Managing God's Treasure 5

, today, let me go ahead and pray and then, we will get started. Lord, I just, thank you that we're together this morning. I pray for those who are still on their way here. I pray that you would, just help them to get here quickly and safely.

well, the topic we're covering today can be complicated. I pray you'd help me to be, clear, and not complicated. so Lord, just, Just help us to, just to grow. Lord, help us to learn to manage your treasure well.

it's just in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, we are on session 5 and this is an interesting, session, investing for future treasure. Investing for future treasure.

And I just wanna remind you, we, we're, after today, we only got 1 more left. thoughtful giving. I, I've been actually reading ahead for myself and that one's gonna be interesting. There's some interesting things to think about when it comes to, how you give and how you evaluate and think about where you're where you're, where you're giving.

but anyway, I just wanted to remind you, this course is part of the Equipping for the Journey series. here at Cornerstone, we want to help people move from brokenness to wholeness through the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's our goal. And.

To do that, we are on a journey, going from brokenness or death to wholeness or true life and where we are now is we, we are here. We are neither fully broken, we're not going to die. We're, we're, we've stopped the journey going this direction. so we're not fully broken.

We're not fully whole, right? We, we, we've still got brokenness within us. We are here in the journey. That's where we are at.

And this is a time where God is transforming us. He's transforming us to be beings. That will live with him through eternity. experiencing things and thinking things in ways beyond what we can comprehend.

And I'm just gonna say for me personally, that is my hope. I'm probably not, I, I wanna say I'm, I'm, I'm very aware of my brokenness, but I have a feeling, I, I don't think I really am. I think, I don't think any of us really are completely aware of the extent of our brokenness. but we wanna be, we want to be aware of, of our brokenness.

We not be afraid of it, not be afraid of our Of, of the things that are wrong about us, the, the, the temptations that we have, the faults that we have. Don't be afraid of them, don't be afraid to talk about them. Because where we are at in this journey part, we don't die, we sin and we don't die, right? The law of sin and death, Christ died to do away with the law of sin and death.

So we sin and we don't die. and we have a savior and the Holy Spirit who is walking with us on this journey. To transform us from this broken person. Right?

Through grace to be something that we have, at least I think I have no conception of. and for me, I'm very excited. I think a lot of that involves becoming what I always say, I wanna be a real human being. I wanna be a real human, being.

That's my phrase. if somebody asked me what's my goal in life, that's what I would say. especially somebody who's not saved, I would say my goal in life is to be a real human being. and I don't see any way to do that other than the gospel.

other than the gospel, you cannot face your brokenness fully. You can face it partially, but not fully. you just can't. So, that's where we're at.

And what we want to do. As we travel this journey, is we want to take this, the gospel. This wonderful truth that God has sent His Son to die on the cross and take our sins. To And the law of sin and death for us.

To transform us into creatures that we have no idea how wonderful it will be. We want to take that truth to every area of life and allow it to transform us. Every area of life. Milton Milton says we want to reason from the gospel.

We want to spend our lives, there's another Milton phrase. I spend too much time listening to Milton. we want to tease everything out of the gospel that we can, tease everything out of the gospel we can and apply it to every area, of our lives because that is what transforms us. That's what gives us love for God.

That's what gives us love for our neighbor, right? That's what allows us to do that. So, in this class, what we're doing is we're trying to take the gospel and apply it to Finances, right? We, we apply it to our finances.

And lo and behold, this is an exciting area to look at because it is, it is an area that I don't know, it's, it, I don't, I, I don't know if I can say it's the most transformative area. But, Jesus seems to think so, right? He says, where your treasure is. There your heart will be.

So if you want to change your heart, Which is the basis of transformation, right? It's the heart that really matters. It's not all this external funkiness that we, we try to change, right? I'll be good, I won't spit, I won't chew, I won't hang out with people who do.

it's not all that external stuff. That's easy stuff to change compared to our Our hearts, our selfishness, our, oh my gosh, all that rot that's in there, right? Jesus says, if you put your treasure someplace. Your heart's going to.

Follow it So we want to put our treasure in gospel places so that our treasure will be part of that transformation. Does that make sense? I know I've said this before, but for me, there's certain truths I have to say to myself all the time., like this morning, on, on the way over, I was, I was, I was, I, I rehearsed the Lord's Prayer a lot. just one of the things I do.

Makes sense to me. Jesus said, pray like this. So, I'll, I'll, I'll just, I'll stop on the first one, I'll just say, Father, holy be Thy name. And I'll think, oh my gosh, God, how holy are you?

I don't, I don't comprehend that, Lord. And I just, just dwell on those things and I have to do that all the time, other because otherwise I And and the same thing with finances. I have to, I have to keep my, my eye on the, the prize and the prize is what? The prize is, right?

The prize is that transformation. It's that, it's that hope at the end. It's the hope of being a real human being. I, I, I know at this point in my life, I don't, I, I don't experience love anywhere near what love is meant to be experienced.

I, I don't and I want to. I'm not going to spare. I'm not gonna despair because I've got, I've got hope, right? The fact that I'm broken does not have to tear me down., I'm, I'm I've got the gospel.

I want to take that gospel every place. All right, we are on number 5. We've, we've gone quite a ways. We've, we've talked about our gospel and God's the gospel journey and God's treasure which I just reviewed for you.

We talked about budgeting and the emergency fund and for me, I, I think, I think, I've confessed to you multiple times, I really don't like budgeting. And if it was only for financial reasons. I really don't, I can survive perfectly well without it. Just because of my own personality.

I can, I, I, I, I am a saver, not a spender. So I, I can, I can pretty much operate without a budget. I have changed my mind. I am now budgeting.

Why? Because of preparing for this class, quite honestly, I have realized. Well, because, cause before it's like budgets are for people who can't control themselves. that was my attitude.

That's a very condescending attitude, by the way. That, that's, that's not a gospel attitude, just to begin with. So, starting off, I'm wrong. and, and what I'm realizing is that, once again, here's another area of brokenness and God just rips it open and goes, hey, Bill.

you're arrogant. Right? You think, you think what you're doing. You think you're better than other people because you've, you've achieved this and you don't budget and you see that as an an area of pride.

And the truth is, what God showing started showing me, he says, what? You're an idiot You're really not taking the time to think through what your money is doing. You're not letting the treasure I've given you change you, because the return that God wants on his treasure. Is us transformed.

That's what it's meant for. God does not, people always say this, God does not need our money. People used to say that to me, I would go, it's weird why do we give? why do we give?

What I'm realizing now we give because giving transforms us. Giving changes our hearts. And it's, it's a whole different, it's a whole different perspective. So I'm budgeting now with the idea of I wanna budget in a gospel way.

I wanna make sure my money is going in areas. That are going to have the greatest gospel impact and they're going to change me because God wants me to change. As I budget, I discover areas of brokenness. I dis I discover areas where I'm spending where I probably shouldn't.

I discover areas where I'm spe I'm not spending where I probably should. and that can happen in families. You, you may not be spending as much money, for, for things for your children that you should or something else. It's, it's those kinds of things that everyday mundane planning for the next month that has gospel power.

Has gospel power to reveal brokenness, to reveal where your heart is, and so budgeting becomes a gospel tool for transformation. it also helps you get your finances straightened out. So, if, if you are having problems, financially, if you're, you've got debts and things like that, it's good that way too. Like I said, I'm not, I, I am not a, I said this several times.

I'm a gospel guy. I'm not a finance guy. I'm in this because of what it can do to change. I want, I want, my goal is to be a, a real person, not to be, hopefully not to be rich.

because God says instruct those who are rich, actually I am rich, instruct those who are rich, that's pretty much everybody in this room, in this, in this, in this present world, not to be conceited or fix their hope. fix their hope. Yeah, hope is that for you. Hope is very important.

On the uncertainty of riches, but on God who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy. Instruct them to be good, to be rich in good works. To be generous and ready to share, storing up for themselves. The real return, right?

the treasure of a good foundation for the future so that they may take hold of that which is life indeed or I think a better translation is true life. Being a real human being. True life, real life, right? so it's really cool.

Now, the reason this verse is important in this section is that when we start talking about, investing, what are we doing when we invest? Yeah, we're putting away money. For The future And we've we've already talked about savings, right? We've talked about saving for emergencies.

Having an emergency fund. When we start doing that, the temptation can be to do what? Fix our hope on the. Uncertainty of Riches.

So I, I encourage you to be careful not to do that. in, in the United States, we have the wonderful ability, and a lot of people don't have this, to manage the risks of our lives using What? Using treasure, using money, we can manage our risks. We have that ability.

And I think the temptation of those of us in the West is to focus on that. we look at money as, as the thing that will, that keeps us safe. I remember the one of the first major cultural misunderstandings we had in Uganda. Was.

We had a young man who wanted to go to a computer school. And. I thought that's a wonderful idea. So we said we, we'll, we'll fund his, his time at computer school.

And so, We, we gave them all the money. To pay for a whole year of. Computer school. All at once, boom, there it is.

come back next year. And I'm talking to the young man. And he's telling me some of his fees haven't been paid yet. What do you think I start, what do I, what do I start thinking now?

Yeah, what, no, I didn't give the money to him. I gave the money to, the people that we work with there, the, the, the director of the school or, actually I think I gave it to, to somebody else, director of a different school. But we gave the money in, in holding and then they would give the money out to the young man. and I thought that was being very, I'm being very careful here.

I'm being a very good, giver of money. but then instead of going, so my, my, my, yes exactly. Mike says, where's the money? I, I've, I've, I'm, I'm now thinking I'm being I'm being cheated.

And that's, that's the attitude I have. So I go to the people and I'm saying, where's the money? Well, We, there were other needs that needed to be taken care of. The idea of having all this money just sitting there for a whole year doing nothing was ridiculous to them.

And the money, and they said the money show will show up and the money did show up and he got paid. and talking to them and doing more reading, I found out that Ugandan understanding of how money flows is very different than our own. if, if you have money, storing it away is looked at as often as selfish, because if there's a current need that's more important than. That you should give, you should, you should, if somebody comes to you, you really and, and ask and you have money, you need to give it to them.

Now, when it comes when you need money. They, you should be able to go back to them and get it back. But there's this very communal understanding of how money flows. It's a little bit more complicated than that, but it is, it is a huge, cultural difference between American understanding of money and Ugandan understanding of money.

And they actually saw me as, as, as lacking faith and, and, and they were upset because it's, it sounds like I didn't trust them and. it, it worked out, well, worked out. I made some more mistakes before it was over, but. anyway, that's, we in the West, the point is we in the West tend to focus on managing things with.

Money, right? And we have to, we need to be, we need to be aware of, how much of that is cultural, how much of that is biblical, and how much of that should we do? And does God want his treasure used for that purpose? Will it, because God, remember, God wants his treasure to transform us.

That's what he wants. So, even when you're thinking about saving or thinking about investing, we need to be doing it with that in mind. we, we can't just, take the, the normal, world's view of this. there's also a tension, and that's the tension I just talked about, is saving our excess for the future, which Westerners are very comfortable with, right?

You're, you're gonna get praise in America if you save your money for the future, right? That's, that's looked at as a positive, characteristic. Versus generosity with time and money. And at least I know I do.

I tend to err on the My future needs, outweigh the, the, the needs of someone else at the, at, at, at the, at the current time. is there an easy answer to that tension? There is not. If you're asking me for a formula, X + Y equals, how much you should put in each one.

Sorry. And I actually think God's done it that way on purpose. Because What does he want the treasure to do? Transform us.

We have to think about the treasure, where it's going, so that it will. Change our hearts, right? to make them, to make it even a little bit more, make it, make it, make the tension a little bit tougher. as a Westerner, this is very uncomfortable for us.

Jesus says, Jesus is observing, this widow, putting her money in the offering at the temple. She puts in a very small amount. But Jesus says she's given more than anyone because she's given what? All she had to live on.

All it's, you, you, you get that? What does that mean? All you have to live on? That means all you have to live on.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it means, it means you, you don't have anything else. OK, Jesus, Jesus is not letting you off the hook, right? He says, you all better think about this. but on the other hand, Paul writes to Thessalonians., to work hard.

And so that you may behave properly towards outsiders and not be in. Any need. Don't put yourself in a position where you are in need. Am I gonna resolve this tension for you?

No, I'm not. I'm gonna let that. No, what it should not do, it should not produce guilt. Do not let it produce guilt.

Right. Do not, do not let it produce, don't, don't let it produce guilt. don't go, oh my gosh, I'm, I'm a Westerner and I don't give enough money, I feel terrible. No, don't do that.

Right. We have what we have, we have the gospel. That's the great thing, right? We have the gospel.

Go before God, open your heart and say, Lord, I'm struggling with this. your word says this, your word says this. I don't quite understand the balance. I'm not going to spare because I know you want my thinking about this to transform me.

Do not let it guilt you. That's not why it's why that tension's there. Don't let anything is, don't have the scripture puts you in a place of guilt. Now it may give you some conviction, you may, it may reveal some brokenness, but don't let the revealing of brokenness put you in a place where you're wallowing in guilt.

because that's the opposite of being transformed. you want to let grace pour in so that, so that you move. All right, I'm getting bogged down here. I gotta move.

Randy Alcorn gives us a little bit of help and I've, I've used this quote before. It says, when I save, I lay something aside for future need. But I hold it what? loosely, realizing it's all that it's all at God's disposal.

If I sense God's leading, I will give it away to meet greater Needs. So I've, I've, I've, I've saved it, but I'm holding it. Loosely, it's not, it's not, well, I've got savings, but it's, it's loose savings. when I hoard, I am unwilling to part with what I've saved to meet others' needs because of my possible future needs outweigh their actual present needs.

Hence, I fail to love my neighbor as myself. How loose do you hold it? I don't have an answer to that question. I, I, I have to deal with that, and I'm, I'm hoping I'm talking to my wife about it.

I'm hoping I'm talking to my brothers and sisters about it. I'm not being guilty about it, but we're reasoning together about what this means. Not condemning someone else, we're not condemning each other about it. Yeah.

In seeking to your As far as how, yeah, what I would say is you do not want, you do not want to stop giving to pay off debt. That would be a mistake because with the very in your budget, what's the first thing in your budget? The very, the very top is, is, is your giving. And you want to make sure that you're, that you are, that you are giving.

At, at, at the top. Do not stop giving to, to pay off debt. Don't, don't say well I, I'm gonna cut my, my giving a church to pay off debt. That's not a good idea.

Why is it not a good idea? Because God needs that money. Because the church is going to go broke if you don't pay the money. Now there, there is some truth to that.

the church, the church does need money and that, that's, don't, don't get me wrong. I served on the elder board for long enough to know the church needs money. And I was on the finance committee, so I, I don't, I don't wanna, I don't wanna, I don't wanna play that down. But the primary reason for it being number one on your budget is, is, is the primary reason that God gives us treasure and that's to transform us.

So if you, if you start messing with that, then you're, you're missing the point. Right? Now, paying back debt's important because scripture also says that debt is a chain, it equates debt to slavery. And we're gonna talk a little bit about the business cycle in a minute.

And as a history teacher, one of the things that I learned very quickly as a history teacher is when things go bad in the economy, who gets whacked first? People are who in, people who are in debt. And I, I don't wanna get too, too crazy here. In fact, that truth is one of the reasons for our Constitution.

I won't, I won't get too much into it, but, one of the reasons that I, I'm, I'm not gonna start. Yeah, this little happens to be a lesson in constitutional formation rather. I've been reading, I've been reading about that lately, so, it's Yeah, so it's, it's on my mind right now. I bumped into a really good book on that.

OK, so we're gonna talk about the whole idea of investing is managing risk. Right? That's the idea here. We're we're looking at now.

We're looking at the future. And part of investing. Now, here's the difference. We, we've been talking to so what's the difference between saving and investing?

They're, they're some, they're somewhat similar. And you'll see that I've, that I've got, I've got saving down here. saving is basically for emergencies along the journey. That's why I said before it needs to be liquid money, something that you can transform and spend easily.

you don't want to put it in, you don't, you don't want to speculate with it. You don't want to, lock it up in some way. It needs to be available. It's there for emergencies.

It's there for the emergencies of your neighbor, even, the money you have in savings. That's money that's there to to to create flexibility in, in the journey. Investments really are looking at the risk of the end, right? Will I run out of money?

It's the question. It's also, it's also a question of the second half of your journey. What will the second half of your journey look like? Now I'm there.

Right, I'm in the 2nd half of my journey. I don't go to a job every day. I don't get up and go teach anymore, which sometimes is sad for me, but I don't. I'm in that second half.

So somewhere back here I had to think, and I'll be honest with you, I don't think I did a very good job of it., I'm not gonna, I'm not at all gonna try to defend what I've done. but I, there was, there was a now for me and I looked into the future and I had some idea that at some point, I didn't want to be in the classroom every day. I still want to have something to do with education and it might be ministry related. I want to be free to do things.

I didn't want to stop. I didn't want to just go. I always liked, Piper's book, Don't Waste Your Life. Very good book, by the way.

Don't Wate Your Life by John Piper. he begins the book by talking about a couple who retire. They buy, buy an RV or they go, they go traveling around and whatnot. And, collecting shells and whatnot, and he says at the end of your life, what you don't want to do is go to the Lord and say, Lord, here are the shells I collected.

there's nothing wrong with traveling and collecting things, but I think you get the point., the second half of my life, I, I want to be productive. I want to be ministry into other people's lives. I, I, I want, I want to be transforming for me. can I relax a little bit more?

Yes. But not too much. I get up a half an hour, a half an hour later than I got up when I was teaching. it's not too much.

but anyway, you want, you want the future. But in between there, there's risk, right? And we're gonna look at four ways of managing risk. one is your financial records.

That's a way of managing risk. It's a very important. In fact, it's a, it's a very cheap and easy management of risk, relatively cheap. you're fully funded emergency fund, that 3 to 6 months of, savings we talked about last week.

That's part of managing your risk on the journey. we're gonna talk briefly about insurance. in the Western world, we, we can purchase insurance. Western culture is insurance crazy.

Right? Every time you go to like Best, you go to Best Buy and you buy a. you buy a flash, you buy a flash drive. And they'll ask you, do you want to buy the extended warranty?

you have a you have a thing that costs $10 and for 59 cents, you can triple the warranty on it. what is that? That's a form of insurance, right? You're, you're paying money to manage risk.

What's the risk? My flash disc might not work. The, the bigger risk actually is I may lose data on that disc and going back and then giving me a new disc is not gonna make me feel any better at all, but that's that's beside the point. That's completely beside the point, but.

Is, is that, is that wise insurance? No. Yeah. Now you have to do what I do, but I, I pretty much never take whatever extended warranty there is.

I almost never take it. Cause what, what they're doing and I, I've told this, this, this is, Why would I take some? You're actually, you're not, you're not doing this for my good. You're, you're, I'm, you're betting, you're betting against me, in a sense here.

it doesn't make any sense. I, I have faith in the product, I, more than, more than you do, it seems like, cause most of that stuff does not pay out. All right, let's, let's get going here. We have, we have more ground to cover.

that slide Readily accessible. in the, I would not put it in a safe in the closet. the reason we wouldn't put it in a safe, some people do, if you want to do that, that's cool. but you have to realize that, money is only worth what it will buy.

Money is a created. Oh gosh, I can start talking about what money is. This is my favorite topics in US history, or in world history, the invention of money. money is a convention.

And you put money in the, in the closet, it's it's losing value. It's losing value. sitting there because inflation's going up, that money sitting there will not buy as much next year as it's buying now. You might wanna have some there.

so you, that, if something happens and sometimes things go on with the banks where you can't get instant access and then that makes sense. It makes sense to have some money at home in cash. But I'm telling you if, cause people, I know people who we're getting into, into opinion stuff here. I know's a lot of Christian ministries, they, they talk about having gold and stuff like that.

And, I'll be honest, I, part of my, part of my, my, my portfolio, part of, part of, part of my portfolio involves some gold. I have some little gold things I bought. But, if the if the economy goes crazy enough that you can't get your money out of the bank. No.

that's just, well, no, it's, it's, it's, it's, I agree that if, if the economy goes crazy, gold's gonna be very valuable but how do you divide it up to actually get bread on the table? That's what really counts is bread on the table, not the stuff you have., yeah, anyway. You can starve with gold in your closet. Then that's true.

That there's, there's some, OK. but anyway, you're fully funded emergency fund, I would have it., you can have it in the money market, money market with cash, cash writing. You want to try to get as much interest as you can on it without locking it up. You don't wanna, you don't want to lock up or you don't want it to be speculative.

You don't want to be going up and down. cause most of, we're gonna talk about this in a minute, most investments are gonna go up and down. Yeah. Pinpoint your recommendation.

in the Uh-huh. better that. Yeah, we're in an unusual time. we're, we're, we're, we're fighting economic problems with monetary policy.

so it's an unusual time, quite honestly. and, and If you want to make an argument that yeah, having a bunch of cash in my, in my closet is, better than having it with the, yeah. because, but you can put it in a money market and make a little bit more than that. you can't go to CDs because CDs are not liquid.

Yeah, that CDs locked it up. you can't go to mutual funds because mutual funds are, are speculative. They're gonna go up, they're gonna go down. So you're pretty limited.

Yeah, you're, especially in our current, but it changes all the time and this is one of the advantages to being a history guy is that, right now it's like a little slice and it's really what's happening to bank, rates is ridiculous. current monetary policy is funky in my estimation., anyway, I wanna, I don't wanna go there. So insurance, and then the last thing you want, are investments for the second half. So let's move real quick.

Let's move on here. First of all, you want your financial records in order. And you want to have a will in living trust. And this is basically in case you stop existing in this world.

if you stop existing in this world, you leave people behind. You go to a good place, right? You have to be with God. you need to go to the next, the next part of the journey.

by the way, there's there's more journeying on the other side, but you get to go to a different, different part of the journey, yeah. Buying bonds with for your emergency fund. No, like As part of, as part of a balanced portfolio, yeah. Yeah, we'll talk about that in a minute.

Yeah, you, what you, we're gonna talk about what we call the diversity or balance, yeah. Yeah, what we're gonna find out, yeah, the, the lower the risk, the lower the return. And what you, what most people say is you want, why don't we just go wait till I get there? That's, that's better because I'm gonna get there and I'm gonna end up, yeah, I'm gonna end up talking about it now and I'm dumb enough, I'll talk it again, again.

anyway, make sure you have all your key information written down. my dad did this and it made life, well, he had most of his key information written down. it made life so much easier. make sure someone knows how to access all your accounts.

They know the passwords, they know all the security junk. oh my gosh. my, my dad sat down with my sister and went over most of that with her. but it, it, it, it can be a, just trust me, it can be a big hassle.

And have a have a will or living trust. Do not put your your financial. situation in the hands of the state. Yeah Yeah, is there, is there, is it better to have a will or a living trust?

I tend to live towards a living trust, but I don't feel, think that I'm qualified to give a statement on that. And like most of these things, it's going to depend upon you. it's not necessarily a one size fits all answer, yeah. for Uh-huh OK, everybody get a loving.

The other thing that That's steals your password. your Cattle Yeah download one Yeah. they, But I Yeah, it's that. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we, I, we've been through that. It's, it's very helpful, to have all that stuff spelled out so you're not All right. Insurance.

What, on what should you have insurance? and I would, I'm, I'm kinda going with Ron Bloom. This is my way of doing it too. I've, I've minimized insurance because insurance becomes an expense and I'm real, I'm personally, I'm a proponent of just insure the big stuff.

I don't, I don't have a home, warranty, or any of those kinds of things. Ron Blue says that, the, the big ones to have are, are health insurance, health in, we all know medical costs are, are, are deadly. we, we want to make sure you have some life insurance in, in place. We'll talk in a moment about how much life insurance you have, what life insurance you have.

It's really very personal. some people say that, the rule of thumb is to have, 8 to 10 times your income. Well, that, that may be, it depends., if you're someone, and married to someone who has an ability to earn money, you may not need to go quite 8 to 10 times your income. should you have whole life or should you have term life?

there are Most, most of the people I read are gonna, are gonna move you towards a term policy. But there are, there are some reasons at certain points in life to have whole life also. That's why it exists., you wanna make sure you have disability. Disability insurance is good to have.

if you are, if you, if you are employed for, for a long period of time, your family's gonna have, gonna have trouble. you wanna have possibly long-term care insurance, it's a possibility, Ron Blutz, recommends. And if you have a lot of assets, this, well, long-term care insurance. I don't wanna get too much into this.

I'm not, I'm, I'm not a finance guy. I need to keep saying that. I'm not a finance guy. Most of these things, some of these things are how much you have or what you have is gonna be contingent upon your situation.

if you have a lot of assets that you want to protect, then long-term care insurance makes more sense. But I don't want to get off on trying to give you advice on what to buy or what not to buy because that's not my Not my area of specialty. should we have plans for the second half? Proverbs says the plans are diligent leads surely to advantage, but everyone who is hasty comes surely to poverty.

what's being said there? Yeah. Yeah, so the plans the diligent. Amazon's talking to me.

Yeah, if there really, there really aren't. Most, if somebody says you can get rich fast, it means they're probably going to get rich and, and you're not. they're gonna, they're going to have your money is what's going to happen. and unfortunately, within, within Christian circles, yeah, there's a, there's a lot of shenanigans out there.

So you want, you, the, in the Christian world, in the, in the non-Christian world, there's a lot of financial shenanigans out there. If anybody says you, I've got the sure thing, if it's, if it's sure. And it's going to be quick, and it's just like mm, I'm, I'm, I'm done, I'm done talking about it. Use what, what you want to look at is slow and steady, slow plotting and start early.

It's much better than looking for a get rich quick scheme. Start early. Eileen and I were having this conversation a while ago when we were first married. I got my first teaching job and made real money.

actually my first teaching job, my only teaching job. That they, they, they come around and start talking to you about these things called, tax. Tax sheltered annuities and stuff. They start talking about tax shelters and things that you can, that you can put your money into.

And I listened to it and this makes a lot of sense. And then we had a conversation. It's like, but that's so far away. We're only, what, 20 or 24, 25 or something.

We're really young. Yeah, and it's, it's way out there. What are you starting now? But you realize that you, what you want is you want compound interest working in your favor.

That compound interest is an amazing thing. And the earlier it and quite honestly, even a year or two difference can make, when you go on the other end, even a 1 or 2 difference can make a big difference about how much You have at the other side. So there's a lot to be said for starting early and just being patient and slow plotting along the way. So starting early and slow plotting.

there is a grievous evil, which I have seen under the sun, riches being hoarded by their owner to his hurt. When those riches were lost to a bad investment, he had fathered a son, then there was nothing to support him. It's a warning there about being, about being careful, in terms of investing. I, I've made these mistakes.

I've, I've, I've done some And, and, and both of them were, this is not, and, and both of them were from, from, from, from Christians that had this like, this, this. Here's a way you can make some money fast. And both of them, I I lost money quickly. you'd think I would have learned the first time, but it took me twice.

to, to learn something. Be patient. higher returns involve greater risk. There are things out there where you can get really high returns, but you are taking a, taking a greater risk.

if you don't mind taking that risk, But you then, but realize the money you put into it may be gone, and it's not guaranteed. That it may be money that's gone. avoid get quick rich. Howard Dayton says be patient when investing.

I have never known anyone who made money in a hurry. Diligence, study, and counsel are the prerequisites for improving your chances for successful investments for avoiding risky ones. investing is also personal, and this is really important. What works for one person this may not work for another person.

It is very, very personal. my portfolio, my portfolio, if that sounds so we're saying that, my collection of investments does not look like what my dad's does. both of us have very, very low risk tolerance. I'm very risk averse.

to the, to the. I, I, I've driven several, investment guys crazy. Am I gonna argue I'm right? No, I'm not gonna argue I'm right.

I'm not going to argue I'm right. I'm just gonna argue that's who I am. And it's where am I going to argue my dad was right? No, I, I, I will tell you it, it worked really well for him.

Very, very, very, very risk averse, very, very over a long period of time, very slow, very conservative investments., he, it, it worked out really well for him. Consider your temperament, how much risk can you tolerate?. If, if you're somebody who worries a lot, you, you have to take that into account of how you invest. You do not want your investments causing you to be awake at night.

and that's personal. Don't get involved in something where it's gonna, it's gonna keep you awake. know your risk tolerance. My risk tolerance is very low.

Could I have retired with, with, with, with more money? Probably. But part of my temperament is I don't, quite honestly, I don't really care. That I didn't make more and you might say, well, maybe that's wrong, it's God's money.

You should have got a better return for it. OK, but I, I said I want my, this is what I'm looking for in the future. This is what I want. I'm gonna do what I need to get there and I, I don't really care about making a whole lot of money.

I, I, being rich. I'm not, that's not really my idea. Is that the right way to see it? No, that's my temperament.

That's the way I look at life. And I invested based on that temperament and that outlook. Yours may be different. So your, your, your portfolio may very well not look like mine.

It may be very, very different. My collection of investments, like I say, looks very different than my dad's. Learn from the strategies of others but invest from yourself. It's good to, to, to, to look at, how does Ramsey and, and Dave Ramsey invest.

My, my portfolio does not look at all like Dave Ramsey's. There's things I've invested in that, that Dave Ramsey would say don't do. Do I feel bad about that? No, I don't.

Am I gonna argue I'm right and he's wrong? No, I'm not. He's probably right and I'm, maybe I'm wrong. but I'm comfortable with what I've done.

it's, it's, it's low risk and it's, it's the investments I wanted, the decisions I made. be somewhat detached. The world of investments, in fact, do I, I'm hoping my next slide is what I think it is. You, in investing, you've got to be somewhat detached.

You cannot worry about it from moment to moment. The other thing you want to do is you want to look at what are very important in, in your investing are your goals. What, what, what do you want your second half of life to be like? And you want to invest for those goals.

I had or I have goals for what I wanted my, my second half of life to look like. In some ways those goals, some of my sales goals were very modest. OK. I think, I think that's one of my advisors looked at me and they said that.

They look, it's like, oh come on, Bill? Don't you want more than that? That's that's the attitude I got from him. He says, you're settling for, for, for, for less than you could that you could have.

And I, I basically said that to him, I said, I know that. I know I'm settling for less than I could have. I'm OK with that. Is that what you wanna do?

Maybe not. I, I don't, it's, it's very, very, very personal, but you do need to have goals. Don't just, don't just think it's, it's, it's gonna happen. Think about the future, think about what you want and, and make it a gospel thinking.

What, what do you want that second half if you didn't have to go to work every day? What would it be, what would it look like? And what do you need, to make that happen? Do you, do you wanna be, be doing missions?

Do you want to be overseas helping? And you need to have enough money to be able to do that. Is it gonna be here doing something? You'd be volunteering churching, a church a lot, whatever, whatever it is.

maybe you, maybe you want to open a bed and breakfast and, and develop relationships in your second half. you want to leave your office work and And have this bed and breakfast where you can build relationships and share with people and get to know people and share the gospel. I don't know what your second half looks like. And so your investments are going to look different than than mine are.

How much do you invest? first of all, investment is, is step number 4. So you want to make sure basic emergency fund. Pay off all debts except for your mortgage.

Fully funded emergency fund and whatever insurance you believe you need. Right, once again, insurance is a personal thing. Get, get what you think you need. Talk to someone, get what you need.

Then look at investing. And, and, and the hope is you get to somewhere between 10 and 15% of your income. But that's, that may not be you. It mean yours may be different than that.

It might be, it might be less, it might be more. but do save and try to, try to save, a fair, the, the real key is, is starting, starting early. Getting your debts paid off early, if you're young, get out of debt and just start the slow plod. to get there, a couple of things, oh gosh, time wise I'm dying here.

ethics of investment, when you begin investing, you're putting your money. Into companies. And I, I want to raise this question, I'm not gonna say very much about it. Dave Ramsey says, look, primarily at the return, it's not possible to be consistent in withholding economic involvement with those who disagree.

That's one view, Randy Alcorn says we should not do what we can, we should do what we can to discover how the companies in which we invest express their values. We should avoid investing in companies that are engaged in practices that violate our biblical values. those are two views. I, I don't fully agree with either one of them, quite honestly.

And, but you need to think your way through that. It's not a, I, I do think we should, should pay some attention to it. but on the other hand, what Dave Ramsey said is true. it is very difficult to find out everything that's going on out there.

It's hard to know all that. Types of assets. When you invest, you are going to hopefully get a collection of assets because what you want is you want diversity. Right?

You want, you want, you want money to last. So you want your investments to be in a variety of things. You're going to hold those investments over a period of time and you're going to have some return at the end. That's, that's the big picture of investing.

And you want to diversify, just divide your portion to 7 or even to 8, for you do not know what misfortune may occur on the earth. Right? What does that mean? Yeah, don't, don't put all your eggs in one basket, right?

It's like, that's the same, the same idea. You don't want all your money invested in one thing. That thing goes belly up, then you're, then you're sunk. What you want your money is, you want spread out.

So if one thing goes belly up. You, you're OK. you're, you're not, you're not devastated and the chances are that, something you're going to invest in is not going to work out. And, and you have to be OK with that.

If you're diversified, it's not a problem. Right? It's not a problem. You still got, you, you, you still got other investments that will cover it.

Another reason for diversifying is the American economy. I get a little history lesson here. The American economy tends to go up and down. politicians tend to forget this, but, it tends to go in cycles.

The, the width of the cycles varies. used to be like it would say every 5 years you get, get a cycle, but the economy tends to have boom cycles where everything is going up. I if you remember back in the, the early 2000s, right? Everything was getting better and better and house prices were going up and, and all that, and all of a sudden it goes.

Crash and it goes and it goes down. And then it goes, and, and, right now we're climbing back, up again. Unemployment's better than it was and the economy tends to go like this. the government tries to use policies to control it, monetary policy, physical policy, all kinds of things, but it goes up and down.

and you have to, you have to keep this in mind in investing. It is going to go up and down, which means you have to have a long, you wanna be diversified. Because everything does not normally go down together and you have to have a long picture. You have to be hang on for the long, the long haul.

if you, if you buy up here, when things are really high and it goes down, then you sell, what happens? You've lost it all. I know, I know my sister back, back in When the economy first went down in what, 2007, 2008 back in there, she says, I'm never going to be able to retire., I'm. But what's happened?

The stock markets Higher than it's It's ever been. it's, it's, it's up and down, so you just and for me, I, I just kick back and go, well, OK, it's down. And it's It's, you, you have to have that long-term mentality. Otherwise, you're gonna do it if you're going in and out, in and out, in and out.

Which some people try to do and, and there's, there's some people who play the system and aren't successful at it. But, the best thing to do is you you you've gotta realize it goes, it goes up and down over a period of time. so you, you spread yourself out. This is not all I, I stole this from, from Ron Blue.

this is just an overview of some of the different types of assets you can, in which you can invest. And so you've got stocks, domestic stocks, international stocks, bonds, real estate, precious metals, cash, and what you want is you want to find a portfolio of mix of these things that you feel comfortable with. Is this list exhaustive? No, because quite honestly, anything can be an investment.

Anything can be an investment. You can hold anything that you hold on to that increases in value, if that's why you're doing it, it's now a Investment, I could buy, I could buy drum sets. And hold on to them and they eventually become vintage, and I, I sell them as vintage drum sets. That's in.

That's investing Trump. More than Oh yeah, I've, I've got, I've got a Slingerland drum set that my parents bought for me when I was a little kid. When I was in junior high school, when I, when I first started playing drum set, it was used. It's a drum set from the 1950s, right?

Which my parents paid. Squat nothing for. I know cause my parents wouldn't have bought it unless it got squat nothing. And when I was a kid, I thought it was a piece.

I know, I thought it was a piece of junk. Now that thing is probably worth a couple $2000. Maybe more. I gotta, I gotta, I need to find out how much I gotta get it back together again first cause I can't, I destroyed it.

So I gotta get it back together again. But yeah, anything could be an investment, coins. You name it, people collect dolls, some people collect it just because they like to have them. Other people collect them as As investments.

Does the value always stay, stay high? No, it, it, it, it can go up and down too. Gold, gold prices go up and down. They're up a lot higher than they were a long time ago.

The other thing I want to see about investments, Dave Ramsey talks about this. There are lots of ways to invest. One of the ways to do it, especially is, is to use mutual funds. mutual funds invest in multiple assets.

They're run by professionals. look for funds with good returns over time, recent performance, long term. That's what this last couple of things here before I, close out. Before you invest, seek counsel.

Realize you need help. Even Dave Ramsey says he turns to people who are experts on stuff to get advice on how to do his investments. You can't keep up with everything. Couple of things about financial professionals.

Interview several financial professionals. Don't just take Uncle Bob because Uncle Bob is there. make sure you get an advisor who's someone who has the heart of a teacher, not a salesperson. If someone's currently trying to sell you something, they don't want to explain it, then the other thing you wanna do is you wanna, You wanna make sure how, how does the person get paid?

Have them explain to you how they're making their money. If they're working for free? No, they're not, probably. You need to understand how their, their income affects your investments, that there are advisors who get a percentage of, some work for a percentage of investments, some work for a fee in advance.

There's advantages and disadvantages to both of those. but check them out, look at several of them. now, actually, I'm gonna stop there because I'm running out of time. I'm, I'm not gonna talk about investing with employers.

OK, let me go ahead and pray and then, and then we'll be done. Lord, thank you for your, your grace and your goodness. Well this is a complex area and I know that we've just flown really, really, really high over it. Lord, help us just to be good students and good stewards and realize that, our true hope is not in riches.

thank you, Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen.