Spending Wisely: A Kingdom Approach to Financial Stewardship

This powerful lesson on financial discipleship challenges us to examine the heart behind our spending habits. Drawing from Proverbs and the teachings of Jesus, we're reminded that spending wisely isn't just about budgeting—it's about recognizing that God owns everything we have. The scripture emphasizes that 'the plans of the diligent lead surely to plenty, but those of everyone who is hasty, surely to poverty' (Proverbs 21:5). This isn't merely financial advice; it's spiritual wisdom that calls us to slow down, count the cost, and think generationally rather than impulsively. The lesson beautifully connects Jesus's teaching about counting the cost before building a tower to our everyday financial decisions. When we understand that we're stewards rather than owners, our entire perspective shifts. We're no longer driven by comparison or the need to 'keep up' with others, but by contentment in Christ. The practical tool of a zero-balance budget becomes more than a spreadsheet—it becomes a spiritual discipline that trains us in faithfulness with what God has entrusted to us. This wisdom applies not just to money, but to how we spend our time, talents, and energy, all for God's glory.

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Key Points:

• God owns everything; we are merely stewards of His resources
• Spending wisely is a spiritual discipline that reflects our relationship with God
• The number one cause of debt in America is medical expenses, highlighting the need for emergency savings
• A zero-balance budget is a tool of stewardship that glorifies Christ by preventing waste and enabling generosity
• Hasty financial decisions lead to poverty, while diligent planning leads to plenty
• Count the cost before beginning any financial endeavor, just as one would before building a tower
• Living within your means requires distinguishing between needs and wants
• Tithing (giving) should come first, followed by saving, then spending
• Think generationally - consider leaving an inheritance to your children's children
• The love of money, not money itself, is the root of evil
• Wealthy individuals often live off only 30% of their income, demonstrating wise stewardship
• Financial wisdom comes from being steeped in God's Word and accepting correction
• A paid-off house provides financial freedom and security
• Couples should work together on budgeting and financial planning

Scripture Reference:

• Proverbs 3:9 - "Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruits of all your crops"
• Hebrews 13:5 - "Let your conduct be without covetousness. Be content with such things as you have"
• Proverbs 21 - "The plans of the diligent lead surely to plenty, but those of everyone who is hasty, surely to poverty"
• Proverbs 21:20 - "The wise store up choice food and olive oil, but fools gulp theirs down"
• Luke 14:28 - "For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost"
• Proverbs 22:7 - "The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender"
• 1 Timothy 6:10 - "For the love of money is the root of all evil"
• Proverbs 9:10 - "Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom"
• Proverbs 27:23 - "Be sure you know the condition of your flocks"
• 1 Corinthians 10:31 - "Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God"

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Transcript

 All right.

Good afternoon, morning, evening.

Not sure exactly what time you're consuming this, but the great thing about what we do, it's evergreen.

No matter the time of day, no matter what you're going through, this is one of those things where we're talking to you about things that you're going to need for the rest of your life.

We are in week three.

 It's moving.

It's moving really fast.

It's moving really fast.

Hard to believe.

We're already in week three of a seven week course in which we're teaching financial discipleship.

And number three, we're not going to say I'm not going to go as far as to say one lesson is more important than the other.

But I will tell you they're equally important in this one.

 is spend wisely, all right?

Spend it wisely.

First of all, let me introduce myself.

I didn't even do that.

I do have a habit of just going into it as one.

Crookshank here.

I'm here with my guy, Aaron Guyette, and we are teaching you all about how your finances and a faith in Jesus Christ all are tied in together, are basically the same thing, all right?

If you really understand that God owns it all, he owns it all, it's all his.

 It takes the pressure off of you so you understand how exactly you need to be going about living your life, especially when it comes to a financial standpoint.

And week three, when we're talking about spend wisely, all of this is right here in your heart, guys.

All right.

I've seen it.

I've been around it.

 And I've seen people spend money on things they have no business spending their money on, and they tell themselves a story over and over and over and over again that justifies the spending.

But if you really think about it, if you really understand, spending wisely is in your control, and it's between you and God.

It's a God thing.

It is a God thing.

So before I make the intro too, too long, I'll let Aaron kind of kick it off, and then we'll kind of go from there as we've always been doing.

 Yeah, that's beautiful.

That's a great intro.

Yeah.

So we coming off of God owns it all.

Okay.

So I'm just a steward now.

And, and just the steward is the right perspective.

God is God.

We are not, as Juan said that last week.

So true.

And if he, if God is God and we are not, and he owns it all.

 It's really easy to look to him, look to his scripture.

How can I be a good steward?

How can I be a wise builder?

How can I steward God's creation appropriately?

And so with that creation, it's my time.

 my talents, right?

My skills, my abilities, what strengths God has given me, what weaknesses God has given me.

And so how can I steward those?

And then treasure.

So material goods, property, homes, vehicles, whatever that is, and then monetary, obviously.

And so the big piece today is spend wisely.

It's the monetary aspect of that.

And so I'll just do a quick

 This is teaching us how to live within our means.

So if God has given you gifts, then to spend gifts that he hasn't given you is actually unrighteous, is not appropriate.

So to go outside of that.

And we know in scripture, right, that debt makes us slave to that lender.

We are now slave to that lender forever.

 And so if you're in debt, have no fear.

We are not here to judge you and condemn you.

We are here to help you, help you spend wisely, get out of that debt trap, get away from being slave to the lender and then into stewarding God's financial gifts.

 to you appropriately and well.

And so that's living within your means, spending wisely, and having your contentment in Christ, not in the money that you earn or how many things you have.

So faith in Jesus teaches us.

 to be content with what we have.

That's Hebrews 13, five.

So let your conduct be without covetousness.

So not looking to others, right?

Comparisons of thief.

We talked about that as well.

Be content with such things as you have for he himself has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you.

So you have the most important gift and that is salvation in Christ.

So you don't need to look further for any other additional gifts in order to feel fulfilled.

And so we can plan diligently.

So we honor God.

 rather than chase worldly desires.

A budget, which is what we're gonna talk about today, a budget, a zero balance budget, a family budget is a tool of stewardship that glorifies Christ by preventing waste and enabling generosity.

 Yeah.

And on that point, because you said something about being content with what we have.

And I just have to tell this story because my I grew up with an older sister.

We're five years apart and she was 25 when she bought her first house.

Right.

And I remember I mean, listen, we again, we grew up together.

So we would spend hours in the mall buying a bunch of clothes and doing doing all the things.

So when you grow and you develop with a person, you have certain conversations with them.

 It's something that you just have to share.

But when she bought her first house, she and I were driving back to the house we grew up in.

And we were just having a conversation just like this.

She goes, you know, that was my nickname.

All you really need in life is a house.

If your house is paid for, all the time, all the stuff we went out and spent money on and the malls and all that kind of stuff.

Outside of that, if the house is paid for, what else do you really need?

You can go work, you do.

But having a house that's paid for as a person that is, again, teaching.

 you all to be you know good stewards of your money you don't want to get in like you were mentioned you don't want to get into the situation where you're getting caught up in all these rents and all the traps all the things that they're going to put out there for you buy the house when you can afford it and then try to get it paid off and you'll be good yeah no that's uh that's awesome and that's i

 And but don't we talked about it while you said this last week, you said, you know, the worst thing that you could do is become house poor, though.

You have a house, but but you actually are broke.

You're actually going into debt.

Yeah.

So on that point, it's the way she said, like, and I go back to that advice all the time, because as long as you could own the house, if there's a plan of owning the house.

 then you won't be housed.

Like you can't just jump because you'll basically be paying rent.

And again, that's like, again, if you're interested, we'll hear, we'll talk more about that on a one-on-one sense, but there's so much out there when it comes to that, that can, you can lose your way.

And that's why that word of God is so important.

I can't wait till you dive into the example about paying your tithes and making sure you're connected to the word.

So you don't go too far off, off the rails, all the people that are selling you all sorts of things.

 Yeah, that's right.

And we talked about, obviously, giving.

We talked about tithing last week.

And, man, that's just such a great habit, right?

Not just to teach our children, which we, you know, showed the video of my daughter Ellie when she was two.

That was amazing.

 yeah now she's 11 and and she joyfully like she gets she gets money right she will sometimes she gets gifts or whatever that's that's money and she joyfully just knee-jerk response this is just what i do she's already like okay this is how much i'm gonna give to the church or i'm gonna give to this organization right

 And this is how much I'm going to save.

And then this is how much I'm going to spend.

And I'm going to think about like, what is the way that I could spend this best?

But using that little microcosm, I mean, that's so Proverbs 21, the plans of the diligent lead surely to plenty.

But those of everyone who is hasty, surely to poverty.

And I have been...

 countless times in that hasty mindset like oh i just need to earn a hundred thousand dollars yesterday oh i need to have this thing and man every time every time i slip into that i either slip into debt so i'm slave slave to the lender right and then having to spend way more money on the thing that uh that i could have had at at just the regular regular price because of interest right

 Or it just leads me completely astray of the point that God had for me.

And so then God makes it a point to teach me through his correction, through his rebuke and chastisement, which now you can see that as a blessing.

It's like, oh man, the Lord has blessed me with this correction.

 But it's only a blessing if you learn from it, right?

If you keep doing that same thing, it's like, oh, it's a curse.

And so to think about like, okay, well, what do I have and how can I spend that wisely?

And so the zero balance budget is just, hey, this is the money that has come in, whether you're on commission and it varies from month to month or you're on a salary or you're on hourly and you can...

 set the weather by it right or set the set the moon and the sun by it or whatever it's like okay this is how much i'm getting paid so then the what i'm gonna spend is gonna be inside of that and at the end of the day right at the end of that that budget it should be zero so every dollar is accounted for and you think about that that's got like god gives us money so that we can train in

 how to spend the gifts that he gives us.

So this works the same with time and our schedule.

This works the same with the gifts and the strengths.

Obviously, Aswan is just naturally good at being social, at connecting with people, at networking, at speaking.

So how can he spend that wisely?

Exactly.

 Within that balanced budget, right?

Of the gift that he has so that he is able to glorify God.

And then in that, there will be blessing, right?

And the blessing may not come in a monetary sense, might come in a relationship sense.

It might come...

 you know, in some other way, shape or form.

But he's, but Aswan is staying inside what God has gifted him and not doing something that he hasn't been gifted with yet.

And that doesn't mean that we can't learn things, that we can't gain skill.

But diligence, right, is that discipline, that continuous action again and again and again, where it just becomes a natural outpouring of who we are.

This is just how I operate.

When I get a dollar, this is how my dollar gets divided up.

 Yeah, and on that point, because I looked up the definition of hasty while you were talking, I wanted to make sure it's clear for people.

 it's the excessive speed in something.

And again, being in the financial professional that I am now, the number one, it is number one reason people go into debt is because of medical expenses, medical expenses, medical expenses, and medical expenses.

And obviously when something, God forbid, something happens, you have to jump on it excessively.

You have to make sure people are taken care of now.

And the reason I'm bringing it up is because if you develop the mindset of

 It's yours.

And if you develop this mindset of you're constantly you get a dollar and then you go selfishly spend things, then eventually leads you to poverty, poverty.

Right.

It leads you to a place where, God forbid, something inevitably happens that you need to jump on.

Now, you don't have it because you spent the money on something that you don't even know you own anymore.

Right.

So when that verse hits so hard, because it's like the plans of the diligent lead to lead surely to plenty.

Right.

 Plenty.

You're going to you're going to have abundance more when you're diligent about what you said.

This is the budget.

We're not going over this.

I don't care what it is.

I mean, your favorite is a favorite artist to come in the town.

You're all.

No, you got to have and you got to be blessed to be dealing with someone that holds you accountable.

Say, honey, look, you said we're not spending on this because the next day when something when emergency comes up and like I said, the medical stuff comes up.

 You don't want to be in a situation where now you're in poverty because you don't have it to take care of the important things because you wanted to enjoy such and such concert.

You want to be in a club.

You want to run it up.

You want it to be, you know, bottle pop and act like and look like.

Yeah.

 I've lived that life.

I'm not talking actual.

I've been there.

I know exactly what goes on.

And when you think about it in that point, you really, really start to ask yourself, what am I doing here?

I know tomorrow is not promised.

I know for a fact I got to do something more productive.

So that's a powerful.

I remember my first first church I ever really got involved in.

It was an all men's group Bible study.

And we went over Proverbs.

So just you reading it, man, it hits.

And we got several Proverbs verses here, but it it hits a chord.

Yeah.

 Yeah, absolutely.

And I love, so Jesus talks about this and I talk about this a lot with the Discipled in Christ app and the Discipled in Christ 100 in His Strength course.

I'm like, hey, count the costs, you know, before you jump in, before you begin.

And that is the beginnings of diligence, right?

Just like the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, the wise way,

 of us to pursue this is to count the cost first.

And so Jesus Christ talks specifically about counting the cost of discipleship, but it works the same in this regard as well.

So if the plans of the diligent surely lead to plenty, but those of everyone who is hasty or fast moving and trying to be the hare instead of the tortoise, right, will surely lead to poverty.

And so Jesus says, for which of you intending to build a tower

 I'm building a tall tower does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it.

So we, yeah, we can know it's like, Hey, I, this is the mortgage.

This is the house that I want.

This is how much it's going to cost.

Like, and, and you were saying with AI now you can figure out, you know, that amortization schedule, just like a financial rep.

 is going to break that down for you and it's going to be like well over time you're going to spend about 300 000 in interest and you're going to spend about 700 000 in in your your payments or whatever so it's going to come out to a million dollars are you going to be able to afford you know this million dollar mortgage at the 3 000 or whatever you know whatever the monthly payment is going to be

 And then depending on the interest rates and all that stuff.

And it's like, yep, no, I'm not going to be able to afford that, right?

That's over 30% of my monthly income.

And I'm going to need, you know, to be able to provide for my family, provide food, provide gas, you know, all this stuff.

And then there's the variability of costs as we're experiencing right now in our nation.

 right when if gas goes up costs go up and so can you weather those storms are you building it on a rock did you count the cost building on the rock of christ or are you putting it in sand

 Right.

And not only on that point, because I do this work throughout the entire day and we study a lot of billionaires.

I mean, there's so much self-development stuff that goes in my.

If you were to look at my YouTube feed, you'd be like, OK, you got to slow it down because it's a lot that goes in.

But the one point I want to make about Luke 14, 28, for which for which of you intending to build a tower.

All right.

You can name tons of millionaires.

I can name tons of them from Warren Buffett to Tony Robbins to all sorts of them.

 they live off 30% of their income.

I mean, one of my favorite CEOs and entrepreneurs is Kevin Plank, the founder of Under Armour.

His first year, he paid himself $1, okay?

He paid himself $1.

 dollar because all of, again, he had enough from the previous year and he was so smart with it that everything that he was looking to build, look, I'm going to figure out how to create a system to where that tower is going to be built.

And I'm good with the $1 I have made for this year and everything else goes to where it needs to go.

As a leader, as men and women of God and men and women of Christ, if it's hitting your heart that

 You don't own any of it.

All right.

You again, it's all God's.

Then you will know what do you really need versus what is it that you want?

All right.

And you can fight for the two when you want to build a tower.

If you're going to build a tower, you're not going to do that on your own.

 And you have to show based on money, based on how much finances you're willing to give to people that, hey, I'm going to do what I do, but I'm going to open the door for you to do better.

I'm going to open the door for you to build this tower.

Again, speaking of that past I was referring to earlier, there was the church is no longer in business now.

I think he just went online or something like that.

But online, they had this goal to build like this big athletic facility, all these sorts of things around the church.

And they had the number.

 What it would cost.

He looks at me, he goes, look, man, I was on.

I'm not gonna be allowed to see that.

I know for a fact, be alive to ever build and raise that kind of capital.

But I'm gonna put it online and hopefully young man like you gets there and you can be this one.

It is.

But I know for a fact, I'm not gonna be allowed to ever see that amount of money, but it's not gonna stop me from preaching the word and, you know, giving you this word the best I can.

 And that's how powerful that verse is.

It's truly about build your tower, but you won't do it on your own.

And you can rest in the fact that, hey, I'm living off what I need.

And then the rest I'm going to give to the system what it is I want to build.

 Yeah, no, I love that.

And what I love about that is like, so he is thinking generationally and the Bible calls us to think generationally.

That's why we get to read of all these generations to Jesus Christ, right?

In the gospel.

But then if you go back to the Old Testament, it's like,

 it feels like sometimes every other page is like another lineage of generation after generation, but it's like, but this is where our mind frame ought to be.

We ought to be thinking.

And so then if we are, the beauty is we can have, we can have that mind frame, that paradigm, that way of thinking that is genuine.

 the tortoise as opposed to the hare, right?

Which right now in this, you know, convenience, I got to have it now fast-paced world that we live in because of technology, we often get caught in that groove of the hare where it's like, I need it now, I need it now, I need it now.

But slow it down a little bit.

 Have that tortoise mind frame.

Think, hey, how can I set up the next generation?

How can I leave an inheritance to my children's children, right?

Which we talked about in the launch.

 videos, but how can I leave an inheritance to my children's children, man?

And that can help you slow down, realize God owns it all.

I don't need all of this stuff.

I can, I can have that dollar right in that whole year.

And maybe you can't have the dollar in the whole year.

That's okay as well.

That's why we've added, uh,

 So whether you like PDF or you like doc or you like Excel, or you could just like my wife and I do, we just hand jam it all on a piece of paper, but we run the same model.

So we've attached down below.

 on this lesson, we've attached a zero balance budget.

And it's not my, Aswan asked me, he's like, hey man, that was brave that you put your finances out there.

I was like, no, no, no, no, no.

These were all suggested examples.

They were not where, this isn't what I make.

This isn't what my wife and I are doing.

This is just an example to show you.

So you can zero it all out.

 Type in, you know, what is, okay, what's the total income?

And so whether, again, so I've got like the PDF version, I've got the doc version.

Are you able to, do you want to share?

I'm looking at it.

Do you want to share the screen or not?

 Yeah, so we can share that screen and go over it.

That would be sweet.

Yeah, let me pull it up first.

And then once I get it pulled up, then I will share into it for sure.

So I think I will do this one.

So do you want the doc or do you want the Excel spreadsheet?

Yeah, let's see if the doc is easier.

Yeah, I like the doc as well.

Oh, yeah.

And it's C. Yeah.

 So here I'll share headline and this, anybody that's listening for the regular views or just listening, it says financial discipleship.

Let me excuse me.

Finance.

Yeah.

Financial discipleship, family zero based budget.

All right.

Based budget.

Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruits of all your crops.

Proverbs three, nine.

All right.

Yep.

 And then it kind of gives a how to use it, right?

Exactly.

How to use it.

It's income minus outflow zero begin by entering your monthly income right now.

Right there is where it starts.

Your monthly income.

And then...

 It says givings, savings, expenses.

All right?

Yeah.

If you start there, if you start there, number one, and we talked about this, I believe it was last week, where you have to give before you get.

No one's just going to hand you the money you want.

Again, even if you have to pay for a lottery ticket, but anybody that's won the lottery, right?

You have to pay.

You have to pay something for the lottery ticket because I know a lot of people who say, oh, what if I win the lottery?

You still paid for the lottery ticket, so you gave something.

What if you got straight by the lottery?

Seven times.

Yeah.

 And then, again, we talked about savings because you just don't know.

None of us can predict tomorrow.

And then the expenses that you come in.

I learned this very early on.

Thank God I have the mother I have who

 We'd spend hours in the grocery store.

She would not pay for anything unless it was on sale, unless it was a deal, unless it was like buy one, get one or two for whatever it was.

She would not pay for it.

So we would have to be in there for hours upon hours.

But she would always show us the receipt and say, look, son, look how much money we saved.

You know, we saved.

So I kind of was indoctrinated in that world.

But between the givings and savings and expenses, that's what that's what you have to focus on.

 Yeah, and so then going off of what he's saying, and so I'll try to say this in a way that those of you that are just listening, you don't have video if you can't see what we're sharing, right?

If you come down here, when you fill this out, so let's say I change my primary salary.

Let's say I make $10,000, right?

Take home.

And then my spouse, but my spouse makes, let's say she makes $0, right?

 All right.

There we go.

And then there's like little Proverbs, uh, next to little scriptures next to it that talks specifically about, uh, salaries and things like that, that if you want to look them up, they're, they're there for you.

Uh, obviously you don't have to look them up every time you enter, enter things in, but this is just a reminder that, Hey, God has set forth a plan for you as a Christian.

Um, and man, if you follow it, right, if you believe in God's promises, if you follow that, uh, it will be blessed, right?

Uh,

 And so if I add that in, do I need to refresh it?

Is there a refresh?

Oh, yeah.

You have the systems already.

You might have to refresh it.

Yeah.

Yeah, so then when I've done that, then, okay.

Oh, shoot.

 That will change the formula up here.

Oh.

Oh, man.

Well, it didn't change the formula up here.

Sorry, guys.

Let me go back.

Back.

All right.

So here, I'm going to go to the Excel spreadsheet.

That is not it.

A lot of refreshments to see what it does.

There you go.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

 Did it refresh?

Yeah, but it didn't have... Oh, yeah, it has the $10,000.

There you go.

Under the primary salary take home.

Yeah, so on the Excel spreadsheet, maybe it's a little bit easier to notice, but I can have total income.

And then I change that.

 That's coming from the budget.

So the way this works is if I'm changing how much I'm getting paid or how much my housing is or how much my utilities are, then it changes on the dock or on the PDF as well.

So it's just an automatic formula.

So when you download it,

 and you use it on your computer, all of those things are variable and should change.

So I wouldn't use it on the internet.

But the whole point isn't that this formula works or whatever.

The whole point is that all this stuff is broken down.

So I've got income, primary salary, spouse's salary, side income, self-employment, other things, other gifts.

And then...

 First I give, right?

So 10% of my income.

And so for me, the tithe goes to my local church offering.

And so this 150 would be above and beyond, right?

That local church offering in this example case, right?

If I give to missions or some other thing that's parachurch or outside of the church or part of the church, that's a church ministry, right?

You could put that in.

Benevolence, the poor, generosity,

 But we have to go back to that point real quick.

Only because, and I'm pretty sure I did mention it on this show, but I want to re-emphasize what type of high school I went to.

I went to a Catholic school where the religion component of this, this right here is where we get, it gets a bad rap, guys.

I get it.

There's a lot of quote unquote religion places that will take advantage of a situation because of the religion component.

When we say tithing, when I first learned about tithing,

 It was from that pastor that I previously mentioned where he said,

 It is not you giving to an individual person.

It is you developing a relationship with your walk of faith and developing a relationship with Jesus Christ.

That's it.

And you need to do that if you're going to take control of all the other things.

Because the other things that we're going to show you, they're out of your control.

You can't control a hurricane.

You can't control the things that will happen with all the other things that are on this list.

But what you can control is you can control your walk of faith and develop that community of faith.

 of God faring folks.

So they understand that we are, yes, we're here, but this is not, this does not belong to us.

Again, religion is going to make you feel like, Hey, I'm paying to be a part of some group and that can, that can go the wrong or right way.

However it is.

But again,

 When you're developing a relationship with God and you're giving understanding that this is for your developing a relationship with God, that is a completely different mentality.

That's a completely different outcome than what a religion is going to teach you, okay?

Yeah.

 And then in this, it's planned, actual, and then difference.

So if you're planning for something, this is just helping you stay diligent if you want to do that.

Or you could just fill out the actual.

Then it has the saving component.

So obviously, God owns it all.

 First, we give and give generously because of Jesus Christ and our relationship with him, not because of some really slick, amazing pastor or some beautiful church or some lowly church or whatever.

It's because of our heart posture towards God that he owns it all.

 And then saving, right?

As you said, the medical expenses.

And I just want to, again, give a shout out.

Aswan, he's available.

You can click the Calendly link, get on his schedule, chat with him about any and all of these things to try to help you move into the right direction, no matter where you're at.

Right.

 So let me just shameless plug there, you.

But yeah, so my wife and I, we have our emergency fund.

So this is like highly liquid savings that we can pull from if a vehicle breaks down or our roof blows off or we have a plumbing problem or whatever.

 you know, whatever that might be.

Then we have three to six emergency reserve.

So if I lose my job, if I, if my business goes bankrupt, you know, whatever position you're in, right, you're going to be able to still provide for your family.

And then we, then we do long-term.

So we have Roth IRAs, we have IRAs, you know, so Roth IRAs, I pay the taxes up front.

And so I don't have to pay the taxes when I pull it out.

A regular IRA or 401k,

 I'm putting money in, but then when I pull it out, it'll get taxed.

And so we have a couple different renditions of that.

I even do, I try to even spread it a little bit further.

So each one of those things are spread through like mutual funds or S&P, like index funds type things.

And then-

 and then i'm doing some sort of encrypted currency like bitcoin or whatever um which is decentralized so a couple a couple of different examples there i'm not saying i'm not saying oh you have to do it a specific and particular way you should get with a professional if you don't know um talk with aswan have him help you know guide that process for you um

 And then into the spin wise.

I mean, I listen and I'm just on that point.

I want to make sure people know I was just as unaware of this stuff until I actually was man.

I was maybe a couple of minutes away from paying a guy from Northwestern Mutual about five thousand dollars until I realized, hey, I'm going to go learn these things on my own and become licensed professionally as a financial manager myself.

And I realized, wait a minute.

 There's options.

There's things that I could be doing.

You don't have just because it's Northwestern Mutual does not mean you can't go learn things on your own.

That is part of what this show is about.

This this this course is all about is we live in 2026, 26, where you get to make decisions based on your own research.

 The ones who seek the word, seek the word.

Do you see how that stuff ties together?

I can talk about this stuff all day.

Like if you seek the word, then you start getting the answer.

You start receiving God's favor.

That's amazing to me that, you know, again, because a lot of what you just mentioned in terms of everybody just hears of that 401k and that's what they push on you.

But again,

 All it is is a tax code.

That's it.

But then there's Roth IRAs where, again, there's taxes up front and then you don't pay them later.

All sorts of things that can come out.

So, again, we can go down the rabbit hole on that conversation.

But like you said, just schedule a call with me and we'll go from there.

 Yeah.

Yeah.

And we'll and we'll talk about savings next week and kind of break more of that stuff down.

But then here's, you know, spin wisely.

There's housing, there's utilities, there's transportation, food, insurance, personal and children, medical and health.

Right.

And so we've kind of touched on a bunch of this removing the debt.

 recreation and then miscellaneous, right?

So it just gives a bunch, a large swath of categories.

You don't necessarily need to fill every single one of these out.

You could fill only three of the cells out, right?

Like how much I'm making, how much is going out for this particular expense, how much is going out for that particular expense.

Boom, and maybe that's it for you.

That's totally fine.

So I just wanted to share this.

When you download it, it should be functioning.

If it doesn't function,

 please feel free to hit me up.

I'll send you an updated version so it does function.

So when you're filling it out, it's actually changing that top number.

But yeah, so there's an Excel version of it.

There's a doc version of it.

And there's a PDF version of it.

All of them are fillable.

So you can use that.

Or you could just use it as a reference point and do what my wife and I do.

And we actually physically write it out with our hands every time, which is so antiquated today in the AI world, right?

 But it's honestly, it leads to another lesson because, you know, the things that you had just shown, very few, there's many couples.

I mean, I deal with it all the time.

Many people that they don't do this as a couple, they don't do this as a married couple.

They, you know, they get into a situationship and they think it's just part of the leisure activity.

But as it pertains to really sitting down and going through your finances, that's a huge part of building a marriage and building a life with someone because a

 Again, you just can't predict the future guys.

You don't know what's going to happen and you don't know what you don't know.

 That's right.

Yeah.

And I just wanted to touch on really quick before we close.

I just wanted to touch on the spend wisely.

So we've been talking a lot about spending and, and we, the cool part is we talked about not just spending money, but even spending time and our, and our skills and our abilities and our gifts, but just, I wanted to touch on wisdom really quick.

So why is wisdom,

 Wisdom in terms of what God has allocated to us.

So the wise store up choice food and olive oil, but fools go, there's down, right?

Proverbs 21.

And like you said, the Proverbs are just filled with good information on how to be wise about what it is that we're, how we're spending, how we're saving, what our stewardship is.

Plans of the diligent.

We talked about that.

Dishonest money.

 dwindles away, but whoever gathers money little by little makes it grow, right?

And that's that whole give, save, spend wisely piece.

And if it's just a natural habit, then you won't think about your, like every dollar that you get is, oh, this is a dollar for me to spend.

You'll think about, and like what you said, well, how do I only spend 30% of this, right?

Like how do I do what the wealthy are doing?

And not because, hey,

 Wealth is some positive posture or stature.

But if we are building wealth, if we are leaving an inheritance to our children's children, then we are truly building the kingdom of God.

And it's not about greed.

It's not about give me more, more, more, more, more.

It's about how can I give more, more, more?

How can I invest more, more, more into what God has put before me?

The rich rule over the poor and the borrow a slave to the lender.

We talked about that.

 Jesus counting the cost or Jesus telling us to count the cost.

We talked about that.

Be sure you know your condition of your flocks.

We didn't mention that one, the Proverbs 27, 23, but you should know like, okay, how much am I getting in?

What is my...

 how many hours am I working?

What is that?

What is that turning into?

What, what am I producing?

Am I producing it to give glory to God?

Or am I feeling like I'm under the thumb of my boss and I just have to do this and I'm living in fear.

And it's like, you can shift that mindset and just all anything I, whether I eat or I drink or whatever I do, I do to the glory of God, right?

First Corinthians 10 31.

Yeah.

 And then we already have talked about for the love of money is the root of all evil.

Right.

So it's the love of money.

It's not money is the root of all evil.

If I, if I'm enamored and if I'm idolizing money, right, that's where I go astray.

But then, so that that's, those are wise ways of managing the, the things that God has gifted us, but then wisdom itself is,

 Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

So if you could take correction, if you could take correction from the Lord and his scripture, if you could take correction from Aswan or Aaron, or I could take correction from Aswan, or I could take correction from my wife, right?

That is what will lead to wealth, right?

And wealth in a spiritual sense, right?

 a reconciled relationship with God, a reconciled relationship with my brother here, a reconciled relationship with my wife.

And those, that is wisdom, right?

So fear of the Lord, beginning of wisdom, his word, beginning of wisdom,

 knowledge of the Holy One and his understanding, right?

This is what is wise.

And so, man, if we could double, triple, quadruple down on his word and implement that in our life, right?

That's where wisdom is gonna come from.

And so then a natural outpouring of that is when I get time, when I get talent, when I get treasure, then I'm spending that wisely every single time because I'm steeped in God's word.

 Exactly.

Exactly.

I mean, you pretty much covered it.

And I'll kind of close you guys out with this, just this idea of people saying they don't need to be rich or you don't need to have a lot of money.

You don't want to walk around with that excuse.

All right.

If you know in your heart that you're making as much as you can possibly make, but because you know it's going towards your family and going towards a greater cause, then do not let anyone down.

 kind of dim your light do not let anyone make you feel guilty because you want to be rich there's absolutely nothing wrong with you wanting a lot of money because in your own mind you know it's going back to the right people and you're putting it in the right places that is a conversation between you and God and seeing a lot of people lose friends and like I said lose family men fall out with family members over finances it's probably the number one thing that ruins a lot of relationships but you have to have it in your heart that you're going to be seeking God and

 above anything else.

And then, you know, let things happen the way that God meant them to happen.

Not the way you wanted that, but the way God meant for them to happen.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

He, yeah.

He's going to give you what he's going to give you.

And then if you steward that well to his glory, right.

Then it's okay.

If it's a lot, which is what you're saying.

Um, it,

 But if you're just trying to get a lot for the sake of money, that's where we go astray.

And it never works like that.

I mean, yeah, we could talk for hours on it, but it never works because eventually you have this mindset where you don't have the wisdom to

 You have it.

It's available.

See a Lamborghini.

You don't even know where you're living yet, but hey, I have it in my pocket.

I can buy a Lamborghini.

Okay.

Try the maintenance on it.

Then the next month.

And then when this happens, hey, do you have the cost?

No, you don't.

Yeah.

Yeah.

 Well, thank you so much.

Yeah, the third lesson, spend wisely.

Again, hit up Aswan.

Get into his Calendly.

Schedule some time with him.

And then, yeah, check this out.

Check out the resources.

Give us feedback.

We'd love to hear from you.

All right.

See you guys next week.