Using Money Wisely: Spending Less & Having More

Well, let's go ahead and get rolling on this. This particular one, after some initial parts, we're going to be getting into some things that are, I'll call them more practical. A lot of it's less dealing with scriptural principles per se, but it's specifically some people said, well, can you give me some practical help in trying to get this budget so that it balances. And so that's a good portion of what we're going to end up dealing with here today. But one of the things to return to here is just this issue. We talked a few weeks ago about the balancing the income and the outgo, and that's really what this is all about.

Americans have not done well with this. You know, one of the things we brought up on the chart, the second week was American savings rates gone down to, actually there was a period of time where it's actually negative, where the net was a draw from savings. That's improved a little bit in recent months, although I noticed the statistics for October, I haven't seen it for November yet.

Americans increased their spending at four times the increase in their income. So, massive. I mean, it's still huge increases in debt. Basically, that statistic says that at least for that month, Americans were spending, outstripping their income, four to one. And the difference obviously has to come out of debt or savings. And they didn't have any savings, so guess what?

As Christians, we need to look at things differently. Part of what's happening, and we were talking especially in the second week, Christians need to take a long-term look. We need to do, as Proverbs makes mention of, it talks about the plans of the diligent. And we need to have a long-term look. We need to have diligence. We need to see the needs and save for them. That's appropriate.

And kind of the American pattern that has arisen, especially in the 90s, and still seems to be holding itself into the next decade that we're living in now. The pattern has been to just spend and spend and spend and go crazy with it. Another little statistic here. Retail floor space has grown at five times the general population rate during the 1990s. Five times. We're not talking double or time and a half. Five times. So what that's telling me is people are just going crazy with spending. and going into Hawke.

Now, one of the issues that we want to address here, and it applies to most of the folks in this room before we get into this, is that money matters in marriage. And there are two principles that are key here, and they're addressed on page 42 in the middle of the page.

The first principle we call the Oneness Principle, and this finds its roots in Genesis 2.24. A man shall, you know, leave his mother and father and be joined to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh. That oneness principle we carry over in the area of finances.

It means that while there are reasons, sometimes specifically, to have separate accounts and things of that sort, the general picture needs to be looked towards the husband and the wife looking at their financial picture together. Looking at their financial picture together. One of the reasons why you see the divorce statistic so high, it's certainly not the only reason, and pointing with those divorces to the financial area, is frequently husbands and wives have not got this figured out.

They're heading off in two different directions, never having sat down and worked out this oneness principle. How does oneness that's spelled out in Genesis 2 and important enough that our Lord repeats it and Paul repeats it. It must be important if it keeps coming back, right? People have not sat down and figured out how does that work out in our marriage in the area of finances.

By having separate financial worlds here that are not worked out, it creates problem, and you find a couple with separate financial worlds with each of them, without having that worked out as how are we going to resolve this as husband and wife, implementing this oneness principle, you end up not fulfilling what marriage is designed to be biblically. Now, again a caveat, there may be circumstances and reasons for something separate. Example, just the way IRAs are set up, it's in the name of one spouse and you can have the other one as beneficiary. But even that needs to be talked about and worked at jointly, so that the husband and wife are carrying out that oneness principle, not just in all the other areas of their life, not just under one roof, not just, you know, in different areas, but also in the area of finances, that that is one of the areas where that oneness principle gets implemented.

That oneness principle not only shows up in that Genesis passage, but it also shows up in this Ephesians 5 passage as to the relationship between Christ and the church. This oneness. Now, the next one is the headship principle. And that is that the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. That's the second principle.

We'll talk more about what that means in a lot of different areas when we get into the section on marriage. But for now, it means that in the financial area, the husband needs to take leadership. That does not mean that the husband always gets his own way. That does not mean that the husband is the one who does everything, but he takes the leadership to see that it gets done.

One of the things that Nancy and I have found to be true as we've done financial counseling is that in some couples, really, the wife may be the one who's more financially savvy and more naturally deals with numbers. In other cases, it's the husband. Once in a while, we run into a case where neither of them are, and that's really a struggle. But there may in fact be a situation where the wife is the one who really ends up crunching all the numbers and dealing with balancing the checkbook.

Still, it is the husband who needs to exercise leadership. And again, that leadership is not, I get my way. The leadership is seeing that it is the best thing for the family, for the couple, if there's just the two of you, that the best thing gets carried out. And taking the time, even just saying, hey, let's sit down and take a look at this. Let's talk about this. The headship means responsibility for the oneness. See that? The headship means responsibility for the oneness.

So that's one of the reasons for the husband taking the leadership. Not that he does everything. He may not, in fact, be the one who is most financially savvy when it comes to crunching numbers. But out of sacrificial love, taking the leadership, seeing to it, that things get done in the financial area and that what is carried out implements the oneness principle. See that? Does that make sense? Now, we'll get into more of what that means in terms of husband and wife as we get into the marriage section. Those two principles work together.

One of the passages we bring up specifically in the middle of 42 is 1 Peter 3.7. It is the smallest verse on husbands that is the most potent. Husbands, live in an understanding way with your wives, as the weaker vessel, so that your prayers won't be hindered. And that means leadership means understanding. Husbands, do you understand your wives?

Believe it or not, it means you have to listen. Okay, I hear a lot of laughs, so that's good, I suppose. Well, that's what next quarter's class is all about. Make sure that your husband takes your leadership to sign up. Okay. Now, that is a preface here.

Next week we're going to be returning to more biblical principles in various areas as they impact finances. For now, I want to kind of shift gears and go into just plain practical stuff. Again, the intent is to help people balance the income and the outgo. It is hopefully to help you have some material to talk with your spouse about and to, again, in practical ways, implement this Oneness Principle and the Headship Principle. So let's go through it, and again, just with the understanding that it's going to be more practical and pragmatic things, not biblical principles explicitly. Okay, so let's turn to 43.

One of the things I hope you still have with you here is this budget sheet. If you don't, I think we may still have a spare or two over here that you can pick up. What I will be doing is stepping through this budget sheet one line at a time for the most part. And so that's what it'll be in reference to. I'm starting at page 43, but the budget sheet was an item. I included it in the section, I think it was about three or four weeks ago.

And there was also an additional one that I put in the appendix and I put some more out here. Is that the last one? Yeah, I think we're getting there. Yeah, why don't you do that? That would be good. Yeah, let's 20, 20. Yeah. We'll get some more, Nancy will get some more copies there because I'm sure it'll be helpful for folks to have. Anyway, we're going to step our way through it.

A reminder, you can look through that section, you know, because I don't consider a budget to be a requirement for, you know, Christian couples or Christian people to do. What I outlined in there is a tool, okay, not a law, it's a tool, and here are some circumstances and conditions where it would be a good idea. So look at that, determine whether or not being on a budget is a good idea for you, and take a look at that again if you need to. What we're going to do today is step through it, and the reason is whether or not you're going to do a budget, these categories are things that you can talk about and it's a useful kind of outline to work from. What I've done in this is to kind of step through each category so that you can use that, you know, make notes, go through it together if that helps you. And so we'll kind of walk our way, you know, through this. First one on top of page 43 is just dealing with this income per month. Now, hopefully you have income. Okay. Now, we have listed on the sheet there about five categories and one of them to catch all is the other, you know. Wages, commissions, interest, dividends, and the other category.

And what we generally ask people to do when we're doing the budget is if you have, let's say you get paid weekly, you'll have some months where you get paid five paychecks and some where you get paid four, right? If you get paid weekly. And so the idea is we recommend folks budget on the basis of the four. And then when you get the five, we have a windfall plan for how to handle that, OK?

But the idea is you live on the four as the norm. Because the truth is most months are going to be that way. Let's say you get paid every other week as we did for years when I was in Carson City. Every other week was the pattern. And so that would mean a couple times a year you'd get an extra paycheck.

So again, you want to live on the two if you get paid that way. and then have a windfall plan to handle the extra income when it comes in. Otherwise, believe me, it will get frittered away and eaten up. Folks on commission or irregular incomes. If you have a situation where your income is either because of commission or you've got a small business or something, the income goes up and down, generally what we suggest is that people budget on the basis of 90% of what they have been experiencing as average, and then if they get extra, handle that with a windfall plan.

The idea is that you deal with a little bit less in each of those approaches. And that way you're conservative. And then you have a plan for how to deal with the extra when it comes in. Hopefully it comes in, right? And so no matter how you're situated, then you're able to deal with it. And the idea is that you're taking a conservative approach. You're not kind of leaning into the wind, so to speak. You're taking a conservative approach. And then when you do get the windfall, you have a means of handling it wisely instead of just kind of letting it happen.

Okay, next thing, the giving and taxes. We talked about that a few weeks back, so we addressed that in great part. One of the kind of reminders I would give is one is at the end of the year, you want to be Pretty close to break even, if anything, owing a little bit. If you end up getting some huge refund, you just gave the government an interest-free loan.

Not a good idea. Not a good use of money. So you want to aim for that. If you need to sit down towards the end of the year and kind of pencil out, or even use software, that's what I do, look at how am I doing and what does it look like, that's a good idea so you don't end up with some real substantial hiccup. We've talked with folks who it seems like every year they're paying some huge amount, including penalties, because they didn't get set aside enough.

The other caution there is when you're making decisions, don't let the tax impact make your decision for you. Okay? What you want to do is consider the tax impact, but only let that be a part of your overall decision, not the whole decision. And some people will decide, oh, I'm going to do this because it will save me on taxes. But what I have seen is many times they're doing the wrong thing because they're letting the Congress, if you can imagine that, make their personal decision, which isn't a good idea. Congress has no idea how you live, believe me.

Okay. Next thing on housing. For most people, this is going to be the largest category, unless you have teenage boys and have to feed them. OK? So anyway, this is going to be the big one. And of course, right now there's a refinancing boom. Most people are taking out 5% to 15%. I think the last figure I saw this last week is a little over 12% was the most recent number. Most people are getting more money out of the house than before.

You want to look at getting a lower interest rate and one of the difficulties here, in the past it's always been, I'm talking decades past, you want to shoot for your housing expenses to be 25% of your income. That's almost impossible these days. Thank you, sweetie. That's almost impossible.

But what you do want to do is make sure that overall the figure is balanced with so you're not overspending in your total category. One of the things aside from looking for lower interest rates is also seeing if you can shorten the length of the loan if you have a loan to deal with. A lot of times what you'll find is the shorter loans will have lower interest rates anyway and you will cut your total interest payout to less than a third. going from 30 years down to 15 years. Less than a third of the amount of interest. So it's a huge improvement if you can pull it down to, say, 15 years from 30 and live with that.

The other thing is, and this I check with folks here in the church that are involved in real estate, be careful on financing and refinancing the fees. because what they'll do is they'll give you a good rate and then come back and just nail you with some outrageous fees. Compare those fees, not just the rate. Get some advice if you need it. One thing to think, yes?

The 30-15 year mortgage really doesn't differ all that much per month either. It differs, there's no question it's small, but I mean the amount of difference really Yes, and I can guarantee you the banker likes the 30-year. That's his gravy, that's his retirement plan. Yes, you're right. The difference because of the lower interest rate is typically not that great, so very much worth taking a look at.

The one thing to take a look at, because where you live, especially if you're buying, tends to be such a locked in, hard to change kind of number. It's something you need to look at your overall budget before you lock in on a situation. People will buy into something, then find themselves really up in hawk. The last number I saw, and I haven't seen the numbers in the latest quarter, but the last number I saw is in one quarter, 650,000 foreclosures.

And it's a record for this country. And what's happened is people have gone and signed up for this massive mortgage. And they go charging everything. All of a sudden, they're just up to their gills in payments. And they just have to walk away from it. So that's the last number. I don't know if the number's gone up or down or about the same or what. But that's huge. That's a lot of people losing their house. That's a lot of people losing their house.

Another thing, and this is an issue we've kind of brought up before everybody's in the room. Next category is on this insurance, and we're going to revisit this insurance issue several times. Something to understand about what's going on in the insurance realm. Insurance companies have operated for a number of years, I'm talking a couple of decades now, on this basis.

They've taken in premiums, they have invested a lot of money And the rates that they have charged and the payouts that they've been willing to make have all been based on being able to go to a stock market that just is going up and up like a choo-choo train up the mountain. Well, the last three years almost, next month it'll be three years that the bear market hit, the last three years they've not gotten the returns. As a matter of fact, they've been losing money, so guess what happens? It's two things.

One is insurance rates are going up. And if you haven't seen that, you know, you're gonna. Insurance rates are going up even if you haven't had any claims. I was talking, somebody on the Wednesday night class was saying, you know, we have not had one claim, one ticket, we've got a $500 increase in our car insurance, you know. And this house insurance obviously is a category, but that's one reason. The other reason is it varies, but some companies have been hit hugely by the Twin Towers collapse, I mean, just massively. So that on top of the stock market situation.

In the southern band of the United States where they've had, you know, the high humidity hitting, especially in the Gulf states, they have had these mold claims that have been hitting so, you know, left, so much left and right. A lot of people are finding, you know, that they get any claim at all, and they're just, they're terminated. even after they've been 8, 10, 12 years out there, they're being terminated. And it's because the insurance companies, they're trying to get out of some of these states. And the easy way for them to do it, as soon as you make a claim, you're off the list.

So something to be careful of. In the appendix, I've got a couple of articles you might want to take a look at. It's how to defend yourself in this environment because insurance rates are going up. The other thing to watch, and previously we gave a listing on how to check the safety of your insurance companies, because of this duress that's going on, a lot of the insurance companies are hitting some difficult times, much more difficult financial times. And you want to check on your insurance company, especially if you've got a lot riding on it, just make sure that they're going to hold up.

Anyway, just a word of caution. I think it helps to just get the big picture of what their stress is, and you can see how they're getting squeezed. So they end up being nasty. One of the major recommendations that they make, aside from trying to up your deductible, is if you have a claim, talk to your insurance agent first. Because what's happening is the insurance agents are getting blindsided. But they have experience in sometimes how to work this thing through without having you get shafted. So that's one of the recommendations. But anyway, look at the articles in there. There are two of them with some suggestions.

And it's just the insurance companies, and again, we're going to visit this in several categories, they are going through a horrific time and it's not over. OK, next one is electricity and gas. The biggest thing, aside from, of course, finding ways that you can cut back, is if you can take advantage of equal payment programs. And a lot of them, it's the springtime and spring and early summer when that window is open. If you can do that, some of them have it, some of them don't. But especially like power bills and things of that sort, power, gas, really helps. Because otherwise, your budget gets strained every time the winter hits. And you get this huge up and down. And it just makes it tough to budget and make ends meet.

Water and sewer. Different people are in different circumstances here, but I think the one thing to watch especially is just plain leakage. One drip a second is a thousand gallons in a year. And the bottom line is, especially if you're in a circumstance where your sewer and the water bill are together, you get your water bill and your sewer bill is based on your water bill. And so if you have leaks, you're just paying for both way too much. So anyway, that's one of the things to look at.

Sue Anderson was saying that a few years ago, apparently the water and the sewer bill here and the church are combined. And in the summer, when we had the sprinkler system, the first year, the bill came and they had adjusted the sewer portion of the bill to reflect water usage in the building, which there wasn't. So they had to go back to the... Right. Yeah, we shouldn't be paying the sewer bill based on lawn watering.

Yeah, those are things to be watched. The next one I'll go to is the telephone bill. Of course, you know, sometimes these days with the cell phones, you've got some flat rate things and of course you can also get gouged like crazy, so something to look for. But the other thing, Nancy and I these days are using the AT&T calling cards, about three and a half cents a minute. You can get it at Sam's Club, or you can get somebody who goes there to buy one for you if you aren't a member. But that's a good one. And we found another one more recently. It's even under three cents a minute. So worth taking a look at. I don't have the info on your package there, but I intend to get it to you. Let's turn on to page 45.

The maintenance category is one, and this is another one we're going to revisit a couple of times. The maintenance category, if you're a homeowner, is one that I would strongly underscore because essentially deferred maintenance is the same as debt. Deferred maintenance is the same as debt. It's an obligation to keep something up. Otherwise, if you don't keep it up, at a minimum, you're going to decrease the value of the property that you've got.

A lot of things left to themselves tend to get worse. You know, you've seen that. So something has started off to be a little soft spot on the floor and all of a sudden it falls through, then you've got a real big problem, right? So things like that. Deferred maintenance is not a good idea.

It's far better to budget what it takes to really keep on top of maintaining the house and let that be the way you handle things. If you can do things reasonably yourself, then that obviously helps too. The main thing is keep up on it. The other thing that we strongly recommend is for furniture and improvements, some big improvements you may not be able to handle on a save for it kind of basis, but especially furniture and minor improvements, far better to look at saving the money and then buying it when you need to.

What's happened is our culture has gotten so much into the debt approach that the furniture companies are all backwards where they're You take this stuff and you don't have to pay for it until a year or more from now. And no interest, all that stuff. And all they're doing is they're trying to get the people who shouldn't buy the stuff in the first place to buy it. So if you are going to take advantage of that, just save up the money so that when the payment finally comes due, you got it.

It'd be a situation, again, plan for future needs. Don't let it catch you by surprise. Now, and again, the food and groceries category, I thought Nancy did heroically well when we had, especially both of our boys were teenagers. They eat like backhoes, you know. It's just amazing to watch them. I see Bonnie chuckling. But just, you know, it's an area, in this area, one of the things that you find is the convenience costs. You know, the more convenient it is and pre-processed and pre-packaged and everything else, the more of that you have, the more it tends to be.

Now, one thing, if you're going to do a budget, you want to make sure there's no leaks in it, right? But there's no harm if you buy something that's really in some other category at the grocery store, just go ahead and include it here if that makes it simple for you. In other words, if it might be something that you would put in some other category on the budget, it's okay to shift it just as long as you're keeping track of the total. Make sense? It's the total you're concerned about, not trying to play accountant with every little jot and tittle. So don't sweat the small stuff.

In the automobile category, the one thing is we want to work towards not making payments. And that's one of the reasons why at the bottom of the page on 46, we talk about saving for replacement. Most Americans don't save for replacement. And so as a consequence, most Americans are on this treadmill of constantly borrowing, constantly borrowing, and they wear the thing out and even a lot of them get upside down. And that's the other flip side of it is you want to avoid getting upside down if at all possible and aim for a situation where you're not making payments, but especially to avoid a situation where you're paying for a car that's now worth substantially less than what you owe.

Nancy and I have counseled with some couples where the car is worth half of what They owe on it, and then the car breaks down. Major breakdown. I mean, like engine blow, that kind of stuff. You can get in a spot where by the time you put the money into it, the car is only worth half of what you owe on it. So it can get really bad upside down. You want to avoid that being upside down. It gets you in a spot where you just don't want to fix it, but you have no other choice. You just don't want to get in that spot. The next issue I'll cover there is this insurance issue again. The same thing I said before with insurance applies to the car insurance because it's the same basic principle. The companies that are insuring their car, in the past they used to be able to invest that money and get a pretty good rate of return, pretty easily get 20% a year or something like that.

Now it's going the other way. They're losing money on what they're taking in as premiums. because they're still investing with the same philosophy. So they're losing money, and they're saying, well, we're not making as much money, so you've got to pay more. So that principle is hitting a lot of folks. And again, people are finding cancellations come awful quick, too.

And one of the things I found is insurance companies actually are good for picking up really big liabilities. But if it's anything small, they're going to charge you enough to get it paid back. You may have noticed that already. They'll up the rate in order to recoup what they just paid out to you.

And then the last point on there I'd like to cover is the maintenance and repair. Again, deferred maintenance on a car is also like debt. And especially with a car, because you defer maintenance, boy, it gets really expensive. It gets really expensive. I had one fellow, I told him that we had a Volvo. This was years back. And he says, those are great cars.

We had one and didn't change at all for two years and it took two years to blow up. That's not quite the way you want to do it. And that's not the standard of a good car either. I'd rather not test my cars that way. Maintaining the car, keeping it up, is valuable and it's worth doing. First of all, if the car gets more and more run down, you'll be far more tempted to go out and sell it and try to get something else, which won't be economically viable. The best thing, keep up with the maintenance on it. Make sure you budget for that maintenance. Yes? Are some of the mechanics that suggested a regular maintenance on the car, it'll run for two or three hundred thousand miles? Yeah. Occasionally, exceptional stories.

I talked to the service manager at the Honda dealer when we were down in Texas. And he said, we had one guy come in here. He said he had a Honda Civic. He said all he's done is the prescribed maintenance, no major repairs, 650,000 miles on that thing. Now, that's extraordinary. But the bottom line is, yes, keep up with the regular maintenance. That's pivotal. OK, let's move on from there.

47. One of the things, moving into the area of insurance again, and this time we're talking about life insurance, Nancy and I found people both underinsured and overinsured frequently.

And the underinsured situation, when I talked to one fellow, I said, now wait a minute, you've got a wife, and you've got two kids, and you're the only worker in the house, what happens if you're killed? And he goes, I don't know, you know. And the problem is it was absolutely nothing for the family to fall back on. I said they would be, you have no savings either. I said they would be in an immediate emergency, a financial crisis instantly, not eventually, instantly, you know, based on the circumstance they've got there.

The other thing is being sold insurance you don't need. So both extremes are a problem. One of the things that we've encountered is There are some insurance folks, and not all of them are like this. There are some honest folks out there, believe me, but some of them that will go around and sell people insurance that they don't need. They'll sell insurance to some non, like for example, on a non-working spouse. That doesn't make a lot of sense, especially a large amount, where they'll make them insure some kid that's in their middle teens or something. It just doesn't make sense. So don't overspend.

Make sure you need it, but also make sure you've got coverage for what is needed and look at it both ways. Generally speaking, in the life insurance category, term insurance with rare exceptions is going to be a better bet. And there are some exceptions to that in special business situations, but for most people, term insurance is going to be your best bet. Now, one of the things that we talked about before is check, especially if you've got something where you're having a long-term relationship, especially for something like life insurance, check on the safety of the outfit that you're dealing with. Because of the financial stress where a lot of the insurance companies are having to do radical things that they haven't had to do for 20 years, there's going to be all kinds of strange turnover and upset in the insurance realms.

So check on them. It doesn't cost that much to get a rating on them, and there's a reference there for you to take a look at it and see if the outfit you're dealing with is decent. The other thing, and I also have some information in the appendix in the back, is check on what you do have in Social Security. If you ask for them to send it to you, they'll give you a report.

Here's what I've got. Social Security provides three things. It's disability insurance, it's life insurance, and it's retirement. Now, there's no question, but the Social Security system has a lot of issues with it as you look into the future. But at least for now, in the near term, You need to look at that and not ignore it, because it is out there. On into the future, there are some serious questions, and somebody who's looking exclusively or substantially to Social Security to supply what they need is fooling themselves. So, you know, be aware of that, too. But nonetheless, do check on what you have, and do let Congress know you want them to do something different with it.

The other area is medical insurance. And for a lot of folks, I mean, that can just be outrageous. When I was working in Carson City, I remember talking to one fellow. And this is a guy with a mortgage and kids and all that. And he says, mortgage, no problem. Kids going to college, no problem. He says, my medical insurance is eating me alive. So what's at the front of your package?

Is it Christian Care MediShare? It's something Nancy and I have been doing for about the last decade. There are certainly some critiques I would have, but generally speaking, the idea is this. It is Christians who are, and it's not really actually legally insurance, but it's Christians who are in a system where they're helping each other cover medical bills. And they actually, okay, this month your contribution is going to help this guy who just had heart surgery, you know, that kind of thing. You can pray for the guy and send him cards, and if you have a prayer request, you can put it on an 800 line, and so there's that. There's also this aspect of it.

They don't cover lifestyle-related illnesses that are based on sin. For example, they don't prohibit alcohol, but if you come in with an alcoholism problem, they provide no coverage for that. They actually have some exemptions for that. Yes. There's some exemptions for that. I mean, it's not outrageous, but there are some limitations. Yeah, there are some limitations to it.

So anyway, it's something to look into. Nancy and I have been on for 10 years. Nancy, our experience has been pretty good with them because we have had to make a few claims. So there's a monthly on this? Yes. Yes, they actually do have, here's your minimum monthly and then they actually have a list here of some needs that are outside of what's covered and things to pray about and that kind of thing. Amy?

Actually, the only thing I have aside from that is what's covered in the auto, the medical part of the auto. The idea is to cover the big stuff. If you just want stuff for a little doctor visit or something or some occasional medicine, that's out of pocket. But it's relatively inexpensive compared to a lot of things. And also, if you have one or more kids, it's the same. So if you have more kids, a larger family or something, it's no different rate than just having one kid. So that might be something.

They're very quick in their response. A few years ago, we had a plane, and it was in November, and in January, they called me and said, could you put in the rest of the medical bills, if you'd like to close this? The doctor said, no. Yeah, they're actually asking, please send us the bill. We want to get it paid. So they're good. And anyway, yeah. And I work on the other end of that, and I have one patient Yeah, yeah. Cigna, for example, is in trouble. They're having problems.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. So, you know, this is time for open enrollment and stuff like that. People are going to be there. Yeah. I've noticed that happens every January. Yeah. If you are treating with chronic illnesses or teflon or whatever, you know, wait, this was taken in December. Yeah. It's no longer in January. Yeah. We need to be more focused on it. Yep. Yes, Bob. Is there pre-existing conditions and exclusions? They do look at pre-existing conditions before you come on, yes. Right. Right. Right. Right. And so she needs to get on to something. Yes. Yeah. Right. Yeah. There's basically two levels with this program.

Oh, by the way, there's another one you might want to jot down and check into it. Samaritan's Purse. Samaritan's Purse and Franklin Graham, his outfit is associated with that. So that's another one to check into. Now, what I say in the way of critique is that these are kind of ecumenical, so I would critique them that way. In terms of just being versus a secular insurance company, it's still a huge improvement in my estimation. So anyway, that's something to take a look at.

In the medical insurance area, people I think can make a mistake in trying to get something too gold-plated because a good deal of the expense is just processing and handling things. So people who want to sit there and get every jot and tittle and office visit and thing covered are going to pay through the nose. Because just the processing and all this little stuff costs a lot of money. And so far better if you find yourself where you're footing the bill for the insurance, far better to look at a situation where you're covering the stuff that's going to keep you from going into the poorhouse.

It's something I just thought of. I remember when I worked at the pharmacy that sometimes the prescriptions that the person would want to make grants to run, and it would be a $5 copay or a $10 copay, the generic drug was actually cheaper than your copay. So if you have an insurance program that has a copay, Watch those kinds of things as well. It may only be $2 or $3, but if you're on a medication, you can continually pay $2 or $3, $3 or $5 a week if we're there. Another category that we have on the sheet there is just debts. If you have debts, and we put that as a category to explicitly seek to eliminate them, seek to get the debt off your tab. And beside the things that we mentioned before, because we previously under debts talked about, here's the system, put them in this order, list them, pay them, first little ones and then get the ones with the largest interest rate.

We talked about that before. The one additional thing I would suggest, and Nancy and I used this, we took discretionary items, that is items that weren't fundamental to our daily living, weren't something we were saving up for something. Example, if we had some money left over out of entertainment and recreation because we weren't saving up for something or it wasn't to meet some required need, we would take the extra and put that towards paying off a debt.

That was one value of keeping the budget and keeping the tabulation. We'd look for categories like that where at the end of the month we had some money left over, we'll transfer that to this debt category to get our debts paid off. And so that's one way where you can manage your money to get, and it's maybe 50 bucks here, 15 bucks there, fine. But that helps eliminate the debt that you're trying to get paid down. So just an additional suggestion there. In our case, we borrowed from some relatives and did pay them back. And that may be an option, too, in some cases. If that helps you, for example, to get an interest rate that works better for you, that's fine.

Make sure you pay them. All right, next one, entertainment and recreation. This is an important area to consider. Nancy and I in our counseling have seen folks at both extremes. The one fellow who said, I must, and this was mandatory, have $700 a month personal entertainment money for me, he said. And just to be fair, my wife should have the same amount. Well, they couldn't make their house payment. Now, that's the one extreme. The other extreme is the people who say, well, we want to get our debts paid off, so we're not going to have any.

No, not a good idea. What will happen is life will be so dry and so dull that you'll gag and cough and it won't work. Instead, it needs to be one of those areas where you look at the overall picture, you want everything to balance, but you don't want to be sitting there looking at paint dry. for entertainment, okay? It just doesn't work.

So on the one hand, you don't want to be entertaining yourself to death, okay? But the other extreme is you don't want to be bored to death and to the place where you just can't stand it, okay? Depending on your situation, but the more debt you have to deal with, obviously you're going to have to look at this real carefully, you don't want to cut this out, but you also want to keep it from eating you alive.

One of the things to look at here particularly is, and this is a real common one, the eating out thing. I mean, I talk to people and they're catching the fast food place and they're hitting it every day and they're running here and there. As long as you can make the total fit, fine. But the problem is that's one area where we just noticed that a lot of people would kind of have a huge leak. When you start adding it up, well, how many times are you going out to lunch? How much are you spending? And all of a sudden, it's, whoa, that's a big number. So just a caution there. Confirm that's food, right? Yes. At roughly three times the price, usually. So that's one item.

And the other thing we suggest is budgeting separately for trips, which we generally look at as more visiting relatives. kind of regular or, you know, we always go to this place to visit grandma or whatever it is. Budget separately for those versus vacations. And then the other thing is make sure that you include all the things that belong in others. Maybe it's cable TV, maybe it's, you know, Blockbuster, whatever it is. But those other things need to make sure they make the budget list. Clothing.

One of the things that we found extremely helpful, if you've got kids in the picture, is having a separate account sheet. You know what I'm talking about? Not the budget sheet, but the individual account sheet for each kid. That we found extremely helpful.

Whereas before we'd get all the whining, I've got to have a Nike, you know. And then now all of a sudden it's, you know, okay, here's the money and that's how much you get. And if you want to wait two months to buy your Nike shoes, it's fine. If you want to go out and earn some extra money to buy it, fine. But basically, they're managing it. And we found it to be immensely helpful. And while it took years, our kids actually thank us for that now. It wasn't like that originally.

And then the next thing we have on the category, and this is on 49 now, just so I'm not losing you. in the area of savings. The critical thing there, as Nancy and I talked to people, the critical thing was getting some contingency money set aside. This is liquid funds that are safe and accessible that if you need to, you can get at it. It's not just put and take and play around money, but it's money that if you have to, you can get at it. We ran into too many folks that had nothing of that set aside. And if the engine blew up, they were immediately on the visa card.

And so getting that money set aside is numero uno priority in terms of getting some money set aside for savings. Aside from that, there's all kinds of goals that people need to look at. There's a couple of packages in the back on estimating what you would need for retirement. Obviously, people have all sorts of other savings needs, but What do you need in the way of retirement?

And by the way, let me mention something here. Scripture doesn't talk about retirement. But it's something that I think what happened during the biblical times, they just wore out. And these days, thanks to all our wonders of modern technology, people don't wear out like they used to.

So, what we're looking at is is you still need to look ahead, even if you're one of these guys that keeps on ticking, like my dad is, he just won't stop. Even if you're somebody that keeps on ticking, you need to still have a time when you're not quite as efficient. You need to still have some money set aside for that and looking ahead to that.

Those two sheets I have are one from Fidelity where they've got a one sheet deal and there's another one, there's an outfit called See, it's the American Savings Education Council and there's a couple of sheets in there to help estimate there. The one exception I would take with one of their sheets is they talk about husband and wife doing a separate retirement plan and I don't agree with that or approve of that.

Anyway, you might take a look at that. Yeah? You want to look at the big picture, but the point is, though, that they still need to look at it as one because it's the oneness principle. Even if, in the end, what happens because of IRAs and things like that, you still have your name on it, you want to look at it together because you're husband and wife and that's the oneness principle.

In between that, there's going to be other medium-term needs. whether it's saving for the kids in college or other things of that sort. And people need to be looking at that, too. But the first thing is contingency. Second thing is to look at these other needs, but making sure you've got the contingency money. We talked about savings earlier in that savings triangle and investing triangle. I think it will be real helpful to you. The next category down is medical expenses, and I include in that dental and similar you know, kinds of medical-related expenses.

Like houses and cars, deferred maintenance on this thing is not a good idea. Okay? Don't try to save money by deferring maintenance on this thing. You need to take care of it. Okay? So not a good place to scrimp. So make sure you budget money for it. Especially if, you know, you've got kids, you need to get the regular dental checkups and that sort of thing. It's an area where you obviously don't want to go crazy with spending, but shortchanging it is not wise, not a good idea.

The last category is miscellaneous. And boy, there's an awful lot of miscellaneous, isn't there? A lot of different things. And this is an area where we frequently find we have to kind of double quiz people to make sure they haven't forgot something.

Oh, you have an accountant handle your taxes once a year. better get it in there. That's an expense. And you go to see an attorney once every five years to have them check up on your will, on your trust or whatever, you better get that in there. Whatever might be included in this, make sure it gets on the sheet so you don't have a leak in your budget.

One of the biggest areas to cover in this is the area of gifts. This is the time of year where A great many American families go and run up the credit card bills, and they're into the spring paying them off usually, along with taking diets and exercise.

But the two categories, and we recommend you do it this way, is general gifts and Christmas gifts, and do those separately. Because the general gifts, except for some folks like in our family where everybody's born in September, most of the time it's spread throughout the year. With Christmas, it's a one-shot deal, so you need to have two separate budgets for those. So that as you come across a good deal on a Christmas gift, you can buy it, but you're never in a position of catching up with debt. And as the needs come along for gifts, whether it's birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, those kinds of things, you've got the money sitting there waiting for these things to be covered.

But you want to have two separate categories for those because the spending pattern between the two is quite different. Nancy mentioned another one that's another way to handle it. But in truth, you don't necessarily need it. Some banks and credit unions will have like a Christmas club. The idea is to put money aside still.

So it's the same idea. And then make sure that you get things included in the other category. The other category is all those other things, tape, stamps, paperclips, whatever it is. Okay. Yes. Yeah. It's an other yeah, there's another and everything including miscellaneous. Okay, now, on page 51, you got total expenses, the idea is you want total expenses to be less than the income, right? It's when you get more than that, that's the problem. And that's what apparently most Americans had in October.

So you want to look on that now notice, The windfall plan, there isn't anything on the budget sheet about it, and it's because it's as simple as this. You want to figure out initially what percentage of it am I going to give and have to put into taxes, and that's going to leave some percentage. And I give sort of an example there, but it's not prescription, it's just example.

What percentage am I going to have left? Usually then you'll take that net amount and have some plan for how am I going to distribute that money when I get it. If, for example, I have lots of debts, maybe even if I have some debts, you might say, I'm going to take half of the net and apply that to debt reduction. I might apply half of it to debt reduction. I might put 40% of savings and 10% for vacation.

Just again, examples. But the idea is, this is the extra paycheck if you get paid three times in one month instead of two, or if you get paid five times instead of four. then you take the extra paycheck and apply it to this. There's your windfall plan. If you are on a commission basis and your income goes like this, you're going to want to put a good chunk of that into savings initially to carry you through those low spots. Now, the above figures are just for illustration. And I think the thing is, what's the most serious need? That's what you need to make sure you fund with the windfall.

The situation Nancy and I were in when we started taking a look at this thing some 13 and a half years ago, we said, you know, we've got to get on top of these debts. And so we were, I mean, we were serious, and it wasn't like we didn't do anything else. We went on the first vacation we had in years in the middle of this thing. But we were very serious. We had windfall, and we took a good chunk of it and just said, we're going to nail those debts dead, okay?

And so, you know, that's something to take a look at here. What's the priority need? And you can take the windfall, whatever that is, and it might be extra paycheck, it might be some kind of, you know, a gift from somebody, insurance, you know, whatever it is. But those windfall amounts, you can handle that way and just a separate sheet. Okay, next week, we're going to be going back to looking at some more biblical issues, kind of a miscellaneous biblical issues in order to cover a number of different areas as soon as our last time.

And I guess the other thing I would want to ask since we're going to try to cover a lot of things, if you have any questions that you haven't asked me and you'd like me to try to answer, and especially if you think other people might benefit from it, let me know, okay? And we'll try to make sure those get included. Okay? Any questions now? Covered a lot of stuff. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you that even the small details of our lives you care about, just like we were looking at this morning as we saw that your plan is to be among us. We look now at the small details and thank you that you're using even those small details to show your faithfulness, to show your character, as well as to conform us to the image of your Son. And we just thank you for that and give you praise. In Jesus' name, Amen.