A family was building a home. It cost $10,000 more to construct a cathedral ceiling instead of a traditional ceiling in the house. This added $20,000 to the resale value of the house. It added beauty to the house. Now when people enter the house their eyes are drawn to look up as with any cathedral. Is looking up such a bad thing? Maybe one day as the homeowner is sitting and looking up he is inspired with an idea for a business. Now since they have more value in their home they can leverage that value for a loan to start a business that creates jobs.  The people who will work on those jobs will get paid and go home and feed their kids and pay their mortgage with the money.

Some would say it is a waste of money to build the cathedral ceiling. The wealthy think the poor waste money, and the poor think the wealthy waste money. Who is right? A businessman sees it as wasteful to take the time to change the oil in his car. I have to agree. He could be out starting businesses and creating new jobs for people. A prosperous person realizes trying to save money on little things is often a waste. Many times poverty minded people will try to do everything themselves and save money. But they never have enough time to finish so there are often broken-down cars and car parts in their yard or unfinished parts of their house as well. Have you ever driven by one of these?