Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Every time God makes his promises to Abraham, every time the promises are not just to Abraham. God is always looking through Abraham's eyes, looking into the future. And he says, this is for you and for your seed forever. If you want to think about generations and children and what we call legacy in the way that God does, you are thinking the right way. And to think Abrahamically in a biblical, godly, truly Christian way is not. I want to just live with as few sins as I can before I die and maybe be comfortable in my lazy chair when I'm 80.
The godly thing is I'm building a generational structure that is going to bloom and blossom for for the good of the kingdom of God. That's what I want our guys to own.
Run your home and your dough like a biblical boss. Welcome back to Abraham's Wallet. Today we're going to wrap up the Abrahamic starter series.
This has been our roadmap that's taken us from tearing down the broken pop Christianity story to reclaiming God's dominion mandate to marry, multiply and subdue the earth.
Building the Abrahamic family machine that runs on sacrificial headship and open handed leading with your kids and dynasty minded money. If you've been with us, our goal for this series has been to take you from point A which is standard Christian, American, family Christian. I just mean church. Going into the Abrahamic mindset, you felt this shift of the paradigm that we're working on. And today in this final episode, we're going to arrive at the destination of that's the good life that God actually designed for the faithful family leader. So picture not just some vague retirement of golf carts and loneliness, but a 70 year old man surrounded by a bunch of grandkids, presiding over a Sabbath table loaded with stories and scripture debt free with millions compounding for generations, his wife thriving as a Proverbs 31 powerhouse and his legacy already stretching towards 200 years of blessing. We're going to paint that picture so vividly that you can taste it and then we're going to project it forward another century to so to show you what that faithfulness can really compound into. So if your dad in your 30s wondering if there's more than the average church guy, fade out. This one's for you. Let's go. Mark, how are you doing today?
[00:02:43] Speaker B: It's been a full day already and it's only lunchtime.
[00:02:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:48] Speaker B: So yeah, I am blowing and going but here we are.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: Okay, well are we as of this recording lotto, Feb is imminent now I Know that our people have already been through Lottofab, probably when they hear this, but how are you feeling going into Lottofab? Have you done these, have you done the Costco run?
[00:03:10] Speaker B: And there's always this internal debate for me between stock up and get all the treaties and kind of a pull towards purity and say, no, just if it's not in the pantry, then you, you don't get to, to stock up. So I don't know. I, I think there will be some sort of Costco run. I, I woke up this morning and there was no, no liquid IVs. And I've become really a fan of the, what do you call it? Electrolyte.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: Powders that you put into a water here and there.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:03:49] Speaker B: So things like that. Like, there's no way I'm buying those suckers during February, but yeah, maybe I'll stock up on those.
[00:03:57] Speaker A: Yeah. It is tough to feel that, oh, it's coming imminently and I don't have these things that I know that I really want to have around and am I cheating to get ready for them beforehand? So I don't know. It's a matter of conscience, isn't it?
[00:04:10] Speaker B: Yeah, it's food sacrifice to idols. We can't criticize someone who's gonna behave differently than us.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: Okay. I'm very excited about this episode because I, it's very rare that we kind of pause and just look at what, what could we be talking about if someone was to follow all of our wonderful tips and tricks and they buy into the biblical story of family leadership and living on less than you earn and paying off debt and having your life run by a budget and saving for the future and all of that stuff. Okay, what, where does it lead? I, I, I, I, I've often made the point that what do you do going into the, going into the land that's flowing with milk and honey after you actually get there? Well, guess what?
You're surrounded by a land flowing with milk and honey. That's actually good when you actually get there.
And I, I'm a little, I'm, I'm of two minds. I mean, I want to speak happily and freely as we go get going, but I also know that when we talk about things like this, for instance, I've got to, in order to talk about the good life in the future, I do have to draw up what a, quote, normal Abrahamic man would look like. And I know that there's going to be people who are thinking you're, I'm behind, I'm behind. I'm 43 and I'm behind what you're describing. I'll never make it to what you, to, to what you're describing me.
Yes. And then there's going to be people who, who feel like there's some sort of weird, I don't know, brag or something in the kind of numbers that I'm going to be using when I talk about, well, here's what could happen to your money.
And I just got to say I'm, I'm simply drawing out a middle of the line, not best case scenario. But this is what a life of faithfulness could look like if you start following the lord in your 20s and make good decisions.
You don't have to start with a bunch of money beside you. You just have to walk down this road consistently for decades. And as we have said many times, Mark, in short order a little bit of money on the side turns into wealth pretty quickly. So I'm very excited to go, to go into this. It's about fullness, purpose and legacy and actually being able to taste those things in, in the latter years of one's life.
So I'm going to start describing the, the scaff life, the standard church killing American family. What does that scaff life look like at age 70?
Okay, so I'm just going to give you a statistical snapshot and just tell you what that life looks like. These are hard data numbers. The median retirement savings of, of an American churchgoer. Do you know what they are, Mark? And let's say that at age 70
[00:07:07] Speaker B: in the U.S.
yeah, like everybody, man. It's got to be low, I guess, I don't know, $350,000, $200,000.
Wow.
[00:07:22] Speaker A: That's what I found.
The median income for you as a retiree. Let's lump in your Social Security, your little pension that you might have going, anything that retirement is kicking off for you.
There's a range, but I'm going to pick the exact middle of that range and say that it's 70K.
[00:07:43] Speaker B: Oh, that's a lot higher than I thought.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: But okay, I think that that range is probably weighted on the low end. But I'm going to give our listeners the benefit of the doubt and say you've got 200k in your total retirement savings. That's not a lot to, to live on if you're, if your income is about to turn down dramatically.
The typical picture, I'm really sorry to say this, is that you're divorced, it's churchgoer age 70 I was really stunned at the stats for how many divorces are happening after the age of 65. They call those gray divorces and I can't imagine doing that but that's happening.
So you probably have two kids.
Just think this is the result of the kind of messaging that we talked about in episode one which is delay marriage, delay the having of children because they can impugn upon the joy of living for us.
So you're going to have two kids.
Those kids are going to live far away.
Statistically they'll probably move far away. And you're going to visit you rarely. There's no family land for you. There's little inheritance for you to hope on passing along to anybody. I mean you're just if you can make it to the finish line you're going to be happy with that. Your retirement is filled with the golf that you can afford tv, lots of TV Mark, a lot of TV and is what you can look forward to in your retirement.
Maybe some part time work. But you are searching for meaning and that might be through volunteering, maybe through this part time work. You have health anxiety at age 70 you are wondering about your health and you have financial anxiety and those things go together.
Your church attendance is sporadic. Your legacy feels quite thin because your children have drifted from the faith. Again that's statistics. If you're there's a regular church going they have punted on the faith are going to or going to some happy good times church that that isn't doesn't actually represent the gospel.
You have no grandkids close.
There's no multi generational table that's this is the fruit of of the playbook that's happening in churches that is institution focused giving again waiting on children. No dynasty vision.
It might be comfortable. You might have a nice lazy boy and maybe you've moved into a duplex where you don't have to do the yard and you might have a nice luxury car. I guess that's possible.
It's comfortable but it's empty compared to God's design. That's the picture of the scaff life at age 70 sound good to you Mark? So far?
[00:10:40] Speaker B: No, it sounds terrible.
[00:10:43] Speaker A: I agree. It sounds like a total.
Are we use allowed to use the word jip? How does. How does YouTube feel about the word jip? I know it feels like a jip to me.
I'm going to read a couple of passages. They're going to set up
[00:11:01] Speaker B: what I
[00:11:01] Speaker A: want to describe the good life. I'm going to start with Psalm 128.
It says blessed.
And I'm going to read from the Amplified. There's a little, there'll be a little explanation.
[00:11:14] Speaker B: Sometimes new words to the Bible, right?
[00:11:18] Speaker A: They explain, they explain the word so blessed. You might know it on what blessed means. Blessed, happy and sheltered by God's favor is everyone who fears the Lord and worships him with obedience, who walks in his ways and lives according to his commandments.
For you shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands. You will be happy and blessed and it will be well with you.
Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine within the innermost part of your house.
Your children will be like olive plants around your table.
Behold. For so shall the man be blessed and favored who fears the Lord and worships him with obedience.
May the Lord bless you from Zion. And may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life. Indeed, may you see your family perpetuated in your children's children.
Peace be upon Israel. That's Psalm 128, Proverbs 13:22. I have to throw in here if you're going to hear this happening.
A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children, but the wealth of the sinner is stored up for the hands of the righteous.
A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children. And then there's a couple of pictures. There's not many in the Bible, but there's a couple of pictures of men who actually make it to the finish line. One of them is Job. And as you know, the story of Job, he went through absolute horror in his life, but it ended well for him. And the, the latter days of Job's life is job 42 16. After this job lived 140 years and he saw his sons and his grandsons, four generations that, that you could do that if you lived in 140. So job died an old man and full of days. It's this picture of fullness and prosperity and you can't talk about this unless you talk about seeing your generations and the multi generations and Abraham saw that, and Jacob saw that, etc. So anyhow, that's the, that's the biblical storyline of, of where, where we're supposed to end up. I have to say in this conversation, if people are interested in how to have a, that just came to mind, how to have a useful prosperous retirement years.
I strongly recommend that you go back and listen to our episode on Grandparenting well, in which I interviewed Dennis Bosazure, who's a Guy I just saw earlier today, he's still putting his grandchildren and they're, you know, they're moving as a group up in age. And he's putting them all through Granddad University, which is basically starting Bible studies at age 5 for all his grandchildren. And that dude is doing it so respect to him. So anyhow, I would like to paint the picture of the Abrahamic man who's living the good life at age 70. Let's talk about his children at age 70. He's got five children. I'm just going to say that I picked a number. They're all married. They all married young. They're all faithful, very important to the story. They're all faithful to the Lord. They know God.
I'm going to say for the sake of my.
What I've got going here, they're going to each have five kids, okay? All of his five kids. They had wonderful childhoods.
They're well provided for.
I'm going to say as an average, they're going to have five kids each. So he's got 25 grandkids at age 70.
I'm going to say that of those five, three of them are living nearby enough that they can be regularly involved weekly in the life of the kids.
So I feel like I'm being fair there.
Here's. Here's his physical setup. He's in a house that's paid for and in which he can host.
There is a lakeside family compound somewhere.
And on that piece of land somewhere in my mind, it's in Texas, there is a big house where he can host everybody. Now, they're going to have to build cabins and expand in years to come. But there is a piece of property that's going to be like family land. And I imagine the whole crew going and gathering at this place at Thanksgiving and maybe Easter and summer gatherings. So this is a place that people come back to. And of course, people can take weekends there, whatever.
He also does a big family trip every other year.
So he takes about 50k and he does a cruise or everybody goes somewhere. Let's all go on a Grand Canyon trip together and y' all can take the burrows and me and grandma will figure out a way to get. See at the bottom. I don't know.
Here's his finances at age 70, he. He's debt free. Of course, I'm going to say he's got 4 million in assets at age 70.
And he has either he's got some kind of assets that are. That are giving him passive income. So he lives comfortably on between 80 and 100k. That's his lifestyle for in a year's time. But he's got that money on the side that he's pulling for the big, the big family things. You with me so far, Mark, you want to challenge any of these assumptions?
[00:17:04] Speaker B: I have lots of challenges, but I'm going to hold them until you're done with this description.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: I know it can depend on you. Okay, here's his daily weekly rhythm most of his week.
So mornings, afternoons for sure. I'm going to say most of his week is spending time with the grandkids.
Just think of how many of them are there. There's 25. How many are nearby?
15.
So he's going to be spending time doing some of the pickups from the school, running somebody to soccer. Oh, he's so happy to put up his chair and sit and watch Billy at his soccer practice. What a joy. That's my seven year old grandson out there. This a lot of his week is engineered around spending time with the grandkids.
He shepherds a young, a group of young men and for him young men could be 45 year olds, but he's shepherding some younger dads. He's an elder at his church.
He's considered a, a city father. And so he kind of masterminds things that guys that are just running churches you don't have time to think about.
So he's meeting with some of the respected elders in the church.
It's funny that when people think of city fathers or elders, they think that those are kind of like retired pastors. Generally they think of that. I don't think of that at all. I think of these are just faithful dads who care about the people of God. So he's on some kind of think of it as a committee or a team or something. He's certainly got an eldering presence at the local church.
His wife.
There's not a lot of passages that talk about that, talk about the retirement years. One of them that we believe does is Proverbs 31.
And it's a woman who is in maturity, the maturity of life. She's probably the Proverbs 31 woman is probably between 50 and 75 years old and she's running a household.
That's what his wife is doing. So she's thriving, she's discipling young women and they host a Sabbath meal every other week at their house.
So how many people is that? That's 23 people that's just in their family coming every other week.
That's a big meal and every week it's fine china and linen napkins. They just, they just do it up every other week when everybody's around. And every Sunday it's an open house. I know grandparents that do this right now, every Sunday.
Everybody's welcome. We'll feed everybody. Our, our home and our property is an open house. So there's a trampoline and there's a basketball court and there's a pool and we just want everybody around. If you can't make it, that's fine. But Sunday's an open house at our house. It's a busy multi gen hub. Their house is.
And I just think in the personal fullness category for the 70 year old. His time is wanted by young dads and by his sons and sons in law.
His older, his older grandchildren are asking him, having good conversations with him. He might have a couple of college kids that have, that are sniffing around his scene. Oh, I'm happy for you boys to come over. Why don't you come do some yard work for us and I'll spend some time with you. His purpose is peaking at age 70.
It, it's opening up in front of him. He's starting to taste, and I'm borrowing that language from Psalm 128, he's starting to taste the fruit of his years of faithfulness. And it feels like, man, we got a happening operation here.
And he's seeing his arrows fly and he's seeing his godly offspring multiplying and he is experiencing the peace and the satisfaction that comes from an expanding dominion like Abraham or Job in their old age. He's full of years.
He's blessed, he's seeing his legacy and, and he's, and he's going to be seeing increasing generations, which I'm going to get from my, from my projection forward. But that's to me, that's what the good life is. And if you had to pick a moment or a snapshot, what's the picture, the ideal picture of the good life biblically? And this comes from Psalm 128. What is the picture that was chosen for describing it? It was this man's at his table. It talks about his wife at his table. Your sons are on the table, Your, your daughters are on the table. So it's him presiding at the Sabbath meal where he is handing out blessings to the little ones. He's praising his wife at the Sabbath table. And it's a huge table.
I'm saying three out of his five kids live nearby and there's 23 people around that table every week.
And it's a full table and it's a great meal. Meal. And he's the grill master if he wants to be. And he's opening up the word of God and maybe reviewing memory verses and just loving the fullness of his life. So that's the picture, that's the vivid picture of the. Of the good life at age 70. What do you say?
[00:22:36] Speaker B: I think, number one, that sounds like a good life. Right. I. I'm excited about that picture.
You asked me how I wanted to challenge it. So I'll. I'll take your bait.
[00:22:48] Speaker A: You can challenge. Enjoy, enjoy.
[00:22:50] Speaker B: I'll take your bait and just say, I think what you painted there is one version of the Abrahamic good life. And I could paint a picture maybe that had none of those components or they weren't exactly the same, is a better way to phrase it, that would be equally maybe joyful. Awesome picture of the Abrahamic good life. What I don't think I could do is get away from maybe what I think is at the core of what you were just describing, this guy, in order to get where you're describing, from a very young age, he had to take himself out of kind of being the main character at age 70. Because what you described is not a guy who's like, it's all about me and I'm the center of attention. There are places where the patriarch of the family gets to enjoy the benefits of everything he's built. Like sitting at the head of that table and blessing the children, for example. That's something. I mean, Lord willing, I look forward to the opportunity. But the guy that you described at the beginning of the show, who was the vapid, sad. Would you call him Churchgoer?
[00:24:09] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:24:11] Speaker B: He kind of tried to create a retirement. It sounds like that was mostly about his own pleasure and enjoyment. And the result was he was lonely and he got sick of the local golf course that he could barely afford because he only made $70,000 a year.
Like, and TV, like, these are the things that he got for focusing on what would be sort of self absorption to the max in retirement.
[00:24:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:38] Speaker B: The Abrahamic guy, he spent his earlier years laboring his butt off. Yeah. So that he could be serving in these late years.
And we've done whole episodes, even like Dennis, you mentioned that episode about grandparenting. A big theme is that my retirement years are years in which I have handed off a lot of the leadership mantle of my family to a next generation already. And I am now in A kind of consultant, advisor, service role.
And there's a lot of things about that guy that just, he's not the main character of some of the storylines anymore in this family.
And so it's almost like there's financial implications to that. You better be ready to invest a lot of your time in grandkids when you're 60 or 65. If you want to be this guy.
You can't be like, well, I'm going to work at the law firm until I turn 78 and then I'll talk to my 50 year old son about handing over some of the reins. Well, your son has gone on a long time ago and built a life without you because you haven't been involved for most of his adulthood.
I think that, that, that if you get that part right, service is kind of the goal and I am going to be a family leader still at that age, but I am going to structure my family from the time I'm 30 aiming at this.
It will change the decisions you make and you could end up. I always think about our friend Mark Douglas describing Grandpa Ransom who would sit in the chair in his house. Well, to my knowledge I, I could be wrong about this. I. The way he's described his grandfather, there wasn't like gobs of money. He didn't have the multi bedroom house or the family compound. But he was enjoying a lot of the benefits you just described since simply because he had structured his life so that when he was old he was going to be a service to his family. And at the very end of his life that meant all he could really do is sit and pray for them all day long. And that was his joy. And I would say he experienced a lot of the blessings of the Abrahamic Father because he set up life primarily around how am I going to participate in fuel and bless this family for a long time after I'm gone? Not how am I going to have a really fun retirement stint where I make it mostly about my own diversions.
[00:27:14] Speaker A: Yes, that's excellent.
It's great. I, that doesn't sound like a challenge at all. That sounds like excellent. Just for the sake of, of, I don't know, being generous, could you describe another couple of, I don't know, lifestyle pictures that you think scratch the same itch as what I'm describing?
[00:27:38] Speaker B: Sure.
I think that there's a family who, you know, we work on the financial planning side. Sometimes with people who listen to the podcast, they get real fired up and they maybe want to have a family compound. Well, I heard Stephen, talk about family compound by the lake. That's great. And I say, I'm glad that's exciting to you, but you make $150,000 a year.
You won't be buying a family compound and your primary home and taking family vacations. You just don't have enough money.
So instead of focusing on maybe some of these external indicators of like financial provision for your family, can we talk about just faithfulness? And that could look like, hey, we realized we could add a couple bedrooms to our normal American family home and make it a place that is comfortable for us to live and have another family in there. Like maybe one of our kids is gonna just, we're gonna hand off this house for free and we've got a nice little apartment that we can live in and we're gonna take care of grandkids. Or maybe it's. Again, I'm not financially in a spot where I can just zip around the country and do all the grandparenting stuff I wish I could do, but I, I can plan on, like I said earlier, maybe could we plan on being retired by 64 and in that retirement, instead of moving to Florida for the golf, I'm going to be rolling up my sleeves and telling some of my kids, hey, we're going to be watching kids four days a week.
That would probably be good for my health too and keep me young. But could, could I build around that being a non negotiable, you know, I think that that would force me to make different decisions. Well, that boat that I could certainly afford, yeah, I could afford it, but then I kind of need to work an extra three years and that's three years that my grandkids might be between the age of two and five. Well, those are hard years for a young family. I could, I could do a lot more for the next 200 years of my generations by not having that boat and spending that, you know, opportunity cost of the work I would do to pay for it. Just down on the carpet with, with a toddler.
Those are the types of decisions where I go.
You're going to do different things if your whole plan revolves around how am I going to power this family for even things that they will accomplish that I won't get to experience that. That's when I think you've crossed from, you know, oh, Grandpa and grandma really like giving gifts to the grandkids. They're super generous. That's nice. But also Grandpa and grandma get some, some feedback. That feels real good. Oh, you guys are so nice. You gave us some money for college and you bought us nice Christmas gifts.
What about Grandpa and Grandma?
Wiped butts when we were babies and didn't leave us as big of a financial inheritance, but it allowed us to change our scene multi generationally. Well, that's a lot less. That's more of a thankless role, but it could have a bigger generational impact.
And it's something that Grandpa and grandma only do if they're thinking long term and not just doing things based on how it's going to give them, you know, warm fuzzies.
[00:31:13] Speaker A: That's excellent. And, and I will say that if you're listening to this and thinking, well, I think there's quite a lot of work to do between where I am and what you're describing, we would agree totally and say that's why the podcast exists, to help you in the interim to make all the decisions and all the moves that need to happen between these. I'm just jumping way right to the end and going, if everything goes well, all things being equal, this is the kind of life that we should be shooting for. And I think that setting your ambitions on this kind of life as a retiree will help you make decisions in your 30s, 40s and 50s and 60s so that you can get to some approximation of this.
The most important ones being that I'm still with my wife, I'm still walking with the Lord and my children know God.
Those are the most important ones. And you will immediately set yourself apart from the entire church going scene if those, if those things are in place. The other stuff is gravy on top of all of that.
[00:32:24] Speaker B: And one of the fun things we get to do as hosts of this podcast, Steve, is we've had guys reach out to us who have been 50 and go, I just got divorced. I didn't necessarily want that, but does this mean it's over for me? And we would say, even to somebody who you kind of said the big things, can I stay married? Can I basically conduct, like, keep my kids discipled in the faith?
You can even move forward in this vision if you've screwed up the biggest things in this. So we've, we've talked about that. We have a whole series on divorce, actually.
So yes, they are the biggest things. And we would much rather you have a healthy marriage than a healthy brokerage account, that's for sure.
But I think that this path is accessible.
I just don't want anybody to listen to this description of the good life and go, that's a pipe dream for me because Maybe it was your own fault. I completely screwed it up at step one. And so I guess I'll be watching TV and playing the golf course when I'm 70. You don't have to do that.
[00:33:42] Speaker A: I gotta say. Yeah, you made this point earlier, but the, the picture I'm describing isn't possible for me because I didn't pick up on the story early enough. So, like the having 15 grandchildren around because that's three of your five kids, that's not going to happen for me. I don't have enough children for that. But it's still a picture of the good life. And I still, at my age, I want to have the right vision of where I'm going because I, you know, if there's this old saying, if you shoot for the moon and mists, you'll still be among the stars, but if you shoot for the dirt, you'll hit it every time.
So that's my idea, is like, I want to be. Have a vision of the good Abrahamic retirement years. And if I get anywhere near that, I'm, I'm delighted. There's just the story that's being told here is one that I want told. And I want my children to. I don't care if I have one child. I want them to see grandpa involved the way that we're describing. And then they, you see this, whatever is missing on my downline, if I transmit this story, those things will get ironed out in the next generation. That, that, that's possible. That can happen.
[00:34:57] Speaker B: So, Steve, you know, I feel like you're, you're shortchanging your daughters here because my wife, my wife met a woman yesterday who was 29 and just had her 12th child.
[00:35:09] Speaker A: Oh, my stars.
Wow.
[00:35:12] Speaker B: So if you want to have all those grandkids.
[00:35:15] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:35:15] Speaker B: Get your kids involved with the, the FLDS church, and they can be wife number four to some old guy and have 12 children by the time they're 30.
[00:35:25] Speaker A: Okay, gross. Another option is. I'll just throw in this is one of the caveats of the story is that Paul made it clear that you can have spiritual children. Paul wasn't even married, and he had sons that he called his sons in the Lord. And I have every expectation that in my retirement years, my spiritual sons are going to be part of this crew that's kind of circulating around my, around my world. So. Okay, can I zip forward a hundred years?
[00:35:57] Speaker B: Let's do it.
[00:35:58] Speaker A: Okay. I'm assuming that in, in this guy's retirement years, one of the things that he's going to do because I've seen this happen. This isn't a fancy of mine. This isn't part of my imagination. This really happens where, when, when your children, you're a good father and your children are starting to have children and they're asking you questions, dad, you did so much right. It was such a wonderful childhood. Would you help me to parent my children? And what happens is dad ends up writing some cobbling together. Well, here's the main three rules that your mother and I. I'm imagining that this guy is going to write some kind of handbook for the family.
That's just going to be. Here's, here's our family story. This is where we came from. This is how I earned my first dollars. You don't know this about my grandfather, but I want to put this in the story. And here's how we managed child training. Here's our views on money. Here's what we think you can't do with money. And by the way, I have to say this, that what's happening with this, I said that he's got 4 million at 70, that money is going to be growing and it's going to be passed down.
So what happens with that money? I'd like to talk about that for a second. So, so let's shoot for it 100 years, as you said. You just talked about a family with 12 kids.
I don't think it's unreasonable to think. And again, I'm thinking of the families around us who are living out this story.
And five is not, is not an, is not a crazy high number for the number of children especially, I think if you said to anybody, let's say that finances aren't a burden for you at all. How many kids are you having?
I just think that number goes up when you think, well, mom doesn't have to work for the sake of income.
Well, how many kids would we love to have? Let's say that there's, we got grandparents trying to help, et cetera. So I'm going to continue on with my model that all of the children have five children and every 25 years they've got another five children. So I'm going to continue on with that model and I'm just going to fast forward 100 years from this one guy who started saying, I'm going to walk in a. I'm switching tracks from standard church going American family to the Abrahamic model. Would you like to take a guess, Mark, at how many people we're talking about in a hundred years?
We're multiplying times five every. We're already on 32 people right now at age 70. We've got 32 people.
He had five kids. We got 32 people. How. And we're going to multiply times five. We're going to multiply times five, four times.
[00:38:49] Speaker B: I'm resisting the urge to open the calculator app. You can't do it.
I don't know. Are we at like 500?
[00:38:59] Speaker A: Mark, in 100 years, we're talking about 19,500 people.
In 100 years, if all five kids have five kids, we're talking about 19, 500 people. It goes 125, 625, 3125. And then it goes to 15, 6, 25.
[00:39:25] Speaker B: You're right. I checked your math.
[00:39:27] Speaker A: It goes really big, really quick. We're talking about 19,000 people. That's a huge.
That's a huge town in Texas. Okay, now let's talk about the money.
[00:39:41] Speaker B: Can we talk about the size that we're going to. How is my modest family graveyard going to hold 19,000 people? Steve, it's impossible.
[00:39:51] Speaker A: We are expanding the family graveyard and we will, we will be expanding the family plot of land for the following reasons.
[00:40:00] Speaker B: Mark.
[00:40:01] Speaker A: Okay, I'm just assuming that the kids, they're going to be given a, A down payment on their house when they buy their first house.
They're going to be given a sum of money when they marry. Let's say it's $50,000. Every child, when the day you marry, you get $50,000. Bless you. I don't. I want you kids working hard, but I don't want you worried about paying the rent. And you also have the possibility. Remember your dad, your, your, your patriarch. You're writing the manifesto. You can put limits on what that can do. This isn't for the fanciest car in town. There's a limit on how much the car can cost, et cetera, et cetera. You can, you can put limits on it and you can start a bit. Remember, these are kids who have been trained from age 4 about how to deal with money. That's part of the job.
And so we're. I'm making these assumptions.
Everybody in the family knows God.
Everybody is parenting the same way. Even 50 years from now. They're, they're, they're parenting the same way. We're training our children with how to use money and how to know God. Those are, those are just two basics that I'm assuming.
I know somebody's going to die. And something's going to go weird. I know, but I'm just saying this is possible.
$4 million. Okay. I'm saying that if five kids, these five marriages, house five households from the time they hit 25, they are going to contribute. They're all going to die at 75. I'm just saying that for, for numbers there. And so from 25 to 75, all five households are going to contribute to the pot that started out at 4 million.
They're going to contribute 50k each for those 50 years to the pot. And I know we're going to buy, we're going to expand the family cemetery and all that stuff, and it's going to grow at 8% a year.
[00:42:04] Speaker B: And, and they're, they're kicking in 50K per year?
[00:42:08] Speaker A: Yeah, per year.
[00:42:09] Speaker B: Oh my gosh. At 25, how.
[00:42:12] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. Well, they got, they got free college degrees.
Their 529 plans paid for all of the.
And in very short time, Mark, as you're going to see, there's going to be enough in that pot to take care of things like family education and family properties, etc.
So as soon as they start their careers, it's not like, well, maybe we can get a starter house. They've already got a starter house.
And so it's an expectation that you can make your own money from 18 to 25, but starting at 25, you're going to kick in 50k a year to the family thing. I'm just talking, I'm just, I'm ideating here. Are you doing math already based on what I'm saying?
[00:42:55] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm thinking with you.
[00:42:58] Speaker A: I see clicking away. You're looking at the screen. Okay, they're going to kick in 50k a year. How many people are we talking about by the end, Mark?
[00:43:10] Speaker B: 19,500, something like that.
[00:43:12] Speaker A: Okay, so in a, in a hundred years time, what is the family pot that started at 4 million when, when grandpa kicked the bucket?
[00:43:26] Speaker B: I have no idea. Even I'd have to think for a while to do that math. It's a lot of money.
[00:43:32] Speaker A: It's over $14 billion.
[00:43:35] Speaker B: Yeah, that sounds right.
[00:43:36] Speaker A: In 100 years.
So what in the heck are we doing with $14 billion? Well, I can tell you that the family land has expanded.
There are probably multiple compounds. There's massive kingdom impact.
Meaning your grandkids get to sit around and dream. Well, what part, part of society do we want to impact? Where do we want to plant churches today? I guess our church planting arm is going to be taking 50 interviews this year for new churches around the.
And basically what. Think of what Gates has done, which is taken his billions that he got from software development and sit around and scratch his little weaselly little chin and say, what do I want to attack now? Imagine your grandchildren doing that same thing. And they didn't have to strike it rich.
They didn't have to have some amazing idea. Some of them probably will have some amazing entrepreneurial ideas, but you'd actually don't need that. What you need is faithfulness over 100 years. And we're talking about outrageous influence and impact.
Your descendants are contending culturally, you've got education. Yeah, check. That's not even a question. Land missions.
And you've got this patriarch and his, and his vision again. You can, you could put, you could put constraints on how things are used. Yes, I know we're going to lose some kids along the way. They're going to go the way of the flesh and they're going to spend their money and get on cocaine. I'm sorry, that is going to happen in 61 years from now with one of the, with one of the kids. You know, I don't know. But we are talking about a dramatic number of people and dramatic financial influence.
So anyways, that I, I'm just, I'm just laying it out there and you can tell me all the reasons you don't think that's realistic, etc. I'm just expanding for you what one family can look like. If we are faithful in creating children who know God, who have a financial basis, they, they're, they're wise in handling money and they expand upon it's, I mean it's, it. As we have said many times on Abraham's wallet, in a very short amount of time, the numbers get silly and we can't even comprehend what to do with them. So I'm going to read a couple of.
A little Bible passage that I think hits on it. This is Psalm 112.
I love Psalm 112. It's one of the few passages that just talks about the godly man.
I think we have this in our goal summit to read 1:12 over the husbands. And it's a wonderful thing to read anytime you want to bless men. Psalm 112. So it says, praise the Lord. Hallelujah. Blessed. Would you like to know the definition of blessed again? Blessed, fortunate, prosperous. And favored by God is the man who fears the Lord with awe, inspired reverence and worships him with diligence, who delightly who delights greatly in his commandments, his descendants will be mighty on earth.
There it is.
A man of God who walks down this road, which we could just call the biblical road, but that doesn't mean as much in today's society. So we like to call it the Abrahamic road. Road.
Who walks down this road, his descendants will be mighty on earth. The generation of the upright will be blessed, meaning his whole downline. It's going to go good for them.
Isn't that so good? And Genesis 17:7. This is an Abrahamic verse. Specifically, if you can look at the promises that God made to Abraham. We just were doing this last night.
Start in chapter 12. When God starts to make his promises to Abraham, they get reiterated in chapter 14 and again in 15. And I'm going to read from 17 every time. I'm going to raise my voice back up from the mic every time God makes his promises to Abraham, every time.
The promises are not just to Abraham. God is always looking through Abraham's eyes and looking into the future. And he says, this is for you and for your seed forever. He's thinking, multi, multi, multi generations. Here's the verse. I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you, throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your descendants after you.
If you want to think about generations and children and what, and legacy, what we call legacy in the way that God does you, you are thinking the right way. And to think Abrahamically in a biblical, godly, truly Christian way is not. I want to just live with as few sins as I can before I die and maybe be comfortable in my lazy chair when I'm 80.
The godly thing is I'm building a generational structure that is going to bloom and blossom for the good of the kingdom of God. That's what I want our guys to own. And if you're making 45 grand right now and, and it's cold in the winters because the walls are so thin, I want you to have this picture in your mind that someday in my generations there's going to be blessing and fullness and it's going to come in numbers of people. Yes, that's part of the story. It's going to come in finances. Eventually it's going to happen.
So anyways, I have to share those verses. Obviously they get me a little hyped. What do you think?
[00:49:42] Speaker B: Well, I have to confess, Steve, and you called me out already, but I was kind of going back to my spreadsheet as I am Want to do?
[00:49:50] Speaker A: Yes, you are wanting.
[00:49:52] Speaker B: And I just.
I wanted to give a little more color on your hypothetical example. Right.
[00:49:58] Speaker A: Because I know. Yeah, go ahead.
[00:50:00] Speaker B: Somebody heard that, and they said, $50,000 a year from 25. Screw off, you crazy man. And so I said, okay, let's make a little bit more realistic of a scenario. Right.
[00:50:09] Speaker A: Okay. Okay, Mark.
[00:50:12] Speaker B: And I'm going to give you a discount on kids. I'm going to give you a discount on savings. Great.
[00:50:16] Speaker A: Yeah, you can you. You give the plan B version.
[00:50:20] Speaker B: For the, for the ease of Math, generation number one has four kids and ends with $4 million. Meaning at he. He hands off $4 million. A million each.
[00:50:32] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:50:34] Speaker B: Half of it gets spent every generation. So what I'm saying. This is kind of crazy. What I'm saying is they get that inheritance, they spend each of them 500 grand of their millionaires, all right? Maybe they use it to buy a house. Maybe, whatever, it just gets blown into smithereens.
[00:50:53] Speaker A: All right?
[00:50:54] Speaker B: And then instead of 25 to 75, they're only going to add $10,000 a year for 35 years. Okay, okay. Maybe they don't get their money till they're 40.
[00:51:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:07] Speaker B: And they're going to add 10 grand a year. That's all.
And they're going to grow it at 8%.
Remember, they spent half of it and they each have four kids.
[00:51:17] Speaker A: I can't believe they spent half of it.
[00:51:19] Speaker B: Well, you know, generation two, your 4 million seed money, remember, it went down to 2 million on day one because they all bought themselves a Bugatti on. On day one.
They started with 2 million, but when they ended their 35 years of 10 grand a year, how much money you think generation two has left behind?
[00:51:42] Speaker A: 5 million.
[00:51:44] Speaker B: 31.2 million.
[00:51:46] Speaker A: Oh, okay, Sorry. Pretty good.
[00:51:47] Speaker B: Okay, so. And remember, they are doing the same thing parents did. So they have 16 kids. Four of them each had four kids.
[00:51:53] Speaker A: Okay, okay, okay.
[00:51:56] Speaker B: On a per capita basis, because I was interested in this, that means each of their kids, they're leaving 1.955 million. So almost $2 million per kid. They've almost doubled what their parents left them, right?
Now they hand that down.
Now the next generation blows half the 31 million. They start with 15. They do the same thing, same amount. They're only saving 10 grand a year.
At the end of this, generation three's life. Now, this is just your grandkids, generation one, they have increased their starting balance of 15 million to 233 million.
[00:52:33] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:52:33] Speaker B: That's shocking because now we have 64 people out there multiplying money. Now on a per capita basis, we went from 1.9 to 3.6 per person.
[00:52:45] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:52:45] Speaker B: And the next generation, this is your great grandkids. If you're the first.
They, they blew half. They started with 116 and they ended with 1.7 billion.
[00:52:55] Speaker A: Holy cow. They're having to work hard to blow half of that money.
[00:52:58] Speaker B: But okay, they are.
[00:53:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:00] Speaker B: They're each in charge of 6.7 million at the end of their lives.
Same deal. By generation five, we have 12.7 billion or 12.
[00:53:12] Speaker A: Oh my goodness.
[00:53:13] Speaker B: Now there's a lot of kids. There's 1024 people now in the family, and it's 12.4 billion or million dollars per person.
[00:53:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:53:23] Speaker B: So I think that that number is a little bit more maybe realistic because it's like, well, yes, Steven, your, your billions. But that's spread across your, your whole city of people. Well, yes, I would say if in five generations, and we're calling a generation 35 years. This isn't 500 years from now.
[00:53:42] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:53:44] Speaker B: You could take your, your $4 million that you passed down and see that it had become three times that plus plus in everyone's hands that received from it.
That's pretty cool. So I thought that would be just like an interesting color in on the math and yeah. Let's say that you could only pass down what, a tiny fraction of that.
[00:54:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:54:09] Speaker B: Say you could pass down 500,000.
[00:54:13] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:54:14] Speaker B: Well, then each of your kids exact same math. They, they each get a 125 grand. If you have four kids, the, the fifth generation still 10, 24 people each getting $2.3 million. So it's, it's doable, I guess I would say. And the numbers get big. And we always say it on this show. All it takes is time plus faithfulness to arrive at wealth. I could like, like we always say too, I, we could drop a nuclear bomb in the middle of that thing and say you lose 80% one year of the whole family's money.
[00:54:55] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:54:55] Speaker B: And it rebuilds plenty fast.
[00:54:57] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:54:57] Speaker B: Because of faithfulness and time.
[00:54:59] Speaker A: That's right.
So I, I, that's all I wanted to put in front of people today, Mark, is I wanted to go, what are we talking about here? Like when you put about these, you guys are describing your kind of rules for everyday life and low DOE Feb. What, what are you trying to pull there?
I, I'll speak for myself.
I'm trying to teach myself the secret of being grateful with less and I'm trying to teach my children the value of, of plenty and being grateful and learning how to say no to yourself because that's going to be necessary. Because I'm raising, I'm presently raising people who in my mind they're going to be grandparents of a wealthy family.
I'm not think, I'm not thinking of 10 years from now for, for my 16 year old. I'm thinking of her at age 86.
And at age 86 there she's going to be worth some money because I'm raising her that way. That's the way that they're going to be thinking. And we're thinking of our family as a team and they can marry different people. But I don't plan on losing my children to the people they marry.
My plan, unless I find a stronger family, which I'm happy to submit to, is folding them into this family story and building from there.
So anyhow, I, I just want our, our guys to, to consider this, this Abrahamic path. It is about God's original design.
See if, see if the story that we just told just in amount of people and dollars fits this assignment from God. Fruitful multiplication, dominion and ruling. Do you think that happens in any of these scenarios that we're describing? Yes, of course it does. So I want you to switch from the scaff story to the Abrahamic story. I want you to taste the good life. I want you to be around that Sabbath table at age 70.
I want you to be with your grandkids. I don't want you to have this dissolved family and you're the lonely old timer who's hoping that he could glom on. Could somebody else invite me over tonight? I never haven't had a good home cooked meal in a while.
Oh God, I don't want that for my life. Please God, save me from that thing. I want you to have purpose at age 70 and I want you to be a blessing for centuries.
If you're a new listener, you're a dad in your 20s or 30s and you feel stuck in the average church life. And your friend said, and why don't you listen to this series? Maybe it'll give you a picture of what we're after.
This is our invitation to you. I want you to have the good life right now and I want you to have the good life later. And I want your family to never disappear from the face of the earth. And I want them to go from strength to strength.
So if it's helpful, I know that you're going to be reading your Bible to your family tonight at the dinner table. Right? Right, guys, say yes out loud in your car right now. Yes. Yes.
You're going to be reading your Bible to your family. Why don't you read Psalm 128 to your family tonight? Why don't you talk about this multi generational thing that, that verse that I read at the end is from Psalm 112. Maybe you want to read a few verses from Psalm 112. His descendants are going to be rocking it on the face of the earth. Great.
But I'm asking the one thing I'm asking you to do, you could pause the podcast right now or pray for it as this finishes. I want you to pray to God about this vision about where you're headed. I want you to ask God, would you cement this in my mind that this is where I'm headed and when I have to make tough budgeting calls today or I have to discipline my child or spend a little extra time describing to them, well, this is why we give our money. And I'm thinking through the pain of this moment right now. It's because I have this vision in mind for where I'm headed. I want you to pray through that now as you, as you close the podcast out. And I want to thank you for listening to this series. I there's more good stuff coming, but I'll just say in closing, may you, I speak this as a blessing over you. May you run your home and your dough like a biblical boss, the boss you were designed to be and the boss that tastes fruit for those things in this life before you're in the grave that you'll be tasting the fruit of these things. Bless you. See you next time.
