Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: It's a huge risk for you, if you're listening to this, that you would listen to a podcast about multi generational wealth, but that you would fail to do the basic things that you have to do to actually make that happen.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Run your home and your dough like a biblical boss. Most Christian men today handle money exactly like their unbelieving neighbors. For them, debt is normal, luxury feels like a baseline necessity, and social media sets the speed spending bar higher. Every day we see things like granite countertops in starter homes, $7 lattes presented to us as self care and Instagram vacations screaming we made it. When nothing could be further from the truth. It's the American default. But of course, scripture calls us to something radically different.
So today we're diagnosing the cultural trap we're all in. And we're going to talk about how to build a countercultural Abrahamic trap money culture in your home. One that honors God and protects your family and sets up generational blessing. If you're tired of lifestyle inflation stealing your peace and your legacy, this episode's going to be for you. Mark. Before we go into the topic of money culture, I would like to throw out something that is front and center in my. In my world and in my family. I don't think we've ever recommended this particular podcast before because it's a little explosive.
When I say explosive, I mean the words are used, can be explosively naughty words, but I have to throw it out to our people.
Just this week you sent me a link to the Joe Rogan podcast, not something that I always listen to.
And his guest this week is an author named Rachel Wilson, who is kind of. She's not the first to do this, but she is giving us the real history of the feminist movement in America. I've been talking to Mark Douglas and other people about this, and it's super interesting and I think super helpful. Would you recommend that episode to our
[00:02:19] Speaker A: people like I recommended it to you? I wouldn't do something to you that I wouldn't do to the rank and file listener of Abraham's wallet. So yeah, I thought it was absolutely fascinating. And the whole time I was going, how did they let this happen?
On the largest.
I think it's either 1, 2, or 3, depending on the day.
In terms of podcast audience in the world, I know that Joe's audience is like 10 times what CNN's is right now.
[00:02:49] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: So how did they let this conversation happen? Even though he tends to kind of be open to different ideas, it was still pretty amazing. Our friend Mark Douglas said this morning, you know, the Overton window is shifting of what you're allowed to talk about in the public square. Because a lot of what they mentioned would have just been like, swooped away. And don't. You don't say that you can't talk about that in public.
Not long ago. So I thought that was, that was part of my reaction was just, I can't believe they're allowed to have this conversation about feminism.
[00:03:26] Speaker B: One of the fascinating things to me about a recasting of, of the feminist movement as it's been taught in, in American schools is how much the occult has been, has, was a part, was an active part of the creation of what we think of as the feminist movement.
And that's, that is of particular interest, of course, to us because we can see that dark, dark spiritual forces were coming against the Abrahamic family as it operated in the United States.
You know what, this is something that we would probably leave to people to find out on their own, but I actually would love for people to go listen to that episode. But if like you, you are still seeing the waves of a sort of anti patriarchal clash happening in your communities and in your churches, yes, even in your homes, and you see your kids getting polarized by their, their friends or their school or whatever they're ingesting media wise, I think this sort of thing is super helpful. And, and I'm so convinced that having a bulwark against these philosophies in my home is important that I'm, I'm just thinking about how will I walk my family through these things so that we can, so that we can be standing on solid ground. I can segue with that.
Which is what we're talking about is opposing the cultural message.
And so we have to be so discerning whether it is the culture telling us what a woman is like through seemingly innocuous things like Wonder Woman, or what the culture tells us is important to do with money or certainly having to do with God, et cetera. We just have to be constantly on our guard.
I just have to give it as an example. Our family watches this very sweet show on pbs, which is called All Creatures Great and Small, which is about James Harriot, the Yorkshire veterinarian.
And it praises marriage, it praises the having of children. It's just very kind of sedate. And this seems like a throwback show.
And I'm just.
That, that is, that is a show which we champion in our home because it's made it, it made it through all the filters that we. That we have up. Anyways, I throw that out as an example of we're constantly doing this.
We can, you know, this, Mark.
You could be watching a sports championship game and you have to turn the channel during commercials or at least mute it because there's messages constantly coming into our homes that we just can't allow. So anyways, let's talk about money and how you have to create a culture in your home which is going to be unique and curated by a man of God. So I'll turn that over to you.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: Okay, well, we're going to get into the details at the end of this episode, but the first thing I'll say, just by way of further segue into this episode, is that there is a cultural mainstay for both your family and my family when it comes to our money culture that is coming. It's drawing to an end. We are on the eve of.
Of the final day of Lo Doefeb as we record this.
[00:07:04] Speaker B: Oh, that's so true. Oh, I could talk. I could talk about this at length.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: Yes, I think. I think we'll have a whole episode, maybe debriefing this one. I just had a couple observations.
One, I think that I don't know if I did it right this year, but it didn't feel as painful as in years past.
Um, part of that was because of our own failings. I don't think we.
I don't know that we cut it to the bone as much as we have in years past. It started strong. There was a large pot of pinto beans that I ate on for a good week and a half.
But our kids are older. There's just been so many nights where there was three different sporting events in three different locations.
And I don't think we went and like got takeout at all or anything like that. We didn't fail that miserably, but it wasn't as eat through the pantry as it has been in years past.
So, yeah, my kids kind of went well. It kind of felt like Lo dofeb this month, but not that much.
I would say there have been some major purchases that we have pushed so that that was good for our hearts. Although it's the ever present debate of, well, if I buy them in March, did that do something good for my soul? I think the answer is yes. And we'll talk a little bit about why this type of activity, amongst others, builds the culture of money in your home.
But how was lodofeb for your family in one minute or less?
[00:08:39] Speaker B: I would say similar in that my children are aging, they're high schoolers. There's a lot of grabbing and going happening.
There's not as many sit down meals.
So, yes, we also didn't, you know, quite go through the pantry in the same way. But I, it, I. It has been so clear to me how our, our default is to simply take care of our desires at all times.
So if you're, if you're driving in the car and you think, I'd like a cup of coffee, my tendency in most of the year is, well, I'll pull over somewhere and get a cup of coffee. In low doe Feb, that's not an option. So I have to defer that pleasure for the 30 minutes until I get home.
And, and I'm happy to say we've still got a couple of the little pods left over at the end of the month.
And just that little move right there, I know it saves us money, but that's not really the goal of lodofeb. For me, it is the saying no. I just, it rings in my ears that the spirit of God teaches us to say no. And I think we don't say no enough. So anyhow, that's what it's been like.
[00:10:05] Speaker A: The one real tangible victory I want to share with you, Steve. We had three jars.
Don't judge me until you hear the three jars of mild salsa.
[00:10:17] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: In our pantry, all right, now, in my family, at least, mild salsa is like, it's anathema. Why would you do that? It's tomato sauce. Amen.
And I said, this is all the salsa we have left. We have no. And we were diligently making tostadas because we had a stack of corn tortillas in the pantry and some leftover beef that we had used to make empanada filling for a school project.
And I go, okay, we have something. We can make some tostadas. But we got no salsa and we don't have sour cream and we don't have cheese. So we need something to go on these tacos.
I took a reasonable amount of cayenne pepper.
[00:11:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: Dumped my mild salsa, mixed it together, and boy howdy, it tasted like medium to medium spicy salsa. It was a huge load of win.
[00:11:10] Speaker B: You're so resourceful, Mark. Well done.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.
Okay, so before we get into how to build money culture in your home, I think it's important to establish two things.
One is we live in a culture. I assume most of you listening to this are Americans. There's an American Culture, there's all sorts of things. Some of those things are really similar to the culture in the uk, but very different from the culture in Shanghai.
You know, there's different cultures in different places. And that doesn't just mean the food we eat and the clothes we wear. It kind of spans to there's spiritual culture, there's sports culture, there's family cultures, and they differ in different places. Well, there is also money culture. You know, if you go to Asia and go to a casino, you don't see people, like, doing Vegas things and getting drunk and having a good old time and whooping it up. It's very quiet.
And their spiritual culture there actually impacts the way they treat gambling. That's just one little example of there's totally different cultures when it comes to money and the way people spend and all that. I think we have to understand what is the culture that we swim in as Americans before we can even talk about, is that cool? Are we.
Yes, that's our culture. Or are we going to try to build something totally different? So I want to start with what kind of culture do we live in? And the other thing I want to cover before we dig into creating a money culture in your home is why does this matter?
And I'm going to tell you that God cares deeply about the culture around you and the culture in your household. And spoiler alert, he expects those. He demands that those be different.
And that's been true since the beginning of human history.
So he tells us that he gives very clear instructions on this. It's not one of those things that we have to kind of extrapolate out some Bible verse and make it apply to your 401k. This is like clear instructions.
So what is the money culture that we live in? I don't think if you've been listening to this podcast for long, this will surprise you. But I'm just going to, in no particular order, give you some features of the American money culture.
Debt is the default financing mechanism for life.
The average American household carries $30,000 in consumer debt.
Credit card debt alone just crossed $1.2 trillion nationally.
[00:13:53] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:13:54] Speaker A: Carrying a balance on your credit card is normal financing. A car is almost universal. And the average car payment now for people who go buy a new car is over $700 a month.
Student loans are treated as a standard rite of passage for anyone who goes and gets higher education.
And in general, the cultural assumption is that you borrow now and figure it out later when you want something.
Goes back to Steven. Why would we worry about Training ourselves to say no. Well, it's because we live in a culture that does not ever, ever, ever say no when it comes to money.
Okay, number two, spending tends to meet or exceed income at most levels. The personal savings rate in the US has always hovered in the low single digits, so between 3 and 5%, and has dipped near zero at certain times. This isn't just a low income phenomenon.
Lifestyle inflation tends to track income pretty closely across the earnings spectrum. I tell people this all the time as a financial planner because one of the most common things I hear when I first hand somebody a plan that we've made together is, well, Mark, it looks like I need to make an extra $30,000 a year.
And I tell people, if you are 30k short when you're making $150,000 a year, you'll be more than that short when you're making $500,000 a year. And it's like the whole lottery thing, people go, I know that the data says lottery winners tank their lives, but I'd like God to give me a chance to prove that statistic wrong.
Sorry. It's true.
You have to be able to spend less than you earn at any income level or you won't at any income level.
Okay, number three, Luxury has been democratized and normalized.
What was once aspirational is now considered standards. You said it in the intro, Steve. Granite countertops, new appliances, open floor plans are now like, this is entry level. People love to moan about how expensive housing has become, but many first homes are 2,800 square feet, whereas your grandparents raised five kids in 900 square feet. So there's a component of this that's like social media, too.
I think that, you know, the Joneses used to be your neighbors. Hey, Bob just brought a new Cadillac home. I feel a little jealous now. Everyone in the world is flashing all their stuff up on the Internet. And that makes you feel a legit, like, oh, I'm behind schedule because every.
All my friends have all the stuff.
And that does something to your heart. That's part of the money culture we live in.
You know, I think that you talked about coffee. I was listening to a podcast yesterday. You know, I like. I like the wristwatchers. It's a little hobby. And I was listening to this CEO guy of one of the big brands say, it used to be true that every young guy started out with a $80 Seiko and that we made really nice, cool watches at that price point. And then there was a $500 watch when he got A promotion. And it was kind of like a rite of passage. You move up to this one. And by the time he was the CEO of his company, maybe he bought a Rolex for $15,000.
He said, that's gone. We have like two entry level watches that some people buy. And everybody else is thinking they start out at the $15,000 Rolex, which just blows my mind. But that's just one little example of this idea that luxury has become the standard and that consumption is now highly visible and social.
The next one. Retirement savings are underfunded at the population level. Despite the fact that we keep creating new types of retirement accounts. There's 401s and IRAs, et cetera. A significant portion of Americans, estimates range up to to half, have almost nothing saved for retirement. A lot of people are relying on Social Security, despite the fact that we know that it is a Ponzi scheme that is dramatically underfunded and probably isn't going to do for you what it did for your grandparents. And then just two more. One is financial literacy is actually at an all time low right now.
So if you ask a high school graduate to explain compound interest or the difference between an asset and a liability, these things are not widely understood. Despite the fact that in my state there's a K through 12 requirement for some financial education, financial literacy education.
Most adults and students have no idea of basic concepts. So that's a piece of our culture. And the last one I'll mention is that the cultural narrative around money is both complicated and contradictory. So Americans simultaneously glorify wealth.
If you listen to this podcast, I'd say there's a very high chance that you've at least stuck your toe into the pool of hustle culture and self made success stories and how to grind up wealth and things like that.
So we glorify that.
And they're also ashamed and tend to avoid the actual things that matter when it comes to money, like keeping a budget, spending less than you earn. Most families don't discuss finances openly. And money is the leading. We talk about this all the time. It's like the leading source of stress in marriages and conflict. So there's a gap between how we present publicly. Oh, we're all about wealth building and how we actually behave. I think if you're listening to this, that sounds like, what does that have to do with me? It's a huge risk for you if you're listening to this, that you would listen to a podcast about multi generational wealth, but that you would fail to do the Basic things that you have to do to actually make that happen.
This is true in spiritual culture too. We love to say, I want to be a family leader, but I don't want to wake up at 5:30 and read my Bible. That would be uncomfortable for me. Okay, fine.
But that's the American money culture in a nutshell. Any thoughts on that, Steve?
[00:20:18] Speaker B: Yeah, I just want to encourage our listeners to not just shrug your shoulders as you're listening to this and think, yeah, that's all bad, but I think it's important for you to say, I do not want to be a part of that.
I believe.
Forgive me for over spiritualizing. I believe there are spiritual powers in charge of the way that Americans live and think about money.
And I want to encourage you, as you hear these things, to say to yourself, I will not submit to those messages. I will not submit to living above my means. I will not submit to having visible consumption. I will not submit to shrugging my shoulders at retirement savings and go, it'll all work out, et cetera.
I think it's important for us to set our teeth and say, that's a no for me. Maybe you haven't figured out what it's going to be like in your family or you're not sure what the scripture says about certain topics, but this culture, the money culture of America in 2026 is a loser and it ends in death. So I just encourage you to not just go, yeah, that's too bad, but to go, no. It's a hard no for my family. So that's my thought.
[00:21:39] Speaker A: Amen. That's the culture we live in. It's a foreign culture. I hope if you're hearing this and you haven't shut it off already and gone, nope.
I am all about buy now, pay later for everything. Well, okay, you probably already turned us off. So for those of you that remained with us, that's a foreign culture. But why is culture important in the first place?
Like, does it matter a culture if we just do the things God says? Do we have to worry about what the culture is in our homes or in our communities?
Here's what the Bible says. But first, I can't tell you about what the Bible says about culture if we haven't defined it. So I looked up, I went to the Webster's Dictionary and said, what is the definition of culture?
And if as long as we're not talking about like, bacteria on a slide, that's a different type of culture.
The one that's relevant to us is the customs, arts, social Institutions and achievements of a particular nation, people or social group.
Okay, so the customs, the way it feels to me, kind of like the customs and social institutions around money is what we're talking about.
Why does this matter? I'm going to read two passages, and I think they're very instructive. So Deuteronomy 7, 3, 4.
God says, you shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me to serve other gods. And then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly.
He's talking about when Israel goes into the land that they've been promised to, to possess as an inheritance, I want you not to take the other surrounding peoples into your homes, because they will turn you away from me.
My point is, God has always been very concerned with his people having a different culture than the one around them and protecting it.
It's like this is our walled city inside our households. And as soon as you start bringing in the foreigner, again, foreign can be people from a different country. But I don't think that's the primary thing God's concerned about. I think he's concerned with the practices going back to that definition, the customs, arts, social institutions and achievements, the culture of a surrounding nation. That's not the culture he intends for his people to have. So he's always been concerned with this. But he doesn't leave us there.
There's instructions for what are we supposed to do then? And that comes just one chapter before.
It would have been kind of God to put these in the correct order so that we got the warning instructions, but he didn't do that.
This is a passage we've read over and over on the Abraham's Wallet podcast, the Shema, but it's Deuteronomy 6, 6:9. And these words, I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children. You shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise, you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
I think if you will go with me here, that this passage puts a great picture out there of what it means to build a household culture.
And it's. It's kind of four things that I pull out here. It says, there's teaching there's teaching sessions or teaching.
There's kicking ideas around when you're just. It says walking, by the way, doing other things.
There's outward signs of difference. So there's going to be some things you do that are. That are like signs to the world that you're different, and then there's practices that are different. Why. Why are you nailing that thing on your doorpost? What. What is that about? Oh, we do this. This is something we do that your culture doesn't do.
And I think this is relevant to, like, all areas of culture. So I want to spend the last little bit of our podcast and just talk about in these four areas, teaching, kicking ideas around, outward signs and practices.
How do we do things different inside our homes to build culture?
Steve, I'll pause there to let you kind of opine before I move on, but I have to put the caveat in here that some of these things are universal. Like, followers of our God are going to do certain things when it comes to money, culture, and other things. And this is why I think this is so fun, is for dads. You get to build this. You can do things. There's no passage in scripture that says lodofeb is a requirement for everyone who follows the Lord. You could say, we don't do that. That's not one of our practices, but we have others.
This is where it's like a playground for a father to go. I get to design practices and differences, and I get to lead sessions where I'm just kicking ideas around with my kids, and I even get to do some teaching times.
And that's, like, so exciting to me is how do we get to kind of let the imagination run wild, try things. There's definitely some things we're going to do that we're not going to do. But this is why I get so hyped about this particular topic of creating a money culture, because there's some boundaries, but there's also so much freedom for a dad to get to, like, jump in and experiment.
[00:27:23] Speaker B: I like the.
The Deuteronomy 7 passage that you brought up because it describes the unplugging of our family from the culture around us.
And I just want to pause and encourage every dad listening that you must.
You must be comfortable with and even rejoice in saying to your family repeatedly, we're not like them.
We are unusual.
Most people are not like us. One of the things that we said to our kids so early on when they ask us questions about, well, those kids seem to disobey and there's no repercussions to them.
And our standard line was all families are different. That's what we just said up front.
As they get older, they can look around culture and go like, boy, there's so few families like ours.
And where we live, we always point out when we see a Jewish family or an Amish family and we think, see, those are kind of our people. That's kind of a. They have a strong family culture. Most of these people that we, that we interact with every day and are out and about with, they don't have any strong family culture. They're happy to be dictated to about what's important to them. That's why we kind of point out, look at the Jew we just saw. I was this on my mind because we were in a grocery store recently, saw a little Jewish family, like, and my, my kids are like, they, they certainly dress differently. Yes, they do dress differently. They have a very specific home culture. And so I just want to underline for every dad. It's something that you should be building into your family from the get go. We're unusual, we're not normal and quotes.
We're going to celebrate the Passover that's coming up for us. We're talking about it, we're planning around it, and we'll probably be the only house on our streets that does it, and so be it. But if you can unplug from the culture around us and constantly say, we don't do that, we don't believe in that, and put up these walls of belief for your kids, now you've got a little safe sandbox where you can play in. And now, Mark, you're going to tell us how to fill in that sandbox with some. Let's build some culture where we're not just the absence of culture, but we kind of have to start with going, we're not going to do what's around us. And I'm sad to say a lot of that infects church life. What we think of as standard Christian church life, it's the same thing. It's not healthy financial practices. And we need to put up those walls and say, we're not like other people.
And now you can talk to us about filling in those blanks.
[00:30:08] Speaker A: So just to kind of cut it into those four areas, starting with teaching, this is.
You don't really have an option as a father. You don't get to say, I'm just not a teacher. I don't do teaching. I outsource that one to schools and Pastors and things like that.
Sorry, no, you're a teacher. I'm not going to go too deep on this one, but one of them is training.
So especially when it comes to kids, don't be that weird millennial parent who's trying to sit down with a four year old and give them a long lecture about something.
I'm just telling you now, I'm sorry, gentle parenters, but it's not the way that you're supposed to develop and build a child.
For the most part, we start when they're really little with training. And so, Stephen, I know both you and I had this experience of you go make 10 bucks as a kid, and we had families that said, some of that goes in the offering plate.
Now, I don't think that that doesn't have to be the specific culture in your home, but our parents are just trying to do their best to say, we want you to be generous and a giver and to think of God. When you think of where money comes from, that was valuable, even if it was incomplete.
And so that was training. It was like, hey, I talked about it recently on the podcast about realizing my kids were not being generous with their money. And we pulled the emergency brake on all things financial for the household and said, we have to deal with this. It's important because my kids are not tiny little kids. So it just kind of went, oh, you have a area where you need to do some teaching and some training.
This isn't just like little kids stuff. It's sharing the family's situation.
Hey, you guys are old enough. Our friend James Linhoff talks about sharing the entire family's financial picture with kids when they're like, 10. What did he say? How old?
10.
Hey, guys, we have $4 million in investments and business equity. What?
Yeah.
Don't tell your friends, but I think you probably are going to anyways. So let's just navigate this together. Like some of it is being able to share.
You know, we've talked about this. Well, I'm going to punt that to the next one. The last thing I'll say on this, though, is you can't teach a money culture if you're not learning yourself.
So I got a text from our buddy Chris, who's been on the podcast a few times out in Oregon, and he asked me for book recommendations. He's like, I'm really going deep this year on trying to understand finances at a new level. What should I be learning?
And he had a list. And I said, well, of that list, I'd Keep these two. I'd kick these three out because I think they're not helpful. And here's a few more to add. I think that should be pretty normal for a dad because sometimes the best teaching I do to my family, it's not that different than what Steve, you and I were talking before we started recording. My favorite podcast episodes are when I learn something new and I just want to share it the same with my kids. It's the same with my wife.
Honey, check this out that I'm learning. It's amazing. I'm. I'm excited to share it with you. So you should be a teacher and you should intentionally approach money topics. Don't just assume.
Well, we figured out how to budget when we were 25, so I guess that's happening. You should be sitting down with kids and going, I need to see a budget. I want to see you responsible with money. And you know they're going to make mistakes, and that's part of the point. So we want them to make mistakes. I talk about all the time. I set up scenarios on purpose where my kids can make what will feel to them at the time like horrible mistakes. I'm like, I actually, I gave you all your clothing budget for the next six months at once, and I want you to sort of blow it on one pair of sneakers because I want you to feel that pain for six months because it's going to teach you a lesson that's going to serve you for the next 80 years of life.
[00:34:40] Speaker B: Okay, My question is, you mentioned things like teaching your kids about assets and liabilities.
And I know that dads think, well, I know my kids need to learn that at some point, but I don't know how to what they need to know or how to parse that out or when does my kid exactly learn what a 401k is? Is there a program or an outline of family financial literacy that you recommend or do we need to write that this year?
[00:35:15] Speaker A: My favorite is the one that you and I developed for the school course that is probably, I don't know, that's probably 60% done. Although we worked on that long before the advent of our robot AI assistants that can complete things like that so that maybe we could produce that in the next two weeks.
But I think you guys have used the Dave Ramsey course. What's your review on that one?
[00:35:42] Speaker B: It was great for a sort of 6 year old ish idea for like, here's how one handles money. I thought it was great at the time when you get to 12 and above. And you think I want you to start learning some concepts that are about ruling and about building wealth, then it doesn't serve that purpose.
[00:36:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say that My, my kind of modus operandi right now is usually on those things. I tend to move to, to area number two of, of the Deuteronomy 6 model, which is a lot of those things for me have come out. I haven't ever lectured my kids on tax advantaged accounts and why they're beneficial for you in the future.
But I did file my, my, my oldest daughter had a job last summer, which means she got A, A W2, which means we had the opportunity to file a tax return. And I said I want you to do your taxes yourself this year and file a tax return.
You know, she could have gotten stuck onto mine. But I said part of the reason there is because I want you to put money into a Roth ira. And I, she had not made much money. It was less than $1,000 of W2 income.
But I said let's look at this. If we put all of that money into a Roth ira, let's just do some math on how it grows. And that little amount that she put in is hundreds of thousands of dollars by the time she retires, which is again, that's just like it came up in the normal process of life. And I could have said, well, I'm teaching you how to file a tax return. I was teaching that I wasn't there to teach about compound interest and tax deferred growth. However, I said, well, here we are, let's just pop a calculator open. And this is the type of thing I think about when you're just living life.
There's just things that come up that are related to money. And I want you dads to have your antennas up and go, is this a time for me to impart some wisdom?
My examples, the. That happened for us. You know, Floyd Mayweather is in the news this week. He's a boxer, if you don't know that. And he, I think I, I'm not going to look this up while we're recording, but it was north of $300 million. He got paid for the last professional fight he did.
That was for one fight and he had like 60 in his career.
The man is one of the highest paid in the history of the world athletes. And he's bankrupt, which is hard to even get your brain around. But that news headline crossed and I said, hey guys, let's talk about this. How could you possibly go bankrupt when you're making more money than anybody on earth. Hardly. And, and we talked about that. We talked about spending more than you earn. We talked about the risks of gambling because that was part of his story. It was just a normal conversation, but I was using it to reinforce money culture.
You know, we will do this. You have to be careful here. But we'll do this with observations about our friends and people around us.
Hey, little Susie on the soccer team's family just rolled up in a $120,000 vehicle.
And he works for the local big company and makes a normal income.
We don't know their situation. We could be wrong. But if we just think about the averages, the normal American family seems to be driving $100,000 family car around these days.
What can we think about that as a family? What do we think we're shopping for a car too? Like, what are the choices we're making in the trade offs? So, you know, anytime I get a chance to make those observations, I'm doing it. Even about ourselves.
You know, I at dinner sat down and said I was shopping for again. Maybe I have watches on the brain right now, but I was like, I'm kind of interested in watching. I had an idea of what would be reasonable to spend and it took me like an hour to go from this is a reasonable amount to like five times that. And I went at dinner that night and I said, this is what happens with luxury, guys. I started here and like before you know it, I was talking myself into something that's stupid and my heart is deceitful. To me, my heart was going, you can afford it, do it, you want it, just do it. And I just want to be open and transparent with that stuff with my kids. And this is what I think it means when it's like, as you're going about life, how you're sharing and creating culture, just be talking about money all the time. Because remember, going back to that, what's the culture we live in? The culture we live in is families don't talk about money.
[00:40:51] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:40:52] Speaker A: And I know that's true because of the financial planning work we do. I've never talked to my parents about money.
I ask this question for every family we start working with, what was the money culture like in your home? And people go, well, we never talked about money. It was never talked about. I think we had some, you know, usually I had everything I needed.
So be different by just talking about money a lot.
[00:41:18] Speaker B: That's excellent.
[00:41:19] Speaker A: Any thoughts on that one?
[00:41:20] Speaker B: No, I couldn't agree more. That if you'll keep your eyes open, life will present you all sorts of opportunities that you can either let float by or you can go, oh, I'm going to land on that. That's so important for a dad to go. I know I'm at the age where I now have working children. We had to buy a car last year.
We have done the deal where we are sharing with our kids. Here's what tuition to your school costs. I want you to understand how much money that is, et cetera. Just walking through life will present these opportunities. That if a dad will say, I'm going to make the most of this opportunity, and I'll sit with the Lord and go, what Bible passages would be applicable to this stage in my child's life or their learning? And then how can I be part of that conversation and lead the conversation? Because all of those are opportunities to further create my child's worldview and to push the culture in our home that I want to happen that my wife and I, this is what we value. Well, here's a time for us to bring it to bear on whatever's happening around our life. Whether it's. I mean, we've done this, and I know you guys have, too, from the very beginning, is like involving the kids in.
We. I used to see.
Forgive me for interrupting myself. I used to see my dad drop a check in the offering plate and think, don't know how much that was for. Don't know what it's for. Don't know what made it happen. But that's kind of interesting. I saw that happen. Huh? Wonder what that is.
So much more valuable to include your children into that process. Let them see the number. Why is it this number? Well, let's look at the spreadsheet. You can see why it's this number. This is how we determine this. And then when you put the money in, you could look down the aisle and the whole family could show the check, this is our family. We're giving this money, whatever. It's so much, so much better to include your children. If we haven't really talked about this today, if your intention is to hand off everything you've ever made in your life to these children at some point and go, the legacy of our family will be in your hands. Well, then the curating of this culture matters a lot. And talking them through, why do we make the choices that we do matters a lot because you're building their worldview.
So I'm totally with you on the, on the kind of. As you're Coming and you're going in the, in the normalcy of life, man. Make the most of those opportunities.
[00:43:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
Okay. Maybe the two areas that everybody is most interested in are like, okay, so what are the outward signs of difference and what are the practices? Okay, outward signs of differences. You know, the frontlets between your eyes. We don't grow the frontlets, but we do have some things that are different.
One that I noted. Transparency that could be inside the family. We talk about money, but we also share specific details. We also have other humans that see our money picture.
[00:44:32] Speaker B: That's.
[00:44:33] Speaker A: That's weird.
We have created at Abraham's Wallet a whole guide that's the financial transparency guide that is designed to walk you through in a group of people.
[00:44:43] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:44:44] Speaker A: How to be transparent with your money.
That's different.
And I guarantee you, when you start sharing money details with kids, they're going to blab it and mess this up. But just like everything else in the money culture we're building, we want them to make those mistakes when the consequences are low, not when the consequences are high. So we're okay with some, some mistakes and stepping in it here and there. But transparency is a thing that we do that it looks real different from the world.
[00:45:14] Speaker B: That's true.
[00:45:16] Speaker A: I'd say expectations for how we'll pass money along to future generations.
I do everything I can to make sure that we take every opportunity as a family to scoff at the boomer mentality that, well, this money's mine because I made it and I'll use it on whatever I want, and if there's any left over, so be it. No, we use every opportunity to say, I have a responsibility to my children's children's children to steward wealth for the multi generational benefit of this family, to achieve the mission that God has given us. And you young little girls, better, better snap to it, because you're going to have more weight on your shoulders than I did because I'm going to grow this money and I expect you to grow it more than I grew it.
So we just harp on that and we talk about the money choices we're making. Well, yeah, we could buy a more expensive car, but we're buying a less expensive car because we want to grow our wealth, not just maintain it.
[00:46:19] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:46:21] Speaker A: And to that end, the portion that we choose to employ for luxury, I talked about on this podcast in the travel episode, buying a first class plane ticket.
You will not hear me say that. We live totally austere all the time, low dofab lives. I think there's good things to spend money on, and some of them are luxuries that's going to look different for every family.
But I also think that there's times when we intentionally say no to luxury. Even when the world says no, this is totally affordable. I mean, we talked at the beginning about, like, car payments are standard. It's interesting because I am shopping for a car right now. When I walk into a dealership, they're like, what kind of payment you looking for? And I just giggle if that statement. But that's how people buy homes. How much mortgage payment can you afford? It's how people buy cars.
And I always tell people, if you took my income and used it to determine how much luxury was reasonable, I would end up in a total.
What would, to me right now, feel like a luxury bath. It would be bad for my soul. And I promise you that what would feel like totally silly luxury after I had done it for a couple months would be like, oh, this is the new normal. I require this now.
So I'm on my guard against that stuff.
[00:47:43] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:47:44] Speaker A: Any outward signs that somebody who watches your family would go, huh, that is a differentiator for the manual home. They don't do that. Like the normal. The normal way.
[00:47:54] Speaker B: Well, I'm going to reiterate something that you've said that most Americans basically redline their finances at all times, which is if we can buy the gigantic.
Are they still making expeditions? I don't know. Something like that. A gigantic vehicle, Then we buy it. I know that people comment this on our family, that we could have more luxuries than we do and that we could do more ostentatious displays of money that we do. And I want my kids to understand that there are people who live a higher lifestyle than ours that don't have as much money as we do.
And I want them to understand that saying no is part of building wealth. So we're just.
One of the great things about LotoFeb. I was at the grocery store this week with one of my children. We were making a recipe. I said, be price conscious. You go get the cream or whatever we needed, but you be price conscious. And she brought back this name brand. I said, no, we should have got the store brand. And she's like, I don't think there was. I said, we're walking right back there and we saved $0.89 on that thing because we bought the store brand. I'm like, this is Lo Doe Feb. We don't buy this name brand stuff.
And high fives. We walked out going, feeling like we had won the game.
And that's how we want to be living our life in general because we are deferring pleasure.
One definition of maturity is that when you say no to a good thing right now so that you can say yes to a better thing later.
That's maturity is being able to put off pleasure.
[00:49:46] Speaker A: So anyways, over to you. Yeah, so lastly the practices. And like I said at the start, there's some things that are non negotiable truths.
If you're listening to this and you're a Jesus following family, you will create a culture of giving in your home. Okay, now exactly how that looks and to what and all that's negotiable. But the statement we will be givers should be true of all of your money cultures in your home.
You know, we will purge anything money related that wants our hearts. It's the constant warning of scripture is that money is out to win your love and it's a real stinking risk. So we're looking for that. That's just true.
But then there's other things that's going to be unique to your crew. In my family, we use money for education at an outsized pace and not just for our three kids. Like it's so important to us that we're funding education for extended family.
I think, you know, it's a lot easier to pay for private school for three kids than it is for six. So where I've got like family that's trying to do this for more, I go, well, we could help with that.
So you know, we're already as we make a financial plan. Like one of the big things that we want to make sure we can do is fund an annual goals summit for our adult children when they're married every year for the rest of our lives, like every year, mom and dad are gonna pay for us and our spouse to get away and do a goals summit. Awesome.
It's not all about savings and investing. Like we buy dessert at restaurants.
My, my wife came from a spending family where the answer was usually like, oh, just buy it. That was kind of the culture. I came from a non spending family, which was the other extreme, which the culture was like don't buy anything.
And I've realized neither one is the culture we want to build. We kind of want to build our own unique thing. So I had to go, even though it kind of hurts my heart. And I was raised to believe that if I order a soda at a restaurant, I will bankrupt our family.
Sometimes the answer is we're here at a restaurant, let's celebrate, let's have a good time. We don't even Scoff at a $500 dinner once in a blue moon. So there are things out there that again, this doesn't have to be you, but there are things out there that we say that is actually something we want to spend on in proportion to what is responsible and wise and still jives with the long term mission of the family, which is responsible stewardship of wealth and growing it over time.
[00:52:30] Speaker B: Yeah, Mark, I think of the small things that we've been doing with our kids and continue to do with them high school age, like looking at, when we get investment statements in, drawing the kids over and looking at it and looking at, well, let's see how much this account has gone up.
I think that we, well, we know that's unusual for people to do, to have the ongoing conversation with our children about what's on your hearts to be giving to. Do you see people in need?
We had some unbelievable giving opportunities happen to us this year to help families near us. And we wanted to loop our children into that conversation and go, here's the need. You know, our financial picture. Don't you think God would be calling us to do this? And then the whole family feels this excitement. And I know that we're building culture in them in that moment that they're going to want to carry on generations.
It starts with things like when you get, you get paid $20 for mowing the yard and then we sit down and put pencil to paper and how much of this should we give and how much should we save? And you know, you've been wanting a new toy. You could spend this on that toy and that'd be great. The one good for you. You made the money.
Those, those kind of practical things lead your family down a road of culture building where you get to celebrate, as you say, celebrate good purchases, celebrate spending money as a family, also celebrate, well, this. I think it's wise for us to save this and celebrate. Isn't it amazing that we get to give? And I always like pause with my kids and go, like, I want you to know that our ability to give came as a result of your mom and me saying no to a bunch of things. That's how we have, and I do use this language. We've earned the right to, to be generous. We've earned the right to do this thing. And isn't, isn't that amazing that we get to feel the blessing of God and the joy that comes from giving. And it comes as a result of being obedient with him all along the way when it came to earning and saving. And now we get to give it. Oh, it's so wonderful. And in all of those things, we're building a culture. So I just reiterate to our, to our listeners that being culturally estranged from a normal Mainstream America in 2026 is a blessing. You're called to do it and you get to fill in the blanks of what are going to be the practices and financial values of our home. I find that super exciting.
So, gang, the default is debt and distraction around you. It's true of all your neighbors. It's true of all the people that you'll see at the grocery store and the people that you drive by every day. You don't have to live there. God called Abraham to leave the familiar, leave the culture and build something new. And he calls you to do the same thing with your family's money culture.
So wherever you're at, start small, stay consistent, even more than dollar figures. Be watching the culture, what is valued in your home, and watch how it reshapes everything.
So if this hit home, we, gosh, we would love it if you would rate this show. If you would share it with another dad who needs it, subscribe to our channel.
If you'd leave a rating, oh, gosh, that'd be wonderful for us.
But until next time, whatever is going on under your roof as you're building a Abrahamic, multi generational godly culture, we do encourage you guys. Keep going this week. Do the small things. Run your home and dough like a biblical boss. God bless you.
