By JACK GODBEY

Money seems to be a popular topic.

There are tons of books devoted to talking about it. Some will try to tell you how to get it, others will tell you how to keep it, and every commercial on television is trying to tell you where to spend it. 

Each day people are gulping down coffee in order to get up and go to work to make money to pay for the stuff they bought that they didn’t need to begin with. 

I was talking to a friend recently who was complaining about all the overtime he was working. I asked him why he was working so much and he responded that he was working to pay for his new car and his new clothes. 

I inquired why he purchased those items and he responded that he needed them for work.

So we work to pay for things that we need in order to be able to work? It’s a never-ending cycle. 

I believe that the working man is shorted when it comes to the accepted pay scale we use in this country. It seems that those who work as public servants and whose work is so important make the least amount of money while an athlete that plays games for a living is paid millions of dollars.

How does that make sense?

If those athletes all stopped working at once, there would be little impact on my world. However, if the garbage man or the firefighter stopped working then we would all notice quickly.  

I heard recently that the world has more billionaires than ever before. That is baffling to me. Why would anyone need a billion dollars?

I am saddened to think of all the struggling families who would benefit from only a few hundred dollars of that money. 

When I was a child, I learned the value of money by doing my chores and earning an allowance of 50 cents that I spent every Saturday morning. I would buy a comic book, a candy bar and a can of soda. I appreciated those items because I earned the money.

I recall each summer when the fair came to town, I would ask my parents for extra jobs to do, as I wanted as much money as I could get to play the carnival games and win a prize that wasn’t worth what I spent trying to win it. 

I washed the car, vacuumed rugs or polished the furniture all in an effort to get an extra quarter in my allowance.

I look back on those days and realize that we didn’t have a lot of money to throw around. Most people in my world didn’t.

In fact, the only wealthy people I knew of were on the Beverly Hillbillies. I didn’t have a “cement pond” or a “fancy eating table,” yet there wasn’t anything that I needed that I didn’t have. There was always a hot meal on the table at each mealtime and plenty of bologna sandwiches to fill up on in between. 

I realize now that we weren’t poor at all. 

I never got to go swimming with Ellie Mae but I realize that we were rich then, and I remain so to this day. 

I realize that being rich does not mean having an overstuffed bank account. 

Being rich is measured in not wanting for anything and having an abundance of love and happiness. I look around at my life and I see riches everywhere. 

Now, can I borrow 20 bucks?