent. We learned the hard way that quickly filling the vacancies caused a lot of turnover and each time there was a change it cost us extra money in advertising, maintenance and sometimes legal fees. We learned that it was fiscally better for us to take a long term approach to renting the apartments.

A prosperous man buys good tools and takes care of them, because he wants to use them all his life and pass them on to his sons. A prosperous mindset will cause you to be a good steward of the things the Lord has given to you.  You will want to take care of them so that they last a long time. Many times in poverty stricken countries you can see vehicles overloaded way beyond their capacity to earn a few extra cents by taking extra people to a destination. There is no thought of taking care of the vehicles so they last and produce income for a long time. The overloaded vehicles are quickly destroyed and broken down.