The Christian Rich Life w/ Bob Lotich (EP 232)

I'm saying what you're gonna do what you said. Will you open that Bible? You know what you read. You feel the beat in your soul.

But promise they're not expired. Be inspired. I can see beyond the tears you cry. And the pain you feel.

I saw every hill you had to climb. Just a make it hear. When you say you ain't afraid to die. It's a fucking fear.

Yo, what's up people? I'm your host Jay Will. And I would like to welcome you to inspire guys. People where we balance faith and business to guide you to your purpose.

This is episode 232, the Christian rich life with Bob Lotic. We're gonna have a great conversation with Bob. You are gonna appreciate the value that he's gonna bring to the show. He's somebody that I've been checking out just through Instagram and YouTube.

He and his wife Linda. And I'm telling you if you are a person that is a believer that's interested in learning about finances or investing or how do I go from like broke to having some money but doing it God's way and learning how to keep God first. This is the conversation for you people. This is the type of stuff that really you should be paying for somewhere in life.

And just by the grace of God, like he allows us to connect with these amazing people across the world to bring us content that can literally make us money. So without further ado, I'm a welcome Bob to the show. What's up, Bob? How you doing?

So glad to be here, brother. Man, Bob, look, we're gonna jump right into the content. I'm not gonna waste a lot of time. I do at least want to let the people have somewhat of an introduction.

So I'm gonna tell them a little bit about what I know about you just from reading and consuming some of your content. And then we'll let you maybe add to it and introduce yourself. But look, this is a man that is married to Linda. I want to shout out Linda.

She has a adult personality and watching y'all on the podcast and kind of the fire and ice combination of y'all's relationship is really cool and genuine. But you guys, you started C time in 2007, which is a platform for financial education for eternal impact, which I'm looking forward to unpacking. But you are co-author with your wife of a book, Simple Money Rich Life. Love that.

And also co-host of the podcast, C time Money Podcast. Here's a couple cool things that stood out to me. In your 20s, you had $7 to your name. In your 30s, you paid off your house.

And by the time you were 40, you gave away a million dollars. That is a heck of a every 10 year change, some decade changes there. So hopefully we can kind of dive into those things. So Bob, welcome to the show.

And I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to chat about all this stuff. So yeah, let's dive in. Take us wherever you want to go.

All right. Well, first and foremost, I got to ask you this because we just celebrated Christmas. So how was your Christmas? Oh, it's great.

Great. Yeah. I had a good one with the kids. We got three little kids.

And so Christmas is good when you have little kids. It's hard not to be. So did y'all do the something you want, something you need, something to wear, something to read? Or did you overgive?

I know that was something you wanted to wear. Kind of wrestling with trying not to give your kids too many gifts. So did y'all successfully accomplish that? Did you know?

We definitely did it. But yeah, it's like any parent knows the struggle. You know, because if our kids come to us, they got a list of 50 different things that they want. And we're trying to rein in the American consumerism that is the world that we live in.

Pretty good to it. I think we broke a little bit beyond. But we did much better than we've done years past. Hey, as long as you got some growth, that's how you could do that.

So Bob, tell me a little bit. Let's go right into your 20s, right? Seven dollars to your name. You're down, I believe, in South Florida.

Convertible car breaks down. Tell me about that, Bob, the 20-something-year-old Bob. What was going on in your life, then? Yeah.

I mean, if it's not clear yet, preview doesn't know us. We're not the financial experts who were born with the Silver Spoon. We're not those people. And even now, I worked in the financial industry for many years.

And it's pretty standard to wear a button-up shirt or to wear a suit to work. And that's the world. And I don't fit that vibe. We do things quite differently.

But we'll get more into that. But the point is, yes, I was age 22, three, something like that. I thought I knew everything about money. I worked at a bank at that point.

And all my friends would come to me asking me money advice. And yet, in the midst of that, like you said, I found myself broken down with seven dollars to my name. A thousand miles from home. And pushing the car with anybody who's ever done that.

You got the one hand on the steering wheel. Trying to push the car. There was so much traffic on the road. And every steering at you, it's kind of embarrassing.

Just dealing with all that. But anyway, I remember pushing that thing over the car and getting to the front seat. And in that moment, the reality of my financial situation, in that it was just such a mess. It was one thing stacked on another on another.

And I didn't even realize until it all came crumbling down. In that moment, I remember grabbing that steering wheel and having hot beers come down my eyes. And it just meant like, God, I need help. It was the first time I actually humbled myself and asked for help with money.

Because I had been so prideful and just assumed, I'm going to do it my way. I know best and I'm good with money. And all these things I thought and actually believed that just weren't true. And God had a much better path.

But I had to humble myself and ask him and invite him into my financial situation. And that's what kicked everything off. I got a question Bob. Like we'll get back into that.

But it makes me think of something. I'm just curious what you think about like, do you feel like in your experience and talking to all the people that you're right with kind of connected with in your 14 years, plus in doing kind of on this financial journey and sharing? Do you find it like people have to hit rock bottom? Because one of the things I'm trying to explore with inspire guys people.

And I did hit rock bottom. The people who listened to show know what kind of started me on my journey 12 years ago. Like, do you think that's necessary for some people? Or how do we try to catch people before they have to hit that rock bottom point to kind of turn it around?

Yeah, I think one of the interesting things is that is ironic or as unfortunate as it sounds. I actually think it's easiest to make a major change when you hit like rock bottom. And I remember hearing Tony Robbins many years ago say something to the effect of like, until the pain of your situation gets greater than the pain of not changing. Like you're not going to do that.

And so like, that's what it was for me. It's like, it was a slow bleed until I got to this point where it's like, everything kind of came crashing down. It's like, all right, I got to make a change. So I don't know.

Like, I think there's some personalities who can just have all this discipline and willpower and can muster it up. I wasn't one of those guys. Like, I needed to have something rude awakening. But from that point, once God moved me forward in that, I can continue with it.

And especially when it's a really simple system that I can automate and set it and forget it. And which is most of how we've treated our finances. And I think that's what so many people think. Like, it's really complicated and it's really difficult.

The financial industry wants us all to believe that succeeding financially and getting ahead. And really, even like you said, being able to give away a million dollars. Like so many people think, I'm saying this because I was there for so long, that that is so incredibly difficult. But when you actually understand the math, it's not nearly as difficult as most people believe, for someone who might be in the middle class in America.

So anyway, I'll have to say, yeah, it's interesting. So how do you go from, are you hit rock bottom, right? You're in your 20s, you're calling on God, like, Lord, I need some help financially. Where'd you start though?

Like when you're at rock bottom, like where do you start just to begin that journey with the Lord financially? Yeah, I mean, I think, so the way we approach finances is not a one size fits all thing. It's not a formulaic thing because I believe personal finance is personal. And so the things that you are interested in that you want to spend money on might be different than what I want to spend money on.

God has a different calling on your life and the things that he's called you to do. And therefore, he has different things that he needs you to do as a steward of manager of your money than he has for me to do. And so for me to sit here and give you flat cookie cutter advice for how you should manage your money or anyone else listening, like, I don't think that lines up ablically. I think, you know, this is where I think it's so important that we're in connection with God as we're making a financial plan because he might lead us to do some things that are unconventional and that maybe some other financial experts might say are a bad idea.

But if the Lord says to do it, it's a good idea. If he says march around that, you know, that building seven times and then blow horn and yell, we're allowed sounds like a dumb idea. But if he says to do it, it's a good idea. And you got to do it.

You know, so anyway, I just forgot your visual question. No, no, you're 20. Like I'm curious. How do you go?

Where do you start, right? Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, that was a tangent.

But in fact, I question I like for me, it involved getting out of debt because I had I racked up a good amount of debt. And that was kind of where God started me. He's like, let's get this cleaned up. Let's get your spending under control.

And let's get rid of this debt. And so you can stop being the one paying interest and start becoming one who's earning interest. And I loved that. And I'm like, all right.

So you have to have one credit card and suddenly you have an extra $50 or $100 a month. And then you have another credit card and then you have a car loan. And now you have an extra $400, $500 a month. And it's like, you suddenly have so much more disposable income, and which is just so fun, because now you can use it to do whatever the thing is that God's called you to do, you know?

So again, maybe continue to pay off more debt, maybe to be able to give more, maybe to be able to start that business that he's called you to do whatever the thing might be. But that's what's so fun is you start making that progress. Love it. So for you, it's like you started paying off debt.

So is that how you got to paying off your house and your 30s? Was that part of that kind of plan to paying off debt? We just raced to pay off. Yeah.

So we paid off a whole bunch of credit cards between Lynn and I. We had a six or seven of them or something. We paid off both of our cars. I ended up paying off my student loan.

What else? I don't even know. We had more debt. Anyway, we had all that debt paid off.

And then we're like, all right, we're moving to the house. And we're going to start doing that. But again, like I said, we had freed up probably an extra $1,500, maybe $2,000 a month by paying off all those other debts. And then we're just funneling that to the mortgage.

And so when you're paying extra $2,000 a month of your mortgage, and we bought a small starter house in 2009, so it wasn't like a super expensive house. But when you're chucking extra $2,000 a month towards it, you can start moving quick. So it was like, and I think that's important. It's like you guys were paying off the debt.

But you were doing the right thing and kind of like, targeting the next thing that you owe money to. I think some people kind of get caught up in this cycle of like, hey, I pay something off. Now I got a little extra money to kind of go do all this stuff I want to do. And maybe they like abort the mission too quickly, right?

Of like first you got to kind of see through paying off the debt. So I love for you guys that it was like, hey, we paid off one thing. Then we moved to another like about, do you know about how much you paid off in a particular amount of time? Yeah, so when we got married, I think we had about, it was around $45,000 worth of debt between those car loans, credit cards, I think the student loan might have been third.

I don't know. Somewhere from 45 to 60, if you include the student loans, I would guess. And we probably did that in about three years or something. It wasn't particularly fast, but it also wasn't slow.

And it's like, one year, two years, they're going to go by anyway. And it's like, we could have just stayed where we were, or we could have tried to do that. And like to your point where you're saying about like, taking a step forward, taking a step back, it's like, I get that. But we were pretty focused on not just winning the battle, but winning the war.

Like, I didn't really care about paying off one credit card. And so with that long term view and how we were approaching it, every time we did pay off a credit card, we did celebrate, which I think is really important. So it wasn't like, we're just going to live on rice and beans for five years until we get all paid off. It was, we're going to do this, take a big step forward, and then a small step back.

We're going to go out to a really nice dinner. And we're going to celebrate. And yes, we could put that towards a credit card, but me, let's just go celebrate, especially for a woman like I'm married to Linda, like you mentioned. That was really, really helpful, because most couples have one.

You have one who needs that inspiration and encouragement to stick with it. And she was that. And so that was a big help for us. And so y'all kind of had this plan of like paying, but then celebrating which, like you said, is a big deal to kind of like give yourself that motivation and like, hey, we're moving in the right direction.

And maybe I'm even guessing it is like to tell her and her person, I like, hey, it's more this coming, the more that we can kind of get this stuff paid off. But we got this bigger plan, this bigger mountain that we're trying to climb, right? And you mentioned something real interesting, Bob. And I'm curious if y'all went into it like this, or, you know, if it's something you learned along the way, and it was the time.

A lot of times when I'm talking to people, I think this is the hardest thing for people to overcome, especially depending on where they are in their life, right? If they're kind of 40s, 50s, a lot of people just being real, they kind of feel like, you know, I missed that train, right? I should have started this early and they'll acknowledge that they should have started it early. But the mountain seems like way too large to climb.

So what would you say to like those people that feel like, man, like I just don't have the time or it's going to take too much time to start this process. And maybe they even started and it's just not going well. So they abandoned the mission. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I mean, that's the thing that as believers and followers of Jesus, we have an unfair advantage when it comes to this stuff. And I think that if we all understood that more, we all understood God's desire to help us with this. And it's like, as a father, I have, you know, a handful of three kids and any one of them, I can see them trying to do something.

So for example, the other day or whatever Thanksgiving, like one of them, their jobs to do dishes after Thanksgiving or every day, Thanksgiving, it's like, it's a big pile. That child went in there with a good attitude with this huge mountain of dishes. And, you know, I'm sitting there looking at it, they know this is going to take me three hours to do this. Like, I see their attitude and I'm like, I'm going to come in and help.

Like, I'm going to help push them forward. And I can't even tell you how many people I have witnessed who have approached their debt that way. Where they see the mountain, they're like, Lord, I don't have this in my own strength, it's too big for me. But would you come help?

If I dive in here and I do it, I can do in my own strength. Would you come in and help me to win behind you and maybe for, I mean, I have seen that happen so many times. And so people make a plan and it's like, this is going to take me five years, seven years, seven years or whatever. And then God comes in and he's like, oh yeah, I'm going to help you.

I'm going to move you forward so much faster. And obviously, there's no promise, there's no formula, there's no guarantee of how that works. All I'm saying is that I have seen that so many times. And so that's the first part.

The second part is at the end of the day, if we are still above ground and we're still breathing, I believe that God has us on this earth for a purpose, right? And if that's the case, then I want to be someone who's doing something with what he's entrusted to me. If the parable talents is accurate and we are actually managers of what he's entrusted to us and we responsibility, it doesn't matter whether I'm 45, whether I'm 75, 85, 85, like I still want to be taking the little or the lot that he's entrusted to me and doing the best I can with it. So whether that's paying off that, whether that's investing wisely, whether that's whatever, just being intentional with the money that's entrusted to me.

Like that's how I want to live my life and I want to encourage everyone else to do the same. I want to ask you something and then I want to dig into the biblical aspect a little bit before we do that. Because I love that you keep pointing us back there, right? And I think that's so important to believers because like you can get on the internet all day and see people talking about money and like, you know, not the bash anyone, but if it's not coming from the perspective of the Bible, what will happen is we can all get caught up and we find ourselves focusing on the money more than we're focused on God.

What I love about like the biblical perspective is that it all points back to the Lord. And so I want to dive into that, but before we go there, I just want to ask you, you know, so your 20s, you're struggling, 30s, you're paying off debt. How in the world first do you even have this goal? You and your wife to give away a million dollars by the time you're in your 40s.

And then how did you like, how did you accomplish that? Cause one thing to talk about, hey, I want a million dollars, which is a lot of the time we selfishly think about money. And it's another thing that start thinking about money of like, hey, I want to give this amount and have like a gold targeted amount to give. So kind of unpack that for us.

Cause I'll be honest, even for me, I'm like, wow, like how do we get there, you know? So yeah, so just a little history on me. I was a very greedy kid. And I remember wanting to be a millionaire, like literally when I was eight or nine years old and had my little sister who was five.

And then I remember saying, I'm going to be a millionaire one day and I'm going to build this big little house with a basketball court inside and a pool inside and all that stuff and you're not going to be able to come. I'm not going to like come play. And anyways, that was like how I grew up believing. And we came from a pretty lower middle class.

You know, my dad was a construction worker. Like we didn't have a lot of money. He was out of work a lot because he got injured. Things were pretty tight a lot of times.

But anyway, that's kind of my world where I came from. And you know, and as a teenager started following Jesus in Metlinda when I was about 19 or 20, I guess. And we started dating and somewhere during that time, God was working on my heart when it came to our finances. And I remember somewhere in there, like him dropping this idea in my heart that's thought of being able to give away millions of dollars.

I'm like, that would be so fun. Like I actually had the desire to do that. He kind of planted that desire in my heart. But what was interesting is even when that desire was there, I still had the desire to have a whole bunch of money and I wanted a whole bunch of money myself.

It's like, I'll give a bunch, but I want to a bunch myself. And it was just super common. Like that's America, like it's all of us, right? And so anyway, it's very normal.

But like I watched the Lord just continue to work on my heart and refine it. And so much of this was stuff he was doing in our early 20s as we were paying off our debt and as we were making sacrifices and things like that. And so there's a whole lot there to kind of unpack. And we can go and deeper on that if you want.

But essentially over those years, we were paying off the debt. And like I said, once we hit, we paid off. So this would kind of be the main pivot point for us to be able to give away a million dollars. So like I said, we paid off all of our debt up to that point including student loans, car loans, everything.

And we're giving extra money towards our mortgage every single month. And I was 31 years old at this point. And I was out in a field praying. And again, we're following a couple thousand dollars a month towards our mortgage to pay it off quicker.

And so I got my little spreadsheet and said, it's going to take I think three or four years to pay off our mortgage in which most people would be like, that's awesome. Like why would you complain about that? And I wasn't really complaining about it, but I wasn't going to the Lord saying I want it faster. And I remember being out in this field praying, and telling God like, I'm excited about the progress for making it, but I would love to get this house paid off faster.

And one of the clearest things that the Lord has ever spoke to me and not like an audible voice, but man, just clear in my heart. And he said, if you really want to see me move in your finances, I want you to be given your age as a percentage of your income. And so I remember staying out in that field and like scratching my head and like, what the heck? And like, I immediately started doing mental math because we were given about 11% at that time.

And I was 31 years old. So this meant giving 31% of our income away. And I immediately started doing that to Matthew and I'm like, I don't even know if we can do this. I don't even know if we can pay the bills while we do this.

I don't, you know, then I, my next thought is like, I start getting frustrated. Cause I'm like, God, I just came to you asking you to help us pay this thing off. Now you want us to give all our money away. Does that make any sense at all?

Like, what is this? This is terrible financial advice, you know? And so anyway, so I go back to the house and I talk to Linda. I'm like, Linda, this crazy thing.

I, it might be God, I might be not. It's I have no idea. And she says, you know what? Like we've been through stuff like this before.

And if God is asking us to do this, there's gotta be something really cool on the other side. And I'm like, all right. So that month, like, you know, we decided we're gonna start doing this. So we basically almost tripled our giving at that point.

Pretty much stopped putting all this money towards our mortgage because now we're giving it all away, you know? And month one goes by and it's like, all right, nothing's really changing. Month two, it's like, we're able to pay the groceries and everything like everything's kind of work in month three. So we're just gonna get to the business.

It's starting to kick up a little bit. Month four, it's like, whoa, we got a huge tax refund. Like it was just one thing after another after another. And before that year was up, our mortgage was paid off.

And it was just when it was like, God, what the heck did you just do? It was a whirlwind, you know? But it was like, we kept watching extra money. The same thing I was telling you just a minute ago, where it's like, when the wind was at our back, it was like, instead of like climbing uphill, it was like, we're going downhill with roller skates with a 45-hour wind at our back.

It was like, I couldn't believe how fast it was going. But it was all kicked off by essentially laying down the thing that was most important to me, not for mortgage. And instead following God and doing the thing that he asked us to do that seemed counterintuitive that made no sense. That's amazing.

I love like, too, it makes me think like, just as believers, it's crazy how you can have something that you're so focused on. And I realized that like, that's what you have to give up to get it. And it's a hard thing. That's where the faith and the trust and the Lord comes in and like the fact of like, hey, whatever purpose He's calling us on to do that.

So I love that you guys did that. So all right. So you and Linda have kind of, you've been together since you were younger, you've been through this financial journey. What would you say just like to marry couples when it comes to financial struggles?

Cause you said some important earlier, which is like, and I've watched your podcast and stuff. So I know that you and Linda, like I think she's the big spender. You're more to savor and it balances itself out as I kind of hear you guys talk through it. But what are some, some things you would tell like either, I guess a married couple at any age you can have financial struggles.

But I know finances ruin so many marriages. So I love talking about this stuff to help people give Godly financial advice. So like what would you say, just considering if they're one of the person is one of the people as a spender, one is a saver and they're just clashing. What can we say to those people to get them on the right track?

Yeah, well, I mean, I think it's important to understand that, I can't say always, but man, I just be like almost every couple I talk to, they have significant differences in how they manage money and how they view money. So even if, so it's almost always a spender and a saver, but even if it's not, even if it's two savers or two spenders and they came from the same socioeconomic background, it's like all of our parents view money differently. So you could, you could have lived right next door in the same street in the same neighborhood growing up, but have completely different views on money and beliefs about money and everybody has different ones. And so the point is is that when you get married, you are very likely to have very different beliefs than your spouse about money and you see it from a different perspective.

And so again, like I believe as Christians, when God unites us with someone else, that that's not, it's not to work against us, it's to work for us, it's for our benefit. And so when you can see your spouses differences and see them as an asset to you and not a liability, see them as something that's gonna help you in your marriage and help you thrive and succeed, that is a game changer. I mean, because for so many years, I felt like Linda was messing everything up because I came in and set this perfect budget up and it made sense and I ran the calculator and this is the thing that makes the most sense because this is math and it can't be wrong. And she just wants to go spend all the money.

Like I just thought she's wrong, I'm right, she's wrong. And the Lord convicted me, he's like, I created her that way. I created her to be more open-handed, to spend and to let money go a little bit quicker than you. And I put you two together so you can balance each other out.

And so if you can see that she has something to bring to this table and she will see that you have something to bring a table. And like suddenly you are gonna be like, I forgot what that one verse is, we're talking about one can chase a thousand and two can chase 10,000. So it's like a 10x multiplier, we can be in unity like that. And it doesn't mean be the same, but it means being unity.

And so that's my encouragement for any couple listening who feels like we're bashing heads with it. It's like, you should be, because you're different, but you need to understand that God put you together for a reason and that the thing that might be bothering you about your spouse, you need to understand and be able to see that, both of you do. You both need to be able to see each other's weaknesses as strengths. Yeah, you know, and watching you guys' content, one of the things I find really interesting and positive is like, even though it landed like admits that she's the spinner, so y'all talk through it and it's a cool conversation.

But I think it's something interesting where she's also kind of like vulnerable and willing to go the other way, right? And I'm sure that, like you said, you felt convicted. And I think maybe for both people, they have to allow that conviction to occur so that we are understanding like, all right, as an example, like, all right, I'm the saver. I never wanna take a trip, but then if my wife wants to take this trip, then that trip can be such a blessing.

And like you realize you get there and you enjoy your family and get closer as a couple. So I just love how you guys talk through that in like this real vulnerable way. But also, even though you're acknowledging a difference, you're going in the same direction, which I think is super important. Yeah, and I think part of that is just having real conversations.

And so one of the things that we talk about a lot with couples is like just getting clear on what it is that you guys wanna do. And so she would say for the spender, who doesn't really be interested in setting up a budget or whatever, when you understand that the budget is the key to helping you get to the thing that you want. And so if Linda says, I'd love to go on two vacations a year and I'd love to have $1,000 to go on a shopping spree to buy shoes or whatever, like if that's what's important to her and that's what she wants to do with money, then we can explain that the budget is the way that we get there. You know what I mean?

The way that we can get there, or I should say, the way that we get there, doing things I think in a way that's most honoring to the Lord, because of course you can do it with a credit card. Like you can pull tomorrow's blessing into today with a credit card, but again, like going back to God's way of doing things, his way, the thing that he wanted for the Israelites is that they would be lenders, they would be the ones lending and earning interest from other nations and not the ones who are borrowing. And so many of us just put ourselves into that position of being borrowers. And meanwhile, God's like, I want you to be free, I don't want you to be bound like that.

But the way that we do that is by taking tomorrow's blessing in today, and then again, like we're saying, by creating a budget, we can do, we can have both, we can get there, we can have tomorrow's blessing. And that's the path, that's the vehicle that we use to get there. It makes me think about like the prodigal son, I think some of what happened, I'll just say what happened for me, and I'm curious what you think about this, is I had this perspective, where I come from like the inner city of Detroit, pretty much poverty, no financial education, really even to be honest, graduated college back in 2006 with a marketing degree, and was like, all right, I got this degree, you got a corporate job, but I still never actually learned about money. I started making a little money before I even actually learned about money.

And I started thinking like, it's crazy, we need licenses to do a lot of stuff. Like money is the one thing, one of the things that you just get it, you don't have a license, you haven't been trained, no parallel parking, no budgeting classes, but for me what happened was, I went through this journey in 2012 to 14-ish, reading through the entire Bible for the first time, and honestly it was there for me, where the scriptures, reading it in chronological order and just like taking in the word every day for a year and a half, it was jumping out at me, every story. I'm like, the Bible talks so much about money that I could not ignore it. And I'm just curious for you, like, are there scriptures, or what role the Bible played for you and pointing you in this direction?

Are there any specific scriptures or just general scriptures where you're like, man, as a believer, I can't deny that. Yeah. Yeah, I think the parable of the talents in Matthew 25 was one of those big ones for me, because again, so we talked about us paying off the house and that was when I was 31, we paid off our house at H31, which is just crazy, it's still crazy to say it out loud. And then by age 39 and eight months, we had given away a million dollars.

And so that next piece there from paying off the house, because again, like I said, now we have an extra $1,500, $2,000 a month on top of all the other money to give away. So again, that was a goal of ours to be able to give away a million dollars by age 40. And so we just started funneling as much cash towards as we could each month. And again, we were living a decent life.

We're going to vacations, but we're going to Paris every weekend on a private jet. But anyway, it wasn't like we're just hyper-frugality, penny-pinchers, and not doing anything or enjoying anything in life, but it wasn't important goal to us. And so the majority of our extra financials were going towards that goal. And so that was part of what allowed us to get back, or to get to that point by age 40, is just a continual focus on the goal.

And I keep losing your original question, going on in tangent. Look, it's all good. Like holding back the original question. OK, a Bible scripture for you.

You talk about the current violence. Yeah. OK, so parable of the talents, Matthew 25. And so I'll see most of us know that.

But briefly, you have this value-in-owner. And he basically takes, he's got three different servants, and he gives them a certain amount of money, and he says, go do something with this. And the implication is, go turn this into something more. I'm testing you.

I want to see if you can turn this into something more. And two of the guys go take a quote risk, and invest it in something, and come back, and increase what they were given. And then bring back to the master. He says, well done, good and faithful servant.

The other one doesn't invest it, and buries it in the ground. And the master doesn't have good things to say. Go read it. It's not great.

And anyway, and so I don't think that that passage is just about investing money. I think it applies to all kinds of things that we're entrusted with, our time, our resources, our kids, whatever, our actual talents is gifted us with. But I do think money is one of them. I think it's one of the things that is entrusted to us to do something with.

Part of that equation was us learning how to invest and how to multiply. And how do we take the money that we have? And so some of that is giving, and some of that's kingdom focused giving, and that's great. But some of that is actually multiplying it to be able to give more.

And so that was just something that once I saw that in the Bible, I don't know. It just really convicted me. It's like, I need to learn how to do this. And it's a little bit scary, and it's like I'm a little bit nervous to lose money and all these things.

But at the end of the day, I felt a responsibility. And this point now, it feels like a moral obligation to invest, because he's given me an ability to do it. And if I don't do it, if I just bury my talent in that passage, I don't expect him to say good things to me for that. Yeah.

And it's that fear where people bury it. We bury it out of the fear. And I think about, like you said, we actually talked about that in one of the last episodes, because I've been talking a lot about investing, which I want to get into as well. But when I think about that scripture, on the parallel of it, what I love about the parable is that it literally is using the example of money.

But like you said, because Jesus spoke in parables, we know that there's deeper meaning. What's stuck out for me is gaining interest. And you know, you think about like the one message that Jesus came back after he resurrected to speak was the Great Commission. And that's really about gaining interest or the kingdom of heaven and going out and gathering more souls and making disciples across all nations.

And when I think about that, I'm like, what I love about investing in these buildings, these financial habits, is they really parallel the disciplines of a believer. And are these muscles that we need to be building in order to think like a believer. And then if you're doing that in your regular life, you can't help but do it in your finances. So before I jump into investing, I want to talk about one quick thing.

You said something and I don't know if it was something I read on your website or I watched a lot of episodes of your podcast. You said something like there's two tests, financial tests that God gives people. And it's when you have less money than you expected in life, right? And then when you have more money than you expected in life.

Can you just unpack that concept a little bit? Yeah, and this has just been my experience. And I'm sure there are a whole bunch of more other ways you can test us financially. But these have been two big ones he's tested me with.

And not just having less than I expect, but less than you deserve. Being in a situation with a job, with the boss who's ripping you off or being stuck in a career where you're being held down and you're being held back and whatever that might be, where it's like you literally are being ripped off from what you deserve. And again, so many instances of the Bible, you go back to Joseph, accused of rape and thrown in prison. And he did not deserve that.

He got falsely accused. And it looked alike. It was going to hold him back from the thing that God had put on his heart, his dream, his gift, everything. It looked like it was going to hold him back.

But God used it to multiply him and move forward. So I think that that is a test. That if you walk with the Lord long enough and you really want to grow in this area, he's going to test you in that. Another one is what happens, like you just said, when you get more than you feel like you deserve.

How do you handle that? And I think there's a lot of different things here because some people have an inferiority thing where they feel like they're not worthy. So that's something you might need to deal with some people with. Another one is do you just go crazy and blow that money or are you going to maintain and be a good steward?

Because the fact of the matter is like we live in a nation in a country of so much abundance, more than the history of the world like it's ever seen. We're so as a nation, so wealthy that we don't even know it. And so when you get in a situation, and this could be anything. Some people, this is whatever, an extra $100 a month.

Like for some people it's 1000, some people it's 10,000, whatever, it doesn't really matter. It's all relative. But the point is when you get more, what do you do with that? Do you just run and blow it real quick or do you go Lord?

I have a little bit extra in my hand, how do you want me to use it? And so that test is a really important one because if you can't manage an extra $100 or an extra $1000 well, like there's no way he's going to dump millions on you. He's not going to do it because he loves you too much. He doesn't want it to get on you to get a hold of you.

But if you are a steward who can prove that he can give you an extra $1000, you're not going to blow it and you're going to use it wisely, then I think when we do that, I think we're setting ourselves up for him to be able to say, okay, I can trust you with more. Let's try a little more. I love that. You also said something else that I say all the time.

I never heard nobody else say this. So I was pleasantly surprised that here you say, money doesn't solve money problems. And like there's a lot of responsibility that comes with money. There's also this idea that once I get money, like life is going to be perfect.

And I think that's challenging to balance, especially when you're entering it for the first time. Like I've been there with me and my wife to some extent of like starting to tackle some of our goals and go throughout this thing. And I remember having this thought one of our last houses that we lived in, we moved a lot. We had this last house.

It was a pretty big house, especially just for the two of us. It was a beautiful house. And I remember thinking we were arguing one day. And I was like, it's the same argument we were having in the apartment.

It was like, it just let me see like the house is just a house. Like the car, we had a nicer car. And I'm like, well, we still, you know, like we were still like having our normal back and forth about everything in that instance, even though we were like debating or arguing or something, it was actually more humbling and positive for me. And it's kind of helped us on our journey, not to get like overwhelmed or like lose our humility or why we were going after money to think that it does something that only God can do.

So I love that you said that. I don't know if you have anything to add to that, but that whole idea of like money can't solve money problems. It really, it blessed me to hear you say that and then talk more about it. Yeah, I mean, so yeah, we've had ups and downs, like significant ups and downs.

And so we've had some big moments where it's like, man, we're making more money than we know what to do with. And like we're God was testing us like that. And then interestingly, you know, after that, we've had moments where it's like our income drop by 90%. And stuff where it's like, man, it's a roller coaster.

And there's so much that you learn and you find out about yourself when you experience those ups and downs. And it's like, and I always go back to what Paul talked about. I think it's in Philippines before something where you talk about how he learned the secret of being content and learning how to abasant about. And basically, Paul lived in the Kings Palace, but then he also like went through some terrible, terrible stuff.

And you know, and it's, I don't know, that's been something that's always been on my mind. Like how do I learn to have that level of contentment? Whether I'm in the high time or the low time and just knowing that God is my provider, staying even keel. And like that's been my desire to do that.

And it's not easy. And I think it takes a lot of leaning into Jesus and riding with him in the ups and downs. But yeah, the thing about what they just said, like money does solve many problems. And I'm saying that again, because again, having been through the ups and downs, a lot of these things that come up aren't solved by just more money.

Like it's just true. And I was interviewing a woman one time on our podcast and she had been in a room basically doing a seminar for super high net worth people. So it's like 200 people in there, all millionaires or multi many times over. And she said, do you know that a lot of middle class people think that you guys have so much money that you don't have any problems?

And she said the entire room burst into laughter, like uncontrolled the laughter. And it's like, and anyway, and I think for a lot of us, it's just good to hear that just to know that, you know, it doesn't, but what do you get more money? It doesn't solve problems. And I would say that, you know, and again, I'm not at all prescribing this as a theology, but I will say that some of the times when we have been at our highest income points have been the seasons of my life that were most challenging.

And I don't know why, but it felt like there were so many other things that were going wrong at that point and was like, the money's going right. Man, my health is terrible. And I would trade all the money in the world for my health to be right, you know, or my kids are having this major problem or whatever, it's like my marriage is struggling. And that's like all of those things.

Like if they're bad enough, I promise you, the money is just like, take it, just take it, problem, you know? Yeah, it keeps us grounded, right? And I think I called it the necessary struggle. I think as believers, like the difference is like the world, you go out, you just indulge and do everything.

And it's still ain't good for you, but you just do it all, right? As a believer, you're trying to like, cause we're called to deny ourselves. And there's gonna be this necessary struggle. I just think that's an important part of like, you know, talking to people, especially if they don't have money yet because some things you just learned through experience and it may not make sense, but you'll be like, all right, at least I heard it.

All right, so I wanna make sure I get some time for our last few minutes to talk a little bit about investing, which I'm really big on. I specifically wanna get some of your thoughts around crypto, but just before I jump there for you, you know, what led you to getting into investing in general at all, right? Like what was your pathway and your introduction into investing and then maybe from there, maybe talk a little bit about your introduction to crypto and I definitely wanna dive into some of your thoughts here. I would say the key turning point in my life when I came to investing was I was going, I was taking guitar lessons from this guy.

He was a retired school teacher and he was teaching me jazz guitar. And he was teaching jazz guitar lessons, not cause he needed the money because I came to find out they was a multi-millionaire. And I'm like, retired school teacher, multi-millionaire, like what's going on here? And so anyway, one day I'm in there, you know, we're playing guitar, I'm like, hey, who put the guitars down and can you just teach me about money?

Like I don't know that much, I'd love to hear like, you know, what, you know, anyway, so he said it down a week, you know, talking about two or three hours, just explaining everything they had done, his system, his process, everything. And I remember him distinctly saying, he's like, Bob, I talked to people about this quite a bit. I've talked to dozens of people about this and none of them ever do anything with it. They just take the information one year out the other.

And I remember thinking to myself, it's like, I'm not gonna be one of those. I am going to take this, I'm going to, you're not gonna waste your time on me. I'm going to use this, I'm gonna apply it. And I did.

And I immediately went and I started doing what he said to do. And it was scary, it was my first $500 and it's like, I have no idea if I'm gonna lose all this, I work. I don't even know how many hours, or in $500 at that point, a lot. And I was really nervous, but what changed for me was just three months later, after I made this investment, I looked at my statement and I made $97 over this previous three months and I did no work for that $97.

And it was in that moment, because I was earning like $16 an hour or something. And I just realized, that's just six hours of my life that I just bought back that I just passively earned. And I did nothing for it. And it's like, what happens if I just keep doing this and keep adding more money and keep investing more and more and more.

And one of the crazy things was just like a month ago, I was telling Linda, because we've continued to do this. And I pulled up her Roth IRA. And I happened to be looking in there. And I saw that one of our stocks that we own, the price increase in one day was it was $12,000.

It gained $12,000 in one day. And it was Tesla stock, for me, it was curious. It had a big day and whatever else. But it was one of the things where it's like, I'm like, this is 16, 17 years later or something, but it doesn't make sense.

Like the scale and the difference from that 97 point to this. But my point in saying that is, if you're listening to this, and it's like, I'm nervous to invest or whatever, it's like, do it anyway, just start learning. And yes, you're gonna lose money. It is absolutely gonna happen.

I have bought stocks and all that's going on to zero. And I don't even recommend starting with the S&P 500. Like do something a little bit safer to start. But the point is, start doing it.

Know you're gonna lose money. Be okay losing money. Allow that to be your education. You're paying for education.

When you put money in and you start investing. But the point is, you're not gonna lose money on all of them, especially if you continue to learn from your mistakes. And if you do this long enough, it's like the numbers just get bigger and bigger. And you're gonna have this point where 10 years, 20, 30 years down the road, whatever, you're gonna sit there and look, like I cannot believe that we just gained $13,000 in one day from this one investment.

Like it doesn't make sense. It's like having three jobs. Like for some people, right? Cause you talk about like the school teacher.

And I like to be real about this. I'm like a tough, love type person. So respectfully to anybody out there who hears this, y'all know how I am. Like we have to be real about our skillset, right?

Like depending on what skillset you develop, we all have different skillsets. I'm not LeBron James. So I didn't develop a skillset that can earn me $70 million a year, right? And that's just the reality of it.

Some people did. Okay, they don't have to invest necessarily cool or they invest in a much different way. But if I'm a person that's like, all right, realistically I developed a $60,000 a year skillset or 40,000, right? That's okay.

But this is also like a way to supplement that. Like you said, where you start investing and realizing this is like two of you going out and working at times depending on what you invest in and kind of getting educated on. So I love that. I love like the fact that you say like jumping and educate ourselves.

Now for you, now I want to spend our last few minutes talking specifically about crypto. I'm a huge crypto guy. You know, I've been in crypto. I dabbled around in 2017, lost some money.

2020 realized like it all came back cause I just left the wallet there. And I've been like heavy in the crypto for the last almost five years now. I've lost a lot of money. I've made a lot of money overall.

I've made money. So I feel good about that. But to your point, there was a lot of learnings. What was your introduction to crypto?

And maybe just your general thoughts about it, you know, overall. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we could talk for hours on this. No.

So yeah, I saw I first bought Bitcoin and Ethereum in 2020. That was my first. And like everybody else, probably somewhere in 2015, maybe 2013, I don't know, I heard about Bitcoin. They had a man, I wish I would have thrown a little bit in.

But anyway, I did it. But anyway, so 2020 was my first invested in it. And immediately, right after I invested, every both dropped about 50%. But at this point, I would spend 20 extra turns on it.

So anyway, so that was kind of where it started for me. So again, fairly late to the game. But at the same time, I think in a lot of ways still early. Yeah, my general philosophy, because we have an investing course, we're teaching students about investing.

And I'm a really big fan of Bitcoin. And a lot of other coins are more in my speculative bucket right now. But the way that we teach our students is more of a pyramid approach, where the foundation is the safest first step into investing. And again, I'm speaking to someone who is probably 20, 30 years from retirement or something like that.

And for me, what that looks like is the S&P 500 index fund, or something like that, where it's a diversified basket of the US stock market. And I love that as an entry point into investing. Warren Buffett, it's his number one recommendation all the time, among many of it. So it's a great place to go.

And then as you move up that pyramid for our students, that means getting a little bit more speculative. And as we do, Bitcoin quickly comes in there for me. And I'm very optimistic about Bitcoin and a lot of crypto and very excited about the future of blockchain and no doubt that this is going to be used in some way, some fashion form or form of fashion. But yeah, there's still a lot of unknowns.

And Bitcoin, I think it's proven itself really, really well with the ETFs being rolled out in the Black Rock. And everything else, I think it's got a really bright future ahead of it, but still, in my opinion, I think there's still some risks there. So I'm not putting everything in it. But yeah, anyway, you can leave me where you want to go.

No, that's great. Just that general thought around crypto as a whole. It's one of those things that a lot of people, a lot of people ask me when I talk about it, like they think it's a scam, right? And I've put in a lot of effort and educate myself on it.

And so I think just for some people to understand it, to your point, it is at least a small percentage of your portfolio should be allocated into Bitcoin. And I view it as something that like, we don't know where the future is going. I think it's scarce some people. I don't know if you have a perspective about that, but like especially as Christians, right?

Like sometimes it's easier just to like shun stuff off because we're afraid of it. Do you come across that at all? Or is that like maybe that's a little foreign thought that I have? But I come across people that are kind of afraid.

And I think in that same way that fear stops you from investing in general, it's easy just to be afraid of something that you haven't studied at all and just kind of throw it out the window. Do you have any thoughts about that person that's kind of scared of it? It's a little creepy. Yeah, that's the thing that's so interesting is that I think so often we're afraid of change.

We're afraid of doing something different. And what's interesting about that, you know, you've probably seen this chart too, where you look at the last 100 years, how the value of a dollar has been degraded by like 90% and then you look at the last 13 years of Bitcoin. How the value has increased by whatever, 25 or 50% a year or whatever it is, crazy. But the point is that very few people, I don't talk to very few people who feel nervous about holding money in cash.

And it is a guaranteed loss. Like if you hold money for the next 10 years, you're guaranteed to erode away a whole lot of the purchasing power of that money. And yet not enough people are afraid of that. They're afraid of putting it into the S&P 500 or something where it's like, it's going to go down some years, but it's going to go up some years.

But we have a 100 year track record showing that it goes up by an average of about 10% a year. 100 years kind of proving that out in Bitcoin now, whatever, 13, 14 years or whatever, proving a pretty consistent upward track record. Still some major volatility. But at the end of the day, we had the slow, steady depth of the US dollar that so many people just have all that money sitting in the savings counter under their mattress.

And they're not afraid that it's just being eaten away by inflation. And you should be afraid of that. Like that should be keeping up at night. So I think so often we just put our fear in the wrong place.

Yeah, I agree. I want to be respectful of your time. I could talk to you forever and this has been great. But before we get out of here, can you just share, first of all, thanks again for taking your time out to come and talk to us.

I got a lot out of this. I'm sure the audience did as well. Can you just tell us like, where can we find you and Linda in your podcast? And how do we follow you to hear more of this amazing insight and information?

Yeah. Yeah. So like you mentioned, our podcast is SeedTimeMoney website is seedtimeseadt.com. Yeah.

And so we have a book, Simple Money Rich Life you talked about. And then since we talked about investing so much, we've got an investing course called 10x investing. So everyone's to find out about any of that stuff. Check us out.

Yeah. And it'll all be in the description of today's show. So again, Bob, thank you so much for your time. This has been amazing.

And you have an amazing evening. All right. You did the same. Take a drink.

Thank you. All right, guys, people. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's show. Check out by a lot.

This was an amazing conversation about, you know, being a Christian and thinking about being rich and what that means, the pros and cons and ins and outs. Y'all having amazing, amazing, amazing day. All right, baby.