Author Archives: Rusty Rueff

About Rusty Rueff

Rusty Rueff, author of purposed worKING. Rusty Rueff is the former Chairman Emeritus of The GRAMMY Foundation in Los Angeles. He most recently completed the successful 16 month leadership role as Coordinating National Co-Chair for Technology for Obama (T4O) for the reelection of President Obama and ten-years of Board service and President of the Board of Trustees of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Corporately, most recently Rueff was the Chief Executive Officer at SNOCAP, Inc. until the acquisition of the company by imeem, Inc. in April 2008. Before joining SNOCAP in 2005, he was Executive Vice President of Human Resources at Electronic Arts (EA) from 1998 until 2005. He was also with the PepsiCo companies for more than ten years, with the Pratt & Whitney division of United Technologies for two years, and in commercial radio as an on-air personality for six years. Rusty holds an M.S. in counseling and a B.A. in radio and television from Purdue University. In 2003 he was named a distinguished Purdue alumnus, and he and his wife, Patti, are the named benefactors of Purdue’s Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts. He is a corporate director of Glassdoor.com and runcoach. He is the co-founder and Executive Committee Member of T4A.org, serves on the Founding Circle of The Centrist Project and a founding Board Member of The GRAMMY Music Education Coalition. He is also the co-author of the book Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business. Rusty and his wife, Patti, reside in Hillsborough, CA and Charlestown, R.I.

day 2921: Budgeting

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“Give me just enough to satisfy my needs.  For if I grow rich, I may deny you and say, “Who is the Lord?” And if I am too poor, I may steal and thus insult God’s holy name.”

Why do we budget?  Why don’t we just spend until we have gotten what we need?  Or why don’t we just not spend at all and save up everything for later?  Well, you’d have to be too young to understand anything about money to think that either spending or saving without budgeting is a good idea.  Budgeting is the only way to balance our resources and our needs.  Being good at budgeting is a skill that many seek to have but few master.  But, we all could stand to get better and better at budgeting.

Isn’t the Proverb telling us that we are to be good at budgeting what we have been given so that we are content with being able to satisfy our needs and then living with that amount as enough?  To “budget” our lives, we have to zoom way out and understand and accept the definition of our “needs” and then be satisfied right there without a desire for more.  Wow, is that hard! But if we read on there is more to the story when we get out of whack…with too much, we may turn our back on God and rely upon ourselves.  If we have too little, then we may act in ways that insult God’s name.  So, we must find our balance….that is to balance our budget of what is given to us in life. Yes, the Proverb seeks it for us.

Reference: Proverbs 30:6-7 (New Living Translation)