Jim Zes teaches young people biblical principles for handling money and finance, drawn from a financial intelligence conference Jim taught at Hope Baptist Church. Part 1 of 2.

What's good to be here. Thanks for bringing me in. What I'm going to be teaching you is things that basically my father taught me, my brother, and two younger sisters growing up in our home. And the purpose of this notebook is for the glory of God and to help Christians with their finances. A little bit about me, I grew up in a home, it was not a Christian home.

Our God was money and work. My brother and I went in business in 1975, we started buying apartments. We're still in business, we've been in business 47 years. And the most units we ever had at one time were seventeen hundred and fifty rental units. And I'm fourth generation owning apartments.

Our family does it a little different. One generation teaches the next generation how to fish. You don't inherit the business. You start your own business. A Little bit about that later, but let's go ahead and get started.

If you go to, right after the table of contents, using your wealth and your money for the glory of God. Really, that's what it's all about. My brother and I had about 50 employees working on the apartments. And at different times, the employees would come to either me or my brother and want to borrow money like they needed new tires for their car or whatever. And we would lend it to them and then as soon as they would get that paid off, they would need to borrow money again for some other reason.

So I decided about 20 years ago that I was going to, if I lent money to an employee, I was going to sit down with them and talk to them about the use of money and somehow give them the gospel, tell them about Christ at the same time. So I would sit and talk with them and then I started bringing pieces of paper that I would type up stuff and hand them and then as the years went by I started putting the sheets of paper in a notebook so this is this is 20 years of putting papers together so let's and once again this is not about the love of money. It's about how does God want us to use our finances to glorify Him. So if you turn to page one, first thing I go over with my employees or other Christians is you have to understand that God owns it all. If you look at Psalm 24, 1, the earth is the Lord's and everything in it, the world and all who live in it.

We are stewards of what God has given us. You came into the world with nothing, you're going to leave the world with nothing. It's about using what God has given you for His glory. So we are stewards. If you look at the bottom of page 1, 1 Peter 4 10, as each has received a gift, minister to one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.

Titus 1.7, be blameless as a steward of God. Next page, page 2. I like this quote from Henry Segal. He lived in the 1600s. The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love.

So this is more of a self-check. What do you really love in life? Do you love God more than money, more than your family, more than anything else? He goes on to say, He that loveth mean and sordid things doth hereby become base and vile, but a noble and well-placed affection doth advance and improve the spirit unto a conformity with the perfections with which it loves. And here's a similar quote from John Piper.

How else do we assess the beauty of an invisible heart than by what it loves? God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. So it's just basically I'm asking you what do you really love? Is it is God number one? And on page three, this is one of my favorite chapters in the Bible, Deuteronomy chapter 8.

If you look there at the top of the page, it says, beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments, His judgments, and His statutes, which I command you today. Lest when you have eaten and are full and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them, And when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold are multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, when your heart is lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God. This chapter's Basically a reminder, anything that you've been given, wealth or whatever, do not forget the Lord your God. If you look at verse 18, it's about in the middle of that section in Deuteronomy. It says, you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth.

And I put in some scripture verses about living for God's glory and honoring the Lord. Page four, the parable of the talents. I'm sure you're all familiar with this in Matthew 25. The master leaves, But before he leaves, he has three servants, and he gives one servant five talents, another servant two talents, and the last servant one talent. And what are they supposed to do?

This is a picture of Christ giving each one of you talents, and how are you to use those? What are you supposed to do with them? It's talking about money here, but also your talents for helping others or singing or whatever your talent might be. So the master goes away, the guy that had five talents created five more. Well done, good and faithful servant.

Same way with the second one. Two talents created two more. Well done, good and faithful servant. The last servant took his talent and buried it in the backyard. And the master says, you wicked, lazy servant, you should have done something with that talent.

I think that's, This is a chapter that we don't really focus on that much in scripture, but I think it has a lot to do with money. So on page 5 I put together a little commentary on this parable of the talents. Number one, God owns everything in this world. It's His world. He created it.

Therefore, you have responsibilities to the God who created you. Each one of us has been given a certain amount of money and talents from God. This parable makes it clear that God expects you to be a good and faithful servant of what he's given you. Number two, every spending decision is a spiritual decision because it's not your money, it's God's money. And number three, you're a steward.

Your checkbook and your spending habits reveal what you really believe about stewardship and God owning it all. And here's a quote from Ron Blum, money is not only a tool but it is a test. Money and material possessions are a very effective tool that God uses to grow you up. I believe if you don't use your money wisely, then how can you expect the God who's given it to you to give you a lot more. If I gave somebody I know some $100 and he just wasted, do you think I want to give him another $100 to help him do something?

No. OK, bottom of page five. Once again, these are things that we were taught growing up at the dinner table. To my father, it was very important to teach his children the use of money and finances and property and investing. We were taught if you're going to buy something that's going to go down in value, you always have to pay cash.

If you're going to buy a car, if you want to buy a new car, I don't suggest it, but if you did, you have to pay cash for that car, because it's going to go down in value. Now, if you're going to buy a house and you have a reasonable expectation that it's going to go up in value, then According to my father, you could buy that and take out a loan from the bank. All right. Next page. The reason you don't, all the money that's been given to you you have to learn how to use it as wisely as possible remember the master is left and you have the talents and how are you going to use the talents On page six I put together a tale of two families.

The first family, the wise family, this is my father and mother. My grandfather owned apartments. He had a little bit of wealth. He had 30 units and they were all paid for and he owned a restaurant. When he died, he left my father an inheritance of $200.

My grandfather died in 1947. My parents got married in 1949, two years later. They didn't have any money. So my father and mother said, the first week they were married, they sat down at the kitchen table and They said we don't want to be poor We don't want to live paycheck to paycheck our whole life So what they decided to do My mother was working my father was working They said let's see if we can save half my father's net income and live off my mom's salary and half my dad's salary. So what they did was they rented an apartment for $14 a month.

Their friends were renting apartments anywhere from $65 to $85 a month, but they found an apartment for $14 a month because there was no hot water in the apartment. Any hot water they needed they had to heat up on the stove but the $14 a month allowed them to save half my father's net income. So the first month they did that and they saved half his income. The next month they did it. They did it for a year.

They did it for two years. My father and mother did that for 65 and a half years, kept reinvesting half my father's net income the whole time they were married. If you look on page 7, my father had a paper route that he was making about 20, 000 a year, take-home pay. And what they were doing, they were investing their money, and he created passive income of another 20, 000 a year through buying a duplex of four family taxable bonds, certificate of deposit, a duplex of four family. In our house, some people say, oh for retirement I think I need to save a million dollars for retirement or whatever amount you think you need for retirement.

If you are thinking about retirement, I don't think retirement is what Christians need to do, but in our household, if you're making 20, 000 a year at your salary, at your work, the goal was I need to make another $20, 000 a year in passive income. That was the goal. Because if I stop working at this job, I'm still bringing in 20, 000 a year. Does that make sense? Oh, by the way, if anybody has a question, go ahead and raise your hand and I'll try to answer it as we go along if you don't understand something.

All right, next page. The Foolish Family. The Foolish The Foolish family are my in-laws. I have permission to tell their story because it's kind of embarrassing for them. It's been about 10 years now.

My brother-in-law called me up, they live out of town. He called me up and asked, can we borrow $2, 000? I said, sure. He said, well, we want to borrow the money, but we want to come into town and spend the night with you because we need to talk to you about our finances. I said, OK.

So they came in on a Friday night and I asked them, okay, so what's going on? And they said, well, Our car needs $800 worth of work and we want to borrow another $1, 200 to pay off this payday loan. And they said, We're really in bad shape. If you look at the list here of six things, they had no money, no savings. They're living paycheck to paycheck.

All their credit cards are maxed out to like $40, 000, $50, 000 total. They had five payday loans, their car needed repair, they're living in an apartment, they have old furniture, they're renting a washer and a dryer and a big screen TV. So she's working as a nurse and he's working as a janitor in a school district. After they pay all their bills, they have $35 a month to buy groceries and put gas in their car. And they said, we can't make it on $35 a month.

But they said with the $1, 200, they're going to pay off a payday loan. And The payday loan works like this. It was $125 a month. $100 went to interest. And $25 went to principal.

That's the way those things work. And so they thought with this 125, whoops, the 125 with the 35, They'd have $160 to buy groceries and put gas in the car. They said, we think we can make it. And I said, how did you get in this position? You're, This is a couple that had been married for 26 years.

Married 26 years. Married. They got married when they were like 22, and they started working when they were 16. So from 16 to when they got married at 22, they've both been working for 32 years. And I said, I want you to do me a favor.

And if you look on page nine, we wrote down years, all the years they had worked. And I said, to the best of your ability, I want you to write down your net income for each year. And each one of them filled in the blanks for the 32 years they've been working. And after they had done that, I took a calculator and added it all up, and they had brought home, this is take-home money, $200, 000 over 32 years of working. $1, 200, 000 and now they're over $50, 000 in debt and they're living in an apartment and they're renting their washer dryer, big screen TV.

And I said, what did you do with 1.2 million dollars? And they said, well, we were both working so we'd stop at the quick shop on the way to work and get a coffee and donuts and then for lunch we'd go to the fast food. And then for supper, well, we'd be tired and we'd order pizza or Chinese. And we haven't taken any big vacations and we, our one car is nine years old. We don't know what we did with the money.

It just, we just wasted it. And the wife started crying. And she said, I'm so mad at myself for spending this money. I said, if you would have just saved 10% over these 32 years, you'd have $120, 000 in the bank right now. Just 10%.

And if you would have been investing it, maybe you'd have 200, 000 in the bank over 32 years. So this couple is like the guy who got the one talent and buried it in the backyard and do it. And this is a Christian couple and they didn't do anything with the talents that were given to them. So I put two sheets in here as an exercise for you all. If you want to get kind of sick you can fill in you can fill in your net income for all the years and see what your total comes to and what you have left and see how you're doing.

Okay, next page. Page 10, okay, page 11. I told a couple, I said, you know what? I got out a piece of paper and a pencil and I said, this reminds me, I'm going to give you an example. Here's Grand Central Station.

I said, all these trains are coming in and out of here for the past 32 years, but there's one train that takes you to financial freedom. I said you know where you've been for 32 years? Right here at Grand Central Station. You haven't left this station. You haven't done anything toward working toward financial freedom.

You haven't done anything with the talents God has given you. I said, you know what, if you don't change anything in your life one year from now, you're gonna be right here. Two years from now, you'll be right here. Five years, same thing, unless something changes in your life about the way you spend money. The wife started crying again.

They were determined to change their lives. They got up the next morning and they said, we did not sleep all night. We're so embarrassed. We're so sick about how we've just willy-nilly spent all this money that God had given us. They weren't even, they gave no money to the church, no money to help anybody else.

In fact, they were the ones who needed help. And we as Christians should be accumulating some wealth so we can help others. So, let's keep moving. Page 13. What we can learn from these two families.

The Wise family, my parents, they had a plan. We're going to save a certain amount each month and we're going to take that money and Invest it and bring in passive income to get to 20, 000 a year my in-laws no plan spend money however They want They were not content as it says here in Philippians 411. It says, the apostle Paul said, "'I'm not saying this because I am in need for I've learned to be content in whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need. I know what it is to have plenty.

I've learned the secret of being content in any and every situation whether well-fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want I can do all things through him who gives me strength. The Foolish family living paycheck to paycheck the whole 26 years they've been married. My father had a saying around the dinner table, he called it the kingdom of thingdom, meaning you want to buy things instead of saving your money and investing it. And he'd tell us all the time, he'd take his knife and he'd pound it on the table when he wanted our attention, and he'd say, don't get involved in the kingdom of thingdom, because that's how you end up living paycheck to paycheck. He'd tell us all the time, I'm going to teach you how to fish, because I'm going to support you the first 20 years of your life." And then he said, I want you to support me the next 20 years.

Just teasing, but you get the idea. I heard this saying on the radio about one third the way to our two thirds way down on the page. It's about Americans. It says we want what we want and we want it now. Meaning I don't want to wait for anything.

I can get it now. I can put it on credit. I don't need to save money. All right, let's keep moving. Page 14.

I'm sure you've heard some of these sayings, a penny saved is a penny earned. A fool and his money are soon parted. My father would tell us all the time that if he thought something was a dumb financial move, he would tell us, see that sewer over there across the street? Take your money and throw it down the sewer, cuz that's just what you're doing. So I look at the, near the bottom of the page, I told my in-laws, every time you make a purchase, I want you to ask yourself, do you need this Or do you just want this thing?

Because when you stop at the quick shop and buy that coffee or you go out to dinner, I mean you get the fast food for lunch instead of packing your lunch, you're saying this is more important to me than saving my money and then investing it and bringing in passive income. This coffee and donuts is more important. My brother and I would sit and talk about our different employees. When they'd come, which we would see them and we would, they would share with us about their financial successes or their difficulties. And we started saying, oh yeah, that person's a saver.

That one's a spender. So we were putting them in categories. And we came up with a third category, even Stevens. I'm on page 15. Those people will spend all the money they have just about, but they won't go in debt.

They'll get down to even and stop. So I put that in there so you have to look at which one of those categories you think you fall into. Are you a spender, a saver, or an even-steven? I think it's important to recognize where you're at. Next page.

Don't marry a woman with the spending sickness. My brother and I heard that a thousand times growing up. My father grew up in the depression, and If you took your paycheck and you spent all your paycheck, in the 1930s, they would say you had the spending sickness. And they would send you to counselors to help you figure out how to save some money. And my father would, there was two gals he knew as a little boy.

The husband would give them their paycheck, the wives, and they would end up spending it all and they were saving no money. And he would tell us the names of them, I forget them now, and he said they needed help because they had the spending sickness. If you're a saver and you marry a spender, your marriage is going to be like this, because you're trying to save and they're trying to spend and that causes friction. And I read somewhere that divorce, 75% of divorces are some way related to money. And I think it's because you have a spender or even Stephen marrying a saver.

If you look at a couple of these verses here, Amos 3.3, about in the middle of the page, do two walk together unless they have agreed to meet? Deuteronomy 22.10, you shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together. So any of you young men or women, young ladies, don't marry a man with the spending sickness. You know, it's the same way. Otherwise, You may end up like my in-laws.

After you're married for 26 years, still living in an apartment, never could afford a house, and renting their washer and dryer and big screen TV, It's crazy. Page 16, a husband has a responsibility to provide financially for his family. Page 17, this is a couple. She was a spender, he was a saver. They wanted to buy a house, they were in debt, 53, 000.

It's just their story how they got out of debt and were able to eventually buy a house. You can read that later. Page 19. There's three types of people, well there's more, but this first group, group one, they Group one, they work and they spend no savings, no investing, Paycheck to paycheck their whole life. That's what's going to happen.

Second group, they work, They save, but they have no plan, no investing. This group is going to be paycheck to paycheck their whole life. The third group, they work, they save, They invest for the future, bringing in passive income, and they're on the train of financial freedom. So once again, which group are you in? You're in group one, two, or three.

Do you have a plan to get on the train to financial freedom. Otherwise, you're still going to be at Grand Central Station 32 years from now. Next page. This is an article I recently saw on Fox News. The average millennial owes more than a hundred thousand dollars in non-mortgage debt.

This means debt besides what they owe in their house, they owe $100, 000. That's just unbelievable. Page 20. Here's some Proverbs about investing. Proverbs 27-12, the prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty.

Look at Ecclesiastes 11 2 invest in seven ventures yes and eight you do not know what disaster may come upon the land. Ecclesiastes 11 6, sow your seed in the morning and at evening let not your let your hands not be idle for you do not know which will succeed whether this or that or whether both would do equally well. So if you don't get anything out of today, this page is Very important, page 20. There's no creation of wealth without a plan to save your money and then invest it in passive income. About 15 years ago, one of our, one of my friends from high school called me up, he was 54 at the time.

He had just got laid off from his job. He was living paycheck to paycheck, still at 54 years old. And he said, hey, can you put me to work? I got fired, I'm not collecting unemployment and I don't have any savings. So we put him to work and he, after a couple weeks, he said, now I know why you and your brother were working so much through high school and college and saving and investing.

He said I thought you guys were crazy but now I see it's come back to bite me that I thought I'd always have a job and always have income coming in and now I'm in this situation. So young people don't wait the 32 years, don't wait till you're 54 to figure it out. Investing is key. Next page. Investing is key.

Next page. Page 21. I think to be financially stable, we need to think and act like entrepreneurs. The entrepreneur, whatever his motives, including his desire for more money, uses money as a tool. The carpenter uses a hammer and a saw.

The doctor, a scalpel and stethoscope. The entrepreneur uses cash and credit. Money is a tool to create more money. You're given a certain number of talents and you need to create more talents, not for your glory, but for the glory of God. Next quote there.

Before entrepreneurs can invest capital, for instance, they must accumulate it. So unlike gluttons and hedonists, entrepreneurs set aside rather than consume much of their wealth. A hedonist is a person who believes that the pursuit of pleasure is the most important thing in life, a pleasure seeker. They would rather live in the moment than plan for the future. They use their money to live the lifestyle they want now.

Hopefully nobody here is a hedonist. We represent Christ. Anybody here that's a Christian, we represent Christ in our lives. And we need to show the world that we can be good stewards of what God has given us. So we can take care of ourselves and we can help other people that are in need and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with them.

The next quote here, it says, wealth is to be reinvested so that wealth itself becomes wealth producing. So you take your wealth using money as a tool to create more money. Here's a couple surveys near the bottom of the page and top of page 22. They, according to recent Federal Reserve survey, the majority of Americans spend $105 for every $100 they bring home. They spend 5% more than they bring home.

Top of page 22. This one was hard for me to believe when I heard it on the radio, but they took a survey of 3, 200 couples and they said, if you had an unexpected bill of $400, your car broke down and you needed $400 to fix it, 40 percent, would you have the money in the bank to fix it? And 40 percent of the couple said no, we wouldn't have the $400. Which made sense as my brother and I talked about it, that's how a lot of our employees were. Bottom of page 22.

Budgeting and saving, then investing. Okay, first, identify your spending habits, whether you're a saver, spender, or even Steven. Page 23. After you identify who you are or how you spend money, you create a budget and a savings plan. And I think it's important to be on a budget because if you're on a budget and you want to and you set aside money to go out for dinner, Guess what?

You don't have to feel guilty when you're out to dinner that you're spending money because you've already set that aside just for that purpose. We have to live our lives. We're going to spend money for our enjoyment, but we don't want to feel guilty about it. So if you're on a budget, you've got a certain amount set for vacation, dinners, date nights, whatever, you can enjoy yourself. So set up a budget.

My father would say, he'd tell us all the time, if you really want to save money, And this is from the book The Richest Man in Babylon. He'd say, pay yourself first. Which means, say you make $500 a week and you want to save $50 every week. You take $50 and you put it in the savings and then you figure out how to live on 450. As Christians we would tithe 10% and then we would figure out how to and then save whatever you want and then figure out how to live on the rest.

And number three, set short-term and long-term goals. Remember, I'm near the bottom of the page, remember your financial success is dependent upon your ability to save money and invest it. Once again, Ecclesiastes 11.2, Invest in seven ventures, yes and eight. You do not know what disaster may come upon the land. On page 24, if you're gonna be financially successful, I believe you have to imitate Christ and that means you have to have self-control, self-denial, self-sacrifice, and self-discipline.

If you don't have these things, which Christians should, it's going to be very hard to be financially successful. Next page. I put the next page in, the Jesus, the God-man, just to explain to non-believers who Jesus is. Jesus is God Himself. He's the Son of God, 100% God, 100% man.

On page 25 and 26, this is from the book Icthys by Sinclair Ferguson and Derek Thomas. But if you look on page 26, they present this parable. And it's about this master who lives in this high story building, meaning Jesus, and he takes the elevator down to the lobby, and in the lobby everyone is smoking cigarettes. As soon as he opens the door, the smoke hits him, the the people are smoking, the room's filled with smoke. They liken the smoke smell and the cigarettes to Sin.

So Jesus is up in heaven, comes down, as soon as he gets off the elevator he's hit with all this sin. I don't know about you but I hate the smell of cigarette smoke. So Jesus comes down and people want him to smoke a cigarette, they blow in smoke in his face, he's walking through smoke. Jesus exhibited self-control, self-denial, self-sacrifice on your behalf and on my behalf, coming and living among us in this sin, in this sinful world. I think we can figure out how to use our talents to glorify and honor Him.

Page 27. This is from the richest man in Babylon, the book. This book was almost required reading for kids in high school when my father grew up. Law number one, pay yourself first. Law number two, invest to build more wealth.

This is This is things they would teach in school. Law number three, read, study, seek qualified advice. Meaning, when you do get some cash together, some capital, you read whatever you want to invest in, read so you know about it. Don't invest in anything that you don't know about. Seek Qualified advice from gray heads, from people who are already doing it, who are already successful.

Law number four, don't be gullible. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Don't be greedy. Meaning, don't take your money and invest in lottery tickets. I remember, I don't know how many years ago it was.

I saw in the, that's when I, it was in a newspaper article. That shows you how long ago it was. But this gal, her husband died and she got like two or $300, 000, which was a lot of money back then. So she took every dollar that she got from her husband dying from the life insurance and bought lottery tickets. And there was a picture of her in her living room with lottery tickets all over the floor on the table, her chair.

And she, in the, the caption under the picture said, I can't believe not one of these tickets was the winning ticket with this many tickets. You think with 300, 000 tickets she would have won the the 10 million dollar jackpot, but her money was gone. I call the lottery a poor man's tax, because the poor like to go try to get something for nothing. You pay a dollar hoping you'll win a million dollars. Scripture teaches against that.

Page 28. It only takes six steps to plan your success. Once again, develop the right plan for you. Why, when my wife and I got married in 1976, I took a page out of my parents book and about eight months before I got married, All the money I had saved I put is a down payment to buy some apartment buildings. So when I got married, I had no money in the bank.

So my wife and I sat down and I said, where do we want to be in one year from now? Where do we want to be in one year from now? Where do we want to be five years from now? And we decided we wanted a house. We are living in one of the apartments.

It was a 24 family that my brother and I had bought. And my wife and I were the managers there, so we're living there rent free. And I'm making $5 an hour, this is in 1976. And I said, in five years from now, I want to be in a house. And when you make $5 a year, I mean $5 an hour, That's like $10, 000.

That's gross. $10, 800 a year. I told my wife, we need to save $20, 000 to buy a house. And I think we can do it in four to five years. Now she worked the first year and a half we were married, but believe it or not, in Four years, we saved $20, 000, and I'm making $10, 800 a year.

Once again, we're living rent-free, and I worked full-time for my father, working as a manager on the apartments. And I painted apartments in the evening for my father at one of his apartment complexes. I had three jobs, but I had blinders on, you know, for horses. We were gonna save $20, 000. So my wife and I each got a little notebook with the spirals at the top of it, just this big.

And I kept it in my back pocket and she kept it in her purse. And I think we gave each other like $5 for the week. And on Saturday or Sunday, we would, well, every time we made a purchase, we would write it down in a notebook. And then on, I think it was like Sunday, we'd open up the notebook, we'd have a contest to see who spent the least amount of money because we wanted to save $20, 000. We wanted to get out of the apartment and into a house.

And by God's grace we were able to do it. So number one, develop the right plan for you that's realistic that you you could save some money. Establish times to spend on your plan, keep a journal and take notes. Number four, reflect and take time to go back over to study again the things you've learned. Number five, set goals.

And number six, act on your plan. What I did with this $20, 000, I bought a lot. And I built a house. I took the 20, 000 and built a house, and I had about 120, 000 in the house. But at the time, when I finished it, I could have sold it for 160.

The plan was we were going to stay there two years. Scott's been to my house. That was a two-year house. We were going to stay there. Yeah.

So once again, how do you think like an entrepreneur? Take the resources you've given, invest it, create more wealth. Page 29. I put this article in here. He tells you to save 10% off the top of your paycheck.

But if you look on page 30, it's a way of looking at money. And in this article, he argues that for most people, when they spend money, it makes them happy. It's, you look at the first or the second paragraph here, he says, however as children we look upon money as a tool which to buy candy, toys, and other things to make us happy. As a result, we naturally begin to look at savings as a punishment. In about the middle of the page, people very early begin to associate spending with happiness and saving with pain.

So like one third the way up from the top, I mean from the bottom, it says rewire your thinking to gain financial freedom. Your job is to begin thinking in terms of pleasure whenever you think of spending and accumulation and pain whenever you think of spending and getting rid of your money. Some of my employees they had trouble paying us back so we had to we had to have them sign a piece of paper saying we could take a certain amount out of their paycheck every two weeks because they could just they could not discipline themselves to pay us $50 every two weeks to pay back the $500. They were forced into doing it. They had no self-control, no self-denial.

Page 31, Here's what happens when you don't have a budget. You ready? First big headline on 31. When you don't have a budget, getting into debt is a piece of cake. Without a budget, surprise expenses can throw you off track.

When my employees would come borrow money, they'd say, everything was going great till we needed new tires for the car. If that hadn't happened, oh, I wouldn't need to be borrowing this money. That's when I sit down with them, why don't you put $50 a week away so you know something's going to happen, then you're prepared for it. Bottom one-third of the page. Without a budget, you have no idea how much you could be saving.

Remember my in-laws? They could have saved $120, 000 if they would have just saved 10% of their income. And they could have done that very easily. She's a nurse, and he's working as a janitor at a school district. They're being well paid.

Next page, page 32. When you don't plan your spending, you waste money. Remember, it's not your money, you're a steward of it. When you don't have a spending plan, it's much more difficult to reach your goals. So I encourage you, if you're not on a budget, get there.

Page 33, I don't know how many of you have heard of Dave Ramsey. This is his seven baby steps to getting in a financial good position. Baby step number one, at least save $1, 000 for emergency fund so when that $400 unexpected bill comes up, you have the money. Baby step number two, pay off all debt using the debt snowball method. Baby step three, save three to six months of expenses for emergencies.

Baby step four, invest 15% of your household income in the IRAs. You might not agree with all these. It says save baby step five, save for your college, your children's college fund. Pay off your home early and set seven build wealth and give Next page page 34. This is this the snowball method what he's talking about.

This person has three monthly bills they're paying. Diagnostic is $50, they're paying $10 a month. The hospital bill is 38 and Home Depot is 45 a month. So what you do is attack the lowest bill first, the $10 a month, and once it's paid off, you don't have 10 more dollars to spend. You take that $10 and add it to the hospital payment, instead of paying 38, now you pay 48 a month.

And once that's paid off, you take that $48 and add it to the Home Depot bill, till you get the Home Depot bill paid off. All right. Page 35 and 36 are just more explanation about Dave Ramsey's seven baby steps. Page 37, I got this from Larry Burkett. It's a guide to how much you should be spending on each thing in your budget.

So you can look that over and see if that's helpful to you. Like tithe, 10 percent, taxes, you just, whatever your income is, you fill it in. Page 38, more in-depth budget, As you can fill in, page 39 is even more in-depth budget. Page 40, this is a statement of net worth. I've had to do this every year I've been in business.

This person has $9, 000 in liquid assets, basically cash, and $146, 000 in other assets. So you take the $9, 000 and the $146, 000, I think it was, that is $155, 000, right? But then he owes on his mortgage, you look at the bottom of the page, liabilities, life insurance and all these things. 119, 000. So you put 119 here.

So that's six, three, Their net worth is $36, 000. So it's a good idea for couples to do that, to see where you are financially, what your net worth is, just to see how you're doing. I'd recommend doing it once a year just for your own benefit. And then next page, the Rule of 72. Has anybody heard of the Rule of 72?

The Rule of 72, I'll use a darker marker. The Rule of 72 works like this. It tells you how fast your money doubles According to what interest rates you're getting. If I'm getting 10% on my money, I divide 10 in the 72 in my money doubles every 7.2 years if I'm getting 10% interest. Okay, if I'm getting 1% interest in the 72, my money doubles every 72 years.

If you're getting a half a percent, your money doubles every 144 years. Now the banks are paying a quarter percent interest, a quarter percent. So anybody that just putting their money in the savings and thinks that's a good thing, A quarter percent into 72, guess what? Your money doubles every 288 years. Ouch!

That's not good. The bank gives you a quarter percent and they loan it out at five, six, seven, eight percent now. So just having your money in the savings account is good until you're ready to invest it, but just thinking I'm going to let my savings build up is not the way to go. You're losing money. Any questions?

Okay, next page. Page 42. This is just some quotes about why this rule of 72 matters, why it's important to understand it. Page 43, Surety. Surety is a person who takes responsibility for another person's performance of an undertaking or a payment of a debt.

Surety is a dangerous promise. Look at Proverbs 17, 18. A man devoid of understanding shakes hands in a pledge and becomes surety for his friend. He's devoid of understanding. You know why?

A study by the Federal Trade Commission found that 75% of those who co-sign for loans end up making the payments themselves. Ouch. My daughters have some apartments and they rented an apartment to this gal with three children. She couldn't qualify to rent the apartment. So her mother came over and co-signed for her to rent the apartment.

Well, this gal and her three children, as soon as she moved in, her drug addicted boyfriend also moved in. And right away they started getting behind on their rent because, you know, you have to have money to buy drugs, so drugs comes before paying rent. And this guy was on the violent side, I'll say. So he punched a hole in every door in the apartment, tore up the door frames. There was a dryer, there's a washer and dryer in there.

Well, he decided to take the dryer apart, there was a walk-in closet with a pull chain. Well the string had broke, so he took the dryer apart and cut out some of the wires in the dryer to use for the new string for the pull chain light, the walk-in closet. He took the stove apart. He took the dishwasher apart, parts everywhere. He drilled a hole in the apartment to the outside so he could have a different peephole than the peephole in the front door.

Because he wanted to be able to see what's coming in the front door without, you know, when someone looks in the peephole that it gets black and people outside, well, he had a different hole over here. Bottom line is, that's what happens when you get on drugs, your brain gets fried. So he, so we have to kick him out and Believe it or not, my daughter goes through the apartment and there's $14, 000 worth of damage with back rent and damage done. Well the daughter and the three kids, they don't have any money. The drug boyfriend, he doesn't have any money.

Oh, guess what? There's a co-signer. Oh, we call the mom. She comes over there. My daughter walks her through the apartment and the mom just starts crying.

I can't believe my daughter did this to this apartment. She saw it when they moved in where everything was clean and nice. So she went to her IRA account and withdrew $14, 000 and paid the money. So careful who you co-sign for. You may end up making the payments or paying $14, 000 for something that gets destroyed.

Another warning, the bottom of the page, lending Money to your family and friends. In our household, you never lend money that you may need. Only lend money to someone that you don't need it for the next 20 or 30 years. Because guess what? 75% of the time you don't get paid back.

And when you lend money to someone, if you are expecting it back and they don't pay you, that's probably going to be the end of your friendship or your relationship with your relative or whatever. I know this elderly couple in their 70s worked their whole lives and they had saved $125, 000. That was their savings. Their son in his family, they wanted to buy a house. And so they talked the parents into, hey, lend us the $125, 000 so we can buy this house and we'll get a house where you can live down in the basement, you know, we'll have a bedroom, we'll get a house so you can live in the basement and have your space.

Well, the family had a lot of children and the children were not well disciplined and it was too hard on the elderly couple to live there. They said, we can't get any peace. You know, there's always chaos going everywhere. We'd like to go buy our own house with our 125, 000. Can we get our money back?

And the son said, well, no, we'd have to sell the house. We can't give you your money back. Then what are we going to do? So the sons in the house and the elderly couple, they go rent an apartment now. Even though they're the ones that had this saved, Don't lend money if it's going to change your life some way.

If you lend somebody $100 and you don't need that $100 ever back, then lend the money. Just 75% of the time, you're not going to get it back.