- 00:00
- read an article that just blew my mind, and I wanted to share it with you today. But before we get into that,
- 00:06
- I wanted to share a Bible verse with you, which, you know, we need to internalize this verse.
- 00:12
- We need to live by it. The Bible says that we live by the Word of God, and God gave us this
- 00:17
- Word, so it's important, and we need to really understand what it means. And I want to read, it's
- 00:23
- Proverbs 22 7. This is from the King James Version. It says this, "...the
- 00:30
- rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender."
- 00:36
- That word servant is actually slave, so the rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.
- 00:53
- Yeah, that's a verse that we all kind of know, and I want to make sure that I incorporate what this verse is teaching in every area of my life.
- 01:04
- Now what I don't think this verse is teaching is that every example of taking out a loan is a sin.
- 01:10
- Like, if you take out a loan to buy a house, or you take out a loan in your business, you know, you want to acquire a piece of equipment, or a capital, or some working capital, a line of credit, something like that for your business,
- 01:22
- I don't think that means you're automatically in sin. I think a lot of consumer debt is fundamentally sinful.
- 01:29
- However, I don't think that every kind of debt that's imaginable is necessarily sinful, but this does tell a truth, a true thing about every kind of debt, right?
- 01:42
- It doesn't matter if it's consumer debt, or business debt, or a mortgage, or whatever, there's a sense in that that borrowing that you're doing there makes you a slave in a certain sense.
- 01:55
- And that's something that we need to recognize. So if you're in debt, no matter what kind of debt you're in, there's a sense that you're actually a servant.
- 02:03
- You're actually a slave to the person who lent you that money. Now, we need to take this into the world here, because there's lots of different kinds of debt that people get into, and I would suggest that if you have consumer debt right now, you know, credit cards, car loans, things of that nature,
- 02:22
- I would suggest getting out of student debt. I would suggest getting out of student debt as well. However, I might wait on that one just to see if that could get forgiven by the government.
- 02:31
- I don't agree with debt forgiveness by the government. However, if it does get forgiven, you're going to want to take advantage of that.
- 02:38
- There's nothing about taking advantage of a program like that that's sinful. Definitely do it.
- 02:43
- If the government's going to give you some of your cash back or some of your money back, or if they're going to recognize that they kind of cheated you out of some money because of this ridiculous student loan program that they've instituted.
- 02:54
- Listen, guys, I'm not for student loan debt forgiveness. However, I do recognize that the student loan racket was a scam.
- 03:03
- The whole thing was a scam. A total scam. No question about it. I have a lot of sympathy for people that took out student loans to get worthless degrees.
- 03:12
- You know what I mean? Anyway, that's not what this episode's about. This episode's about an article that I read on CNBC.
- 03:21
- I was googling some things about paying off a home mortgage early.
- 03:28
- Strategies, the right kind of way to do it, how to go about it, stuff like that. What I was really looking for was just stories.
- 03:36
- Different stories of different people's experiences paying off their home mortgage early because that's something that I'm looking into potentially doing.
- 03:46
- Man, this is the very first article that I saw, and it blew my mind.
- 03:53
- It's interesting because I googled it. This is the very first article that comes up on Google. You know they want you to see this.
- 04:00
- I DuckDuckGo'd it, and this is not the first article that I saw. In fact, on DuckDuckGo, this article with the search terms that I used didn't come up right away.
- 04:10
- It's interesting. I think that this is something that the powers that be, whoever they are, whoever you think they are, they want you to see this article.
- 04:18
- It's very, very interesting, especially when you keep in mind the verse that we started out this video in.
- 04:24
- The borrower is slave to the lender, and the rich rules over the poor.
- 04:31
- I want to read this article here. This is so interesting. It's titled, Millionaire Who Bought a
- 04:37
- Home at 26 Regrets Paying Off His Mortgage Early. This is the
- 04:42
- Biggest Downside That Nobody Tells You. I'm going to read. Let me just read this.
- 04:48
- This article blew my mind. In 2003, I purchased a 1 ,000 square foot, two bedroom, two bathroom condo in San Francisco for $580 ,000 with a fixed rate mortgage of 4 .25%.
- 05:01
- First of all, let's just stop there for a second. Look at those numbers, man.
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- A 1 ,000 square foot condo, two bedrooms, two baths, over half a million dollars in San Francisco.
- 05:13
- That is something right there. That is something. Cheap mortgage too, 4 .25%.
- 05:20
- Pretty cheap money. All right. He says, over the next few years, I became obsessed with trying to pay off my mortgage early.
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- In 2015, my wife and I finally did it. Eliminating one of our largest reoccurring expenses felt so satisfying.
- 05:35
- With one less burden, we could live life more freely. Here's what he says.
- 05:42
- He's recognizing the fact that he was able—and this guy was obviously rich in the first place.
- 05:48
- He bought a $580 ,000 house and was able to pay it off in 12 years, just about it looks like.
- 05:54
- He recognizes that doing that allowed him to live life more freely.
- 06:00
- Well, that would actually fit in really nicely with the proverb we just read. Borrow a servant to the lender.
- 06:05
- He got out of his debt and he felt like he could live life more freely. He could do a lot more stuff.
- 06:12
- He didn't have this recurring payment, which I don't even know what that payment looks like. $2 ,000, $3 ,000 maybe?
- 06:18
- I don't know. He had this recurring payment that it was off his back at this point.
- 06:24
- He recognizes that he could live life more freely. Here's how the article continues. Just a year later, that feeling went away, along with the fire to improve my finances.
- 06:36
- There are several studies citing the psychological benefits of paying off a debt early, such as emotional relief and the strength to avoid slipping back into debt.
- 06:45
- All of that is true, but the biggest downside that nobody talks about is the complete loss of motivation to take on calculated risks and to work as hard as you can to grow your wealth.
- 07:00
- When I read that sentence, I was thinking to myself, huh, this is interesting.
- 07:07
- So the servant gets out of servitude. He gets out of his debt slavery, right?
- 07:13
- In 12 years, he's able to get it out. In less than half the time that it should have taken, he's able to get out of that relationship where he's a servant anymore.
- 07:23
- Then he recognizes that this is, I'm now free. My income is freed up.
- 07:29
- I'm no longer the servant I once was. And very quickly after that, he almost loses his identity a little bit.
- 07:38
- He says he loses his fire to grow his wealth, his ability to take on...
- 07:48
- motivation is what he says. He loses his motivation. It's almost like the servant doesn't know what to do anymore when he's totally free.
- 07:57
- He's just kind of lost. What do I do? It's very interesting. This is a psychological thing here.
- 08:04
- Let's just continue to read for a second to see why he thinks this is a downside. He says, after being mortgage -free, my wife and I lived comfortably off the severance checks that we negotiated when we quit our six -figure jobs in finance.
- 08:19
- By that time, we had amassed a net worth of $3 million. He has no mortgage, has a net worth of $3 million.
- 08:30
- They quit their six -figure -a -year jobs. He also gets $150 ,000 in annual passive income, mostly from real estate, dividend stocks, and bonds.
- 08:43
- This is a rich, rich man. Net worth of $3 million, quit his six -figure -a -year job.
- 08:50
- He has $150 ,000 in annual passive income, so dividends, stocks, bonds, real estate.
- 08:58
- This guy's doing everything right, but listen to what he says. My entire attitude slowly changed once I sent that final mortgage check.
- 09:07
- I stopped aggressively looking for new freelance consulting work. I went from taking three contracts per month to just one.
- 09:13
- Instead of working 60 hours, I was only working 20 hours. At around $10 ,000 per contract, I was losing out on $20 ,000 of our monthly income.
- 09:25
- I just find this fascinating. Tell me in the comment section if you agree.
- 09:32
- It's almost like that servitude that the Bible talks about. The borrower is slave to the lender.
- 09:40
- It's part of your identity. That slavery that you're in, we can't mince words.
- 09:46
- The Bible calls that a form of slavery. So that slavery that you're in becomes part of who you are.
- 09:51
- When you don't have that, you lose your motivation. It's like when you don't have your master anymore, you're confused.
- 10:00
- You don't know what to do. This is a rich man who enjoyed the servitude of a mortgage.
- 10:07
- It's very interesting because that slavery mindset has nothing to do with your net worth. It has nothing to do with your income.
- 10:15
- There were rich slaves back in Jesus's times as well. That freedom though is something that is scary to a lot of people.
- 10:22
- I got to be honest, this article, it kind of made me angry because this is a millionaire.
- 10:30
- This is a net worth of $3 million, $150 ,000 a year in passive income, which means he's not working for that.
- 10:37
- He makes $10 ,000 a month on contracts and he can take three or take one. He's lamenting that he doesn't have the motivation to take three even though he doesn't need it.
- 10:46
- He's lamenting that lack of motivation. That's not how it works for the majority of people though.
- 10:54
- The majority of people aren't millionaires. What is this article trying to get you to do? I'm assuming a lot of non -millionaires are reading this article.
- 11:03
- It's trying to get you to stay in that place of servanthood, that place of submission, that place of slavery.
- 11:11
- It's trying to get you to almost hate freedom, the idea of freedom. You're going to be lost and confused.
- 11:17
- Your mental state isn't going to be quite right when you lose your master. It's going to be...what a bizarre article.
- 11:24
- So we need to kind of come to terms with this. If you've lived a life of debt and essentially you've lived a life of slavery, that's what the
- 11:35
- Bible is telling you. So if you've been in debt your entire adult life, like most of us, most of us have been in debt our entire adult lives.
- 11:43
- It starts with college debt. That's the thing I hate about college debt, right? Because they get you right at the beginning, right?
- 11:49
- So you start off in debt and they teach you in high school that that's the right thing to do, to start off in debt.
- 11:57
- And then you stay in debt, and most people stay in debt their entire life. People are paying mortgages into their 60s, right?
- 12:04
- And so it's like you're in debt your whole life. You've lived a life of slavery. I think that there is a temptation to make that servitude and that slavery, even if it's a comfortable slavery, a part of your identity.
- 12:19
- Like the idea of being totally free that this guy talks about, at first it was attractive and then he realizes that he doesn't actually like it.
- 12:27
- He'd prefer to stay in slavery. There's a big downside, he says, in this kind of freedom. We need to come to terms with that.
- 12:34
- It's gonna be weird to not have this kind of servitude when you get out of it, right?
- 12:40
- So I would argue that we probably shouldn't be in eternal debt, eternal slavery, right?
- 12:49
- We should never submit ourselves to a lifetime of this kind of servitude.
- 12:55
- Don't start your kids off in debt. That's probably a really bad idea.
- 13:00
- Don't get them used to the idea because I think that freedom, despite it being maybe a little bit more challenging for some people, is preferable.
- 13:10
- I think the Bible makes that case, right? I don't know. I'm not even really sure what this video is about, but this article blew my mind.
- 13:19
- It's almost like slavery becomes a part of your identity because you've never lived in non -slavery.
- 13:26
- Most of us haven't. So we need to understand what does that do to our psyche? What does that do to our soul, our spirit, to desire slavery more than freedom?
- 13:38
- I'm not a psychologist or anything like that, but I have to wonder if this mentality doesn't just play itself out in finances, but if it also plays itself out in politics and also your social situations and things like that.
- 13:52
- But this article blew my mind, man. I just thought I'd share it with you because it just... Don't do what this guy did.
- 14:00
- This guy's trying to get you to stay a slave like him. Don't do it. Don't do it because it's probably not gonna work out the way it did for this guy.
- 14:07
- I don't know. Sorry guys, this is kind of a haphazard video, but I just read this article and it just blew my mind.