Money Matters (part 7)

Father in Heaven, we just praise You for the God that You are and how

You orchestrate all things for good. Father, we thank You for sending Your Son, Jesus Christ, to die for sinners, to be raised on the third day that we might come to know

You. We thank You for Your Spirit drawing us, convicting us of our sin and regenerating us that we would come to faith.

Lord, would You bless our time this morning as we consider what's taught in Your Word, even as I share a little bit about my dad and then we talk about financial matters.

And Lord, I just pray that You'd bless this time in Christ's name. Amen. I wanted to read just a verse here, kind of share a little bit about what this passage...

Can I get a little new agey or a little, you know, and say what this verse means to me this morning?

Romans 8, 28. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.

And you think that's kind of a funny way to start money matters. Well, I wanted to just tell you I had the misfortune, the sad providence of being at the

Red Sox game yesterday. Man, that was painful.

But I got a text during the game, and I'll reveal that text here in a moment, but I want to go back a little bit.

When my dad was in his teens, he was a little bit of a scoundrel. And he eventually got caught joyriding on a motorcycle.

And he appeared before the magistrate, and you just go, well, where's this all going? Just hang with me for a minute.

He appeared before the magistrate. The magistrate said, I'm going to give you your choice. You can go to jail, or you can join the

United States military. My dad thought about it for about five seconds and decided he wanted to go into the

Navy, and into the Navy he went. Now what did that mean?

Well, it meant a couple things. One is a few years later when he got out of the Navy, he could be a police officer, which if he'd been convicted of joyriding, he wouldn't have been able to do that.

But the second thing, and this is where I wanted to start this morning, was that I wouldn't have the opportunity

I'm going to have in a week. My stepmom called the funeral home yesterday after dad died, and they were talking about funeral arrangements.

And mom thought, you know, that there would be a memorial service at the house.

And, you know, just kind of a get -together, potluck kind of thing. And if you knew my dad, my dad would never want any kind of fuss made over him.

And his attitude was, and my sister told me this a few times, dad wanted to be cremated, and he will be.

And he wanted his ashes spread out over East Los Angeles by helicopter, which might sound a little bizarre to you, and probably illegal.

Although I have no doubt he could get it done. Because East LA was a place where my dad worked at a unit called the

Special Enforcement Bureau, which was the SWAT team, kind of the CIA, Navy SEALs, you know, super bad guys, of the

Sheriff's Department. They went all over LA County, kicked in doors, put down riots. They had all the good stuff.

In fact, I used to say that I joined the Sheriff's Department simply to besmirch the family name. Because my dad was such a great cop.

And she called the funeral home. And the funeral director says, well, he says, was your husband a veteran?

And she says, yes. Which again, if he hadn't gone joyriding on that motorcycle, he would not have been.

And he tells her, he says, well, because of that, he can be buried at the National Cemetery here.

And he goes, you know, there'd be an official honor guard and they'll come in and they'll play taps and they'll present you with a flag and da -da -da -da -da, and he says, and then a preacher will have 10 minutes to say whatever he wants to say.

And so I'm at Fenway yesterday and I get a text from my sister and she says, we need a preacher for dad's service, would you do it?

The people around me probably thought I was crying because of the Red Sox. But I thought, what a blessing and what an amazing opportunity that I never would have dreamed of.

And so I was talking to my mom last night and she said, well, you know, we thought about maybe we could just hire somebody locally and, you know, that kind of thing.

And I'm like, she thought, but I thought it'd be better if it was somebody who knew dad. And I'm going, that's great.

So I'm just so thankful for that. I couldn't believe it. I just wrote back. I texted my sister.

I just said, yes, exclamation, exclamation, exclamation, you know, a thousand percent.

So I'm just delighted by that and excited by that and all because my dad stole a motorcycle.

So who knew? Well, on to more mundane things.

I've been talking about money. Just kind of review us back to where we are.

I mean, we talked about a lot of different things about what the Bible says about money. And I just thought

I'd start with this, you know, just a few brief reminders. Our riches, our true riches are in heaven. We know that those things can never be subject to rust or to decay or to anything like that.

And they can't be stolen. They're preserved by God's own power. We talked about biblical giving and how we really can't, ultimately, if we think about it rightly, we can't out -give

God. And that just doesn't go with finances.

It goes with every aspect of life. But, you know, as I'm quick to say, that doesn't mean like, you know, the charlatans on TBN that in order to get from God, you have to give or all those kind of things.

We talked about how giving should primarily go to the local church. We talked about how parachurch organizations are no more mentioned in the

Bible. That doesn't mean that you should not give to them. It just means your primary giving should go to the local church.

We talked about tithing. We talked about, you know, and I really just, this boggles my mind when people just kind of give as the spirit leads or as the wallet leads.

It's like this, you know, what do I have in my wallet? That's what I give. We're to purpose what we do.

Let's see. Skip over that. And so, talked about the different aspects of it.

We talked about tithing and about how that's really not a New Testament command. Talked about good stewardship.

And here we are. We've handled some difficult issues about, you know, people are concerned about what the pastors get paid, and it really upsets them when they see what the pastors get paid.

Again, that just kind of, maybe I just have a different mindset, but I, you know, and on the sheriff's department, here's what we used to say.

You know, people go, you guys get paid a lot of money. Of course, I think, and just as an aside here,

I think the police and firemen out here are woefully underpaid, and I'm not really sure why that is, but when

I compare the two, there's something wrong out here. But we didn't get paid for what we did, but for what we might have to do.

I mean, I don't know many people who want to duck bullets or run into burning buildings for a living. That is not fun.

But I'll tell you what, I'd really rather duck bullets than run into burning buildings. And I love my son -in -law.

Okay, so we were talking about, you know, the idea of having a begrudging attitude about thinking, you know, that somehow

I'm paying the pastor's salary. And, you know, I would say that if God, and we know this is true, that God loves a joyful giver, that if there's something within you that says,

I can't be joyful, well, first of all, I would say that you need to repent. And then secondly, maybe you should talk to somebody about it.

Because you obviously have an issue, and rather than just hold on to it and fret over it, you should talk to someone.

Talk to me. Talk to one of the elders. Talk to Pradeep Tilak, because he's gentle and nice most of the time.

Now, what about this one? Should I give part of my unemployment check?

That's a rough one. That really is a rough one. I mean,

I don't know that, I just don't know.

But if we're to give of our increase, I think that would be right.

I mean, again, I think you need to be careful about that. And here's what

I mean. Let's say your unemployment check, I don't even know what unemployment is, for which

I'm grateful. And don't get any ideas. Pastor, we'd like you to experience unemployment.

If it's $2 ,000 a month, I don't know what it is, it's probably less than that. But whatever it is, and if you're used to getting more than that,

I presume, and you do all the calculations and you can still give some, well then give some.

Because the Lord's still ultimately providing that for you. We talked about, we have talked about kids going to college, and to just kind of catch up on this one, your child works to help pay for college.

Your child works to take care of their car to pay the insurance.

And you know, they're just kind of getting by. I mean, nobody who's in that age group, and when I say kid, I mean,

I remember when I went to work at 18 years old, full -time job. This will floor you how much money

I was making right out the gate, right out of high school. I was bringing home $105 a week.

It's pretty amazing. $285 an hour. Everybody's not like, wow, that's amazing.

Oh, those were the good days. The salad days. But what do you do, you know, when you're in that age group, you're not going to make a whole lot of money.

So what should you do? How do you balance that out? You know, do you charge the kids rent?

Do you expect them to give? What should be your overall attitude towards children and giving?

They get $100 from you, you know, what should they do with it? What do you think?

I think, I don't think really the kids can start giving early enough. I mean, I think, what do you want them to think?

Well, this is for me, so you don't have to give on that. I think that's one approach to it.

I think on the other hand, if you think, I want my kids to understand that this is, it's via me, but it's from the

Lord. I want them to praise the Lord for whatever they get, then you probably want them to give.

Any thoughts or questions about that? And Pastor Mike, I know if he were here, he would say this, that young men especially,

I think I'm just like almost fanatic about this. I think we live in what I call, not, you know,

Generation X, but this is Generation Xbox. We have young men from 21 to in their 30s who totally think it's okay to live at home with mom and dad and now they can stay on their parents' healthcare until they're 26.

And I'm like, why not 65 or something like that so that they never have to leave the house? You know, mom and dad will be in one room watching

Blu -rays and they'll be in the other room playing Xbox until they're 64 or 65 and they get their retirement check from whatever game store they're working at.

I mean, to me, it's just pathetic. Grow up. Grow up.

Young men should be paying rent if they're over a certain age and staying at home.

It should be, you know, it's like birds. Little birds grow up and they're all nice and...

well, they're not really ever nice, but at some point their parents push them out of the nest. Why? It's for their own good.

They have to learn how to fly and they have to go off and take care of themselves. Well, in the same way, especially young men, and I think there's a difference between men and women in that young women should be protected and young men should be given the boot in love.

Well, I know, you know, he's only 28 and I don't want... You're laughing, but I'm not making it up.

This is the norm. You know, go off to college and act all grown up while you're gone and then come home and, you know, bag groceries and live with your mom and dad for, you know, however long.

No. Get out and get a real job. Go live on your own or, you know, pay your parents rent.

It's fine. But this kind of nonsense of working part -time, just getting by, kind of calculating how you can do the least amount of work so you can unlock the most amount of achievements possible.

I mean, I think we're heading for, you know, a generation of kids where the young men will be buried and on their tombstone it will just say, you know, 300 ,000 achievements awarded, you know, during his lifetime.

Awesome. Had no kids, no wife, and never did anything but, you know, work part -time in the mall.

He was selling pretzels. It is ridiculous.

I just want to rant. But anyway. Okay. Thoughts or questions about that?

Anybody want to defend the idea of, you know, your 27 -year -old... He plays

Wii. Okay, great. Awesome. You got me. Okay. Let's see.

This is an actual question by an actual... an actual attender of Bethlehem Bible Church.

Emergency fund. I think I might have talked about this, but, you know, it should have, I've said, $500 ,000 to $2 ,000.

And this really is dependent upon where you are. I think the more stuff you have, you know, if you own a home, then you really need more.

And that's not to say that that's the extent of it, and that's the nature of this question, so that you have money to cover any extraordinary car repairs and other such unexpected expenses.

Well, that part's true, but I would go further. In fact, I really should, like, bring in a spreadsheet to show all the things that I think you should have going on.

You need to have an ongoing car... You know, if you own a car, which most of us do, you need to have a car repair account.

You need to have a home repair account if you own your home. You need to have... What other kind of things come up?

Well, here's something. How about this? This seems pretty basic to me. Now, keep in mind that I absolutely loathe the idea that we are still on heating oil.

I don't understand that. I mean, this is like... This is one of the things about New England, I'm just like, you know,

I don't think we've come far enough in terms of heating our homes. Heating oil. Not very efficient,

I would argue, but since the truck has to drive out and drop it off at your house and all that kind of stuff.

But heating oil. And then, here's what happens for some families. September and October come around and they're like, we need heating oil.

We had no idea that fall and winter were coming. It should be on a 12 -month schedule.

You should go, okay, this is about what we're... Now, this year... I mean, I thought it was amazing.

The oil company wouldn't even offer us a contract or a price guarantee, and I'm just like, well, okay.

I see how that works, or they did, and it was like... Excuse me, they did, but it was like $5 a gallon or whatever it was.

It was crazy. And you start doing the math on that and you go, okay, we're going to need oil prices to go up to, so it doesn't just need to be a war in Iran.

It has to also include about three or four other countries, and it was craziness.

But this idea that... I'm not suggesting that that's all you should have in reserve.

I think our biggest problem, and this is something I'm going to talk about in a minute, well, and then

I just can't say enough, so I'll say it over and over again, is learning to live on less than what we make.

I've said it in the beginning, and I'll say it in the middle, and I'll say it at the end. We need to live on less than what we make.

The typical American family says what? I'm doing well if by the next paycheck,

I'm not already out of money. I mean, no offense to any Marines here, but that's a

Marine Corps idea. How many of you were in the Marines? Anybody? The lovely and talented

Steve Pru was in the Marines. Let me just tell you what the Marines do, and I happen to know my son was in the Marines. Here's what they do.

You're in boot camp, and you correct me if I've got this wrong, Steve, but I think this is pretty close, so don't correct me. They pay you half your regular salary while you're in boot camp.

Is that right? And so what they do then, and you go, well, that's not right.

Oh, yes, it is, because here's what they do. At the end of boot camp, when you graduate, then they give you all of your back pay all in one great big lump.

So what do you suppose Marines do with that? Do you think they go to the bank and immediately open a CD and deposit that and start planning for their future?

It's like they've lived this tightly controlled life. They've lived with no money, and now they've got just a bundle of money in their pocket, and it is like, what is that material that just burns through everything?

That's what it's like. They just can't get rid of it fast enough. And so a pattern is set for Marines.

Sorry, I love the Marines, but this is what they... I mean, we actually banned them from our NCO club in Okinawa because every time on payday they would come in and thrash the place, and we'd have to go in there and beat them up, and it was ugly.

So they were banned because payday meant go out and celebrate, spend all your money, and then next payday will take care of itself.

And that's how they live. And I think that's the American mentality. I've got a payday coming.

How fast can I get rid of that money? Or, you know, I'm doing good. If I have some money left at the next...

That's wrong. Control your money. Know where it's going. Have separate accounts where you, you know...

Some people say you have to put the money in an envelope, and that's fine if that works for you. There are ways to do that on the computer.

Some of you are far more computer savvy than I am. My wife has different accounts that we have online for different functions.

But you need to keep money on hand for oil, heating oil. I mean, if you divide that up in 12, if you just figure, okay, this is what we spend a year on, heating oil, you divide it by 12, it's a whole lot easier than going, it's

September. We need heating oil, panic button. So all those kind of things need to be taken care of.

How about this, though, too? They ask, well, what about having more savings so that if you lose your job, say you're a pastor and say something stupid, the church fires you, you know, what do you do?

Do you have any money as a buffer? And again, I think the

American mentality is, of course I've got a buffer. I've got five credit cards with $12 ,000 each on them.

I've got $60 ,000 before I need to worry. That's a rough way to live, especially when you try to dig out of that hole later.

On the other hand, most financial experts would say that you should try to get three to six months' salary or living expenses in savings.

You just go, how could I ever do that? Well, let me say it again. By living on less than what you make.

Save. You know, you've heard the old saying, save for a rainy day.

It's going to rain. What are you going to do when it does rain? 1 -800 -DIAL -A -PASTOR.

We can take care of ourselves. We can prepare for these kind of things. I'd like to just say a word.

I'm not in any way against healthy living.

I think some people can take it to an extreme. I don't know, say, not having any sugar for a month.

Sorry. I couldn't resist. But, you know, some people want everything organic, and I think that's fine.

Listen, if you can afford it. If you can afford it.

Without revealing any names, and it's nobody at this church, I know a person who basically spent a fortune on health food, health supplements, and wound up with a house full of that when they were completely incapacitated.

All this kind of thing, I mean, it's good, but you know what? Organic food, healthy eating, all these kind of things are fine, but we have to go back to if you can afford it.

We also need to understand that if God has sovereignly designed that you are ordained, that you are going to die on April 21, 2012, there is nothing you can do about it.

Now, I'm not saying that we should, therefore, go to McDonald's every day. That's not what I'm saying. We need to be smart. But we also need to understand that, for example, let's say it's organic food or heating oil.

Well, you know, you could be healthy and freeze to death. I mean, we would often say, in my previous line of work, you know, that common sense is not so common, and this is the kind of thing

I'm just like, when it comes to money, all the things, and I've said this before, all the things that people did, you know, through the

Depression, through the 1950s, through the 60s, through, well, 60s is pretty much where all that stuff ended.

Common sense left, and this consumer mentality over, I need to have this and I need to have it now, it all came in.

I mean, and some of the things were better then than they are now.

I mean, I think about, you know, we used to put things on layaway. When was the last time you put anything on layaway? Hardly anybody does that now.

Why bother? You just whip out the plastic and take it. So organic food,

I mean, I'm fine with it, but don't, you know, well, here's another one.

How about organic food or giving to the church? Organic food or, you know,

I educate my child the way I want to. You know, we have to put the kids in public school.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with public school. Our kids were in public school. But, you know, if your conviction is, well, we need to have our kids in a

Christian school, or your conviction is our kids need to be educated at home, and then you say, well, you know, we can't afford to do that because we have to have organic food.

There's something wrong with the way you're thinking. Just a couple of words about the true path to prosperity.

This is kind of reemphasize things that I've said already. How do we get to be, and I'm not saying our goal should necessarily be to be rich, but, you know what, anyone can be rich.

It's just a matter of spending less than you make and saving.

And I'll prove that here in a few minutes. Or maybe we won't get to it until next week. But if you spend less than you make, that's a key.

Saving, investing, denying some of your wants. I mean, I have to tell you, for the first,

I don't know, seven or eight years that we were married, I was the worst.

I think our biggest marital problems were because I would just look at my wife and go, how can you be so selfless?

And I'm so selfish. I look bad in, you know, I still look bad, but that's here and there. But practicing self -denial is not a bad thing.

And I mentioned it before, but I'll say it again. You know, one of the real cool things that I learned was to just not buy things on impulse.

When I go, you know what, I like that, I want it, I'll buy it tomorrow. Tomorrow comes around,

I like it, I want it, I'll buy it tomorrow. And I would repeat that probably for four or five days and then I'd forget all about it.

It saved me a lot of money that way. I mean, you'd save a lot of money. Lack of self -control.

What does that lead to? Massive, crippling debt.

I mean, what happens when you, you know, if you live the American dream and you kind of get to the end of the month and you've gone, well, you know, we successfully paid all of our bills.

And then the next month it's going to be, we successfully paid all our bills because your credit cards are so high that all you're doing is paying the interest and you're going to continue doing that for 15 or 20 years.

That's not the way we ought to handle our money. That doesn't, that's not God honoring. Another true path to prosperity is pretty simple, thrift.

Ladies just had a little seminar on frugality. I just want to say that word, frugality.

Thrift, finding ways to get things that you want more cheaply. I'm not the best at that,

I'll be honest. But there are ways, even sometimes when I really, really want something, there are ways of getting it more cheaply by shopping around.

I mean, I do like to do me some shopping on the internet and, you know, just kind of Google and find different things.

I remember there was a, I still haven't bought it because I got so mad when I found out I could have had it much cheaper that I didn't buy it.

There's a particular weight stand thing that I want so that I don't have to bend over to pick up these weights. And I think

I found it for like less than half of its regular price, but it was a one -day only deal and it had already gone by.

And so I'm just like, well, now I can't buy it at full price because I've seen it at half price, you know. So I'm just going to wait until I get it, you know.

And that's just kind of, we need to think like that because money does matter, to coin a phrase.

I had a question here. What should I do if brother or sister in Christ continues making poor financial decisions even while convincing themselves that they're making good ones?

What should I do in that kind of situation? I mean, how do you talk to somebody and say, you know what,

I think you're blowing it financially? How do you do that?

Any thoughts on that? Peggy.

And I think Peggy hit the proverbial nail on the head. I mean, if you do something in love, I don't care what it is that you're talking to somebody about.

If you approach it and you really think about it, if you go through the Matthew 7 kind of idea and you're like, you know,

I'm going to think through this. I might, you know, make sure I've removed the beam from my own eye.

I'm just going to think through things properly. And my goal is not to prove that I'm right.

My goal is really to come alongside this person and to help them. I mean, there are probably areas for each of us where we could say, you know what,

I'm super strong in this area. I mean, you can show me, you know, swimming pools all day long and I'm probably not going to be tempted.

There are areas where maybe I'm not so strong. I'm trying to think of a really good example of places where I just have, like, no impulse control, but that doesn't really...

Well, I mean, I could, but those things come out so infrequently that it's not really a problem. But I digress.

I think that there are just places in all of our lives, whether it's financial or other aspects, where we're strong and then there are areas that we are weak.

Well, in the areas where we're strong and we can see a brother or sister struggling in those areas, then what do we do?

Just go, man, I wish Tom, I wish Bill, I wish Juanita, whatever the person's name is, was as strong as I am in this area, but, you know, too bad for them.

Steve? Discipleship. I mean, that's what it is, right? You come alongside them.

You have a particular strength, but you don't go, you know what, Steve, I'm a lot stronger than you in this area, so let me just kind of show you, you know, like you come into the gym and just kind of, dude, you're doing that all wrong, let me show you how it's done.

You know, that kind of thing. You have to come in with the right attitude, you have to be prayerful, you have to be humble, you have to think, what is, and this is so often the problem, what is my motivation for doing this?

Do I really want to show the other person up or do I really want to help them? Any other thoughts on that?

Yeah, Harry? That's good.

I mean, it really depends on where they are, both spiritually, financially, and what your relationship is with them.

I agree with that, with those things precisely. Some other financial do's and don'ts.

Now, this is just great. You know, one of the ways I, if I'm driving in a neighborhood and I just go, okay, this place is done, stick a fork in it, what's like the worst thing that could happen?

What's the last thing you would want to see in your neighborhood? I'm going to tell you what the last thing

I want to see is payday advance stores open up. Okay, I would rather know that there's a crack house on the corner and, you know, why is that?

Because I can shut that down. You know, I can call the police, but these payday advance things are legal and it's crazy to me.

I mean, you know, some people are probably like, what is a payday advance place? And basically,

I would say it's a place where typically drug addicts are going to go and get some more money, but other people do it too because they just don't know any better.

Cash, let me just read you what I found online. Cash advances are some of the highest interest loans there are and they usually have many restrictions.

Some come interest free. I mean, basically it is, it's this, you have a job and you're going to get paid on the first of the month.

So what they do is they say, well, you have a job. Here are your pay statements for the last however many months.

We will give you an advance on your next paycheck and then you just pay us back on payday.

Sounds really nice. Friendly. Sometimes these come interest free for a period of time, but after that, watch out.

They usually don't. Oh, that's a cash advance. I'm sorry. Payday loans are for employed folks who want to get money on something upcoming.

I was going to talk about cash advances too. I'll do that here real quickly. But these payday loans,

I mean, usually the rate of interest is exorbitant, somewhere around 30 or 35%.

In fact, I think there's a new federal law to help deal with some of that, but I don't know what the restrictions are or if that's even been implemented yet.

Cash advances on credit cards. Those are interesting because do you get those things?

I love these. You get them in the mail. They're checks. They're made out to you. All you have to do is just fill in the amount and sign it.

Awesome. That is great. I love it. We get those in the mail and I'll say to my wife,

Hey, Janet, how much do we get? She'll go, $30 ,000. I'll go, That's nice of them. That's really sweet.

They just want to help. I mean, they really love to send those around the holidays because they know that things are a little bit tight.

Here's just a little something to help you out. Can I just give you guys a hug?

Thank you, Chase. They're brutal.

I mean, those things are brutal. And what they do is they wind up putting all kinds of restrictions if you have a credit card account with these companies, which is why they send them to you.

They put all kinds of restrictions about what you can and can't do. Gone are the days where you could pay off your monthly charges every month because now you've got this cash advance and you've got to get rid of that first, and they sock it to you on the interest.

I mean, they are brutal. In fact, I would say it's almost as bad as payday and loans, but I think both of them would make a loan shark blush.

I'd rather go borrow money from Lefty and some of these other guys.

Now, I mentioned many, many weeks ago the rule of 78s. Anybody remember that?

It was on the first contract, the first credit thing I ever bought, and I just thought I have to look that up because I don't remember exactly how it was, but I do remember that we got this solid oak piece of furniture way back in the day, and I was so pleased, and we kept that thing for a number of years because I was so thrilled with how much we wound up paying for it.

In fact, we kept it until we bought our current house, and I think this is right. They couldn't get it up the stairs, and we gave up because it wouldn't fit, so it was either knockout part of the house or get something else.

But that was actually written into that contract. Now, let me just explain because I thought the rule of 78s, rule of 78s.

Anybody know what the significance of 78 would be? No, it wasn't the year

I graduated high school. Oh, yeah, it was, but, I mean, that's not the significance of it. Rule of 78s, okay?

I don't know what the, you know, there's a mathematical term for this, and I'm going to forget what it is.

A Fibonacci sequence is when you add, you know, 1 plus 2, and you get 3, and then 2 plus 3, and you get 5.

Well, this is a little bit different than that. If you just run the numbers from 1 to 12, and you add them all together, what do you get?

78. 78. You know how I know that? Because there are 12 numbers there. That's obvious enough. And if you take the first and last numbers, 1 plus 12 is 13.

You multiply it times 6, which is because you divided the total number of numbers in half, so you've got 6 now.

13 times 6 is 78. So that's where it comes from. Are you following that flow?

We're all on the same page. Different book, but same page. Okay. So rule of 78, that's where it comes from.

And here's the idea. The idea is I'm going to borrow $1 ,000 at 12%.

Well, out of that 12 % interest that they would get, which is, what, $120 over a year, 12 over 78, that percentage of it would be charged in the first month.

And then the second month, 11 out of 78 of that $120 would be charged. And then 10, and then 9, and then 8, all the way to the end when it would be just 1 of 78, so just a real small percentage of it.

And this used to be used in the days before calculators when guys were just like, it's too hard for me to figure out.

We're just going to make it easy. So what does that mean? It means even though that $1 ,000, they're going to let you pay it at, what is that, a month?

I don't want to figure it out. But just the $1 ,000 divided by 12, and then they're going to slap the $10 a month interest onto your payment.

But when you pay it off early, what do they do? They go, oh, rule of 78s applies. And so they go, okay, what you technically should have paid in the first month was a much larger amount, like 16 % or so, maybe 15 % somewhere in there, of that loan instead of just the 1 12th of it.

And so the sooner you pay it off, actually the more you pay an interest. That's why I said I paid that thing off in like two or three months, and yet when

I did the calculations, it was 35 % interest, 35%. If it had been spaced out over a whole year, it would have been 35 % interest.

That's crazy. That's why you have to read the fine print. Rule of 78s, don't do it. And it's even worse, by the way, if it's like a two -year or a three -year contract, it gets more convoluted, and I don't even want to go there.

I mean, because now it's no longer the rule of 78s. It is called that, but it's now, I think for the second year, it's 300, 1 to 24.

Is that right? It doesn't matter. Yeah, it is right, 300. Am I impressing you guys with my math skills?

Thank you. All right. So that's rule of 78s.

I'm going to talk about life insurance, and I'll just do that briefly. I mean, these are real practical things.

I know somebody, again, not of this church, who is buying whole life. What's the difference between whole life and term?

I'll talk more about this next week, but basically a whole life policy is this. Let's say I get $60 ,000 of coverage, and at the end of that, the period, whatever it is, 20 years, 30 years, or whatever,

I'm going to get $60 ,000 and whatever percentage of interest, but basically they're charging me a lot of money every month, and it's an investment.

Here's the problem with that. I mean, there are a number of problems with it, but the first problem, and the only one

I can really cover this morning, is the first problem with whole life is life insurance is not for you.

I don't have life insurance so that I get rewarded by staying alive. Why do

I have life insurance? So that my wife gets rewarded if I... Oh, that's not right.

I have... That's right, Micaiah. I have life insurance so in case

I do die, the insurance policy takes care of my wife. That's the purpose of it. So if you go into it and you go, well, if I'm getting $500 ,000 of insurance and I'm paying $300 a year, that's $300 a year

I'm throwing away. No, that's $300 a year that you're paying so that if anything happens to you, your wife doesn't have to go into panic mode.

And if she gets $60 ,000 instead of $500 ,000, she isn't going to think, oh,

Steve was really smart to make that investment that he's never going to see. She's going to think, Steve really didn't take care of me because now

I've got about a year before I have to go back to work. And especially for guys when they're getting married, when they have young kids at home, you need to have a lot of insurance.

Because you just have to think, if anything happens to me, what is my wife going to do? That's what insurance is for.

It's not for you. All right, well, with that, we're going to close in prayer and we'll pick this up next week.

Father in heaven, we thank you that you are sovereign, that you are loving, that you do use all things together for good to those who love you and are called according to your purpose.

And Father, we just rejoice in that. I pray that you would give us wisdom and self -control in every good thing when it comes to understanding our finances.

Lord, I pray that you would just drive us again to your word and to wise counsel when it comes to handling our finances, that we might please you, that we might treat it like the stewardship that it is.