Financial Wisdom & Folly (3)

We want to dive into that some more today and kind of go through some things that can help us to save money to Store money Preserve wealth that kind of thing. Especially for the the really nasty times that are coming that already here.

So I.

Wanted to pick up from last time we were talking about justice and poverty and How to view those things and how to engage? The poor and One thing that I always like to share with with the poor is You.

You never want to just give them money. It's always good to give them a Track the gospel some something else that will give them The truth because that's really what they need. And one of the things that I like to use to cement that reality is.

In.

Matthew 6:25–34 and Providence in God’s Care

Jesus Sermon on the Mount. If we if you turn with me to Matthew 6 in verse 33 so in Matthew 6 Actually, we'll start at verse 25. I'll be reading from our brand new LSB Bible. We got for for our son Matthew 6 starting in verse 25.

For this reason I say to you do not be worried about your life. As to what you will eat or what you will drink nor for your body as to what you will put on. It's not life more than food and the body more than clothing.

Look at the birds of the air that they do not. That they do not sow nor reap nor gather into barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they. And who of you by being worried can add a single cubit to his lifespan.

And Why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow. They do not toil nor do they spin yet? I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these.

But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace. Will he not much more clothed you you of little faith? Do not worry then saying what will we eat or what will we drink or what will we wear for clothing?

For all these things the Gentiles eagerly seek for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.

So do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. This is a very key passage.

For.

Anxiety and the cares of this life, especially with poor. The poor who don't have Shelter, they don't have a reliable means of income or whatever. The case is and we went through the different reasons why that might be.

But one thing that I always like to share with the poor Is this verse? Because this verse really demonstrates that God provides for the birds the lilies the flowers and. How much more how much more of value are we then.

Flowers and birds right and that's what God is saying that if you seek God first and his kingdom and his righteousness By first and foremost believing the gospel. That's step one, right then God will Provide for you all of these things.

He'll take care of you.

And.

Now this teaches us another really good lesson an important lesson about God God's use of means. How God uses means. So when it says look doesn't God? Feed the birds. Doesn't God clothe the the lilies of the field.

Doesn't it does he not clothe the grass. So what what that means is that God is not literally putting Clothes on them or giving them food. But he's using his providence to provide for them through means.

Right, that's the it's not like some supernatural giving of manna from heaven. It's more through God's providence and God's providence if you all recall from our catechism.

That we.

That we have from the Baptist catechism. If we if we look there we'll see. Well if it lets me see it. But we know that Providence is God's governing of all things in creation According to his will.

And.

I don't know why this isn't working.

So.

But that's really oh I think I found it. Okay. Yes, here we go.

Okay.

What's that one? Yes? What are God works of God's works of providence? God's works of providence are his. Are his most holy? Wise and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures and all their actions.

And.

Then question 16 What special act of providence that God exercised towards man in the estate wherein he was first created when God created man? He entered into a covenant of works with him upon condition of perfect obedience.

Forbidding him to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil upon pain of death. So God has special works of providence and he has ordinary works of providence. His ordinary works of providence are what we see in nature the Sun rising and setting The moon all of those things that order and that consistency is part of God's works of ordinary providence.

God obviously does extraordinary works of providence like Initiating covenants with man like Adam and Abraham and and all of those other men in the Bible David so you see those special works of providence.

But ordinarily God works through means through secondary means so God provides for us. Through different means right? What means are those? How does God provide for us? For our needs our food our shelter, how does he provide for us?

Not a trick question simple simple Working a job, right. God provides for us through a job he helps us to Find work get a job and that's how he equips us and that's why Job was also Wealthy it's not that God just poured out blessings from heaven by default it was no it was because Job worked and That is the principle in the Bible that if you don't work, you don't even eat.

So you have to work we have to work because that was part of what God Instructed man to do in the garden. He needed to work the garden. It wasn't hard work or cursed cursed work, but now the curse heightens our Struggles to work from the sweat of our brow in order to get something get what we need from the earth from our money and all of those things so We have to work, but that's how God provides for us.

He gives us a job or a husband right that will provide and those things.

And.

So that's an important lesson of how God primarily works through means. He works through these means and we shouldn't try to go around To circumvent these means because those are the means that God uses right so we can't ignore or go against or around those means.

That's why the Bible repeatedly warns in the book of Proverbs Not to try to get rich quick or not to do some scheme where you make some money or steal. Right because that's not God's means of provision.

That's the devil's that's the devil stealing killing and destroying that's sin. When you go through those means you will likely You will suffer consequences you will in this life and in the next if you don't repent right and.

So that's really important for. What I always like to share with homeless folks poor the poor is This passage I think It provides a lot of hope. Because it's just a matter of look just make God a priority.

Seek God seek God through his word believe the gospel and God will lead you into finding ways to provide for you. He will help you to find a job and a place to live and all of those things God provides.

Right, so that's very important to have a good understanding of because in a lot of ours and a lot of churches and in a lot of Movements. So to speak in the church There tends to be a lot of this pietism and a lot of this like this this, you know.

A popular example is George Mueller. Anybody know who George Mueller was? Yeah, he was a Victor he lived during the Victorian era with Charles Dickens and he had orphanages. He was very well known for his orphanages and he had this thing where he had this conviction and you know, Paul Washer uses the same principle that His conviction was we're not going to ask anybody for anything.

We're not going to ask for anything because we believe that God will provide. Right. So that's this principle that he lived by in saying. Well, we're not going to ask anyone for any kind of financial help any kind of physical need needs help like food or nothing and You know sure enough the Lord would provide and God would move people to Provide food or even when times were we they didn't know where was the next thing was going to come from but there's something that George Mueller was leaving out of his conviction.

There's something that he was doing that was actually in a way Reaching out and letting people know what he was doing and encouraging people to give to his ministry. This is part of where some some folks in the church Don't understand God's use of means and One of the things that George Mueller was very well known for was his newsletter he was the one who pioneered the concept of a ministry newsletter and The concept of a ministry newsletter was fairly new and Mueller would talk about all the things that God was doing in his orphanages and in his ministries.

He said look God is doing all these cool things all these amazing things and look how he provides and look at this and that. And the other and people would devour his newsletter. They would look forward to it and they would read it and obviously that was giving insight into what what what?

Mueller was doing and what what ministry work he was doing and that would encourage people to give money to his ministry. So it's a failure to recognize The means that God uses through people and through normal means through the means of publishing media, right newsletters or books or emails advertisements, whatever it is those are all means that God works through and they are not impious means of using them.

It's it's it's disingenuous to say. Well, we're not going to ask anybody for anything. But then you publish a newsletter and you tell people everything that you're doing. It's it's disingenuous because in a way That is a form of advertising you're advertising yourself in your ministry and Look, look at everything God does and look we didn't ask for a night for anything.

But it's like that's not how God works. God uses means and it is perfectly appropriate to ask for support. When the situation is appropriate it calls for it. It's not appropriate to ask for support when you don't work, right?

If you don't work, you need to get a job, right? That's the big thing.

But.

Paul asked churches for money in The book of in the Acts and Corinthians. He said hey prepare an offering when I get there. So when I get there, I can go and distribute it to the other churches that are in need or send a representative With you so that he can help provide for the other church that's in need.

There's nothing wrong with asking for financial support. Obviously, it gets abused with prosperity churches and ministries like, you know, these just buffoons on TV like Jesse Duplantis and Kenneth Copeland and all these got Joel Osteen.

Even locally here at Bundy Living Faith, right? You have a lot of these prosperity Ministries that are false satanic. They're of the devil. They're not they don't belong to God. So there's a balance the way we need to have a balance in How God works and how God moves and not to judge People in thinking well, he's extra spiritual because he doesn't ask for money or to think that oh, well, he's not a spiritual.

He doesn't trust God as much because he's asking for money. That's like yeah, but you have to accuse Paul of being unspiritual. Paul the Apostle Who wrote most of the New Testament? Right, so let's not be foolish about How God works and moves, right.

And.

And.

So that's something that I think is important to have a good understanding and balance. Understanding of because you it's very common. You see it's so common today. Like I said, Paul Washer does this he he says that we don't ask anybody for anything.

And it's a you but you have a newsletter you have all kinds of advertisements on your website and your newsletter and you're talking about all the exploits that your missionaries are doing in this country and in that Country and look at all the work and the church is being planted and stuff.

That's a form of advertising right, so It's important to understand these things properly and and to have a good grasp of What the word says And how God works, right?

So I.

Think also. There's something else that I wanted to kind of tackle Today. I talked about Infinite banking a few weeks ago a little bit and I talked about how we.

Used.

Sort of Dave Ramsey's method for saving and for short-term savings and for budgeting, right and One of the things I wanted to go through I have I have the Financial Peace University booklet that we used when my wife and I took the class several years ago when we first got married and Like I said some things were helpful and Now that I understand certain things better.

Some things were just downright horrendous advice. Okay, so we want to make sure How do we need to be careful with who we put it? You can put it up put it up. Just put it down. It's fine. So this is what we really need to understand When it comes to Who you trust and making sure you understand what they're telling you.

What advice is somebody giving you and is it good advice or is there better advice out there that you may not be aware of? And that this guy or this advisor may not be aware of either or may not have a good understanding of.

We have to really be careful with how we Handle our money because there's so many schemes out there including government schemes like retirement accounts and 401ks and college savings plans and all these different government programs and accounts that May look like they're they might be a good investment or something to get into but if you don't have anything to compare it to or a good understanding of what's really happening or what the The cost is for having something like that then You're not going to know better, so I'm going to go through the seven baby steps that Dave Ramsey recommends for pretty much everybody.

Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps and the Limits of Conventional Advice

Step number one is to have a thousand dollars saved in an emergency fund right and This is this is generally good advice. It's good to say for a rainy rainy day.

And.

Because things are going to happen right things are going to break down. Houses are going to get worn out. Need to be replaced. Repaired cars. You know we talked about cars last time. You know just to give you an idea we save.

We save a hundred dollars a month for car repairs. Just just just for car repairs and tires and all that stuff. So that helps us so that when we need to have a repair something breaks down the check engine light comes on.

The tires need to be replaced which ours do. So we have funds saved up for those very things those costs.

Now.

Saving for an emergency is also important so that you don't get yourself into bigger trouble. If you have a financial need and a real emergency, okay, we're not talking about oh, well, I can't buy Cookies today because I'm not I don't have enough money.

So I'm going to need to take out you know take it out of my savings or somewhere like no obviously a real emergency. Right like something that you need in order to go get to your job like a car or whatever it is a real emergency.

It is good to have money saved up for those kinds of events that are going to happen. They're going to happen.

So.

Expect them to happen because they will happen, but when they went when they when they Do happen. You'll be better prepared in those circumstances. Now a $1 ,000 is not a whole lot.

So.

We're going to get to the next baby steps to see what he what else he says now. Step number two is to pay off all debt except the house your mortgage in other words and Utilizing the debt snowball method so that the debt snowball is just basically if you have several debts.

You take the the debts that have the lowest amount and you pay the minimum. You pay the lowest amount first. And then you pay the minimum amounts for all of the other debts and then once you finish paying off the lowest one Then you add that minimum payment to the other one to the next one and then it starts snowballing so that you pay them all off eventually In a snowball effect or you go with the one with the lowest interest.

That's another method.

But.

The key thing here. The key thing here the court. I know the key thing here is To it is good to pay off debt because the Bible says oh no man anything right. Roman says oh no man anything except to love one another.

However.

There are trade-offs, okay that we have to also be aware of so that we are careful not to Pass up on certain opportunities that can actually help us to make more money and to pay off our debts faster.

So what I mean is for example just as an example. Just as an example like we can say Silver right now is is very affordable. It's very cheap. And so if you buy silver right now Which is going for about $30 an ounce right now very cheap.

So if you buy it now Within a very short while it's going to continue to go up and it's been going up for the past Several decades for the past several years and decades. It keeps going up. And so if you were to buy.

Silver and Get.

Weight sit on it a little bit a few years later. It's going to go significantly higher in Value and price because a lot of the things that are happening are making silver go up that we know are happening.

And there's a direct correlation to what's going on. One of the big things that makes silver and precious metals go up is inflation. Now who knows what inflation is who can tell me what inflation is? Yes.

Inflation is when the government prints more money. When you print more money, it creates more money in Circulation and it dilutes the amount the value of your existing dollars. So when you create more money out of thin air with nothing to back it up with you are essentially diluting the existing currency.

Because you have the same amount of You have more money chasing the same amount of goods. There's nothing that that warranted a Production of money other than the government decided to print more money because they wanted to do this that in the other and so what?

That does is that devalues our money our dollar which is not real money. It's just currency and it's devalued because the government controls it so when that happens The value goes down and the cost of living goes up.

It goes up significantly and over 90 like 97 or 8 or 9 percent of our dollar has vanished because the government keeps printing money like crazy and What that does however is when they print money this way it starts to bring a significant rise in the value of precious metals.

There's a direct relationship there, that's why a lot of when you see a lot of investors or Countries like China buying heavily Precious metals because they are hedging they are hedging. It's a hedge what it is.

It's sort of like insurance for your money. It's a hedge because when the value of money continues to inflate The value of precious metals goes up as well. Because the value of the dollar is going down To the point where it eventually can collapse and be worth nothing which has happened on several occasions.

So.

There's a lot of reason there are some reasons why it would be better to if there's a good opportunity to invest in something it might be better to actually invest in that opportunity and You can use the money that you invested to pay off Your debts much faster as opposed to just paying off the debt first and This is something that there's a principle built into this because What happens is that?

When when. When when you pay for something. When you use your money to pay for something to pay off debt or to buy something you are losing The ability for that money to make you money. You're foregoing interest on that money That you are that you are forfeiting by using it to buy something or to pay off debt.

That's a very important important principle.

Okay.

This is where the difference between the power of infinite banking comes in as opposed to just saving money in a savings account. Okay, and then spending it whenever you get ready to use it.

So.

So.

We.

Very important to understand this principle and I'll get into this a little bit more. Well, actually, let's get into it right now. So One of the important things here is to understand if you save up. So one of the methods that Dave Ramsey advocates that I talked about last time.

We use a sinking fund. Right a sinking fund is a short-term savings account. Where you save up for things that you know You're going to need or that you want to get that are more expensive that are too expensive for you to buy within a month basically, right so you want to save up to buy for a car to buy a car or Anything, you know, you name it whatever a vacation.

So what you do is you save up money in your savings? For those things every month you set aside a certain amount. Typically 10 of your income you can save it off for these other longer shorter term expenses.

And.

That's what we've been doing. We typically take like 10 of our income. We use it for our short-term savings to save up for insurance, right. Because it's cheaper when you buy insurance. In six-month installments or in yearly installments as opposed to monthly and things like that car repairs as well.

Like I said, and so saving up money Saving up money Is is better to The so the concept of that is you save up and then when you're ready to buy something you can pay for it in cash. And that's what Dave Ramsey said says he recommends like when you're bargaining or trying to buy pay for something take out the cash.

So you can say hey, I've got cash that I can pay for right now. And usually you can get a discount off of that. You know The the power of that you can still find that there's still value in that but the dollar is just it's it's becoming so Diminished that it's not that the effectiveness of that is not going to be all of that effective.

Just because the dollar keeps collapsing.

But but.

Here's the thing When you were saving up your money in a savings account, you were gaining interest on it a certain amount of interest, right? Well, it probably wasn't a lot but You were gaining certain interest on that money because it was being saved up and you had it in there and your money to some Extent was working for you gaining interest.

So the thing the thing here is that When you use that money that money you lose the interest that you were making on that money. You're no longer going to make me interest on that money. That's where the difference in in infinite banking comes in.

With the infinite banking concept when you buy a whole life Insurance policy that's mutually owned and Dividend paying you're essentially paying for a policy that is sort of like a bank and That you're paying premiums for it and you're you're building up cash value Inside the policy and it's growing tax-free.

That's another benefit of using a Whole life insurance policy because Everything you earn there is tax-free as long as it's structured correctly. It's tax-free. Whereas even the interest that you make in a savings account is taxed and you have to report that on your Income tax, right?

You're you what are they what form is though? The the it's a W. What is it? It's it's an income statement that you get from your the interest earned and Your bank will give it to you. What's that? Yeah, it's a specific term it's a form an IRS form but for interest interest income now.

But in this situation you don't pay any tax as long as it's structured correctly and used properly now here if you keep putting money in a life insurance policy you pay premium premiums on it every month and when you when you When you What when you sorry when you earn so I get keep getting distracted when you earn Build up the life insurance policy you build up cash value that you can that you can borrow out of.

You can borrow out of this money by getting a loan from the in from the life insurance company. So what you do is if you want to get if you want to take some money out instead of withdrawing money from the policy.

You get a loan from the life insurance company you pay them interest on it, but you get a loan so that instead of taking money out of your policy the money in your policy stays and So you're still making interest on that money.

The money is still there because you're taking out a loan from a life insurance company at interest at a certain rate of interest. But you take that money out. The your money still stays in the life insurance policy and it's still earning interest.

It's still earning interest and you're still getting dividends paid for it because they pay dividends at the end of each year typically. And the higher your cash value is and your those the the premiums are the higher your dividend will become and it all piles up.

It continues to compound interest and that's the power of using an infinite banking concept policy through life insurance through life insurance because. You don't take the money out. The money always stays and it always continues to build up so if you need money you take it out of a Through a loan through the life insurance company and then what they do is they use your death benefit as collateral for the loan so everybody's pretty much safe because Your death benefit is guaranteed when you die because you will die right unless the rapture happens, I mean the The the Christ comes back before then but you will almost certainly die before then and so.

Even if you take money out and you don't pay off the loan, which you should we need to be responsible with our lending, right? We need to pay off the the money pay back the loan, but Your your death benefit collateralizes that loan.

So.

It's really a an extremely advantageous thing because it's also something called an unstructured loan. An Unstructured loan has no repayment terms on it. When you get a loan from a bank or from an auto Company, you have to set a minimum payment.

You have to set certain terms. You have to pay it off within a certain amount of time or a certain amount minimum amount and If you don't stick to that you can get into serious trouble. But here there are no repayment terms.

It gives you a lot more control over your money and the ability to repay the loan as You're able to even if you fall in hard times. Even if you fall in difficult times, you're still able to. You don't have to repay the loan right away.

You can wait. Okay. Well, I lost my job. It takes you a couple months to get another job you get another job and then you can start repaying back the loan again. But you don't suffer any consequences for not Paying it that month or those two months.

So this is the power. This is the power. This is the power of using infinite banking concept. It's very different. It's very different from what the traditional way that people teach us to use money like Dave Ramsey and it's very frustrating that I found this out later and Wasted some years getting to this point, but It's like they always say better late than never right?

It's it's good to try to take advantage of this if you can.

And.

So the.

The other thing about this is that so but but it changes the dynamic completely of how The sinking fund works because as a instead of using a sinking fund to save up money for something ahead of time.

You're paying premiums into a life insurance company to build up cash value. And then when you need to pay for something you take a loan out so you take a look instead of taking it out of your savings account you take a loan out instead to pay for a car or to pay for a house or whatever or Repairs tires, whatever it is.

You're taking out out as a policy loan from the life insurance company instead of a Savings account that you're saving into. Because the concept is that this is sort of basically a it's a it's a replacement.

Or a different way of doing the same thing. But it has its benefits because your money is still working for you because you never took it out of your policy. It's still there and it's still growing and compounding interest Every single year that you pay the premiums and all of that stuff.

Okay, so yes. How long what? Well, the concept itself has been used by Very shrewd and wise Investors and wealthy individuals like the Rockefellers and like Disney when Disney I think first started they started it.

They use life insurance companies in order to fund their the companies, you know. The assets and all of those those things. So this was known to wise investors and people who knew how money worked and But it became popularized by a gentleman by the name of Nelson Nash.

Nelson Nash, he wrote a book.

Called.

Becoming your own banker. Highly recommend that you all read that book. I've shared it on the me week group. I'll post it again. I posted a review of the book. Because it is an amazing concept that literally solves all of the answers that it's it's an answer to all of the government problems has created with money and Investment and retirement.

It's an amazing concept. So Nelson Nash popularized this concept through his book. I think he published it in the late 70s or 80s or Maybe a little later. Maybe in the late 80s somewhere around there.

I forget when the first edition was it's like the fifth edition now, but He's the one who popularized this concept and It's not as well known. It's gaining some traction because people are recognizing the benefits of it and the amazing value that the ability to preserve wealth.

Through this method as opposed to all of the traditional methods that most financial planners and advisors recommend to you like Dave Ramsey and like You know these other guys like Suze Orman and all these other Gurus financial gurus that you know, they they sound like they know what they're talking about.

But in a lot of these cases, they don't they are not giving wise advice and they're actually misleading people in Ways that will hurt them if they listen to them as opposed to doing something like this and so obviously I Have to caveat that I am NOT a financial planner or advisor.

I'm not a CFP. I'm not a CPA. I'm not a legal Nothing. I'm just a person who understands basic math. Right. I understand basic math and I've seen how one way works. Which I used and I practice and now I'm seeing another way that works much better and that is way better to use if you use it properly and take advantage of the benefits that it provides for you as the tremendous asset that it is because It provides protection from the government, which is huge.

It protects you from the government because the banks are what the worst place to put your money in. The word literally the worst place you could put your money in is in a bank now I'm not saying don't use banks at all because we're pretty much stuck using banks, but the the point the the point of.

You.

The point of using this is that it's not a bank. It's a life insurance policy. So it's protected from the government's hands because it's not FDIC insured. FDIC insured means the federal government controls the banks and Therefore you can lose everything in there and the banks themselves don't do a good job of handling the their assets your money in a lot of cases.

Including a lot of the local banks here in El Paso. But when you use When you when you minimize what you have in the bank To just the basic expenses that you know, you need to take care of. And you instead take advantage of putting it in a life insurance policy like this an infinite banking concept.

It protects you from the government. It protects you it protects you from lawsuits as well. So if somebody sues you which is becoming very popular these days, right all this lawfare. They they cannot sue you after your life insurance because life insurance is not an investment.

It's not an ad. It's not a Considered an investment or an asset. It's considered a replacement for a loss it's it's insurance and So they can't sue you for life insurance over your life insurance policy, which is extremely powerful.

Okay? It all depends. It all depends. That's the most important thing is determining how much premium are you willing to pay? Because how much premium how much premium you pay? Determines how Big and how fast the policy is going to grow and how big your death benefit will be and how big your cash value will.