Senator William Proximire (D-Wisconsin) regularly delights the general public by awarding his now-famous "Golden Fleece Award" to some government committee or agency which, because of some redundant high-dollar project, has achieved recognition for excelling in flagrant, wasteful, unnecessary spending. Senator Proximire gets our attention because he illuminates a subject of interest to us all: how money is spent. We do not like to spend more than we have to and have little tolerance for irresponsible, reckless spending wherever it occurs. "Throwing money out in the yard" and "pouring sand down a rat hole" are expressions which we hope to successfully avoid having applied to ourselves. It really doesn't matter whether we speak of it as stewardship, frugality, or practicality. Wasteful spending is offensive to anyone who attempts to be responsible with personal resources.

Extravagance, or even what appears to be extravagance, does not go down well. We need to remember that whether we read of the woman anointing Jesus' head (Matthew 26:6f) or the woman anointing his feet (Luke 7:36f).