The Blog

Net Given: The Better Metric To Track

November 9, 2021 By Bob Lotich 7 Comments

(The following is a transcription from a video Linda and I recorded. Please excuse any typos or errors.)

We’ve recorded a video about “8 Habits of Wealthy and Successful People.” And one of the things that they did, was that they keep track. This is actually something that we had already been thinking and talking a lot about recently.

Well we made a shift a little while ago. I’ve been tracking our net worth, which is assets. Everything you own minus: your liabilities and your debts. And, that gives you a number which is your budget net worth.

It’s a really simple thing to figure out. A lot of people think it’s a really complicated calculation. It’s not, it’s really easy. It’s a good number to determine whether or not you’re going forward financially, or backward. And that’s why I love it because it’s one simple number. And we started tracking this many, many years ago.

We Were In The Negative

We had a negative net worth, so it was a very humble beginning with our net worth calculation. But as we’ve made smarter financial decisions and we’ve watched that number go up and that’s been fun.

Ever since we were dating, we both have sensed this call on our lives to be able to give a lot of money away. We want to be able to give millions of dollars away to support causes we believe in, to fund and finance kingdom activities and just to be used by God and whatever capacity through our giving.

Somewhere along the line, it dawned on me that we have two things that are fighting against each other. Our net worth tracking and our desire to give away a lot of money. When we give money away, it pulls our net worth number down. So these two are working against each other and just fighting each other. There’s a tension there because I found myself not wanting to give as much because it was going to make our net worth go down. And because I’m a numbers guy, I just want to see that number go up, you know?

Taking My Frustration To God

And that tension was just eating at me. I was praying about this and I felt like God showed me… why don’t you start tracking your giving? From that point we started tracking what we call our Net Given. Essentially it’s just a simple spreadsheet where we track how much we give each month and now that is our primary metric for success because it lines up with our goal of giving a lot of money away.

It was a game changer for us because it made giving something that can be tracked. It eliminated that frustration and that tension. And it made giving more fun and it excites us. We get to watch our Net Given number rise. It’s just really, really fun. That is the more important number to us. Our net worth is not as important to us any longer.

It’s a number that has eternal value. You know what I mean? Net Given is something that I’m really glad we began to track. And the funny thing is, and this shouldn’t be a surprise, you would think that by tracking your Net Given it will show a reduction in your net worth. But what we found is the opposite. We found that as we keep our giving going up and we keep our Net Given increasing, our net worth actually goes up lockstep with it. It makes no sense in the natural world.

It’s pretty amazing. But that’s how God works. His ways are not our ways. He does things that the ways of the kingdom or the laws of the kingdom seem to be opposite of what they are on earth and so yeah, that’s been really fun.

Download the Net Given Spreadsheet

Just enter your info below to download the spreadsheet.

How Do You Track Net Given?

The gist of it is just a simple spreadsheet where we track: what gift we have given, how much it cost, the date and maybe the reason for the gift. Some of these columns aren’t necessarily necessary, but we like having them there. Any opportunity we have to give, we list it on the sheet so we can track our giving.

I’ll have my spreadsheet below for you to download and use a template to track your own Net Given.

Budgeting For Giving

One of the ways we do this is we have a giving category in our budget. First of all, that is one of the best things that we ever did. It was a game changer for us. It made giving at least five times more fun.

So we pull money out of our budgeting category for giving when we give to our church, other ministries and some not-for-profits or organizations that have personally ministered to us that we want to give support to.

Basically the rest of the money in our giving category, whatever’s left over, is money that we can just give to individuals. Random stuff. Cash we want to have on hand for whenever we feel the Lord tugging on our heart to do something.

For example, a GoFundMe cause maybe something we give to with the left over funds in our giving budget. Or, maybe a gift for a birthday. I don’t have to decide if we’re going to buy groceries with this money or if I’m going to buy my mom a present, you know? It makes it so much easier to give knowing the money is already there to give.

We have it budgeted. It’s just sitting there waiting to be spent and it’s just a game changer. It really makes it so much easier and funner to give onto others. So if you don’t already budget for giving, definitely include giving into your budget. We really highly recommend it.

My Meeting With A Life Coach

When I was about 23 or 24, somewhere in there, I went and met with a life coach, but and he didn’t call himself a life coach. I’m giving him that term, I’m calling him a life coach. But basically he was a guy who was really successful. He’s a man of God and somebody I looked up to.

I was at a point in my life where I felt everything but successful. I felt very unsuccessful. I felt like nothing was really working out. And I just wanted some wisdom and advice on how to get unstuck, if you will.

We went and sat down at the Cheesecake Factory. And, we were having lunch. He’s a very direct guy and he says, “All right, well what do you want?” I wasn’t sure what he was asking. Like, are you talking about ordering food right now, or are you talking about what I want out of life? And he’s like, “Out of life, what do you want?” I didn’t know. And he just drilled me.

Ultimately I said, “well, I want to be able to make this amount of money. Like that’d be really nice and good for my family. I feel I’d be able to provide for them better.” And he responded, “Okay, great. Write it down.” Then he asked “What else?” We got to the point where I’m talking about giving. I told him that I want to give away this much money. And it was considerably more than the number I said I on how much I wanted to make.

He responded, “That doesn’t make any sense, you can’t do that. That just doesn’t make any sense.” He’s thinking mathematically, that you just can’t do that. If you’re only tithing that amount, you’re not going to give the amount of money you’re wanting to give away. But, this was my goal. If I’m going to have a ridiculous goal of giving away that amount of money, I want this to be the ridiculous goal. Let it be my ridiculous goal.

I realized if this was my goal, it just seemed like the better thing to do was to track my actual giving. And to track my Net Given rather than chasing the highest number of earnings I could possibly earn. That just seemed like a shortsighted, unfulfilling goal. I was just trying to earn as much money as I could. Or accumulate as much as I can. So that was part of the driving force behind this whole idea of tracking our giving.

We Started To Track Our Giving

What was really exciting, is that I felt when we really did not have much money at all, we still had this desire in our heart to give. And so we started tracking our giving and it was exciting to be able to see that number go up. Even though we still had a ton of debt and we still had other things that we needed. We were in a hole financially that we needed to dig ourselves out of, but the number that actually meant the most to us was how much we gave. We watched our Net Given go up even when we were not in the best state financially. And this number continues to increase with time.

If you want to join us and start tracking your net given, we’d love for you to join us! Download the spreadsheet below and make a copy for yourself, so you can start tracking today. Let us know how tracking your Net Given has changed your view on financial success!

We welcome you on this journey with us! Be Blessed. Be a Blessing.

The 3 best investing lessons I learned from my millionaire mentor

October 11, 2021 By Bob Lotich 4 Comments

(The following is an abbreviated transcription from a video Linda and I recorded. Please excuse any typos or errors.)

In this article, we’re talking about some of the best investing lessons I learned from my millionaire mentor. We will be going over three lessons I learned that will be beneficial to anyone who is investing their money.

I will tell you the story about my mentor and I will show you the results of following his advice (the before and after the lessons that he gave). And as we applied his advice, you will see what happened afterwards.

I recorded the discussion Linda and I had that you can listen to on our Podcast, or you can opt to watch the video we recorded of our conversation on YouTube, which can be viewed just below.

But, if you would rather read the full transcription, you can do so here in this article! Enjoy.

The meeting with my millionaire mentor

Bob: So going back to this story, do you remember this?

Linda: A little bit?

Bob: So, yeah, it was about 16 years ago. It was a friend of mine reached out to me because he had a wealthy guy in his life. Long story short, he was offering to coach us on investing and and I didn’t know anything about it at the time. I didn’t know how to invest.

Linda: Yeah, but you were interested.

Bob: Interested, but I knew nothing. I was scared of investing. Yeah, just knew nothing. And this guy was a multimillionaire and he had, he was a teacher, so he was on a teacher’s salary. And on top of that, he hadn’t started investing until basically he’s mid-life and so I’m like, all right, well, if this could work for him and I’m a whole lot younger, like why not see what he has to say?

Linda: Right.

Bob: So I remember going over to his house and we chatted for three or four hours and he shared everything that he had done. What had worked, what had worked well, and what hadn’t. I remember taking notes and I remember just thinking, this is a great opportunity. I do not want to miss out on what this guy is sharing with me.

Like it was a really special thing. He took the time to share all this with me and my friend. And I’m incredibly grateful that he did. But, I want to talk about three of those really important lessons that he taught. And there were a bunch that day, but three really big ones that I want to share.

Having the foresight to better your future

Linda: The other thing is that you had the foresight, this was when we were newly married. And I think you took a Saturday and went to go talk to this guy. And I was like, can’t you just stay home with me, let’s just hang out. But you had the foresight to know that if you spend a little bit of time upfront, it was going to yield great results.

I didn’t have the foresight and I was a little bit annoyed by you going to meet with him, but…

Bob: Like, “Why are you wasting your time learning about this investing stuff?” We can be watching The Office, or what we’re watching then? Was The Office on yet?

Linda: Probably. But I mean, even still, that’s what so many people do. They don’t have the foresight to see that if they put a little bit of effort in, like what it’s going to yield down the road.

Bob: Yeah.

Lesson 1: Stop wasting your money

Bob: All right. So onto the first lesson, and I will never forget this. I’ve been talking about this for years, but he said that there are two things that most Americans waste their money on and are essentially destroying their financial lives with. With two decisions that most Americans make.

And it’s, it’s affected me ever since he said this and everything, you know, and every single time I buy either one of these two things, I’m thinking about this, it’s like a loop playing through my head…

Linda: Well, tell us what it is.

Money wasted on cars

Bob: I want to keep you in suspense a little bit. All right. So the first one is cars. Our car purchases in America. And he absolutely convinced me and showed me some of the numbers and gave me his perspective on this, about how the way we buy cars in America, in.

Not everybody, but most Americans are on this new car cycle. Where you buy a new car, you hang on to for two, three years, and then you trade it in and then you buy another new car. It’s just one of the most destructive things you can do for your finances because cars are just assets that depreciate really really quickly.

What happens is you spend $25,000 on this new car. And then the value of it goes down to about $15,000 or $10,000 over those three years when they buy another new one. And you just keep losing all this money real, real quickly.

Versus if you buy a used car, somewhere in the three to five-year range, you’ve already shaved off so much that depreciation. And then if you own it for longer, a reasonable amount of time your total cost for that car is going to be so much cheaper. Not to mention insurance prices are going to be lower, and there’s a whole bunch of different factors here.

But point is, is that cars are so important in terms of most Americans long-term financial success. And yet it’s one of those things, that we just love our nice new cars. And it’s like, and if you can just take this one thing and just get over this a little bit you know? This was something that was a big deal, a big transition point for us. Because I just got comfortable with enjoying a used car and we haven’t bought a new car in a long time, but our last, what four cars we bought with cash.

And that’s really fun breaking out of that new car payment thing where we’re always having a car payment. So now we save up and we buy our cars with cash. And it’s really cool. And…

Linda: Yeah. I think there’s ways around the whole new car thing where I really like having a new car he’s okay with a more broken and worn and you know, thing. So you can buy new older cars, like few year old cars. Are really well kept up that don’t, that don’t have rips in the seats or stains on the carpet. That aren’t disgusting. And also a lot of times, if you buy them from a dealer or just a really specific type of person, they will be so clean, you’ll be able to eat off of the floor.

You know what I mean? So, I think sometimes that’s the idea that we have in our head. It’s like, I don’t want an old car cause I don’t want something dingy and worn out.

Bob: Yeah.

Linda: And while you don’t mind the warn in kind of…

Bob: I still don’t want to drive a dingy car.

Linda: Our cars have been nice is what I’m trying to say. They have met my standard and I like nice things. I don’t like camping. I like to be in a nice hotel. You know what I mean? And when I say nice hotel, like a nice hotel.

Bob: There you go, there you have it.

Linda: I’m not trying to be a brat, but yeah, that’s the thing, sometimes you have to mentally get over the idea of what you have in your mind and actually look and see if you can find something that will meet your standards. Right?

Bob: Exactly. Yeah, and part of that’s just realizing that it’s possible. It’s possible to get a really nice used car (steps you should never skip when buying a used car). You know, in like a lot of other things, when you buy it used, you can get it for so much cheaper. So if you want to drive a luxury car, you can drive a luxury car that’s maybe seven years old, BMW or Mercedes or something like that. You can get that for probably close to the same price as a new, like bottom of the barrel car.

Linda: Right. And chances are, people in those cars are taking care of them a little bit better.

Bob: I sure hope so.

Money wasted on food costs

Bob: I sure hope so. The second point that he talked about that Americans are really bad with, it is costing them their financial futures, is food. They basically are essentially eating out. And if you look at how many meals most Americans eat out it’s just insane, the amount of money that we spend on food. Especially when we have the option to make food at home and save a whole lot more money and be healthier, in most cases. It’s just a no brainer.

Again, we love eating out. It’s one of our favorite things. But…

Linda: So the answer to this, that we have, is not “don’t eat out.”

Bob: Yeah. It’s not that, but it’s understand that this is where a lot of your money is going.

Linda: And use it as a filter.

Bob: Yeah. Just be thinking about it as you’re making a decision.

Linda: Right.

Bob: Because when you understand that a whole lot of my financial potential is tied up in this dining costs, maybe I can start make eating out a little bit more of a celebratory thing. Rather than an every night occasion, because I just don’t feel like cooking type of thing. And when you change your habit of eating out, that adds up to a lot.

It might be $20 or $30 a week in savings. Which then becomes a hundred dollars a month savings. And then that invested over the long-term becomes hundreds of thousands of dollars. And that’s how you need to be thinking. Think about the small things that can turn into really, really big things.

Finding unexpected savings in your spending habits

Linda: Right. And we were talking to a couple not long ago and they were saying we just don’t have any money. And they went through and actually looked at where they were. But they had already been spending their money and they realized they had been spending $800 or $900 a month on food. And they were really tight on money.

But, they were willing to make humongous sacrifices because they felt like they didn’t have any money. And this one change in their spending opened the door to unexpected money in the amount they could save. They thought “If we go out to eat and spend only $200 next month, that will free up $600 of cash for other things.” Just by disciplining themselves to this budget, they saw the fruit of it immediately. That’s, what’s so exciting to me about it.

Bob: Yeah. And that’s essentially what we’ve limited ourselves to, $200 or $300 in the budget for eating out per month. And there’s definitely nights where it’s like “man, I’d like to go get food out tonight.” But, if we don’t have that filter in place, if we don’t have that wall in place and our budget limit set, we’d easily spend $800 to $1,000 month eating out.

Linda: We have kids now and they always want to go to Chick-fil-A. I mean, every time we pass Chick-fil-A…

Bob: What does Oliver call it (our two year old)?

Linda: “Chi A.” He’s only two.

Bob: Alright. He’s only two. Anyway It’s pretty cute.

Linda: He’ll say “Chi A” fries.

Bob: They got him trained already.

Linda: We’re like no… we’re not getting fries today.

Bob: But anyway. So that is the first thing. The first big lesson that I took from him. Was do not make these mistakes that other Americans are making, you know, or at least be aware of them. So you can reduce and not make it as big of a deal. And the main reason here is because, because this all comes back to investing, because if you don’t have any money to invest, you can’t invest.

So the whole point is that if you’re spending every dollar on eating out or on having a new car or any number of other things that we can be spending money on, then there’s not any money to invest in. The point is we need some money to invest. And so this was that first step where it really helped us free up extra money to be able to invest.

Linda: Well and really, I think the idea is. You’re not defaulting to whatever your momentary desires are,

Bob: That’s good. Yeah.

Telling your money where to go

Linda: But you are actually telling your money where it’s going to go and deciding what you want to spend on these things so that you can have money for other things, right?

Bob: Yeah. You’re being in control. You’re actually being the steward of the money.

You’re actually managing it, making decisions about it, rather than just letting your flesh in the moment, decide. Where it’s going to go.

Linda: Right. Because there’s a lot of people who have said, well, I don’t have time to do a budget. Or I don’t have time to… fill in the blank. When in actuality you’re spending just as much time on your money, than probably more than Bob and I are. The difference is we are telling it where to go and have created the Real Money Method for our budget that was such a life saver when it comes to our finances. People who are not using any of these strategies are spending time burdened by their money choices and are worried and freaked out by their spending habits.

Bob: Yeah and it’s reactive. There’s reactionary things that are happening.

Linda: Yeah.

Bob: But the point is, we’re all spending money or spending time managing our money one way or another. It’s just a matter of, are we cleaning up messes? Are we doing this, or are we doing it proactively?

Linda: Right. I think you would agree. It’s a whole lot more fun to be proactive. Well it’s just less stressful and I feel way less stressed out, which to me is a big selling feature.

Bob: I completely agree. Completely agree.

Lesson 2: There is a floor, but there is no ceiling

Bob: Onto second big investing lesson that I learned from my millionaire mentor, which is when it comes to investing, the downside potential. There’s a floor. So if I invest a hundred dollars, I can only lose a hundred dollars.

But that a hundred dollars invested, there’s no limit to how much that can grow.

It took me a while to understand that because I just didn’t want to lose any money. So when I invested a hundred dollars, I don’t want it to go down to $90. I’d really get nervous about that. I don’t want what I invested to go backwards at all. And I definitely don’t want to lose all I invested. But, you have to offset that risk with the upside potential in realize what’s possible beyond that.

It’s a numbers game

Bob: When you understand that what your investment can grow to, that changed the game. Because then, it becomes a numbers game.

I remember reading a sales book many, many years ago, it might’ve been by Zig Ziglar or someone similar. I was never a door-to-door salesman or anything. And honestly, I’ve never really had a sales job. But the book talked about sales. If you’re doing door-to-door sales, or cold calling or any of this stuff, you have to count your “No’s.”

So basically what that means is it’s a numbers game. One out of every 10 people are going to say “Yes.” And so instead of getting discouraged that five people in a row said, “No,” you just keep counting those “No’s” because on average one out of every 10 is going to be a success and say “Yes” to you.

And that gives you some encouragement because you can sit there while you hear: “No. No. No.” And it’s like, man, this is terrible. But you realize and understand you’re getting closer to that “Yes.”

And so it’s the same way with investing. This is how I’ve looked at it when I’m investing in a particular stock, it’s a numbers game.

The two approaches

Bob: Without getting all into details, I have two different kind of fundamental approaches. One is the really secure long-term approach. And then with a small percentage of our investing, we invest in some stocks and some more speculative stuff. And with those stock investments, that’s how I’m thinking about this.

I know some of the investments aren’t going to pan out and some of them might even lose everything. I’ve had probably two stocks I invested in where we’ve lost, basically everything in it.

Linda: Krispy Kreme?

Bob: We didn’t lose everything in Krispy Kreme. We lost…

Linda: Almost 98%.

Bob: I’ve had some decent failures with some stocks, but we’ve also had wild successes. The biggest one being 34 X return on our investment.

Which again, you can lose a 100% of what you invested or you can go up 3400%, like in this particular case. I’m so glad that I took that chance on putting money in that stock. I had no idea what would happen, but to have it multiplied by 34 times, like that’s really, really cool.

And you can lose multiple times and still come out way ahead when you know, something like that happens.

Linda: That’s great. The 34 times investment return has probably made up for what we’ve lost in other investments.

Bob: Oh yeah. Absolutely.

There is a chance to lose, nothing is 100% risk-free

Bob: And like any investment, there is a chance to lose. Even in a savings account, whether or not your bank wants to admit this. There is a chance that you can lose your money, thankfully you have FDIC insurance. But there’s nothing that is a hundred percent risk-free.

Linda: Yeah, so if someone is telling you that something is a hundred percent risk-free. Beware. Right?

Bob: It’s not. There is no a hundred percent risk-free guarantee of anything.

Linda: If your neighbor comes to you and says, they’ve got the deal of a lifetime. And that there’s no risk involved. Right?

Bob: Yeah I mean, there are people who will argue this fact. There are plenty of bankers who will say that a savings account has zero risk. But the point is, is that after 2020, there’s just nothing that has no risk. You know what I mean? After we saw so many of the banks, big banks, go under. Banks who are “too big to fail.” There’s just no investment that is a hundred percent risk-free.

Your money is being invested somewhere

Bob: So with all that in mind, you have to understand that your money is being invested somewhere. Like you’re putting your money somewhere whether you see this as an “investment,” or not.

You’re either putting money under your mattress. You could be putting it in a savings account, you’re eating it, you’re putting it on your body with the clothes you’re buying, etc. Or, you’re putting your money in something that might have a little bit more risk, but has a really big upside potential.

So my point in all of this, with this lesson, for me was that once I understood that it’s not like it can go down just as far as it can go up, but there’s a cap on how far down it can go. But then the limit on how high up it can go, there’s no limit. And when you see it that way, that’s really encouraging. It just changed the game for me on how I think about investing.

Linda: That’s great.

Lesson 3: Build a really solid foundation

Bob: And the third lesson that he taught me that it really changed a lot for me. It was to start by building a really solid base foundation of low cost index funds. A long-term investment that is very predictable. That has a high likelihood of growing at a predictable rate to really build the retirement savings or whatever the longer term financial goals are.

And then on top of that, once you have that in place, then set some money aside to do some of the more aggressive or speculative investments. And that’s some of the stock investing I was talking about above. Understanding that and approaching it that way is just a much safer way to invest.

And it’s also an investing approach where you can sleep at night a whole lot easier. Because, there’s a whole lot of people who don’t know what they’re doing investing right now. Who are running into the most speculative things. Cryptocurrency being one of them. Or day trading stocks or options, or something like that.

Which are all things that I’m not against doing them, but it should be a small percentage of your portfolio. It should not be, “this is the first investment I ever make is in this crazy unknown cryptocurrency,” that no one knows about. That somebody just made a hundred percent return in two days yesterday.

Like it’s just…

Linda: It’s really risky. Right?

Bob: Yeah. And I think that’s the thing…

Linda: If someone wants to do that they just need to know the risk involved. Right?

Bob: Yeah. And I think that’s fundamental. If you’re investing, just understand the risks that you’re taking and that if your return goes up that fast, it can come down that fast or faster.

That’s my biggest hangup. I’m seeing way too many investors who don’t understand that. And they think: “I’m just gonna invest in this and I’m going to get rich.” They don’t even understand or comprehend that there is a downside potential and that it’s actually really, really big.

So that’s why I love laying a really solid thorough foundation of much more stable investments, long-term investments as your base.

And then on top of that, if you want to do some more speculative things go that route.

Linda: Gotcha. Very helpful.

Our results of following his advice, before and after

Bob: Just for illustrative purposes, I want to show you this chart. I decided to put this together. I wanted to see what happened after I started doing what my millionaire mentor taught me. And so I took the 10 years before and the 10 years after I implemented the lessons he taught me. And I’ll just go ahead and show you how that played out…

So as you can see I’m really glad that we started investing. This has worked out really well for us.

Linda: I’m really glad I allowed you to start investing. That was really good on my part.

Bob: I’m glad that my wife and I came into an agreement that she allowed us to take some money that she would have spent at the mall for us to start investing. It was a really good decision. I’m glad we did it.

Linda: Me, too.

Bob: Yeah.

SeedTime 10 X Investing Course

Bob: So over the years I’ve been getting more and more questions about investing. And so what we did in April, is we started building out our first investing course because we were having so many people ask about it. And I’m really, really excited. We had our first batch of students take the course in April. And then, we just opened up again for fall enrollment.

So if this is something you want to do, if you want to get started investing, we designed this course specifically for beginners and intermediate investors. We go through step-by-step down to the buttons to press of how to make your first investment on a more stable long-term approach.

Linda: That’s great. So for someone like me, it’d be great.

Bob: Perfect for you because we literally show you what to do. What website to go to. The buttons to press, everything we can possibly show step-by-step as possible. And then after that’s in place, we have the Plus Package for the course. In this package we go into some of the more advanced investing.

In the course, there are a lot of lessons that I learned from my millionaire mentor. How to actually pick a stock. And basically the exact strategies that we followed to pick that 34 X return winning stock. We also had another investment that was 27 X our return on investment. We’ve had a whole bunch of others that were beyond 10 X. But the goal, 10 X. That’s why we called the course “10 X Investing.”

The goal is to get to that point where you have a investment that will yield 10 X. And the cool thing is even the base foundation, the really much more stable and secure and predictable investments that we talk about, that low-cost index funds over a long enough time-frame (for most of us) that turns into a 10 X investment as well.

The point is everything in the course, hopefully should be able to yield some really great returns over a long-term.

We’d love to serve you with this course. So if it’s something you’re interested in you can check out the course at Seedtime.com/10X.

The bottom line

My encouragement to you is to get started investing, if you aren’t already. There are a lot of different ways to get started. It’s not that difficult. But if you want help from us, we would love to be able to help you with this course.

So if you have any questions, just shoot us an email or you can send us a direct message. We look forward to hearing from you!

How to enjoy reading again

September 20, 2021 By Bob Lotich 2 Comments

(The following is an abbreviated transcription from a video I recorded with Jeff Brown. Please excuse any typos or errors.)

Hey guys, I’m excited today because I got to interview Jeff Brown about how to enjoy reading again (and why it is so important).

He is an author speaker and he runs this fantastic podcast called Read to Lead, which I highly recommend.

It’s been nominated for a lot of really great podcast awards.

Jeff’s really well known for a lot of things. He’s actually somebody who lives in Nashville or Franklin, TN… down south with me.

I recorded the discussion I had with Jeff that you can listen to on our Podcast, or you can opt to watch the video we recorded of our conversation on YouTube, which can be viewed just below.

But, if you would rather read the full transcription, you can do so here in this article! Enjoy.

Bob: Jeff, thank you for taking a few minutes to come to chat with us today.

Jeff: I am excited to be here.

Bob: Jeff just released his book, same name as the podcast called Read to Lead, and I’m really excited about it because I love reading. I actually have had to overcome a dislike for reading for a long time (and had to learn how to love reading books again). Because school unfortunately kind of beat it out of me. I was forced to read and forced to read things I didn’t like. And I learned to dislike reading. As I grew up and once I got out of school, I slowly found my way back into the benefits of reading.

So we’re just going to talk a little bit about that today. But anyway, Jeff, I want to ask you the question that might be obvious at this point, but what’s the single best thing that you can do to improve yourself professionally?

The single best thing that you can do to improve yourself professionally

Jeff: Well in my book, it’s definitely reading. And in my experience, mirrors yours tremendously. I had the desire to read, the desire to learn educated out of me by school and spent the better part of my twenties, not reading at all. It wasn’t until my early thirties, when I sort of had that fire that love for reading, I had as a child rekindle.

Sort of serendipitously through the efforts of the leader that I worked for at the time and Seth Godin. And I got introduced to Purple Cow back in 2003.

Bob: Yeah, great book.

The benefits of starting a reading journey

Jeff: Loved it. And, and my reading journey began really there as an adult. And I’ve been a voracious reader ever since then.

Bob: Yeah, that was what you started this podcast, what like eight years ago or something you’ve been doing this. You started falling in love with reading and started seeing the benefits of it. And that led you to start the podcast and ultimately write the book, right?

Jeff: Yeah. I didn’t know that it was going to become a book eventually, but after about 10 years of, of being a pretty avid, podcast was something that I wanted to explore, but for several years, I wasn’t really sure what I would podcast about (how to discover the wrk you were created for). I was like, what would people listen to me for?

Bob: Yeah.

Jeff: And as I was tracking my reading goals early one year, I guess it was 2013, I was adding up the books I had read three months into the year and realized I had read about a book a week. And that kind of surprised me. I didn’t realize I was reading at that pace until about three months into the year.

Bob: Yeah.

Jeff: And when I had that thought a light bulb went off. I thought maybe that’s the idea for the podcast I’ve been looking for. I love to read, I read every week, most of the podcasts I listened to were weekly podcasts. You know, I thought maybe I could get some free books out of it. And how cool would it be to have conversations with these authors and maybe through this process I could create a way, much you know, book summaries do, a sort of an audio CliffsNotes and, and be a way for people to have an on-ramp to books or audition books, if you will.

Bob: Yeah. I love that. That’s great.

So yeah, one of the things that I think you talk about in the book is why you need to read like your career depends on it. I have some thoughts on this, but I want to hear what you have to say about this.

Why you need to read like your career depends on it

Jeff: Yeah. I found in my personal career, my personal journey that my career didn’t begin to take off until I was practicing this habit. And I’ve found, and I think this is still the case 20 years later, that when you practice this habit you will be one of the few people doing it. And as I practiced it and began to then execute and experiment with what I was learning through the books I was reading.

The funny thing is, is the things that I tried that failed were quickly forgotten. But the things that I tried based on what I was reading that worked got me noticed. And as I got noticed, I got more and more opportunities to do more and more things.

Formal Education and it’s alternative

Bob: Yeah, that’s good. I went to school for business. I ended up getting a four year business degree. And so when I tell people that I run my own business, they’re like, oh, what’d you go to college for business. So, oh, okay. Well that makes sense. And I’m like, not, not really I know it seems like it, but in reality, if I look at any hints of success that I’ve had with anything in business, to be honest, it didn’t come from school.

It came from the books that I read after I graduated. The books that I paid $15 for or $20 for (and only $1 for some) instead of $150 textbooks (if you need textbooks, learn how to save money on them!). That were kind of outdated in my college curriculum and stuff. You know, and that’s what I’ve always tried to encourage people in. And it’s like the benefits of reading.

How reading improves your finances

Bob: And you know, we talk about finances a lot around here (we’ve even created courses and written books to help our readers!). So it’s been the same way with my financial journey. I was such a mess financially 15-20 years ago, but the books that I’ve read (outside of God’s grace) have been the number one catalyst that have moved us forward on our journey and helped us really just be in a completely different place than we were all those years ago.

So I’m a huge proponent and always advocating for people to just continue to read. And I know, you probably do too, some adults who haven’t read a book like in a decade. You know, and it’s so sad to me because it’s such a potential for growth, you know?

The easiest, cheapest and simplest way to further personal and professional development

Jeff: Yeah. And such a relatively easy one. It’s the easiest, cheapest, simplest way I know of to further your personal and professional development, you hinted at this, but, I’m a big fan of using books to create a curriculum for yourself rather than going back to school and spending all that money.

And I’ve done this a couple of times in my career related to you know, when social media was first coming on strong about 15 or so years ago, 17 years ago, whatever that was. And, and I was in a profession of radio where we were trying to sort of get a handle on what this means for our industry.

How is this going to disrupt us? How are we going to leverage these tools to, you know, more intimately connect with our listeners and all those kinds of things. I created a curriculum for myself and that was some of that experimentation I began doing that got me noticed.

And as that got me noticed, I began being asked to then go present to other factions within the company to share my findings. And so then I thought, well, now I need to read about public speaking because that’s not something I’ve done very much of. And that journey, that curriculum led me to aiding the president of the company in creating his presentation, that he would leverage to share his vision for the company, for the next 10 years.

Creating your own curriculum

Jeff: So none of those things would have happened, have been possible. Had I not been creating that curriculum for myself.

Bob: So what’s really cool about that, and I’m making an assumption here, but when you say you built this curriculum, (and I want to hear what it is) but how many books are in this curriculum that you built? Is this 50 books or was this five to 10?

Jeff: Yeah, it’s much fewer than you think. So in the first instance, probably three or four with regard to social media and social media marketing. And then in the case of public speaking, initially, it was just two. It was Garr Reynolds Presentation Zen, and it was Nancy Duarte slide:ology.

I started with presentation design because when I started I was fearful of public speaking. There weren’t any (at least not that I was aware of) books on that topic, specifically the fear of public speaking. So I deduced that, I would feel a lot more confident presenting if I felt good about my slides.

Bob: Yeah.

Jeff: And plus maybe they’d be looking at those instead of looking at me. I don’t think that’s necessarily great advice for public speaking necessarily, but for me at the time, that’s what I felt I needed. And so I started with those two books. Now, since then I’ve read probably 25 or 30 books on public speaking spanning the last 18-20 years.

Bob: Yeah.

Jeff: But in the early going, it was just a handful.

Minimal time investment

Bob: So what’s so cool, that I think most people miss, is that reading two books or three to four books isn’t a year long investment. This is literally something that you could do in a week. You can read two books in a week. You can spend 10-15 hours and knock out two books on a subject and have such an advantage over everyone else, in whatever your industry.

That’s what I love so much about the power of reading a good book. But, even any book. Just continue to expand your understanding because it just gives you such a head start. And I think most people think, “oh, I need to go get a four year degree to do this thing.” But you can literally read two books and they will set you apart from everyone else.

It will lead you down this path of becoming an expert in this thing you’re trying to achieve. And you continued to learn and continue to read, but that initial starting point is just not nearly as intense and as big a deal as I think a lot of people think.

Putting in the work after you read

Jeff: Yeah. There’s more work that comes after, in the actual doing you know, because it’s not enough to just read and fill your head with facts and knowledge. And if that’s all you do, you’re kind of wasting everybody’s time.

But once you start taking action on the executing, what you’ve learned and experimenting, as I talked about, that’s where the real work begins and where you truly are able to show off a little bit and and demonstrate your knowledge along the way.

Bob: Yeah, I love that. All right. So one of the things you talk about in the book is technique that you use to double or triple your reading speed. Can we talk about this?

How to double (or triple!) your reading speed

Jeff: Oh, sure. My co-author, Jesse Wisnewski is the expert when it comes to speed reading specifically. However one particular technique that we talk about in the book, but I’m particularly fond of, is quite useful when it comes to a reading non-fiction.

And that is this idea of skimming on the surface. Skimming sounds obvious, but there’s a technique to it. Again, related to non-fiction, that I think is pretty powerful. And so when it starts with non-fiction. I recommend that the first thing you do is begin with the end in mind, as Stephen R Covey is famous for saying.

Begin with the end in mind

Jeff: And that is, decide on a book you’re about to read. Why are you reading it? What is it that you want to get out of that book? What’s the goal of sitting down and reading it in the first place?

Write that down, identify that once you’ve done that. That now informs where you’re going to begin in that book, which isn’t necessarily with chapter number one, look at the table of contents and make a decision as to what chapter or chapters really seem to speak at this goal I’ve set for myself. The purpose I’m reading this book in the first place and start there.

And that may mean reading just three or four chapters from the book, and then you’re done because you’ve got what you needed. You got to the goal, you met the goal. From there, start at the beginning of one of these chapters and read just the headings and the subheadings, and go from beginning to the end of the chapter. And familiarize yourself with the points that the author is making in this particular section of the book.

And then go back to the beginning of that same chapter and allow yourself to read the first and last sentence from each paragraph. You’ll find once you’ve done that for that a whole chapter, you now are able to comprehend and even better retain what you read. Comprehend of course, but understand, retain, remember about 80% of the meat of that chapter.

That’s how most non-fiction books are typically structured in the way we structured our book. You can consume it in that way. Now long-term that’s not something that I would prescribe, especially for books that you do plan to take specific actions on. But in a pinch, in the 11th hour and you’ve got to get it done, you need to get through it that’s one great technique for doing that. And, again, you walk away with most of the key insights and main ideas in the process.

Benefits of speed reading

Bob: So there’s two thoughts that I have about this.

Number one, what I like about this is that I have a stack over here of probably 20-30 books that I want to get to. But I’m in that phase of life where I’m not able to read as much. And so that’s what I like about that is because some of these books, I don’t know if they’re great or not. But this technique allows me to move through quicker and evaluate.

And the second point that I think is really important for someone like me, who struggled with reading was another thing I was hung up on. I always felt, and this is because of school, that if I don’t read every page, every chapter, if I don’t finish the book, then I’ve failed. And I did not accomplish the reading goal (which was not helping me in learning how to love reading books again).

The freedom of not “having to” read an entire book

A hidden key to enjoy reading more

Bob: And that’s something just in the last few years, honestly, I begun to get some freedom on. I’m kind of doing what you’re talking about, where I will actually pick and choose chapters that I want to read. And sometimes I’ll go back and go through the whole book. But by giving myself the freedom to not have to read every page or every single chapter, it takes so much pressure off.

You know what I mean?

Jeff: Yeah, it does. And I believe I’ve gotten to the place finally, because I used to be just like that. What you’re talking about, I got to a place finally, where I give myself the freedom of going on Goodreads and marking that book as read. Even if it only means three or four chapters. Because again, I got out of it what I set to get out of it.

I think it’s okay. Then to mark that as one you’ve actually read. Read, doesn’t necessarily have to mean finished verbatim. Read can mean getting out of it what you set to get out of it.

Bob: Yeah. And that’s such a small and silly point for some people. But there’s plenty of us who are like, I don’t know if I should check it or not because I didn’t read every single page.

It feels good you know. And I just love having the permission to say yes. Yes, I read this book because I got out of it what I wanted to get out of it. It’s really liberating. You know what I mean?

Jeff: Yeah.

How to get in the habit of reading

Bob: So all this to say, I’d like to talk a little bit about the habit of reading and what this looks like for you. What you’ve learned.

You’ve been talking about this for a long time. How would you encourage someone who just doesn’t have a great reading habit to create a better reading habit.

Jeff: Well, I think the thing to think about at first is to start with what interests you. I think James Clear says in his book, Atomic Habits, if you read toward your interests (and I’m paraphrasing) you’ll never be bored.

And I think a lot of people miss that, they think that reading about things that interest them is somehow cheating. You know, I remember walking in and seeing my boss years ago at his desk reading and thinking that he was goofing off. That was my attitude toward him reading. And sometimes if it interests us, or if it’s not hard, but it’s enjoyable that it’s somehow cheating.

Let go of that.

Read what interests you – it’s the key to enjoy reading books

Jeff: So start with interest. Think about the people that fascinate you. The topics or disciplines or skills that fascinates you (). Maybe the places or the times in history that fascinates you and start there. And then that will prompt you to your interest, to branch out from there and going directions that you would have never have foreseen otherwise (you could read the Bible and learn fun ways to memorize scripture!)

So that’s where I’d begin. A lot of people say to me, “Jeff I want to be able to read a book a week or a book a month, and I just can’t seem to make that happen. How do you do it? How do you read a book a week?” And one of the first questions I’ll ask back to them sort of ingest is, “Hey, before we get to that, tell me about some of your favorite TV shows.” Because I’d love to know what some of those are.

And when they get to about TV show number three or four, they go, “Oh, I see. I see what you did there.” There might be some things you’re doing, that you do hours a day that are taking away from other opportunities to do more impactful things.

Scheduling the time

I’m not saying that watching television is bad, I’ve got my Netflix and Hulu and whatever subscriptions (yes you can still watch sports if you cut cable!), too. But I’ve also put reading as a place in my life of high enough importance that I actually schedule time to do it.

Now I was sharing that with somebody earlier this week and they were like, I love reading so much. I just do it without having to think about it. It’s the other things that I have to schedule the reading would get in the way of. And if that’s you, great.

But if you’re struggling with making reading a priority, my recommendation is to schedule it and protect it like you would any other meeting or appointment. Only then is it taking a place of importance it probably needs in your life.

And so when someone comes to me and asks for a piece of my time, if that time overlaps with time I’ve set aside to read, I can make a choice. I can decide to acquiesce and give up that reading time knowing I might make it up later or what have you. Or I can look at that on my schedule and go back to that person and say, “well, you know, I’ve got an appointment at that at that time. Can we do this a different time?”

So treat appointments with yourself, especially appointments having to do with reading, just like you would treat any other appointment.

Bob: Yeah.

It’s okay to say “no”

Jeff: And we’re in this mindset. I think a lot of us have, of when someone asks for our time, not that we shouldn’t be helpful and participate where we’re needed.

But oftentimes when someone asks for our time, we default to yes. And if we say, no, we feel like we have to defend no to that person when no can be a complete sentence. Surprise! And I think instead we need to learn to default to no. And if we are going to say yes, we need to be able to defend yes to ourselves.

Bob: That’s so good. I was thinking about, as you were saying, I was thinking about Stephen Covey, because you had mentioned him before. I’m trying to think of where I was going with that. But yeah, like this whole idea of. It’s just fascinating as we’re talking about this.

I’m just realizing, and working through all these things that I’ve developed in school that have affected my reading, which have, you know we’ve talked about the benefits of reading have affected the rest of my life because of some of these simple mindsets and some of these guilted things and you know, a little bit of a tangent here, but yeah, when we’re talking about scheduling things, I think there’s so many people who struggle with this.

Reading is important

Bob: Just this idea of, well… this is reading. This isn’t important.

And, circling back to Stephen Covey, just the idea of the big rocks versus the small rocks. You know, the things that aren’t urgent, but they’re actually really important. And reading is one of those things that should be, if we really want to advance and grow in our career and our business and our spiritual maturity or any other way. Readings should be part of that equation.

And so it is very important, even though it’s not urgent in most cases so many of us. Especially in the 21st century world where it’s just nonstop distractions. We default to whatever is urgent. And so we’re just running towards wherever the fires are and taking them out, rather than having the boldness to say “no, I’m busy. I can’t make this appointment because I’m reading.” And you don’t have to tell people that, but it can just be “I have an appointment.”

I have an appointment with myself to read. This is what I do on this day, at this time and schedule it.

Jeff: And I think the person who does not read, I’m going to say it arrogantly, a person who says I don’t need to read or I don’t want to read is basically saying I don’t need to think.

Bob: Wow. I love that.

Reading fiction is a good start to creating a reading habit

Bob: So, you know, one of the things I wanted to touch on because basically I feel like we’ve mostly been talking through the lens of non-fiction. And I’ve found some people that I’ve talked to, who I’ve tried to encourage more in the direction of reading and it might be different for each person, but I found that some people agreed reading fiction can be a better on ramp to the habit of reading.

Because essentially, what you’re doing is like you’re watching a movie. If it’s a great piece of fiction, you’re essentially watching a movie in your mind’s eye and then many times it’s more. It’s better than you could see on Netflix or anything else.

And so you get a really good fiction book. It gets hard to put it down and that can be a good on-ramp to the habit don’t you think?

Reading for improving creativity for empathy

Jeff: I absolutely agree. And I think it’s often missed in studies and research backs this up that reading fiction can be great for improving creativity for empathy.

You begin to see perspectives from the perspectives of different characters in a story. And these skills or these things that you read about these characters you read about, sometimes you don’t even realize what you’re learning, something from that reading and transferring it to real life.

Suddenly you have empathy for that person over there in part, because of that story. You read where there was someone in a similar situation that you had empathy for it. So, fiction is great for many of the soft skills to creativity and communication a chief among them.

Bob: Yeah. I personally do not read much fiction. And I want to read more. I just haven’t really developed a strong habit of doing it. But I’ve noticed, and I remember hearing, I forgot who, but a couple of different people talk about it. It seems logical that if you want to learn a skill, you should read nonfiction specifically teaching about this topic.

Fiction can inform and educate, too

Bob: But there are arguments presented that you can learn a lot of these lessons through fiction and in some cases a whole lot better through fiction. Through hearing a story. We all know how important stories are and getting us to remember and hang on to a concept or idea. So anyway, yeah. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Jeff: Well, I totally agree. I think fiction, as we were saying earlier, is often overlooked. You know, in non-fiction too doesn’t necessarily mean to that side of the equation. We tend to think that well reading non-fiction means I’ve got a to-do list whenever I finish, right?

Of these things to go out and execute. And I mentioned some of that earlier about the importance of taking action, what you’re learning. But sometimes we’re reading even non-fiction just for how it impacts our thinking. Right? It’s okay to read non-fiction and fiction for just how it impacts your thinking and not to have necessarily a to do list, that comes after.

The benefit of reading biographies

Bob: Yeah. And speaking of non-fiction, I think some people don’t think of in terms of non-fiction books, but like biographies. Where it’s essentially a story, but a real story. And I remember Andy Andrews, author who sold millions of books, talked about apparently he was homeless living on the beach and this was his on-ramp. He just started reading biography after biography of really successful men and women. And that just started affecting his thinking, just reading how some of these brilliant and really successful people in the past have thought.

And so there’s real power in that, even though it’s not a five steps to do this thing, just reading someone’s life and their journey and their story can be really powerful.

Jeff: It’s one of my favorite genres. I’ve read the Steve Jobs and Benjamin Franklin biographies written by Walter Isaacson. And another author who’s written a number of biographies on creative people. Speaking of which is Brian Jay Jones, and I’m reading a biography he wrote on the George Lucas. And he’s also written biographies on Theodore Geisel, Dr. Seuss, which I’ve read and Jim Henson from the Muppets among others.

Bob: That’s cool. That’s really great. Yeah. And that’s another area where I’ve read full biographies, but and every time I do, I can see some of their thinking seeping in. And so, yeah, I want more of that. I want to add more of that to my list. Jim Rome has a quote that I love. He said “the difference between where you are today and where you’ll be in five years from now will be found in the quality of the books you’ve read.” I’m like well said.

Jeff: Man, after my own heart.

Read To Lead Book

Bob: Yep. All right. So your book comes out August 31st, 2021, correct?

Jeff: Yeah, it’s readtoleadbook.com. If you’re able to pre-order, when you choose our publisher Baker Books as your vendor (as the place you order the book from), it’s 40% off from Baker, but that is only through August 31st (2021).

So if you’re hearing this before, then readtoleadbook.com get 40% off. And then the bonuses include a mini course that my coauthor, Jesse and I have put together. There’s a bonus chapter that wasn’t included. Not because it’s not good, but it wasn’t included because Jeff didn’t get it done in time. That has turned out to be my wife’s favorite chapter of all.

And so only the people who pre-ordered, the book are going to get that and you get the audio book for free. So if you’re an audio book fan, pre-order the physical book. Know that you’re going to get the audio book absolutely free! There’s some other stuff in there as well.

Bob: That’s awesome. All right, great. That’s cool. All right, so everybody run, check that out. And I appreciate you taking the time to come chat, so it was good hanging out. We should do it again.

Jeff: Well, thank you for having me. And I will add that if you’re interested in the book and it’s after August 31st, you can still get the introduction and the first chapter for free as well.

Bob: Okay.

Jeff: Thanks for having me, I really appreciate being here.

Bob: All right. Thanks Jeff. Take care.

If school made you hate reading, have you learned how to enjoy it again?

Let us know in the comments!

My Checklist To Financial Freedom (PDF)

September 15, 2021 By Bob Lotich 31 Comments

I am one of those people who loves checklists.

Especially when I want to make progress in a particular area but don’t exactly know what steps to take.

my personal financial checklist that you can download - PDF!

They tend to help me see the big picture a little bit clearer.

Below is my personal financial checklist that I have been following.

It covers many of the steps I have taken over the last decade that have helped me move from being a financial mess to having at least a little bit of an idea of what’s going on with my money.

Some of the listed items are bigger and will take a long time, and some of them are simple tasks that you can accomplish in a day.

Some will be relevant to your situation and some will not – that is why it is called “personal” finance – everyone’s situation is unique.

But, if you are just starting out and are trying to get yourself into a better position financially, I would suggest spending the next couple months checking off as many things on this list as possible.

If you do that you will be on your way to financial freedom!

Get my checklist to financial freedom (printable PDF) - its my 24-point personal financial checklist that has taken me to financial freedom!

Want to print this financial checklist?

You can download this checklist as a PDF and print it for your own use if you’d like.

NOTE: This is not a chronological step-by-step process, but like the title suggests it is just a checklist.

Some of the items can be done simultaneously, while others will require another item to be checked off first.

Hope it helps!

My Personal Checklist to Financial Freedom

✅ Begin tracking your AUM

This is commonly referred to as your Net Worth, but we stopped using that term and prefer the term AUM because we believe it is all His and we are just stewards managing what we have been trusted with. And that it is pretty insulting to define your total worth by a number.

But, all that said, tracking this number is the best way to measure your financial progress. So do it now if you haven’t yet. It might only take 10 minutes. Here is a quick video showing how.

✅ Start giving a percentage

Something. Anything. If you don’t have a dollar to your name, give your time. Just get the sowing and reaping process started.

Genesis 8:22 says as long as the earth remains there will always be seedtime and harvest and you can’t reap what you don’t sow. So just like a farmer wouldn’t expect crops without planting seed, we too must start sowing in the area that we want to reap.

Though it seems counter-intuitive (like many Biblical principles), giving is one of the best things you can do for your finances.

✅ Make a lifelong promise to yourself to spend less money than you earn

We could end this checklist right here and it would suffice.

Just about everything listed below falls into this category. Spending less than you earn is the key to wealth-building, and is the most important lesson when it comes to personal finance. You can do everything else right, but if you spend more money than you earn you will not be in a good financial position.

This is the simple rule that allows families living on a $40,000/year salary to retire with millions and that causes millionaires to go bankrupt. You have to commit and decide that you will not spend more money than you earn.

✅ Begin learning what the Bible has to say about money

The Bible really has a lot to say about our money. I wrote an article called 5 Bible Verses about Money that Every Christian Should Know and if that isn’t enough, here are 250 Bible Verses about Money to get a deeper dive.

✅ Find a budget you can stick with

Creating a budget can be as simple or as difficult as you make it. I love having a budget in place – contrary to what I thought before I tried it, it doesn’t feel like we are in handcuffs, but rather that we are more free to spend money in the areas we want to.

We have a bunch of free free budgeting spreadsheets for excel you can download, but if you really want the best budgeting solution I have found, take our quick course to learn the Real Money Method. It is by far the quickest and easiest to stick with approach I have ever seen.

Once we found this method that we could actually stick with, it instantly improved our marriage, has saved us thousands of dollars, and given us so much more peace with our money.

✅ Negotiate a better rate with credit card companies

While I was working to pay down my debt, I spent some time on the phone negotiating with my credit card companies to get a better interest rate.

It isn’t a guarantee, but I consistently would get off the phone with a better interest rate than when I called.

✅ Pay off all credit cards

Proverbs 22:7 says that the borrower is slave to the lender.

Having been both a slave and a free man in this area, I much prefer being free. A wonderful second benefit is that you can build wealth faster when you are out of debt.

Here is a 23-page guide I wrote on how to pay off credit card debt.

For paying off debts, I recommend the Debt Snowball Method. Te speed the process up I also transferred all my CC balances to get 0% on all my cards.

✅ Get the employer match on your 401(k) or 403(b)

If your employer has a matching program in your 401(k) or 403(b) (many of them do), you should try to take advantage of that if at all possible.

My former employer had a 100% matching program. So if I put in $500, they put in $500. That is a 100% return on my investment. It is free money and you don’t want to pass this up if at all possible.

✅ Build an emergency fund of $1,000 – $3,000

This was another thing that we did to give us a lot more peace with our finances.

It can be expected that unexpected things will happen. Creating an emergency fund is just proof that you are expecting them.

We have since used our emergency fund to save us even more money.

✅ Sell your junk and make it a habit

Way too many of us have way too much stuff. I recently read that the average U.S. household has over $7,000 worth of stuff that could be sold on Ebay or Facebook Marketplace. Not sure if it is true or not, but I have found from personal experience that we have a lot more than we realized.

In this article I show exactly how we made $2,145 in one month selling a bunch of our stuff from around the house.

A lot of it would never be missed if we got rid of it. Here is step-by-step instruction on how to sell on eBay if you have never done it before.

✅ Pay off car loans

I am convinced that the one of the biggest things that keeps the middle class Americans in the middle class is their insistence on spending way too much of their income on cars. And it doesn’t have to be that way.

You don’t always have a car payment. You can still drive fairly nice (and extremely reliable) cars without having a car payment.

Once we paid off the first one, we just kept “making the payment” to our savings account and watched the savings grow. Once we had enough saved we bought the next car with cash, and we have been doing it that way ever since.

For more inspiration read How Cars Affect Your Financial Freedom.

✅ Create a FLOP for your loved ones

Since I handle the finances in our family, I know a little more about what’s going on than Linda does.

I created this file, which I call our Financial Life on One Page (FLOP), as something that she could go to if I died prematurely. I combined it with our balance sheet (or AUM tracker) to make it one file that covers all the financial details that she would need if I were gone.

✅ Start giving 10% (if you aren’t already)

Giving 10% of your income (or tithing) is an important milestone. God was the original giver and we were created by Him to be givers as well.

We have witnessed so many miracles in our life in the area of giving and it also happens to be the only place in the Bible where God says it is okay to test him – see Malachi 3:10.

✅ Better organize your bank accounts

I discovered that having more than one checking account allowed us to manage our money much cleaner and with more efficiency.

Here is a little on how we used to organize our bank accounts. To see how we do it today, check out the Real Money Method course.

✅ Spend more on what you love by cutting spending on things you don’t

One of the things that most people fail to realize is that by cutting out the things you don’t really care about, you can free up more money to spend on what you love.

This requires you to question expenses, re-evaluate current mindsets, and possibly break bad habits, but it is worth it. I wrote about 25 ways to save money by not being “normal” which will get you started.

✅ Simplify your bill-paying process

I tend to be obsessed with efficiency. And I hate wasting time. So I created a simple system for paying my bills each month to make it fast as possible all while virtually guaranteeing that I never accidentally miss a payment. It made my life a lot easier and eliminated a lot of stress.

✅ Pay off student loans

Paying off our credit cards felt good, but man, getting those student loans off our back after all those years was such a relief.

For many of us it is a long hard road, but invite God in on our journey, and I believe you will see things move a lot quicker. Once you do read this article about how to get your student loans paid off faster and how you might be able to get your loans forgiven!

✅ Start investing in low-cost index funds in a Roth IRA

A financial mentor of mine told me that the “Roth IRA is a legal loophole that is too good to last.” He is convinced the government is going to shut it down at some point, but in the meantime, we have the ability to take advantage of it.

Here are some ideas of how you can get started investing today or if you want a step-by-step instruction (down to the buttons to press) we created our 10x Investing course just for you.

✅ Calculate your true hourly wage

This is a fantastic exercise to help you more accurately know what your time is worth and whether or not that job you have is worth it. Most people are blown away at home much they actually earn after factoring all the expenses that come with a normal job.

Try it here: How much are you really getting paid?

✅ Prayerfully set career goals

Following up on the previous task, is the current job worth it? It is going to help you reach your career goals?

If you continue doing what you are doing, where will you be in 5 years – or 20 years? Are you doing what you love?

If not, find someone doing what you want to do, take them out to lunch, and ask them how they did it.

✅ Create (or update) your will

Save your loved ones a headache and just do it. We have an article about how you can create a will in about 10 minutes and for free.

Just mark it on your calendar for this weekend and be done with it.

✅ Get life insurance

For most people I recommend buying term life insurance over whole life.

There are some cases where whole life can make sense, but generally term life insurance seems to be a better purchase for most people.

When I recently got another term policy I used Zander to get a term life insurance quote and was happy with the process. You can read more in my Zander Term Life Insurance Review.

✅ Pay off your house early

As part of getting out of debt, I want to live without a mortgage as well. Here are some ways to pay off your house early.

Just imagine your electric bill being the most expensive bill each month!

✅ Give beyond 10% (if you aren’t already)

The more I understand stewardship, the more I realize that every dollar that is in my bank account isn’t mine – it is all God’s.

A big part of being a good steward is understanding this and never letting money get a hold on us. I am convinced that the most fulfilled people in the world are those who are always looking for ways to give more of themselves.

Time, energy, or money – it is in our DNA to be givers and like the parable of the talents teaches us, if we are faithful with small amounts we will be entrusted with more.

God has led us on a journey of giving our age as a percentage of our income (currently 40%) which has stretched us, but the amazing blessings, miracles, and provision that we have seen since we began has been mindblowing.

We have found that R.G. LeTourneau’s words are true: “I shovel it out and God shovels it back. But God has a bigger shovel.”

The financial checklist

So this has been the checklist that we have followed to this point. Hopefully it serves as inspiration or a guide for you on your financial journey.

Please leave a comment below to say hi!

In Him,

Hiding purchases from your spouse? [Read this]

September 13, 2021 By Bob Lotich 4 Comments

(The following is an abbreviated transcription from a video Linda & I recorded. Please excuse any typos or errors.)

Are you hiding purchases from your spouse? Or, is this something your spouse may be doing?

Have you seen those memes where they are hiding the FedEx deliveries?

The FedEx guy shows up and you are taking that package and hiding it in your closet before your husband sees it.

Or do you have one of these doormats?

We put up a poll on Instagram (if you’re not following us, go follow us on Instagram @seedtime), but we put up a poll on our stories, asking people who’s done this and it’s more than half the people that responded said yes.

Before we share our story, Linda and I recorded our discussion that you can listen to on our Podcast, or you can watch our discussion below:

Linda’s addiction to Starbucks

Linda: I was hiding purchases, hard core, for a while with a Starbucks addiction. So I would basically go get my drink every single day. Sometimes I would pay cash so Bob really wouldn’t know. But I knew that he was seeing the bank statements.

how to stop hiding purchases from your spouse

I don’t know what I was actually thinking, but I was like, if he doesn’t see the cup, then there won’t be a conversation about it. And I even remember when we would be out, I got one every single time, guys. I think they put something in…

Bob: They put something in there. What do they put in there?

Linda: …but it makes you really HAVE to have it.

Bob: Yeah, it’s going to be like the cigarette companies. When you find out, wait a minute, it’s addictive.

Linda: Yeah. It’s addictive. But anyway, so we’d be out, you know, running errands on a Saturday and I’d mumble, “can I go to Starbucks?” And he’s like, what? What? I just didn’t want to talk about it. It was it was kind of a problem I had. But also, I was just like, I don’t need to hear about it.

Bob: Okay. But I don’t know, like I have not always been a perfect spouse. I don’t know if I was…

Linda: Not always, but you are now?

Judging your spouse makes you unapproachable

Bob: But now I am. I don’t know if I was overbearing at any point that helped make you feel like you couldn’t talk about it.

Linda: I’m sure there was an element of that.

Bob: I’m sorry if I was. But you had more going on than just that, right? It wasn’t like I was screaming at you every time you went to Starbucks.

Linda: Oh, no no no. For sure. For sure. I don’t think you ever screamed at me. I don’t think you are ever really that upset. For us, we are kind of on the health, what would you call that?

Bob: The healthy food spectrum? Is that a spectrum that we can be on?

Linda: And Bob would be like, this stuff is terrible for you. He’s like you shouldn’t. And then I thought, well, I’m spending all my money on Starbucks. Even if he didn’t project any of this, which I honestly don’t remember, I felt so much judgment for spending my money at Starbucks every day.

Bob: Well, and at this point, yeah I we were pretty tight financially too at this point.

Linda: No, no, no. This was later when we were…

Bob: This is when we were super rich, later on?

Linda: No, but I know we’ve talked about before. Our spend money, this was coming out of my spending money. So this addiction wasn’t directly affecting him, but…

Bob: Well this is a tangent we should take. Yeah, if you don’t have… Your hair looks great, honey.

Linda: Thanks.

The two budget categories that married couples must have

Bob: If you’re married and you don’t have personal spending money, if you have all your money in one big bucket, like please you, your marriage is going to be so much better if you create separate categories. Really what you need to do is you need to get our Real Money Method and do that.

But even if you don’t do that, just break out separate spending categories for each of you. We did this when we first did this 15 years ago and it changed our marriage.

The number of fights that we went from having to not having it was mind blowing. Just because of this…

Linda: Right.

Bob: …insanely simple thing of breaking out two buckets. This is Linda’s money that she can do whatever she wants with and I don’t care what she does with it.

Linda: My Starbucks addiction was coming out of my separate category. And I was spending it all on green tea frappuccinos with a quarter of the ice.

Bob: So I didn’t really care.

Linda: It wasn’t like I was taking our rent money and spending it on my green tea frappuccino. But he really wasn’t affected by this.

The addictive green tea frappuccino

Bob: Why don’t you tell them what it was like? So, Linda, this is really funny. If anybody’s worked at Starbucks, she would get a green tea frappuccino with not half, but one quarter of the ice.

Linda: I was like, they would make it with light ice. And I was like, they took out two ice cubes. I want this a quarter of the ice. Cause I, it was, it was more like a milkshake it was so good.

Bob: So yeah, so she would do this, get a quarter of the ice, but then they would feel obligated to fill it up. And so what that meant is they just basically dumped more of this simple sugary syrup in there.

Linda: Or milk. So yeah, it was super sugary.

Bob: And you loved it, it was great. It’s like liquid fudge, like that intense.

Linda: Except for it was like the, the macha. Yes. But anyway, that’s neither here nor there.

How to stop hiding things from your spouse

Linda: The point is I was trying to hide this from him. And so even though there’s a part of it, that is really kind of funny, I think, because it’s so relatable. I started realizing, is this a problem that I’m hiding something from my husband?

This was the question I started to ask myself.

Bob: It’s a good question to ask.

Linda: I just was wondering if I’m hiding this from him, would it be easy to hide other things from him and how would I feel if he was hiding things from me?

Help from the Holy Spirit

So I just started going down this path, just because I felt like I wasn’t really being honest with him and maybe there was something in there that I was just getting convicted, by the Holy Spirit.

It’s like, maybe this isn’t the best approach. That was how I got to this conclusion of, maybe I should just stop hiding this.

Being honest with yourself

But then as I started going down this path and start trying to just be a little bit more honest and open and not care. Like, honestly, I was just trying to not care if he saw the container. But. What I started to realize about myself is that I was actually super shameful about it. And I think this is the part where maybe it doesn’t get…

Bob: Shameful about…

Linda: …talked about much.

Bob: …about the addiction, about the spending, like what specifically?

Linda: I think it was just something that I felt like I was caught doing. Which is silly because he’s my husband. He’s not my parent. You do, you know what I mean?

It was just this trigger of if he catches me, I’m going to get in trouble. And maybe it was because it was something I knew I didn’t like about myself. I knew I could hear his words and I knew he was right. That this addiction and hiding my purchases from him is not the best thing for me.

I could see it in my body. Where I was like, this is not great for me. I was getting a ton of migraines and every time I get a migraine, I was like, oh man, is he going to bring it up? I’m pretty sure that I had an excessive amount of migraines due to this addiction.

Acknowledging the problem and finding how to solve it

Linda: I already knew it, but it was a problem that I did not know how to change or solve. And so the more it got brought up, the worse I felt about it. Does that make sense? So it was just like this, this whole ball of all these different things wrapped up in shame.

How your spouse can help

Bob: So what from your perspective about me, what did I do, right? What did I do wrong in any of these situations? What would you have done differently? Or what would you coach someone like me to do and to handle it?

Linda: I did tell you at one point, I was like, please just stop talking to me about this.

I think it took me years to get to the point where I just said, please stop talking to me about this. I understand. I just don’t know how to change.

Bob: So what’s funny about this is I’ve had a nail biting habit for a long, long time. And I’ve come into the same thing where there are seasons where I fight it and try to break it.

But then I’m really working on trying to break this habit or addiction or whatever, we’ll call it. Where it’s like, I want your support. I want your reminders. And then there’s other times where it’s like, I’m just too…

Linda: Because he wears like a shock collar, but it’s a bracelet.

Bob: We can talk about that. It’s called Pavlok for anybody, wants to look it up.

Linda: It’s created for breaking habits.

Knowing when to help, and how to help

Bob: But anyway, there’s times where it’s like, I’m in the fight. Yes. I want the support. And those are times where it’s like, I can’t, I’m not in the mindset, the frame of mind to fight that battle right now. So I don’t need you to…

Linda: Make me feel bad about it.

Bob: Yeah… keep bugging me about this thing.

Linda: Because it’s not helping me change. It’s just making me angry. And it’s just making me frustrated, making me feel more shameful or whatever the emotion is.

Bob: Yeah. So that, to me, based on what we’re saying, that sounds like a topic for conversation, between husband and wife. Where are you on the spectrum? Like, are you trying right now or not? And it’s like, no guilt or shame if you’re not. But I just need to know how can I help you and support you, right?

Linda: Right. Yes. And I do think that you were good about that. And I think once I finally came to that, where it was like, I just needed to know, I can’t do this on my own. I’m not in a place where I even really want to try. I know it’s wrong. And that’s where I’m like, can you please just drive to Starbucks and let me get my drink?

How to find your breakthrough

Bob: Yeah. So I think it’s worth talking about how you got out of this, which is God’s grace.

Linda: It’s God’s grace. It’s a hundred percent God’s grace because I was literally walking down the street on my way to get one. We came to visit downtown Franklin. We stayed in a cute little AirBnb in downtown Franklin, so I could walk into the downtown area and they had a Starbucks right there.

Bob: Franklin, Tennessee for anybody who’s curious.

Linda: Franklin, Tennessee. Yes. It’s great. You should totally come visit or come live here.

Bob: We don’t need anybody else to live here. There’s too many people here.

Take your struggles to God

Linda: Anyway. So I was on my way walking down and I don’t know, I don’t understand what, but I felt this thing inside me go just don’t get one. And I was like, okay. And I’m not kidding from that moment on, I just have not gotten one. And it has not had a hold on me the way it did before.

Bob: So God broke the thing off of you basically.

Linda: Literally just broke it and I prayed for years. Like, I don’t want to want these, please make it so I don’t want them. But I, I lacked the willpower to actually quit.

Bob: Yeah.

Realizing the affects of the addiction

Linda: I do remember at one point you told me, “do you know how much you’re spending a month on Starbucks? Do you know that it’s this much day, which is this much a week, which is this month, that much a month and this much a year.” And I was like, oh my gosh, are you kidding me? It definitely added this, well what can I do instead. It gave me some incentive to try and think of some other methods.

Bob: Having the information…

Linda: Having the information.

Bob: Like being able to see what’s actually happening.

Finding freedom and healing

Linda: What I got from this is that there’s actually freedom from addiction and hiding it is keeping the freedom and the healing from happening in your heart.

And so I honestly didn’t get to the point where I had this thing break off of me until I was very open with Bob about it. “‘m going to go get Starbucks today. Can you take me or we’re going together? Can we go stop over there?”

Bob: Yeah. That’s a really interesting point that you had to admit it, acknowledge it. Be honest about the thing that, that had happened before the breakthrough kind of came.

Linda: Yeah.

Bob: That’s really interesting. I never thought of it that way.

Your spouse cares about you and wants to help you through your struggle

Linda: And I do appreciate that when I would say, just leave me alone about it. You really would leave me alone. Cause I knew you knew it was a problem. Like you can see it from the outside. You know what I mean?

Bob: I care about you. You know, the financial component again, like I said, it was your spending money, so I just didn’t care as much. It wasn’t affecting our household finances as much. But yeah, I cared about you. Anything that we’re addicted to is not good. We shouldn’t have any other masters other than Jesus, you know? So yeah, so I want to live where nothing is in control. I’m not a slave to anything.

Linda: Yes.

Bob: And I want the same for you.

Linda: Absolutely.

Open communication is key

Linda: So, I think anyone listening to this, if you’re married or even if you’re not, and you have this problem, I think it would be great to go and open up to someone about this or preferably your spouse.

But also, if you are the person who someone comes to you, have a ton of grace, as much as you can possibly muster. To be able to just hear them and not have to, you know, ride their case about it or get on them about it. Or every time you see them doing something, it’s like, oh, well, there you go again.

You said you didn’t want to do that anymore. And here you go. There’s a way to just even when you are biting your nails, I’ll just kind of do this. Sometimes take my hand away because sometimes you don’t want the help. And I think it’s okay that sometimes you’re not in that place.

And also that you can just pray and ask God for breakthrough in this area. Right?

Bob: Yeah.

Throwing a brick vs. writing a letter

Bob: I was just, I forgot what book it was in. I was reading a book yesterday and the woman used an illustration about communicating hard messages that I’m like, that’s great illustration. And she basically said, you can take a brick and write a message on it and throw it through someone’s window.

Or you can write them a letter and send it to it. You can communicate a message both ways, but they’re received very, very differently. And the outcome of each action is going to be very, very different.

And so you know, and I think we all know this. If we’re married, having grace, communicating difficult things in a kind tone works so much better than anger and frustration and everything else, but yeah.

Linda: Yeah. There you go.

Bob: Write a letter, don’t throw a brick through a window.

Should Christians chase financial independence (FIRE)?

August 30, 2021 By Bob Lotich Leave a Comment

(The following is an abbreviated transcription from a video Linda and I recorded. Please excuse any typos or errors.)

Today we are talking about financial independence, retiring early, and whether or not this is what Christians should be chasing after.

Have you heard of F.I.R.E. before?

In case you haven’t heard of this term, that’s the acronym: Financial Independence & Retiring Early.

Before we get into all the details and discuss if Christians chase after financial independence, Linda and I recorded our discussion that you can listen to on our Podcast or watch below if you’d rather hear our discussion.

Or, you read the full transcription below:

What is F.I.R.E.?

Bob: It’s a pretty big movement in the personal finance space, if you’re nerdy and curious. And so there’s a lot of people who are just obsessed with this goal. Reaching financial independence and wanting to retire early. And financial independence, being the point where you have enough assets, generate an income for you, that you can live off of that. Rather than needing to have a job. That’s pretty attractive.

Linda: So is this normally longterm? They’re like, I retired at 35 and then I never work again.

Bob: Yeah. If you play your cards right. And do it right.

Linda: That is impressive. And so we’re going to do another podcast where we talk or break down the numbers of how to actually retire in 10-15 years.

Bob: So you can look out for that one.

Questions You Should Ask Yourself About Your Financial Goals

Bob: But now I want to talk about first, should we do this? Is this something we should chase after? And I think there’s a few key questions we should be asking to determine whether or not this is something we should be chasing after. So for any financial goal that I go after there are three questions that I like to ask myself about this.

1. Why Do You Want To Achieve this Financial Goal?

Bob: So number one, as I try to ask myself, honestly. Or get an honest response out of myself. Why do I want to achieve this goal? Whatever it is. If it’s paying off debt, if it’s saving for retirement, if it’s saving for my college or my kid’s college, if it’s becoming financially independent, if it’s retiring early, like why do I want that?

What is the motivation? And I’ve known for myself sometimes that motivation isn’t what it should be. Sometimes it’s I want to get to the point where I don’t need to depend on God anymore. Where I have enough money in the bank account that I don’t need God.

Linda: Right.

Bob: If I’m being completely honest. And that’s not what I want my response to be, but I’ve found what I’ve asked myself questions in certain things that sometimes that’s the answer. And if that’s the reason I’m chasing it, then that’s a problem.

Linda: Right. Yeah. I mean, it’s the deceitfulness of riches, right? You don’t have to be wealthy and you don’t have to be poor in order to be caught in the middle of this deceitfulness of riches. Which is basically that money is more important than God. Really, that’s essentially what it is. You’re putting more value in the money.

Bob: Yeah.

Linda: And so, yeah, I mean, I think that’s a good question to ask, just to keep our hearts pure. Because money is just a tool. We need to see it as just a tool and that our source is really God. Right?

Bob: Yeah, exactly. And so that’s the thing it’s like anytime we find ourselves trying to, and CS Lewis has a great quote talking about this, but anytime we find ourselves trying to replace our need for God, with something. Including money.

Linda: Right.

Bob: We’re heading down the wrong path, you know what I mean? So that’s the first question that I like to ask.

2. Will achieving this financial goal honor God?

Bob: The second question is, do I want to achieve this goal, to honor God or is it because I want to reduce my dependence on him. And if it’s to honor God in some way, if that’s the intention behind it, if that’s the pure heart motivation behind it then that’s a good thing.

That’s, that means you might be headed in a good path.

Linda: Okay. So that CS Lewis quote that he was talking about, it says:

“All that we call human history: money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery is the long, terrible story of man trying to find something other than God, which will make him happy.”

It is really true. I mean…

Bob: Yep.

Linda: I feel like it keeps happening. It keeps coming up over and over again. And I find myself doing it, where I see an outfit in the store window. I think, if I could just have that…

Bob: That’s gonna do it.

Linda: …my life will be complete. And. I, get the outfit and guess what? My life isn’t complete.

Bob: It’s like drinking salt water, right?

Linda: It is. It’s well, now I gotta have more. Now I need shoes to go with it. Oh. And I need some new jewelry and it just, it keeps going.

Bob: Yeah.

Linda: And then by the time I get all the stuff that I want for it, I need something else. I’m ready to buy something else.

Bob: Yeah. And so this is I think we’ve talked about this before, but. Debt elimination can become an idol. And I’ve talked to many people who have kind of struggled with that, where it becomes such an idol in their life that…

Linda: That when they pay it off, they’re not satisfied.

Bob: Exactly. I mean, it’s a biblical, and really solid goal to chase after. It makes a lot of sense, but that’s the amazing thing. We can try to replace God with anything. And if we think, man, once I get that debt paid off, I’ll be self-sufficient and I won’t need to depend on God. And some of this stuff is not like conscious thoughts that you’re thinking.

Some of it’s just like really, subtle stuff. So far down in your heart that only God can actually show you it’s there.

Linda: Well I mean, I think the whole thing about the enemy, the devil is that he tries to take the things that God put in us for a purpose and for a calling. And so that we can do what he has for us to do on the earth. Be the hands and feet of Jesus in whatever capacity that is.

And he tries to take it and ruin it and twist it so that it’s no longer a blessing. And then you see this thing in your life. And you think, oh, well, I’ve got to get that under control and I have to shut it up because it’s not godly when it actually is godly. It just needs to be submitted.

Bob: Yeah.

Linda: There’s lots of examples of this. But I mean, just even debt or I think giving was one for us, whereas God has called us to be givers. That’s fine. Everybody has their own calling and their own gift. And I noticed there were times when I think we started to turn it into a little bit of an idol. And it was like something that God had called us to, and it was starting to get ruined because our hearts were looking at that instead of looking at God.

Bob: Yeah.

Linda: And we kind of had a few talks about it, where it’s just are we, is this just because we want to appear we’re really good at giving?

Or is this because we are actually submitted to the Lord?

Bob: Yeah.

Linda: Right?

Bob: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Linda: So, we’re continuing to ask these questions all the time. I think just because the enemy loves to steal, kill and destroy, he’s trying to steal the gift that God has given us. And to kill the purpose that we have.

And destroy others lives because we can’t keep ourselves in check. Right? That’s what the fruit of the spirit is for.

3. Can I be content in God, if I never achieve this financial goal?

Bob: Yeah. So the third question is, can I be content in him if I never achieved this goal? And that is a tough one because can I be content if we never… we’re out of debt, now we’re a hundred percent debt free, but can I be content in him if we never pay off her debt? Or what if we never own a house. Whatever that thing is, for you.

Linda: Right. The question right there is can I be content in him? I think it’s when we are looking at everything else. That we can’t answer that question the way we should. Or the way we want to be able to is because we’re saying: well but the house isn’t paid off, or that we’re not out of debt yet, or we’re not even in a house, whatever the thing may be.

We’re looking at that too much. And if we are just submitted to God’s will and submitted to what he wants and we are seeking first, the kingdom of God and his righteousness, then all the other stuff is kind of in the background. And it doesn’t really matter that much.

I think about when we’re cooking and we put the things that are least important, like on the back burner. We’re like, let’s throw the peas on the back. We’ll put them on low they’re frozen. Believe them there for a while. They’re low maintenance, right? Like they don’t need much attention. But the things that are in front of us are the ones that we need to be attending to. And I think it’s the same thing with God. Like he needs to be the one on the front burner.

He needs the one that we’re paying the most attention to. And those other things, maybe they’re still there and they might need a little bit of attention, but they should not be getting the same amount of attention.

Bob: Yeah.

Linda: As the potatoes that are about to boil over type of thing.

Bob: Yeah. All right.

Following the financial path God is leading you on

Bob: So now let’s talk about this back to F.I.R.E., and I’ll talk about me personally with it. I’m a money nerd and I’m really interested in this idea of financial independence and having our investments generate enough income for us to live off of. That sounds really enticing and exciting to me, it sounds great.

Linda: Yeah.

Bob: To be able to free us up more time, to be able to focus on what God’s called us to do, I love that. But God has called us to give our age as a percentage of our income.

And so right now, that means 40% of our income. And what that means is that we just have a lot less financial energy to this goal of early retirement.

Linda: Right.

Bob: You know what I mean? If we weren’t giving that much, we’d be able to do that. But I know for us personally, we are supposed to give more. So that is our number one priority. That is the highest and best use of our financial energy.

Big and “small” paths are equally important

Bob: And for someone else, it might be different. Like it might be that God is leading you to this path of financial independence so that whatever you can go be in the mission field for the next 20 years or whatever the thing may be. But yeah.

Linda: Take care of your grandkids and help raise them, or there’s a million different scenarios. It doesn’t have to be. I think sometimes we think that the thing that the Lord has for us to do has to be this really big, I’ll be on the mission field. Which I think is a good example because it’s easy to understand and relate to. But I think that there are a whole lot of other things…

Bob: Yep, absolutely.

Linda: …God has us to do right in our own backyard. Or even just in our home that needs to be done. Right now, honestly, our kids are downstairs. We have a sweet woman from our church who comes once a week and takes care of our kids so we can work.

And she does not charge us. This is her ministry to us. What a beautiful thing that is. And we are so grateful to her, but it’s like what a great thing that she’s able to do that. Right?

Bob: Yeah.

Linda: And I think there’s a whole lot of stuff like that yeah, God is calling people to do.

The need for Christians to have strong financial footing

Bob: Yeah and I would love to see more of the body of Christ in a position to be able to do that and not have to be a slave to a nine to five.

And to all the creditor companies and all this debt that we’ve all accumulated. Like that is so enticing to me. Like how do we get more of the church to break out of that and to break into a really strong financial footing. To be more freed up, to do what God has called them and led them to do.

Linda: Right. Yeah, and I think this is the problem with what the personal finance space has done to this F.I.R.E. thing is because it’s made it very selfish. And I think that’s why we’re even asking this question. I don’t think that this is wrong or right. I think it depends on what God has for you to do.

Bob: Exactly.

Linda: This is not right for us right now. Our main goal is giving our age as a percentage.

Bob: Yeah. I mean, but that said this is still a secondary goal that I would like to reach. It’s just not our number one priority. And so it’s not going to cut into our giving because this is the thing we know we’re supposed to do.

Linda: Right.

Bob: That makes sense?

Linda: Yeah.

Bob: Like I would love to be able to reach that at some point, but. And we’re doing things in terms of our investments, in terms of our income and continuing to use the extra that we have outside of the giving to move in that direction.But…

Linda: Yeah. …

Bob: ….like I said, we’re moving a good bit slower because of our giving percentage at this point.

Linda: Yeah, and that’s okay.

The negative side effect of retiring early

Bob: Yeah. Another thing that’s worth mentioning here is that I have a good number of friends who have sold businesses for significant amounts of money. Sums that allowed them to instantly retire early. And I would say that if I looked at most of their lives and had an honest conversation with most of them. Not all, but most of them. I think most of them would say financial independence and retiring early is not as satisfying as you might think.

Linda: It’s interesting.

Bob: Which is I think a big shock and surprise to some people. But I’ve seen this pattern play a lot out with a lot of different people. So immediately it happens. It’s great. And then you go buy a sports car and then you go maybe buy a bigger house and you do all these things. And it’s oh, this is really fun.

I go on vacation for three weeks. You do all this stuff and it’s fun for a month or two or something like that. But a couple years in many of them seem to be wandering and trying to figure out what’s my purpose now. And I think that’s something to consider.

Finding purpose for your money after early retirement

Linda: What’s interesting is I think about Elon Musk because didn’t he get a big chunk of change? What did he sell?

Bob: PayPal.

Linda: Okay. So PayPal.

Bob: I think he walked away, I want to say walk with 10 or 12 million from that sale.

Linda: Not bad. He probably could have done a lot with that. But instead he was like, What, am I going to do if I just sit here with a bunch of money?

Bob: I could be way off on those numbers, but he walked away with a significant amount. But I think where you’re going is, he ended up reinvesting every penny had back into SpaceX.

Linda: Was it SpaceX or Tesla?

Bob: Probably both, but SpaceX was the one that it was all or nothing. Like the third shuttle launch, the first two failed. And the third one, if it would have failed, he would have been penniless.

Linda: Yeah. I thought it was more than 10 or 12 million.

Bob: No, it might’ve been way more. I don’t remember the exact numbers.

Linda: But a lot of money. Let’s just say enough to do nothing for, at least for a while. Right?

Bob: Yeah.

Linda: I just think that’s interesting that he was like, it was not in him to just sit around and spend money. He was like, I have to do something. So I like that. I think that’s what God has called us to.

I think the idea of retiring at all is just the, world’s way of saying something that maybe God has for us. But in a selfish way.

So what are you going to do in your retirement? Really? Is the question that I have. Is it really just about you at that point? Or are you looking for, what does God have for me in this next season?

Struggling and feeling unsatisfied when lacking work

Bob: Yeah. So another just anecdotal thing is if you’ve read the book Four Hour Work Week, or heard about Four Hour Work Week. I read this book in 2008, maybe.

Linda: And it changed your life.

Bob: And it did.

Linda: Yeah.

Bob: I got inspired and it sent me on a path. I basically built my business with this in mind. And couple years later, I essentially found myself with a four hour work week and I have this really passive business that.

I can go do whatever I want whenever I want. So I wasn’t financially independent, but I was time independent. And I had a very low maintenance, passive business. For a few months, this was amazing. I loved it.

Linda: It was great.

Bob: But in a few years, I found myself just really struggling.

Linda: Bored. Unmotivated.

Bob: Just lacking and, really unsatisfied. I think that’s what it comes down to just feeling very, unsatisfied. I have this thing that everybody dreams about and wants. But it just isn’t satisfying.

We are wired to work

Bob: And I think the thing is that God designed us to work. God designed us to work from the beginning. Like you should go, just do a study on all the Bible verses about work.

This has always been part of God’s plan. And it’s in us, we’re wired to work. And if we don’t have that. If we’re not actually putting our hand to something you get weird really fast. You know what I mean?

Linda: Yeah.

Bob: And so it’s just part of who we’re supposed to be.

Enjoying the season we are in

Linda: And I kind of liked that it was there for a season. You know what I mean? It’s like we…

Bob: For us to experience it.

Linda: Yeah, we experienced that for a little while we enjoyed it while it was there and then it was gone, then it was over, you know what I mean? And I, think it’s just something that I really love about God is just something that you are finding purpose in, maybe at that point in time. That was something you were working towards and you finally got the reward of it. And it was great.

We enjoyed it while it was there. And then it was not the end of the road for us. We need more than this. And so we continued on the journey and didn’t just sit there and just go, well, just give up. He, takes you on a journey and a path and it goes, winds through all these roads and different scenery.

Our purpose and motivation changes

Bob: Yeah, to be honest, we’re in the same business. It just looks different. You know what I mean? Because the motivation is different. And so before, all of the motivation was how can I do as little work as possible and get paid as long as I can.

And whereas now we’re focused on impact. It’s like, how can we have more impact in people’s lives? And in just changing that question, has changed really, I think our fulfillment and what we do.

Linda: Yeah.

Bob: And the impact that we’re making for sure, because we’re seeking first impact rather than how can we live as passive lifestyle as possible. Like it just changes things. It’s like we get different emails from people now than we did then. We get more emails of my life has been changed because of your course or because of this. That stuff feels really, good and very satisfying, knowing that you’re going to take part in what God has….

Linda: Right.

Bob: … planned and you get to be part of that equation. It’s really, good.

Summary

Bob: So summing all this up. Should Christians chase after F.I.R.E., and being financially independent, retiring early.

I think you should know by now my answer is not yes or no. It depends. You know what I mean?

It depends on your situation and this is something that you need to pray and you need to spend time with God, but go back and ask yourself those questions.

And I’ll just read over them one more time to leave you with them.

Ask yourself, honestly and ask the Lord to reveal in your heart, this answer, because sometimes you can’t see it yourself. Why do you want to achieve the goal? What is the actual root cause and desire of wanting to achieve the goal?

Is it to honor God or to reduce your dependence on him? And can you be content if you never achieve the goal?

And so I would apply those questions to every financial goal that you have. I think it’s worth asking for each one of them, but I think that helps you get a clear mind and direction on whether or not you should be chasing whatever that goal is.

So with that, have a great rest of the day. If you need it, know anybody who needs this, go ahead and share that with them.

Chase Sapphire Preferred benefits (our review after 8 years of using it)

August 24, 2021 By Bob Lotich 5 Comments

The Chase Sapphire Preferred Card Overview

The Cha se Sapphire Preferred Card has been around for over a decade and is consistently listed as a top pick for a credit card that gives fantastic rewards.

i've tried 34 credit cards and this is my favorite

I have personally used it for over 8 years now and it has been the primary card I used to get over 100 hotel nights and 100 flights for free.

It’s a great card for those who are looking to travel for free, but it also has a cashback option that allows you to convert points for cash back as well.

I’ve tried 34 credit cards and this is my favorite

Over the years of running this website and being the money nerd I am, I’ve literally opened 34 different credit cards and tested them out.

And from that I learned a lot and ultimately decided that if I were only going to have one credit card, this is it.

If I were going to use 2 credit cards (which we do), the other one would be the Chase Freedom Unlimited.

Chase sapphire preferred vs Chase freedom unlimited

Like I mentioned if I am only going to have one card in my wallet, the CSP is my top pick, but at the moment I have a 2nd spot in my wallet that the Chase Freedom Unlimited fills.

There are 2 things that Freedom Unlimited does better than the Sapphire Preferred.

It has a $0 annual fee (vs $95)
It pays 1.5 points per dollar spent on everyday purchases (vs 1 point with CSP)

So I can earn Chase points a bit faster with the Chase Freedom Unlimited.

And the points can be combined for each of these cards in the Chase Ultimate rewards portal.

If you only look at the earning rate, the Freedom Unlimited card looks like the one to go with.

But the Sapphire Preferred has a lot of extra benefits:

The biggest one being the perks of being able to transfer your points to a bunch of other travel partners (like Hyatt, Southwest, United Airlines, Marriot, IHG).

Here are just a few of the options:

I go into this in much more detail in our article about how we travel free, but suffice it to say, if you want to travel free the Sapphire Preferred is the card to get. If cash back is your only goal, and you don’t travel, then go with the Freedom Unlimited.

Other fantastic perks the Sapphire Preferred offers:

extended warranty and purchase protection
no foreign transaction fees
primary auto rental insurance
baggage delay reimbursement
trip delay reimbursement
lost luggage insurance
trip cancellation and trip interruption insurance

chase sapphire preferred credit card review

These benefits can really help you save money and get peace of mind as you travel, no matter how frequently you do so. If you use your card to pay for travel expenses, you can call on these benefits in case something goes wrong.

For example, the Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver can make car rentals cheaper because you can decline the rental company’s fee for this service.

If, God forbid, there is damage to your rental car, you can submit the claim directly to Chase instead of going through your personal insurance company.

Booking your travel with your card can also help you breathe easier as you make your plans. This card offers trip cancellation insurance of up to $10,000 and trip delay insurance of up to $500 per ticket.

And if your baggage is delayed or lost, you can receive up to $100 per day for five days (to buy what you need until your bag is retrieved) or up to $3,000 to replace what was lost.

Many credit cards offer Zero Liability Protection, and the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card is no exception.

All that to say, even though we don’t travel as much as we used to, this card is still my favorite by a longshot.

Oh and then there is the insane signup bonus they are currently offering…

The Chase Sapphire 60k point bonus

The 60k signup bonus points equates to $6,000 cashback or up to $750 in travel if you book on the Chase website (which by the way, I’ve found tends to actually have pretty good deals to boot.)

Like I mentioned, the card has a $95 annual fee, but for us the signup bonus pays for that so many times over, that I don’t even care. The benefits I get from this card so far outweigh the annual fee that it is an afterthought for me.

So Who Should Get the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card?

This credit card is a great one for travelers, considering all the travel benefits included. Not to mention, the highest points earning categories and redemption categories fall under the travel umbrella.

But it really is a great all-around card because it has so many perks like extended warranties and purchase protection.

And then when you add in the fact that you can do an endless number of things with the points, it ends up just being a fantastic all-around-card.

The screenshot below is from the Chase portal where you can use your points.

You can use them at Amazon, Apple, get cash back, buy dinner at a nice restaurant, book a hotel or flight, transfer them to other programs, or even book unique experiences like taking a flight in a fighter jet. Yes you read that right.

It’s also a good one to start with

If you’re new to the world of earning points by using a credit card, this is a great one to get you started.

The annual fee is relatively low, especially in comparison to the points earning opportunities you’ll have available to you.

There are other cards out there that have fancier travel benefits, but they also typically carry higher annual fees.

If you are hesitant about paying an annual fee for a credit card, don’t worry – there are other options out there for a cash-back credit card with no fees. This just isn’t it and you’ll want to look elsewhere.

But if you’re interested in finding out more about this card, let’s get going!

Requirements to get the Signup Bonus

Like I mentioned before the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card is currently offering a significant signup bonus. You’ll earn 60,000 Ultimate Rewards points, which is equivalent to $600 cash or $750 when you use your points to book travel through Chase.

To earn this signup bonus, you’ll need to spend $4,000 during the first three months that you have your new card.

NOTE: Certain purchases are excluded from the $4,000 threshold: balance transfers, money orders, lottery tickets, etc.

How to spend $4,000 in 3 months

Some quick math: $4,000 in three months is a little over $300 per week. You should be able to hit this minimum by paying for gas, utilities, insurance, your cell phone bill, and other regular expenses with your new credit card.

Sometimes we look for a big purchase (like a home improvement project) to meet the minimum in one fell swoop.

NOTE: The sign-up bonus is only available to you if you a) don’t have any other Sapphire card and b) haven’t received a new cardmember bonus for any Sapphire card in the past 48 months.

Earning Points with the Sapphire Preferred card

You’ll earn points every single time you swipe your card, but you’re probably curious as to which purchases give you the most points.

Here’s a quick breakdown of what you’ll earn:

5 points per dollar on travel purchased through Chase Ultimate Rewards
5 points per dollar on Lyft rides through March 2022
3 points per dollar on dining
3 points per dollar on select streaming services and online grocery purchases
2 points per dollar on other travel
1 point per dollar on everything else

This card is marketed as a travel rewards card, so it makes sense that travel would earn you the most points. If you book your travel through Chase Ultimate Rewards, you’ll get 5 points per dollar.

But even if you don’t book your travel through Chase, you’ll still earn on lots of travel spending, including airfare, buses, car rentals, cruises, hotels, parking garages, taxis, tolls, trains, travel agencies, and more.

And whether you like to dine at restaurants, roll through the drive-thru, or get your food delivered, the “dining” category covers most of it – eligible delivery services, takeout, and dining out.

How to Redeem Chase Points

Once you’ve earned your points, it’s time to redeem them. The simplest way is by turning your points into cash or gift cards.

When you do it that way, 1 point = $0.01. So that signup bonus of 60,000 points turns into $600.

But you’ll get the biggest bang for your buck when you redeem your points toward airfare, car rentals, cruises, and hotels through Chase Ultimate Rewards.

This adds 25% more value, which means that 1 point = $0.0125. Your signup bonus is now worth $750 if you book through the Chase travel portal.

This portal is run by Expedia, so if you have experience booking airfare, car rentals, or hotel stays through that platform, you can see just how simple it is to use.

I also love that I never have to worry about blackout dates or jumping through any other hoops to use your points through Chase Ultimate Rewards. If you see an available hotel room or a seat on a flight, you can pay for it with your points.

Another option is to use Chase’s “Pay Yourself Back” feature. You can always redeem your points toward a statement credit of 1 point = $0.01.

If you’re not quite ready to travel yet, this is a great way to easily maximize your points earned since it’s the same rate you would get when you book your travel through Chase Ultimate Rewards.

How to Transfer Points to Travel Rewards

Now, you can stick with redeeming your points for travel through Chase. That’s a simple option for getting more out of your rewards.

However, I’ve found that transferring those points to another program can oftentimes get us even more value. We typically transfer our points to Southwest Airlines to book flights and to Hyatt to book hotels. These points transfer at a 1:1 rate.

Obviously, each program is going to be different, but the points can go sooooo far with those two. We can often get a hotel stay through Hyatt for as little as 5,000 points a night and even flights through Southwest for as cheap as 3,600 points.

Just to put that in perspective this single 60k signup bonus could get you 12 nights in a Hyatt hotel.

Things to Note

The Chase Sapphire Preferred Card has an annual fee of $95. If you are used to credit cards with no annual fee, it may seem strange to pay for a credit card.

But even if you just hit the signup bonus, collect your 60,000 points, and cash them out for statement credits, gift cards, or cash ($600), you’re already well ahead of what you would spend on the annual fee.

In fact, you could pay the annual fee for 10 years with the signup bonus.

You may wonder if your points expire – they don’t if your account remains open. However, you will immediately lose all your points if your account status changes, or if your account is closed.

Some Final Words of Caution

Anytime I talk about credit cards, I always bring out the “Know Yourself” speech.

If you are someone who gets in trouble with credit cards skip this and use a debit card instead. Know yourself.

The benefits of the card are great, but they’re nullified if you’re carrying a balance. Sure, you might earn rewards on your purchases, but if you don’t pay off your card in full each month, you’ll need to pay interest.

And we don’t want that.

Consider this: APR is a variable 15-22%, and your rewards earn you at most 5%. I trust you can do the simple comparison and see that what you’ll pay in interest easily eclipses what you’ll earn in rewards.

I’d recommending following our 3 credit card rules if you aren’t already.

So please take a hard look at your spending habits first to make sure that you can use it responsibly.

With that out of the way, you can apply for the card by clicking the button below:

Get the chase sapphire preferred

If you have any questions about it, feel free to post them in the comments below or send me a DM on instagram (@seedtime).

Getting out of debt success story: How they paid off over $229K in debt

August 22, 2021 By Bob Lotich 4 Comments

(The following is an abbreviated transcription from a video Linda & I recorded with Mel & Murph Stewart. Please excuse any typos or errors.)

Mel and Murph Stewart (of FitNFunds) have an amazing debt payoff success story.

Linda and I were so blown away by their accomplishment that we had to share their feat as an encouragement to all of our SeedTime community.

Ready for it?

They have paid off over $229,000 in debt!!!

We are simply amazed. No matter the amount of debt you have to tackle, this accomplishment shows that even a huge amount of debt CAN be paid off!

Linda and I recorded our discussion we had with Mel & Murph that you can listen to on our Podcast, or you read the full transcription below:

Mel & Murph’s Mountain Of Debt

Bob: Today we’re chatting with Mel and Murph Stewart and they have an amazing story that we want to share. I’ve been hearing about it all over Instagram in which you should go follow them, it’s @FitNFunds. But the gist of it is they paid off over $229,000 in debt.

Linda: I mean that is amazing.

Bob : And yeah, and we paid off, I mean, in terms of non-mortgage debt, it was about $46,000. And I felt like that was a lot. So when I hear stories like this, it’s this is crazy.

But anyway, Mel and Murph, thank you for taking the time to come chat about this and share this whole crazy thing that you’ve gone through.

Murph: Absolutely. We’re excited, thank you for having us.

How Did They Get $229,000+ Of Debt?

Bob: All right, so I want to talk first about yeah, so $229,000 in debt, like what was that made up of? What were the actual pieces of debt there?

Mel: Yeah. So it was a little bit of everything. We like to say, you name it we had it. Except for a mortgage. It wasn’t mortgage debt, but I mean, IRS debt, it was medical debt, credit card debt, lines of credits, car loans, student loans, a little bit of everything. The big, the biggest step that we had though is the student loan debt.

Bob: Yeah.

Mel: And that was as well over six figures.

Bob: Yeah. Student loan debt in our society, I mean, I think most people tend to think that’s reasonable debt or good debt. I have some mixed opinions about that. Having a good amount of myself. So was the credit card debt bad spending habits or was it all justified? Or how did you guys land into so much debt?

Acknowledging The Lack Of Financial Education

Mel: Yeah, I think it was the lack of education. Growing up, we really didn’t learn how to manage money, nor did our parents come from wealth. We didn’t really come from wealth, so we pretty much, well, I know when I went to college, I had no choice. I just didn’t really have the education to learn how to apply for scholarships or apply for grants. So it was just, let’s go get a student loan. And so I think that’s a lot of how it started for me. And then the college credit card came along and that was like copping money. And from there on it just kinda started accumulating for me.

Growing Up In Poverty

Murph: Yeah, I think the thing about me was I grew up on welfare. My mom was a single mom doing her thing, trying to raise two boys. And we eat a lot, especially me. But it was one of those things that you, you, you grew up in a household and not knowing that you’re at that poverty status. You’re, you’re just a happy go lucky little kid.

And, but as I grew older, I figured, I started noticing things that we weren’t able to do. And this is where I realized that my mom, she just wasn’t educated financially to help us along the way. I think she was so excited for me to go to college because I got a full scholarship for basketball and she was excited for that, but still I still took out student loans.

So why’d I do that when I had a full scholarship. It’s a lack of education financially that on the, I discovered. But yeah, so it was one of those things. Learned behavior patterns are the patterns that compound and compounded, and it just. Blew up the, the whole Mel and Murph household.

Keeping Up With The Joneses

Mel: The first four years of our marriage, we accumulated a lot more debt. We would try to as I say, keep up with the Joneses. And go out every weekend and spend a lot of money using like a line of credit. Or just money that we didn’t have. So I know that we probably racked up.

Thousands of dollars more in those first four years of, because we just, we didn’t know better. We had a lot of denial around the debt.

Needing To Change Financial Habits

Bob: So what was your turning point moment? Cause I think most of us who we all have some moment or moments where we decide, all right, we got to make a change here. And, what was that for you guys?

Murph: Such a good question. I think it was we were at I think 2014, I believe, so we got to a point of marriage that we were at almost a brinks to divorce. We were arguing a lot more. Really just at each other’s neck, she just wasn’t having it.

Getting Counseling And Introduction To Dave Ramsey

She started going to counseling and I joined a party. I started one counseling. And then I remember I was in the lounge waiting to speak to my therapist, and I had an epiphany. It was one of those things that I felt like now was speaking to me, giving me a refresher of someone’s name that I heard in the past and it was Dave Ramsey. No idea what I heard it from. I thought I heard it from her father-in-law back. I might notice that that’s no way to happen. And then was trying to figure out who I heard it from. But anyway, I heard Dave Ramsey’s name. I started instantly Googling and researching who this man was.

I found out that he was in a million dollars a debt. And he started helping a lot of people. I’m like wait, who is this guy? It really encouraged me because I started listening to his podcast and everything.

You’re Not Alone

And that pivotal moment for us to understand that we were first of all, not alone. And the amount of money that we had in debts, it could be diminished from our lives indefinitely.

I brought that back to Melissa and she was not having it at all. So it was one of those moments that I was so hyped and excited and really that mood of enthusiasm, but she wasn’t having it. Because, I guess, I was so aggressively trying to get as going.

I’ll let her speak on that behalf.

Being Apprehensive About Starting To Tackle Debt

Linda: Yeah, I was going to ask you about that because I was reading your story and I read that you were apprehensive about it. And I would love to know why. What was going through your head? And then I have a follow-up question after that, but I’ll let you answer that first.

Mel : Yeah. That’s a good question. I think when Murph brought it to me, I’ve always liked spending money. Spending every penny and like I said, I didn’t know better.

Bob: You know nothing about that, right?

Linda: Yeah. I know nothing about that.

Mel: Yeah. So basically when I would get those loan checks. If I had money left over for student loans, I would just spend it on clothes or different things.

Crunching The Numbers And Budgeting

And so when Murph brought this to me… I’m like wait what? And he always would calculate out, because he’s a numbers guy, he’d calculate out the numbers. Like how many years it’s going to take us. And I was just like, I don’t want to hear it. Have so much debt, and I had just gotten a new job.

I was like, I want to go shopping and get a whole new wardrobe for work. And no, we didn’t really need to start this budget thing. And I was just not having it. But I think that over the course of that year or so we, we played the podcast in the car and then we started having our budget meetings together.

It really helped me feel more comfortable with the process. And then I learned to like budgeting because it was a place for me to voice what I wanted or needed.

Linda: Yes.

Mel: Over the course of that year-ish the first year, I think it was kind of tough for us because we were not on the same page. But gradually I think that I came to, even in year three and four of our journey.We were finally done with the consumer debt and I knew we had my big student loan left and Murph’s we have to finish this we’re not debt free yet. And I was like, are you what I thought we would be done? So…

Linda: Yeah.

Mel: I think that we finally agreed.

Murph: We gotta put a pinpoint there and circle back on that one, but yeah. I’ll let you do the follow up question because I want to add to it.

Getting On Board To Paying Off Debt

Linda: Yeah. Okay. So my follow-up question is. Okay. What changed? Like it can be from what changed in that first year of you, like starting to listen to that stuff, but also what has changed over the course of this period of time between not wanting to pay off debt and then being like I am sold out and onboard.

What was that mindset shift like for you? Cause we had a little bit of a similar situation, not maybe not as intense as yours. Cause I was more like, can you just take this problem off my hands? So I kind of just did whatever he told me to do. Cause I didn’t want to deal with it, but I was also like, I really like spending money.

So I’m with you on that for sure. But yeah, I just would love to know like the journey that God took you on from: I want to spend all the money I have and more to being sold out for this.

Having A Common Vision: What Is Your Why?

Mel: Yeah, I think it was partly like my own work and healing that I needed to do and encounter, but also, like I learned that once we had like a common vision and a why, that was my motivation and it became bigger than me. It was like before it was all about me, me, me, me, me.

And now, or over the course of time, and even now it’s well, what about our future generations. And what about their kids? And like really seeing those generational curses and there was a lot of other things too, that was our why.

Giving more and traveling more and all of that. But I think what I finally grasped, like the why behind it, the purpose, the vision that I was, I started to change inside and learn a lot more about myself. And when you’re paying off debt and you’re working and you’re and grinding there’s a sense of accomplishment and confidence that you gain in yourself and God and each other and your marriage. So it was just like a whole transformation, like who I was back in 2013/14, I’m a completely different person today.

Does Paying Off Debt Bring You Closer To God?

Linda: So do you guys think that paying off debt has brought you closer to God?

Murph: Well, let me think about that. Yes! And I know that was not a rhetorical question. It was actually a real question. But seriously it has. My belief level has increased substantially to the utmost because I could, God was a per the the spirit that gave me Dave Ramsey like, there’s no way. I didn’t know who this man was. I had no idea what his man was when I was sitting in that lounge, but he intentionally knew that at that time I was at my rock bottom, emotionally and I had to get some kind of hope. And he seriously gave me a lifeline.

And I think my belief in God, even though I was still a believer before that, it just increasingly got better over time. My relationship with him individually, you know. And of course our interdependency, with God too.

Walking In An Abundant Life

Mel: Yeah. And we started getting free from the debt and that was bondage for us. And we started walking in an abundant life. We’re like, wow, this is a real thing. Like what it says in the Bible, when you walk this out and you walk in obedience, it’s these blessings start chasing you down. And then it’s like real life miracles that would happen to us. So we’re just like, this is so cool.

Murph: She’s not saying something that’s really important to her was that we actually kept a miracle book of everything that occurred from day one, what God had did to us. And that really wasn’t pivotal, or more so instrumental element, of our belief in God. I wish we can go down and read them, but it’s this amazing things that happen throughout the course of over the five years.

Extra Provision Blessings

Mel: Checks in the mail, refunds and rebates…

Murph: Promotions, and everything was insane.

Mel: Anything we would increase, anything we got, we just wrote it down. It was just like, thank you, God. No a hundred thousand dollars check in the mail, but you know, it was…

Bob: But extra provision, one of the things we’re always talking about, cause I’ve heard this. I’ve been talking to people about this stuff for 14 years now. And this happened on our journey and I’ve seen this over and over and over and over and over again. And I say it non-stop is when you start doing the natural things, doing, taking those natural steps in your own ability, in faith doing the natural, and then believe God for the supernatural, he comes in like wind to behind your back and pushes you forward.

Murph: Yeah.

Results of Taking Action When Trusting And Obeying God

Bob: To reach this goal, in the case of paying off debt or whatever it is, and we saw that. It sounds like you guys are saying that. Because you were doing the steps and then God starts showing up with all these little miracles pushing it forward. I mean, is that correct? Am I saying that right?

Murph: A hundred percent.

Mel: We still write down our miracles, now that we’re on a wealth building journey. So yeah. It’s amazing.

Bob: Okay. So let’s talk a little bit about some of the practical things, because yes, we see God at work. We see some of those miracles happening.

Making Practical Decisions

Bob: What were the practical decisions that you guys were making to do things differently? So you talked a little bit about setting up a budget, so that was one part of it. What other things were you guys doing to just move down this path?

Murph: I think I can instantly say, we looked at what we were having taken out of our checking account, subscriptions and what have you. We’re fitness enthusiasts. We love working out. So we lowered our gym membership fee. They were almost paying 100, some dollars, got down to $20 a month. So I was one practical thing that we did. We stopped eating out. That was very, very hard. You know we’re foodies too. So she started cooking a lot of meals. And lastly, we do not go on any vacations at all. We did not and the FOMO was real to say the least.

Bob: Yeah.

Murph: For sure.

Mel: I mean, we would do like little weekend trips once in a while, but you know, the, the Mexico vacations or Hawaii vacations, we just, we were working and side hustling too. I think that’s another part of it in addition to, our nine to five. Murph was driving Uber till midnight.

So we did what we could, but I think definitely practical steps. Number one is the budget, it’s the foundation. Just having that consistent, weekly, biweekly, monthly budget. You have to have a budget to do this.

Bob: Yeah. It’s so funny because so many people, and I felt this way, think that, well, I, man, a budget, it’s just, it’s going to be pain in the butt and we’re going to save like $30 a month. It’s just not worth it. And as well as I do, if you have even an average income and you aren’t budgeting, like you’re going to save hundreds, if not many hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month by doing this, like we see this over and over again. And I’m sure you guys have as well, right?

Being On The Same Page

Murph: Oh yeah, definitely. I think when we really started agreeing upon the mutual agreement of a budgeting. And we literally saw more money in our account, which was so weird. It was just like, what, how did, how did we have extra money in our account where we had the same income, not doing a budget, but now here you are doing a budget. And now we see more surplus in our account. It was just. It was, it was almost like a breath of fresh air believe it or not.

Mel: There was literally times where we had no money for groceries. And we would just go off our line of credit.

Murph: Yeah. Revolving door.

Mel: Then start to see like money, extra leftover. Oh, what are we going to do with this money? Oh, well we get to pay the debt or put it in savings or whatever. It’s just like a whole new concept for us.

Bob: Wow.

Linda: That’s amazing.

Bob: Murph, I remember you had something you wanted to tie back to. Do you want to jump back to that point or do you remember that?

Murph: Yeah, well, I definitely remember it because it’s made an impression on me.

Conquering The Shackles Of Debt

Murph: So she was saying that, there was a point where we got all done with the consumer debt and we paid it off. And we’re now about to attack her student on the sixth figure student loan. And she, I remember her saying to me, Hey babe, let’s just say we’re we’re debt free now. And when she sat down, I’m like, what?

No, we have so much momentum we are not stopping. I didn’t say like that. I was more loving of course. Right. I wanted to make sure my pay my money. Baby we can actually do it. Look how far we’ve come. And she was point that she, because I think what it was, it was a sole tie that I was attached to that student loan.

And we can maybe go on that if she wants later on, it’s up to her. But it made her so angry at what that student loan meant to her. That she wanted to ignore it and I’m like, I want it to accomplish paying it off because I knew that we had the momentum building and we wanted to release her from those shackles stronghold to be free.

And that was the whole, concept and I was trying to help her comprehend.

Linda: Wow. So there was more tied to it than just the dollar amount. There was something in your heart that you needed to get cleared up. So, I mean, that’s amazing too, cause it’s God takes us on this journey and it’s not just for one thing. It’s not just to be out of debt it’s for multiple different things, which I think is just so wonderful.

Mel: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that, that once I finally, got that out of my life for good. It was like, I could really get past that. Whatever, whatever that, that hurt and that pain that, that was attached to and forgive and be an acceptance and be like, you know what, it’s okay.

We took care of this and with God’s help, of course, and we can move past this. And, so yeah, like you said, it’s a lot more than just paying off debt. I mean, it completely changes.

Linda: Yeah.

Giving Is Instrumental

Bob: All right. One other thing I wanted to ask about, cause when I was doing some research on you guys, I think I saw some of this. So I’m curious, what role did giving or do you feel like giving played in this debt payoff?

Murph: That’s a good question.

Mel: I think it was, it was instrumental. Tithing was always at the top of our budget, that was one thing that we said, we’re not going to let go of, and I think there was another, portion of sponsoring a child that we said we’re not going to let go of. So those two things we kept, regardless of our income. We were like, okay, we’re going to honor God with the first portion of this. And it was a non negotiation. to this day, it’s that’s the first thing.

Murph: Yeah, I’m laughing because she says sponsor a child. And it just brought back a memory, because I did not want to do it. I’m like babe, we’re not doing this. And here I am at church, listening to Israel Houghton and the New Breed praising God, they’re wanting people to sponsor a child. I’m like, we’re not doing that. But here we are, fast forward still sponsoring that same child.

Should You Tithe While Paying Off Debt?

Bob: It’s funny. Cause sometimes people ask me and I probably asked you to should I stop tithing and stop giving to pay off debt? Because I want to pay off my debt a lot faster. It’s not a math problem. Like it’s just not how God works. And I’m not going to tell anyone, what they should do. But for us, it’s the same way. We’re not going to stop giving to pay off our debt. And we’re convinced as well that by giving that was how we ended up getting it paid off faster. Cause that’s just the way it works in the kingdom.

Murph: Love it.

What Does Being Debt-Free Feel Like?

Bob: Yeah. Well, that’s good. All right. And so I want to know just for people who are watching and listening, What has it done for you? Like having that burden to $229,000 of debt, now it’s gone. What was that transition? What did it feel like? How did it affect your spiritual life, your marriage, your personal life, like everything emotionally? What did it feel like?

The First Year Sucked

Murph: So that first year sucked.

Bob: After you paid the debt off?

Murph: Yes. The year after.

Bob: This is fascinating. Go ahead.

Murph: You know what it was because we were so ingrained with the same pattern, the new pattern behavior that enabled us to pay off the debt. So we were still grinding down. So driving Uber and Lyft. She was still working over time.

We weren’t really doing any of that at home in regards to in kind of celebrating. We were still in that ingrained in that mindset. That’s why I think it was so hard. It was so hard to break that, that new, element of thinking that we were in. So that’s why, in my opinion and why it was so hard at first year though.

Mel: Yeah. And not having, we didn’t really have the next goal.

Murph: Exactly, very true.

Having A New Goal

Mel: So when we finished. It was just like, already to the finish line and then, okay, well what’s next?

Bob: So did you not enjoy paying off debt? Did you not enjoy having it paid off?

Murph: Oh we did.

Mel: And that’s what I was going to say at the same time. We finished probably about a year before COVID. And we did get to do traveling. We got to take a celebration trip to Cabo San Lucas. And, that was like a whole new world. It was just so exciting. We did a lot of upgrades.

We got to move cashflow and move and and then fast forward, a few years later, it’s like our lives are… like money is not an issue anymore. There’s no financial stress or weight anymore. It’s like we get to budget for things like taking this trip, and just…

Murph: Give more.

Mel: Give more and live our lives and build wealth. And it’s just amazing.

Like it just, the opportunities that have opened up for us. And…

Bob: Yeah.

Mel: We drove through one of the old towns that we live in today and we were just like, How did we get here? Like where we are now?

We’re just so grateful but God almost had to take us back there today to show us like, look how far you guys have come.

Cause we used to walk around that town all the time, when we were paying off debt. And it was, it was a hard season for us, but we still have issues and problems and this and that. It’s just, yeah, it’s just, wow. When that financial burden isn’t in your life anymore.

And it’s just not there. It’s just such a better life and marriage.

Murph: I love it.

Figuring Out Where God Wants Next For Your Journey

Linda: Do you feel you had to, like you said that first year was really hard, cause it was a transition of well, what do we do now? Do you feel like you just had to figure out like where God wanted to take you next?

Murph : Yeah, I believe so. Because I think after we actually, we prayed more got kind of like a community around us more at that time. And I think that’s when we started FitNFunds, or am I tripping?

Mel: Once we establish the community, like Murph said, and we started to, figure out what the next goal was. I think that we started the enjoy our debt-free life a little bit more.

Bob: Yeah.

Mel: Yeah, it was an adjustment. A good adjustment, but like Murph said, it was hard. It was, it was hard at first.

Bob: Well, that’s great. All right, well, appreciate you guys taking the time and sharing your awesome, amazing story. It’s so cool. Seeing what God’s doing in people’s lives. So people, @FitNFunds on Instagram, they can see you because you’re sharing so much great stuff there. Website, they can find you at?

Murph: FitNFunds.com, and that’s F-I-T-N, as in Nancy, F-U-N-D-S.

Bob : FitNFunds. Yeah that’s great. All right, guys. Well, thanks for taking the time. Appreciate getting to chat, love having you on.

Murph: Thank you. God bless you guys.

Mel: Thank you so much for all of this.

Bob: All right. Appreciate it guys. Bye-bye.