The Connection between Piggy Banks and Free Agency
By Richard P. Halverson

Recently I saw a cute little ad that had as its graphic a broken piggy bank and an attractive woman with a devilish smirk on her face that said, “I feel a little bit guilty, but this sale is so good it was worth it.”  We can all picture the ad right now. 

Then it hit me — nobody breaks the piggy bank anymore!!  Oh, I don’t mean we don’t overspend. I mean we don’t break the piggy bank; we reach for the credit card.

Piggy banks are pretty much a thing of days gone by.  In some ways that is too bad.  See, the piggy bank represented a physical barrier to impulse spending.  Usually, you weren’t carrying it with you at the store.  This forced you to leave the store and go home, providing an important cooling off period.  Then you knew that if you broke the little piggy it would be gone forever — along with your savings.  These barriers could cause a person to stop and think about how much he really wanted to buy the item.  Sometimes, just the barrier of a piggy bank was enough to help us make more calculated spending decisions.

Barriers are Falling Everywhere

It is not just piggy banks that are gone.  Paying in cash was a spending barrier.  When the cash in the wallet was gone — no more spending.  Even checks were a barrier.  In the past, the idea of writing a check against insufficient funds was a real barrier to spending.  Today most checking accounts have overdraft privileges or come with some type of borrowing ability so that the concern of bouncing a check does not exist. 

There was a day when getting a loan was often difficult.  Sometimes the mean old banker saved us from making bad buying decisions by refusing to lend us the money.  Today the banks have learned they can make more money charging fees and high interest rates.  As such, they are begging people to come in and borrow money.

All these barriers have been overcome by modern financial technology.  The prime example, of course, is the credit card.  When the impulse strikes a consumer today, he just reaches for the credit card.  It can be anything from an ice cream cone to a plasma TV.  Sellers know the barriers are gone and they seek to take advantage of that fact.  Their advertising is absolutely geared to impulse spending.  Many ads barely carry the cost of the item but instead highlight the low monthly payments.

I am not a doctor or psychologist but I am sure that most of us get a type of “high” from buying things, a rush of endorphins. With few piggy bank-like financial barriers to check us it is easy to become addicted to unwise spending.

All this financial freedom has led to a near epidemic of personal indebtedness among consumers.  This has been followed by a near epidemic of personal bankruptcies. There was a day when filing bankruptcy was a terrible barrier.  People did everything they could to avoid taking such action. 

Further, for those who were left with no choice but bankruptcy they knew that future borrowing for things like homes and cars was almost impossible.  Today we hear over and over in the ads, “Poor credit, no problem; bankruptcy, no problem.  We will give you that loan you deserve.”  (Why do we “deserve” it anyway?  That always strikes me as an interesting advertising ploy — we “deserve” it.)

Artificial barriers to spending, from bankruptcy stigma to piggy banks, are pretty much gone. The result is that many borrow and buy when they should not.  Many are saddled with loads of debt and loads of worry.

I once heard a woman tell this story.  Shortly before her marriage she was approved for her first credit card. Before that all her mad money pretty much did have to come from a piggy bank. The newfangled, can-be-used-almost-anywhere credit card came with a $2,000 line of credit.  She said she marched into the bridal shop and spent the entire $2,000.  She said, “I looked fantastic at my wedding!” 

After the wedding some reality settled in.  She couldn’t repay.  Eventually, she decided to declare bankruptcy. 

The truth is her fabulous gown and other wedding trappings have made no difference to her happiness in marriage.  The debt and the bankruptcy have.  There have been some hard consequences.  It is too bad she did not stick to what she had in the piggy bank.  It probably would not have amounted to $2,000, but the barrier of breaking the bank for something this important to her would have helped her make much wiser decisions.

Eliminating Barriers Means More Freedom to Exercise Our Agency

Eliminating barriers is not all bad.  It increases freedom.  In Latter-day Saint terms we can say it increases our agency.  We believe God the Father took the ultimate risk with respect to barriers when he gave us the gift of agency. 

How well do we handle this freedom?  In our world, barriers are dropping everywhere.  In the MoneyWise column we focus primarily on money issues.  There are, of course, other columns on Meridian.  They focus on topics like marriage, morality, literature, entertainment, and other things. 

I believe in almost every category we can see that physical and social barriers are being reduced and eliminated.  As a consequence our freedom and agency are increasing.  Sometimes we are disheartened by the mistakes we see occurring in society because the piggy bank-like barriers are being eliminated.  Frequently, however, we see that those who will listen are strengthened through freedom. 

Agency is Destroyed By Eliminating Consequences

As Latter-day Saints we know these things:

• Agency is crucial to the plan of salvation.  Without agency we cannot progress toward God.
• Agency is a gift from God to us.
• Agency is not free.  There are consequences.

We also know this — destroying agency is important to Satan’s plan of enslavement.  From the scriptures we learn that before the foundations of the world he sought to destroy our agency for his benefit (Moses 4:3). 

Most of us have wondered at one time or another exactly how Satan planned to destroy our agency.  Most often we hear it explained that he was going to force us to live righteously.  I doubt that was it.  You can’t force someone to live righteously. 

You can constrain me to prevent me from taking the name of God in vain but you cannot force me to love God.  You can put me in prison and prevent me from injuring my neighbor but you cannot force me to love my neighbor. 

Ponder this.  Real agency cannot be destroyed by restraint, but agency can be destroyed by removing the consequences of agency.  If there are no negative or positive consequences as a result of the use of agency, there is no growth.  Without the threat of negative consequences, many — dare I say most — of us have tendency to drift to the lowest level of conduct.  If we know there is no consequence for speeding, how many of us will observe the speed limits?  If we know there is no consequence for failing to pay taxes, how many of us will? 

Removing negative consequences is bad for our agency but perhaps far worse is removing positive consequences.  Why strive to be educated if there is no consequence including even the consequence of self-satisfaction?  Why strive to love your neighbor if there is absolutely no positive consequence for them or even for how you feel about yourself?  This is difficult to imagine, but nothing would destroy agency more completely than the complete removal of all consequences.

Handling Money is Just another Use of Our Agency

Why go into all this in a MoneyWise article?  Satan cannot destroy our agency.  That was settled in the pre-existence.  But he sets up counterfeit situations all around where he makes it appear that consequences are removed.  That sets up a risk that fearing a negative consequence or perceiving a positive consequence we use our agency so poorly that we do in fact eventually destroy it. (The very simplest form of this deception is the thought, “No one will ever know.”)  

It can happen with money matters as well as with immorality or honesty or personal relationships or any number of other elements of our lives.  You see the point.  In fact, faithful Latter-day Saints that are using their agency well in so many ways can trip themselves up on money issues.  The immediate consequence can be marital contention, inability to provide service in Church and community and loss of reputation and self-respect.  We can buy all this with a credit card too.

It may have been easier not to overspend when our savings were in a piggy bank.  It may have been easier not to drink when prohibition was the law of the land.  It may have been easier to observe the Sabbath when stores were closed.  It may have been easier to avoid immorality before the pill, and so on.  As technology and society reduces the old barriers we must turn increasingly to our own self-discipline to make good decisions.

In the end the Lord will allow complete freedom of our agency.  There will be no artificial barriers given to us by society or by God.  There will, however, always be spiritual consequences.  The Lord said, “All things unto me are spiritual, and not at any time have I given unto you a law which was temporal” (D&C 29:34).  Of course, this also refers to our finances.