Our journey

We are coordinating our second Financial Peace University at Antioch starting August 23. I was thinking back over some of our journey and thought it might encourage someone who finds themselves along the way...

When I completed my formal education, Carrie and I had been married almost two years and had about $60,000 in debt. We should have been terrified (our debt was about twice our income at that moment), but I actually rationalized that it wasn't too bad. I had bought into the "good debt, bad debt" myth and the "car debt is inevitable - at least early on" myth. Since "good debt" (student loans) and "normal" debt (cars) made up most of our debt load, I actually thought our overall debt load to be reasonable at our stage in life. And Carrie trusted me with our money.

Over the next couple of years I got a job, Carrie quit hers to stay home with our new family, we changed cars, bought a house, and lived a bunch of life. During this time our debt load varied slightly, but we were basically in the same place, only we now had a house that needed a complete remodel. Now that's a great place for a young broke family!

About this time we went through Crown Financial Ministries' small group study and started getting serious about our money. We began to make some adjustments, but with all of life that happens while starting a family and the busyness, we still weren't giving it enough focus or intensity. Debt at this time was probably around $50,000 (without the house) and we were trying to get the debt related to our remodel paid off.

Let me break here to ask a question. Why had we not gained more traction? There are lots of answers that I find are common to about everyone who is struggling:

• We had not broken the cycle of debt. We were still using credit cards while trying to pay them off.


• We were not both intimately involved in our family's finances.


• We were not in complete unity on the level of sacrifice we should make to get ahead.


• We were not using a monthly spending plan.


• We were still reacting to circumstances rather than living our financial life on purpose. We weren't being intentional enough.


• We were not exercising the hard work, discipline, and diligence needed to win with money.

What really got me motivated was watching my kids grow up and realizing just how short time really is. The 4th baby was coming. School was going to start in a couple of years for our oldest. Teenage years were soon to follow. Cars would have to be purchased and insured. The roof would need to be replaced, along with the furnace and air conditioner - not to mention retirement and college savings (for which TIME invested is one of the determinants to success).

And since our kids were born so close together, once the first hits any stage in life, the others follow, like, immediately. In other words, most of my saving for each stage in life had to take place before our first reached that stage.

Carrie has always been an amazing wife and she got behind me on reaching the goals for our future. She became especially motivated during the Financial Peace University class we coordinated.

So, things had to change. How did we get into debt? Not paying attention. Dave Ramsey says, "You can stumble into debt in our culture but you will never stumble out." How did we get out? Focused intensity. It's the only way.

New rules:

• We make a written spending plan (budget) every month, spending every dollar on paper on purpose before the month begins.


• We communicate regularly about our money, making changes to the budget as necessary. Spending all the money on paper requires us to find offsets anytime there is an additional expense we had not accounted for. And Carrie is very involved in this process.


• We use cash everywhere possible to hold ourselves accountable to our spending plan, make wiser spending decisions, and negotiate bargains.


• We don't use credit cards at all.


• We pray about this regularly.

What else?

• We saved $1,000 in the bank as a starter emergency fund.


• We began paying off our debts smallest to largest with a vengeance.


• We picked up extra work to advance the cause.


• We got very diligent about our finances.


• We held off on some wants that sometimes felt like needs.

That was just under one year ago. Today, we have about $11,000 in student loans to go. Everything else is GONE FOREVER. By the end of next year we will be debt-free (except our home), have an emergency fund of 3 - 6 months expenses, and will have cash-flowed a 10-year anniversary resort stay in Cancun.

We are on our way to Financial Peace! Two years of hard work to change our future. Well worth it! And let me assure you of one thing - WE ARE NEVER GOING BACK!

It's a given for me but let me be very clear - To God be all the praise, honor, and glory. We are applying His principles, His truth, and trusting in His provision. We are given strength by His Spirit and are encouraged by His people. He is the Lord of our lives.

I do quite a bit of financial counseling and I have yet to see a situation beyond two years of hard work and sacrifice from being cleaned up. The only question is whether the family is willing to pay the price.

If you are tired of living with the financial stress ... if you work too hard and make too much money to be this broke, please contact me or join a Financial Peace University class near you. This will change your life!

Social Drinking, Part Deux

One week of my life just disappeared during Antioch’s 25th Annual Student Conference last week, but I’m back now and ready to post.

In the context of the Church (maybe I should specify, in the United States), where the roots of Prohibition remain, I cannot see how one can fulfill the high calling of Love and engage in social drinking. The likelihood of offending the weaker believer’s conscience is too great. So my call in the last post was and is to Love as the highest standard. Loving by the standard of Scripture is what I believe best informs the culture. But the church doesn’t seem to be willing to Love at that level when it comes to certain issues, like the tiny issue of social drinking.

I watched an interesting movie the other night – To End All Wars. In it, you might say certain prisoners set out to “inform” the culture of their prison camp by following the most difficult standards of Scripture – Loving their enemies (who were merciless torturers), turning the other cheek, forgiving wrongs, and laying down their lives one for another – and even working hard (completing the Railroad of Death six months ahead of schedule). They consistently made choices not based on circumstance or others’ actions, but on their best understanding of the higher way of Scripture.

I do not believe purposefully moving toward normative drinking in the context of a society “changed” by the Prohibition Era would inform the culture or prevent problematic youth drinking. I think that is still working on the surface level (how to drink rightly) rather than the underlying issue (how to Love rightly). Youth must be influenced, taught, and developed by the family, in my opinion. And they have to be taught who they are so they can live that out in what they do. Without the identity, the what is just a rule. The root of binge drinking, etc. is less about marketing and more about filling an empty space or finding fulfillment in something other than the Lord. I'm not going to get into what all I believe has robbed the identity of our youth so that they feel they need to "find themselves."

Might I add that if the people of God were giving according to the Word of God (whether you adhere to tithing or “grace giving”), there would be plenty of resources available for the church to inform the advertising and marketing industries. But without that resource, the church is ineffective in that arena accept by infiltrating those industries with righteous people.

The church is most effective at informing culture as a movement. So gladly laying aside these small issues (such as social drinking) out of a motivation of Love for others, which generates unity will form into the movement that has the power to inform culture (could be a definition of a church and as momentum builds, of the church). But as long as social drinking causes a divide, that movement is weakened.

My call, again, is to lay it down out of Love for those who are offended by it. It is the highest calling of Love, to lay down your life for your brother. This would make drinking a non-issue and eliminate a point of contention in the church. I can’t change anyone else. I can only change me, and someone has to take the first step. So I will make the first step and lay it down because my calling is to Love others. Every other approach points the finger at “them” to change. Paul says, “If you have the liberty (are stronger) then you take the step – you change out of Love for them (the weaker)." It is clear enough that I know how to respond.

My point on emotion (see last blog) is that it should not drive the decision process. All believers should make decisions based on something beyond their emotions. The inquiry should not be, “How do I feel about it?” but something more along the lines of, “What does God want? What does He say about it? And what response allows me to be transformed into the image and likeness of Christ?"

Maybe it didn’t come across in my post, but my underlying point was to live up to the call to die to ourselves and live in the Spirit, whose fruit is Love. Social drinking was used to illustrate a greater underlying principle – a higher calling - Love. Drinking is a hot button issue in the church and to me, it shouldn’t be. In our culture, at this time in history, it should be a non-issue, laid down in Love, and everyone moves on. The answer to, “Why don’t you drink?” should be, “Because I Love the community of belivers too much to allow this tiny thing to be an issue.” This is what has compelled me to abstain. Is drinking the only such issue in the church? Not by any stretch of the imagination. But it is an issue. In the same way, money is not the only issue but as we address issues related to money, other life issues rise to the surface once there is focus on the big one. My attempt in the last post was to challenge the ancillary issues, leaving all to face the real issue – am I willing to lay down my life (and liberty) for another believer? That is why the overlay is Paul’s discourse in 1 Corinthians. He gets to the heart of the matter, which is not the rightness or wrongness of the choice itself, but Love – which is the evidence of being filled with the Spirit.

So the question is not about the rightness or wrongness of drinking, but whether it is the highest, the best, and the way most likely to land one in the center of Jesus’ admonition to, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and … Love your neighbor as yourself.” My belief is that in the current context, and given the entire counsel of Scripture (not one verse out of context), believers should abstain from social drinking out of Love for the community of believers, some of whom might have an issue of the conscience.

Now where it gets so serious to me is that a “non-sin” can actually become a sin if it causes another believer to violate his conscience. And that is one reason I posted. Drinking is too small a thing to risk so great a consequence.

The bigger issue is whether our lives are so transformed into the image of Christ that we are willing to die daily to ourselves and live by the Spirit, exhibiting the fruit of Love.

…And that is how they will know (and how we inform the culture) – by our Love.