SWYC 2017: Surrender - Moment by Moment

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GYC Southwest

Workshop: Surrendering Our Finances

Alistair Huong

Neither Poverty Nor Riches

Father in heaven, we thank you so much for bringing us up to this mountaintop for the blessings we've received already.

And now as the beginning of this new day and this new week, we pray, Lord, for your help.

We pray for wisdom as we talk about a most practical aspect of our Christian experience, something we all deal with, and that is money.

And may we be able to give glory to you even in this area of our lives.

Guide us now, help us to hear what we need to hear, and may your Holy Spirit be here to guide us, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

So the title of our seminar session is Beyond the Tithe.

And that's because usually when you go to a church and you hear stewardship seminar, Usually it's something along the lines of you should be more faithful in returning your tithes and offerings to the church.

The tithe and the offerings are an essential part of personal finance principles and things like that, but there's a lot more to it than that.

And so while this seminar can rightly be called a stewardship seminar, I try to stay away from that term because of the baggage.

People feel like it's a bad word, or it's got negative connotations.

And so biblical lessons on personal finance, that is actually what we're going to be calling this seminar.

And if someone wants to sit right in the front row you are welcome to.

So session 1 the title of this first session is called Neither Poverty Nor Riches.

I'm going to try to move around so people over here can see.

Neither Poverty Nor Riches, Redefining Wealth and Prosperity.

OK, so we're dealing with principles, foundational principles here to start off.

So a little bit about myself, why should you listen to me?

What credibility do I have to talk about money?

As you are aware, there are certain topics that you should never talk about if you don't want to offend people.

You shouldn't talk about people's diet, you shouldn't talk about how they should dress, and you shouldn't talk about how they ought to spend their money.

And so I'm not going to touch about the first 2, but the second 1 I'm here to rattle your cage a little bit.

So I'm not here to give you professional financial advice, investment advice, tax advice, legal advice.

That's just, you know, boilerplate disclaimer at the beginning that you have to understand.

But I believe this is also 1 of the reasons why Perhaps I have something that might be valuable to you to listen to, and that is I don't have anything here to sell you.

But as far as my credentials, I do have a business degree, but perhaps more important than that, I was a math teacher once.

And believe it or not, all you need to know to do really sound personal finance is a little bit of math.

You don't have to have an MBA, but you do need to know how to add, subtract, multiply, divide, fractions, decimals.

So having been a math teacher, I think that does give me a little bit of credibility, and also I do have a business degree for what it's worth.

And that business degree, graduate degree, I got from Southern Adventist University, but who cares about that?

So I've actually done a few things that I'm talking about, what I'm sharing with you.

And I paid off my house, my wife and I paid off our house in 2 years.

We bought our house in 2013 and we paid it off in 2015, exactly the month our daughter was born, which there she is.

But in 2015, the year that we paid off our house and the year we had our baby, we spent 24% of our take-home pay.

So 24% of our take-home income we spent to live on.

We gave away 21%, so tithes and offerings and charitable giving.

So 2016, first full year of being parents.

And as you have often heard, children blow up your budget.

So yeah, our spending did go up a little bit, 25%.

And you see the majority of the change was right here.

We chose that year to up our charitable giving and our offerings.

I'm not going to get into that here, but if you, I'll share the link with you later, but I have a whole presentation based on the Bible and Spirit Prophecy principles for why we went up to a 26% rate.

So all of this to show these are our numbers.

And if you want to really see the details on our blog, we actually lay it all out.

We tell you exactly how much we earned, how much we saved, how much we spent, how much we pay for our groceries, how much we pay for our cell phone service, all that.

So in 2015, my wife worked half the year before she took off to be a stay-at-home mom full-time.

So, in 2016, not only did we maintain, essentially, our percentages and our savings, we lost 1 income.

So 1 ministry salary, 1 stay-at-home mom.

You heard I work for Audioverse and when we have, you know, when we use the term ministry salary, that's a code language.

Within Adventism we say, oh I work for a ministry salary.

But praise the Lord, we have more than we need.

So not a complaint, just a statement of fact.

I don't have a rich uncle that is somehow bankrolling us.

And so perhaps those are a few reasons why I have something to share.

So I mentioned earlier savingthecrumbs.com.

You can list or not listen, sorry, but you can go and read a lot of the principles that we're sharing here this weekend, we share there.

And here we're sort of flying at 30, 000 feet, whereas here we get down to the weeds.

We get nuts and bolts, dollars and cents and actual services that we use and where we buy them and how we do it.

At audioverse.org, I have my seminar also entitled Beyond the Tithe.

6 hours, okay, 6 hours in-depth seminar on the same topic we're talking about today and what I mentioned earlier about biblical reasons, how much are we to give in tithes and offerings, we talk about that.

And there are a few other things that we're not able to cover here this weekend that is included in that seminar.

You can look up my name or you can look up beyond the tithe as the name of the seminar.

Counting the Cost

Father in heaven, thank you for bringing us back together again Give us alert minds help us to understand some practical ways to Manage our or your money in accordance to your will teach us we pray in Jesus name.

Amen All right, let's get into it session 2.

We're counting the cost Debts budgets and your life.

So for those of you who weren't here earlier, savingthecrumbs.com, that's our website.

And then the seminar that I keep referring to, AudioVerse, Beyond the Tithe, it's a six-part series from GYC 2015.

We started on this earlier, talking about debt.

The borrower is servant or slave to the lender.

Be determined never to incur another debt.

Deny yourself a thousand things rather than run in debt.

This has been the curse of your life getting into debt.

Avoid it as you would the smallpox." Adventist home page 393 paragraph 4.

Okay, it's still not something you want in your life, but we can't say that it's a sin exactly.

So this was the statement we read earlier that I think was somewhat of a revelation for those of us who have not been aware that Ellen White actually borrowed money.

Publishing Ministry, page 209, paragraph 4 and 5 says, I now ask you if you will let me have the use of $2, 000.

And at the end of the story here, when the expenses of issuing my books is lessened the sales will soon pay up all my debts so this statement here actually hidden within it is the principle of what is permissible debt the question was asked earlier is there such a thing called good debt?

If I'm going to follow the Bible and spirit of prophecy, debt is still smallpox and it's still slavery.

So it's difficult for me to call any type of slavery or any type of smallpox Good.

However, there are acceptable instances in which borrowing money is permissible.

It's permissible, but when something's permissible, it doesn't necessarily mean you have to do it.

What's the criteria that LNY through this example right here illustrates to us or shows us as the rules for debt?

Number 1, never borrow money for something that goes down in value.

I'm going to talk, illustrate this a little bit more later.

And number 2 is where Ellen White makes this very clear.

Borrowing is acceptable only if what you are buying can pay back the debt.

Okay, you see how these 2 things are related.

If something can pay off the debt, then it doesn't go down in value, because it's generating value.

Never borrow money for something that goes down in value.

Number 1, borrowing is acceptable only if what you're buying can pay off the debt.

If the debt violates these rules, then no debt allowed.

You're saying no, but you're saying like, no, please don't say that.

And you might be saying, the smart Alex out there, like oh, it might become a classic.

Your Toyota Camry's never gonna be a classic, okay?

And, now I will make this exception for the car, okay?

And that is, if you run a business, right, and you use a car to generate money, then perhaps there might be instances, okay?

Maybe you're like a plumbing company, you have to buy a truck, or you're an Uber driver, or something like that.

So if the car is a business asset that earns you money, then all of a sudden, it pays for itself.

I'm talking about our personal passenger vehicles, right, that we take to Starbucks.

Here's the reason why we should never borrow money for something that goes down in value.

It's because of interest and depreciation.

So we talked about the iPhone, the vacation, and the car.

Who knows what the new iPhone is going to cost.

Price after 1 year, that $650 phone now is only worth $400.

That's 1 of my secrets for saving money, by the way.

My wife and I, we never buy current year iPhones.

We wait a year, people buy it in the year, there's still a warranty on it, the battery is still good, and I just save myself 250 bucks for a phone that everybody else is paying full price for.

Okay, alright, so if I borrowed money at 10% interest, I would have paid $715, but after 1 year I paid $715 for a $400 device, meaning I overspent by 315 bucks.

That's why you should never borrow money to buy an iPhone.

Okay, on a vacation, alright, let's say it's a $2, 000 vacation, the price after 1 year is 0 dollars, because you can't sell your vacation back.

You can't get a refund, but if you pay for it with a 10% interest credit card, and good luck finding a credit card that only charges 10% interest, the difference is you paid $2, 200.

Go on vacation, but don't go into debt to do it.

You're going to vacation to de-stress, but you're only creating more stress by coming back and having this huge credit card payment.

Everybody knows the moment you drive a car off the lot, it loses its value.

Let's say you buy a $30, 000 car, that's a nice car.

If you pay 10% interest, that would have been $33, 000 just in the first year.

So in 1 year, you would have lost $8, 700.

You would never have felt it, but that money surely has left you.

Back to Menu

Series

Workshop: Surrendering Our Finances

Counting the Cost

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Family Finances for Life

Early Years - Part 2

57m

Finding Financial Peace

1h 12m

Stewardship Seminar

Keeping Track of the Things That Matter - Part 2

1h 12m

Biblical Relationships (Afternoon meetings)

Preparing to Tie the Knot (Part 2)

31m

Beyond the Tithe: Practical Lessons on Personal Finance

3. Counting the Cost: Relationships, Budgets & Your Life

1h

Financial Freedom Seminar

Counting the Cost: Saving, Spending, and Budgeting

56m

Marriage Heart to Heart

Money Matters

47m

Mutuality

55m

Personal Finance

1h 7m

God's Love Stories (Noon Meetings)

4. Seven Years

37m

Making a House a Home

06 Building a Financial Foundation

1h 3m

Sound Doctrine