In the sermon 'Saving and Investing' by Kelly Jennings, practical insights into financial stewardship from a Christian perspective are discussed. The sermon begins with the Parable of the Mexican Fisherman, illustrating the futility of striving for more wealth when contentment is already achieved. Kelly Jennings emphasizes that Christians should be stewards of their resources, avoiding the rat race. Savings are defined as the portion of income not spent on current consumption, and the importance of outpacing inflation is stressed. Jennings advocates for paying oneself first by allocating 10% of income to tithing and another 10% to savings. Various savings vehicles are discussed, including traditional savings accounts, CDs, and whole life insurance policies, with the latter being controversial but recommended by Jennings as a viable option for building a cash flow system. The sermon also emphasizes the biblical principles of investing: having defined goals, seeking wise counsel, setting limits, thinking long-range, diversifying, and avoiding over-leverage. Jennings highlights the importance of monitoring one's heart and anxiety when investing. Different investment vehicles such as stocks, bonds, real estate, and entrepreneurship are explored, with an emphasis on understanding economic factors and making informed decisions. The sermon concludes by advocating for an emergency fund and eliminating high-interest debt to ensure financial stability.

Kelly's going to come and just continue to give us practical ways to increase our resources. Christians are people of increase. They are fruitful and they multiply. They bear fruit and Kelly's gonna come and talk to us about that. All right, well I know we're kinda running a little bit behind here.

So I wanted to start by asking a question. So when you hear investing and saving, who gets excited about that? All right, we got a big crowd. Okay, because a lot of times, like my wife, she's like, don't talk to me. Don't talk to me about that.

She can only take, she gives me about a 10 minute window and then after that I have to be quiet on the subject. So I very much want to not lose you in what I'm talking about here. And as I told Mr. Brown last night, like I'm not going to answer all your questions up here. I'm basically going to be probably a mile wide and about an inch deep.

But come see me afterwards, come see some of the men that have talked and definitely would love to sit down, answer some of these questions that you may have. So write them down, make note, and we can talk a little bit more later. Also, I might say a few things up here may be controversial to kind of the ongoing wisdom. Dave Ramsey and I disagree on a few things, so I know a lot of us know of him, you know, listen to him. And so I'll say one or two things here that may slightly be out of that realm, but very much believe in it.

So I'm going to start by reading a Mexican, what's called the Parable of the Mexican Fisherman. And You guys may have heard this before, but it goes as such. Let's see, make sure, this is right before I get into that. An American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village. When a small boat with just one fisherman docked, Inside that small boat were several large yellowfin tuna.

The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of the fish and asked how long it took him to catch them. The Mexican replied, only a little while. The American then asked, why didn't he stay out longer and catch more fish? The Mexican said he had enough to support his family's immediate needs. The American then said but what do you do with the rest of your time?

The Mexican fisherman said I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siestas with my wife Maria, and scroll into the village each evening and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life. The American Scoffs. Well, I have an MBA from Harvard, or Harvard, depending on where you come from, and I can help you, he said. You should spend more time fishing, and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat.

And then with the proceeds from the bigger boat, you could buy several boats. And eventually, you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your cat to the middleman, you could sell directly to the processor, eventually opening up your own cannery. You could control the product, processing, and distribution, he said. Of course, you would have to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to New Mexico.

Then Los Angeles and eventually to New York City, where you will run your expanding enterprise. The Mexican fisherman asked, but how long will that take? Then, in which the American replied, well, 15, 20 years or so. Then what, the Mexican asked. The American laughed and said, well, that's the best part.

When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions. Millions? Then what? The American said slowly, well, then you could retire, move to a small coastal village, fishing village, where you could sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, and take siestas with your wife, Maria, and scroll into the village evenings and play guitar with your amigos.

I read this because it talks a lot. I mean, I think it explains a lot to us about kind of the environment we've grown up in, the way we think about a lot of these things. And I think about a question that was asked last night, which is kind of I have a family and I have these different things and so you really have to think about where you are. If making my shovel a little bit bigger means sacrificing my family, that's a decision you need to make before God. But do not in being a steward get caught up in the rat race of what we just heard.

He had all those things, yet he can make more millions and then do the exact same thing. So it's really scanning where you are and knowing where you are. All right, so my task, savings and investing. All right, I'm going to hit on savings. So what is what are savings?

The portion of a person's income that is not spent on current consumption. So savings as a verb is the action of moving money from one account to the next. And then as a noun you want to say have it be in a safe, protected, liquid, and ultimately you will want it to outpace inflation. Now I know I'm talking kind of to the younger kids here. Inflation, That's just kind of a fancy word for what our banking system, our Federal Reserve does, basically to try to increase over time the expense of certain products.

So for example, if you were to go and ask your grandparents how much a candy bar cost when they were younger, I would pretty much bet that it would be dramatically lower than what you would pay for a candy bar now. That is inflation. So they've taken that where the cost of a good now costs a little bit more each year. And our Federal Reserve tries to have a certain amount, roughly 3%, if you look at it over time, it's kind of the cost of inflation. So when you move something into a savings vehicle, you want that vehicle to try to outpace inflation or at least keep up with inflation.

All right? And so Mr. Brown kind of hinted on this earlier, and I kind of touched on this last night, too, is kind of paying yourself first. Mr. Brown said earlier, if you made $10, give him a dollar to yourself.

And so as we talked about tithes, kind of the first thing that you do, you want to take 10% of that, move to tithe. And then I would say take the next 10% and you move that over to another account for your savings. And then with that, you take that other, and like in my example I use here, you would take what's remaining and then try to figure out where the rest of that money goes. So here in my example, it says you make $1, 000 a month. I automatically move 20% of that to do two different forms of savings account earmarked for their specific purpose.

The rest is left to go toward bills, discretionary spending. If the bills are over $800 a month, that's kind of like what I said last night. I don't go into my savings account or my tithe and say, well, I'll take it from here and pay for these things, I start figuring out where can I cut back? What can I save on? Who do I need to call and say, you know what, I'm paying my bills, I'm going to make my payments, but I fell a little short, I'm going to have to catch up next month.

And so that's a way in paying yourself, not forgetting that your future and what you're trying to grow to actually have your money working for yourself, you have to have a game plan set up in that way. You have to be paying yourself as you get paid. All right, and then so now, the savings vehicles. Because that's the next question you get, well where do I save this? What do I do with it?

Well, you see one example, you can take a jar, some people put stuff, your money in there and go throw it in the backyard, dig a hole, and bury it. And then so you know your money will be sitting there. Most people will not be able to come and find that. But the problem you have there is inflation. As I mentioned earlier, it kills you.

That same $1 that was 50 years ago that could buy probably 15 candy bars may not even buy you one. So you want not the best place that you want to find yourself trying to put that. Another option you have is an interest bearing checking account. The problem you're running with there is it has a very low interest rates. If you look right now, last time I looked, it was roughly 20 basis points.

Basis points is, you hear somebody refer to basis points kind of like what Brother Al was talking about with points. It just means 0.20%. So if I say 0.20%, I'm going to call that 20 basis points. Basically, a 1% basis point is 100. So once you get to 100, you're at 1%.

So if you hear me say basis points up here, because that's what my brain generally goes, if I say 20 basis points, that's just 0.20%. All right? And so it's very low interest in an interest bearing checking account, roughly, like I said, 20 basis points. You also have the basic savings. Everybody knows of a savings account.

You can open up a savings. Again, you run into that problem of it not outpacing inflation. Next you have CDs. I even looked up some certificate of deposits. That's roughly 60 basis points right now.

I mean, if you get excited about that, great. I mean, it's not earning zero, so it's better than storing it in the backyard. And generally, it's safe. And also, here's the one where I mentioned kind of a little controversy that most people that I've talked to don't know a lot about but another option is a properly structured dividend paying whole life insurance policy and I want to put a caveat here I do not have a license life insurance license I am NOT selling life insurance I just have found it to be one of the best places to put money if you're building a system, if you will, a cash flowing management system for your house, for your business, and all those different things. Right now, you're earning roughly anywhere north of 3% on allowing your money to rest in one of those vehicles.

And if you have no idea what any of those are, see me later, we'll talk a lot more about that. And when I say that gets me into trouble, if you ever listen to Dave Ramsey, he would say whole life insurance is the worst place to put money. I would agree with him if we're talking about investing, then yes, I wouldn't compare this with throwing into the stock market. But if we're talking about a place to store your wealth, if you will, as you're trying to figure out where to deploy it, I haven't found a place better than that to put one. All right, and so in this whole concept, what comes to mind is the parable of the talent.

Why am I saving? Why am I investing? And don't have time to read it, but you know Matthew 25, basically if you remember he gave one, he gave five, the master came, one he gave five talents, the other he gave two talents, the other he gave one, and we know what he did with those talents, each the one who had five he doubled his, the one who had two, he doubled his, and then he came to the one who had one talent. And if you remember what the master said when he came back, he says, the servant said, well I just kind of went and hid my savings because I knew you to be a harsh master. And then the master says to him, well, if you knew that, you least should have put my money somewhere, basically in a bank, to earn interest on that money.

So I least have some form of return on that that belongs to me. So I think we see the principle there of investing. We see the five and the two, they actually went and doubled their resources. And then he says to the one with one, at least put it somewhere where we can earn some interest on our money. So I think we see the significance of investing and saving from that parable.

All right, so investing. I get this definition here from Ryan Blue. He's also an investment guy who's in the financial world. And I love the way he breaks this down. He says, it's the use of money for the purpose of making more money to gain income, increase capital, save taxes, or a combination of the three.

All right. So in that and from that definition, we get, he says, gain income. That's cash flow. And I'm assuming most of us know what cash flow is, but here you see, so you invest the money with the purpose to receive a steady inflow of cash monthly or quarterly. An example of that, young people, you put in 100 bucks, You receive $100 a month for the next five years, and then you get your $100 back.

That's cash flow. The cash is flowing in from the money that you have deployed out to invest. Number two, he says, to increase capital. An example of that is you put in $100, you come back five years, you get back $150. That's capital gains.

You're growing on the capital that you put in and then the last one he said is tax savings you pay less in taxes because the type of investments you make and I will say one of the best places that I've seen when it comes to this tax-saving portion is in real estate. The government makes some great incentives for real estate investing. And we can talk more, you can talk to Brother Al as well about that, but there are definitely some great perks when it comes to that. I want to throw out one other thing, too. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of the game Cash Flow.

I know Mr. Brown actually mentioned just kind of Robert Kiyosaki. He invented the game. I want to throw out a plug. If you have not gotten a game, get it.

I have not, again, I haven't played all the games, but all the games that I have played, it teaches these concepts better than any that I have found. Similar, it's very similar to Monopoly in some ways. It takes some time, but you're actually getting out a sheet, you're writing down your cash flows, you're keeping record of your balance sheets. I mean, a 10-year-old can really start, and we in the homeschool world know that it's a, it can be complex, but when you're playing it through this game, it really breaks it down on a level that teaches you foundational house management, investment management types of things. So I highly recommend that game.

I'll throw another thing out. It is not the cheapest game, I will say that. But, in my opinion, it's worth every dollar in what it teaches and how it goes about teaching. All right, so I'm going to walk through 10 biblical principles as we think about investing. I think these, any investment you come to, this should always be, these 10 things should always be counted in the forefront of your mind.

So number one, you want to have defined written financial goals. We see that in Proverbs chapter 20 verse 5. Counseling the heart of man is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out. Also in 21.5, the plans of the diligent leaves surely to plenty, but those of everyone who is hasty surely to poverty have defined goals. Write it out.

If you're married, sit down with your bride. Write those things out. See where you want to go. That way when you walk into a car dealership or you seek to do an investment, you're not just going by your your emotions. You have it defined and written out.

Let me see that right here in scripture. Number two, communicate with your spouse. Genesis 2.24, therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. If you're married, talk to your wife. Men, Talk to your wife before making financial decisions.

Wives, talk to your husbands. If you're single, communicate, find someone, find a man, find whoever you know who has expertise in these certain things and communicate. Number three, wise counsel, Proverbs 11 14, where there's no counsel the people fall but in the multitude of counsels there's safety. In 1920 listen to the counsel and receive instructions that you may be wise in your latter days. Seek counsel, seek wise counsel.

I can't say that enough. Seek counsel before you make these decisions. All right, number four, set limits on investable amounts. We kind of hit on that earlier, Proverbs 15, 16. Better is a little with the fear of the Lord than great treasures with trouble 38 remove falsehood and lies remove falsehood and lies far from me give me neither poverty nor riches Feed me with the food allotted to me.

Set limits. It keeps you from doing things you should not do. All right, number six. Think long range. This is number six, yes.

Think long range. This is vitally important. Sometimes we get to doing these things that like, yes, it's going to benefit me today, but what are the long-term effects? And I can't stress that enough. We tend to be myopic in the way that we think about things.

And it's even hard for our minds to think five, 10, 15, 20 years, but a lot of the decisions that we make today affect those things that are that far down the road. So as much as possible, try to think long range. Luke 14, 28. For which of you intending to build a tower does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it. Diversify, you've heard that as well.

Seek to diversify. Ecclesiastes 11 2, Give a serving to seven and also to eight, for you do not know what evil will be on the earth. Diversify. Do not put all your eggs in one basket. No matter how fancy, how great, whatever this salesman who's trying to sell you an investment product says is going to perform, Spread your eggs out.

Do not put them all in one basket. Slow and steady. Kind of the tortoise and the hare. I don't know if you guys have read that book, but when you're thinking about investing, remember the tortoise and the hare. Proverbs 28 20.

A faithful man will abound with blessings, but he who hastens to be rich will not go unpunished. In verse 22, a man with an evil eye hastens after riches and does not consider that poverty will come upon him slow and steady. Know your risk, Can I afford the loss? All this goes back to having a defined plan, having that written out. We see that in Ecclesiastes 5, 13 through 15.

There's a severe evil which I have seen under the sun. Riches kept for their owner to his hurt, but those riches perish through misfortune. When he begets the sun there is nothing in his hand. As he came from his mother's womb naked shall he return to go as he came, and he shall take nothing from his labor which he may carry away in his hand. Know whether or not you can take that risk and how that risk will affect you if the worst thing happens.

And last two, do not over leverage. We kind of hit on that a little bit last night. You got people on these little apps saying, you know what, interest rates are this low, I'm gonna borrow this much money. Proverbs 22, seven, the rich rules over the poor and the borrower is a servant to the lender. Banks are banks for a reason.

They know what they're doing. They're not offering these things to you because it's like the best thing for you. It's because it feeds their bottom line and they know if you default, especially given the environment that we're going into, all the unknown. Yes, he's low-rate, so I'm going to borrow all this money. What happens if you lose your job?

They know that they have certain collateral and different things that they can collect on. Be careful. Do not over-leverage. The ritual of the poor, Nibbar, is a servant to the lender. Number 10 and you want to monitor your heart and your anxiety.

Psalm 131, 1. Lord my heart is not haughty nor my eyes lofty neither do I concern myself with great matters, nor with things too profound for me. Think about your heart. Where's my heart in this matter? Am I too anxious about this?

If I can't sleep at night from this investment, it might not be an investment you need to be in, because ultimately you're supposed to be putting your faith and trust in God anyway. And so you should be able to rest your head and if you find that this investment just has me all off kilter, you may want to step back and reevaluate what's going on. So those are ten biblical principles that I think we all need to keep in mind no matter what investments that we're making. So now just kind of some of the practical nuts and bolts. I'm going to invest.

What are those things? All right. You see all these different 401Ks, 403Bs? I'm going to speed up. I only have 10 minutes.

These are basically just names that are in the tax code. And so you got governmental qualified plans. And then if you look at the first fours, 401Ks, 403Bs, simple IRAs, SEP IRAs, these things are just, basically you're teaming up with the government. I'll put it this way. They're basically gonna give you a tax deduction right now.

So I put in 100 bucks, I put in 100 bucks. There's nothing taxed on that 100. And then when I take it out in the future then they'll tax me on that. In general wisdom behind that is well when I retire I'll have less money than I make now so I'll be taxed less. Then you want to think about there as well though if you have set up cash flowing income from different investments as we discussed you may not be in a lower tax bracket in the future as also mr.

Brown taught in my view taxes are going to have to go up there's no way in my mind that we can sustain what we're doing without raising taxes on people. So I'm gonna also be taking my money out in an environment where taxes may be higher. Those are things to think about when you're doing a 401k, 403b. And that one of the specifics about those top four is they're generally offered by your employer. They provide these plans.

The government allows them to provide these plans for you. You can put money in. There may be a match. There may not be. But there are also investment vehicles within those.

The traditional IRA, Roth IRA, those are more individual. You can do those yourself. All these have a limit on the amount that you can put in and what you can invest into them. Those are the things I said we can talk about later, but just know that those are options for you. Top four, if you have a job, they generally provide that.

The other two, you can open up on your own. Real quick, traditional versus Roth, you see that thing. Traditional works just like the 401K. It goes in tax deferred. You don't get taxed on it.

Later you take it out, you get taxed. The Roth portion of that, you basically get tax on that hundred bucks, so you may only put in ninety-five dollars, but then when you take it out in the future, there's no tax on that. I'm more of a fan of that personally, because I think we're going into a different environment, but we can talk more about that later. All right. Basically, an overview of the investment vehicle.

So you heard me talk about stocks. You heard me talk about bonds. And then there's this thing of annuities. What are stocks? Basically, with stocks, young people, you're basically investing your money with a company.

You're saying, hey, I'm gonna give you some of my money, basically become a part owner in the company. As it goes up, as it goes down, you can, you participate in that. So that's how you see the stock market go up, you go down, your value goes up and goes down because you're a part owner of that company. And then a bond. What is a bond?

Bond is basically you're given a loan. You're loaning the company your money to basically do what it would do with it what they're gonna do. They're gonna pay you interest on that and then give you your money back at the end. Precious metals. Now precious metals are generally referred to as God's money.

You hear people call it God's money because it was created and God created the world. It was here. People find it. There's a limited amount of it. So it always has an intrinsic value.

This is another area you can invest in. And let me back up real quick with the stocks and bonds. Generally, in the stock market, as Brother Al mentioned, anywhere from, I'm going to say, 8% to 12% over time is kind of you can find yourself in that area if you invest in that. Precious metals has been a great protection hedge, as we talked about inflation, it has performed roughly around 4 to 5% over its lifetime. So you found people using the precious metals as just a hedge or a way to try to outpace inflation of your dollar.

All right, and you have the real estate world, which they talked about buying houses and investing as well. There are a myriad of options in the real estate world. You can buy and hold, which is you buy, young people, you buy an apartment, you take it and then you rent it out to someone, you receive cash. That creates cash flow for you. You can buy one and you can flip it.

You buy it, fix it up, sell it, that's capital gains where you get more of your capital. You can find big apartment complexes. You can invest in those and manage it yourself and you have cash flow coming from it. You can buy land, you can will and deal land in certain ways at a certain percentage. You can receive cash flow from that.

There's also syndications where you team up with people who buy large apartment complexes, put your money in with them, they manage it for you and you get cash flow from it. So these are just all options that are out there that I've found to kind of work well. In the real estate world, You can see anywhere from 12, 16 percent return on some of these things in your money, but you want to be very careful and where you're investing and how you're investing. I want to back up again to the stock market as it just hit me again. I would suggest not putting money in a stock market or into a stock unless you have, you can think, you're thinking long range where I have anywhere from seven plus years to invest because it goes up, it goes down and as brother Al showed on that chart last night, over that course of time, as time is taking up, your chances of loss is going down.

If you do not have that amount of time at least, know very well what you're doing before you do it and have a great plan and idea for it, because you can end up in some trouble if you do. And then speculative investments. Startup companies, venture capitals, hedge funds, these are those types of investments where you can double your money. I mean, think about Amazon. Before Amazon was Amazon, and first starting out, you said, hey, I'll put in $100 with them.

That $100 may be worth a million dollars right now Those you have venture capital those startup businesses I suggest with those these are the things that are kind of on the back end of everything where you say, you know what, this is just extra money that I have to invest. This is money that I will use for that. Boy, I'm running out of time. Okay. And the last thing here, I want to hit on with these is entrepreneurship.

It's not something we talk a lot about in investing, but I see it very much as an investment. You are basically taking your God-given talents and creating something. You're satisfying a need, and you're being able to see the vision for this company. And so a lot of times we'll have entrepreneurs come in and say, hey, I have this money I want to invest in the stock market, or invest in X. And we're like, how's your business going?

What's going well? I'm earning this amount, this return on my business. We're like, Well, why not deploy it back into your business? What happens if you buy another truck and get another worker working for you? That can have 20%, 30% return to your bottom line.

And so I don't want us to forget that entrepreneurship is a way, and if you are an entrepreneur, look very much into investing in yourself that way you're not relying on a stock or a bond or the outside world you're doing something that you actually have control and say so in the middle of and now throw that out it goes up it can go up and can go down just like any other investment. But just know the risks that come along with that, but to know that you are actually the one working that and being able to work that bottom line. So economic factors, as Brother Brown mentioned as well, you have, we have the, basically we're in the middle of the time where government is trying to flex its muscles and control the economy. Those decisions very much affect how the investment how the investments perform. The Fed is printing money and pushing interest rates low.

This has an effect on those investments. You need to do your research and being in steward on how what's going on in our economy affects the type of investments that I'm gonna go into. Stock market performs a certain way. I am in the camp of saying it is high right now because of all the money that's been pumped in. You even look at the S&P 500, one of those stock trackers that we use, the top, basically the top 10 companies is driving that whole return because we have, most people are actually going trying to buy those big ticket items or those things that fall in our bottom line, it helps jack up some of those prices.

But know how it affects each market that you invest in. So I say, well, you say, well, what should I do? I would say this is just kind of a bare minimum, the bottom of the road here. Have an emergency fund of at least a thousand bucks. All right?

And I would have that in one of the savings vehicles that I mentioned earlier. I would say start eliminating and avoiding all high interest and short-term debt Credit card consumer debt credit card companies know what they're doing I mean, I remember when I went to college like they were really I don't know if you've ever been to a parade When they're throwing candy out, But it's like that and with credit cards they were like here take them because they knew college students seeing all these Fancy things in a new world. We're gonna rack up money on that credit card It is some of the highest the worst debt that you can accumulate Be very careful with those number three safe or emergency fund. I say six. I say six months to a year.

I'm a little outside the conventional wisdom of three to six months for certain reasons such as COVID-19. I don't know what's gonna happen, as Ecclesiastes said, as we read in Ecclesiastes, no man knows what harm may befall the earth. So if I have six months to a year of income saved, it buys me time. I am a fan of time, because that way I know now with six months I can still feed my family and deploy out whatever intellect that God has given me to be able to find a job or to find something new. So I lean more toward that in your, once you get past that thousand dollars of income.

And then start investing. There's different vehicles and different things that are out there. After you've done that, start investing. This is just a framework. Actually my partner in work, he developed this a few years back.

He and a partner of his and it's just kind of a visual to be able to see. You have the base fund. That's your bare minimum. You eat, your food, your clothing. You want to kind of think about these as kind of buckets, if you will.

You have a bucket with, you know it's going to take care of that for six months to a year. Contingency funds, you have your insurance and all those things that cover car loss, home loss. You want to make sure those things are taken care of. And then your discretionary spending just means that extra money, that $800 that I talked about earlier. If you have that, where is my discretionary spending going?

And then your legacy fund, That's money where we're thinking about for the next generation. We want to leave an inheritance. A lot of that is captured also in our life insurance and those different things. Basically, the conclusion is this. We see biblically that we are to be stewards of God's given financial resources.

And I believe that we see that we are to pursue some form of return on that investment. Which investment is right for you? That's kind of how you get the question. Only you and God can answer that. I can't tell you exactly what to do with your money because every situation is different.

But we in trying to be stores in the men of this church can help direct you. And so I would say do that. Remember those 10 principles when you're doing it. And trust God in the middle of it. And that's investing and saving 101.

And definitely have your questions and let's talk more later.