The Tithe & The Coin

I have gone back and forth over the years with tithing.  My wife and I have done it at times, but never on a consistent basis by any means.  My brother has been consistent in his belief to be obedient in tithing and will tell anyone who will lend an ear, that he and his family have never wanted, as he has been obedient, and God has seen to provide.
In August of this year we started tithing a percentage of the money we had coming in.  It was an amount that felt right, but a little uncomfortable at the same time.  We wanted to be cheerful givers, and not out of guilt.  We also wanted to support the place where we get spiritually fed, and where we give a lot of time through volunteering for different ministries they offer.
Fast forward 3 months and money was still tight, and is still tight.  My wife and I had just given our third month of tithe and boom an argument struck one Sunday after church.  It was one of those stress induced, doubt filled, faith arguments.  We got things settled as best we could and the rest of the day was as normal as possible.
The next morning while reading news and looking at e-mail, I decided for some reason to go out to apmex.com where I used to buy coins and other PM's for hobby more than anything.  I had gotten an e-mail like every other week, but this time for some reason I went to their site to look at coins.
I still has several coins in my night stand that I had bought several years back and figured I might as well see if they were worth anything.  Both had increased in value, but one had gone up in value so much I almost did not believe my eyes.
Without going into great detail and making this any longer than need be, I will just say that a coin I had bought for $79 was now sold on eBay that week, two days after the discovery for $1300.  I called my brother who I had given one to for a birthday present as well, and he was shocked as you might imagine.  So the coin had given us back our 3 months of tithe plus another month we had not given.
We continue to tithe and between the coin and my trading, my trading account is up close to 300% since we started tithing and being obedient to God in this area.  Our long term goal is to increase our tithe as we have the ability to do so, or just stretch a little so the comfort level is always breached just a bit.  We want to  use money for good, and to help others that really need help.

The Quest @ 3-10%

So what in the world is the quest, and the attached 3-10% mean you might ask?  It is what I have embarked on this year, then stopped, and then started on again.  You see, I lost my job in December of 2009.  I had a small trading account and did some swing trades now and then, as I worked during the day and had little time to monitor any positions.  Well that changed when I was laid off, and I suddenly had lots of time to trade at that point.
Unemployment sure helped with paying the bills and I was able to scratch up a little more money to get around 5k in my account to trade with.  My goal has been to make 3-10% a week off my capital to grow my account and be able to take out some funds to help pay bills.  Crazy.  Impossible.  Maybe.  But a task I was willing to undertake.
This was not my first time trading, to back up just a bit.  I had tried to day trade full time, several times, and left good jobs on 3 prior occasions.  All 3 times I did OK, but was under so much pressure to pay bills due to our debt load, I made poor choices.  I was the guy who sold my winners too soon, way too soon, and held my losers way too long.
But that is not the case any more.  I had no job, so I made trading my job.  With less than 25k you are under the PDT rule, or pattern day trader rule which limits you to 3 day trades per rolling 5 days.  I am fortunate to be around enough network groups of traders and scanners to find plays and slowly built my account up to near 10k.  It could have been more but I did not take big risks.
I decided to study for a license for insurance around July and August and hung up trading for several months while I did this.  I moved my trading money over to our checking account to survive.  Fast forward to late September and the insurance gig was going slow.  So I went back to what I knew and felt I could make money doing.  I put 2k back in my trading account.  Through a series of very good trades and a few other events which I will chronicle in my next blog, I have gotten my account up near 7k now.  I will detail more about how this all came to be in my next blog called The Tithe & The Coin.