Should a Christian invest? If so, what’s a good investment vs bad one? How do I not get scammed? What about bitcoin? This presentation answers all these questions and more by providing guidelines that can be turned into a values-based investment screener.

GYC 2017: Arise

<p>Should a Christian invest? If so, what’s a good investment vs bad one? How do I not get scammed? What about bitcoin? This presentation answers all these questions and more by providing guidelines that can be turned into a values-based investment screener.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

For the Love of Money: Biblical Lessons on Personal Finance

Alistair Huong

1. Prosper and Be in Health: A Financial Health Message

This message was presented at the GYC 2017 conference, Arise, in Phoenix, Arizona.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.gycweb.org.

I think we will go ahead and get started with our seminar.

And as people trickle in, they'll catch up quickly.

Is it all right if I stand down here instead of up there?

You can see me okay, I'm not that tall, but I do have a laser pointer.

And I do want to be able to guide the discussion, so I don't want to be stuck up there and I can't touch the screen.

So, welcome to our seminar for the love of money.

And it is a finance seminar, personal finance.

And before we go any further, let's begin with a word of prayer.

Father in heaven, thank you so much for bringing us safely to Phoenix for GYC 2017, the blessing that this convention has already been.

We pray, Lord, as we spend the next few moments, the next few seminar sessions, thinking about a very practical, relevant aspect of our lives.

Give us wisdom from your counsels, from your word, that we might glorify you even in this area of our lives.

Teach us, be with us we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

You're all familiar with the title of the seminar I believe, For the Love of Money.

Anyone want to finish the rest of that verse for me?

First Timothy 6.10, for the love of money is the root of all evil, which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

It's not money that's the problem, it's the love of money, right?

And so that's why we have a whole seminar talking about this because how do we deal with this thing called money and our relationship to it?

Because if we don't get it right, we might fall into what's called the root of all evil.

So the first seminar session here we are going to be talking about is called Prosper and Be in Health, a financial health message.

This first hour is more of an overview, general principles, a framework through which we can evaluate financial decisions, and then starting the next hour, we're gonna get really specific.

Okay, and this particular hour, I'm gonna be sprinkling through a little bit of a preview so you know what's coming ahead.

So this serves as a framework, It also serves as an introduction to the rest of the other 5 hours, and I'll be giving you some tidbits so you know what to expect and in what seminar sessions, so if you want to catch something else and there's something here that's interesting, you know when to come back.

Okay, so hopefully this will be a helpful orientation, but also a practical, principled-based seminar as well.

What right does he have to tell me what to do with my money?

Well, I'm not here to tell you what to do with your money.

I'm here to share some principles, some of my own experiences, and you do what you want with your money.

Actually, you'll find out later, it's actually not your money.

So I'm not giving you investment advice, financial advice, legal advice, tax advice.

It's a necessary disclaimer, so nobody sues me, right?

But also, this is why I think I have something worth listening to, and that is I'm just like you.

I have to live life, I have a job, I have a family, I have to pay the bills.

I'm not a financial guru where I'm a professional at this and I live in a different world, a different bubble.

I'm in the real world and I'm just sharing my personal experience.

And perhaps most importantly, I'm not selling anything.

Don't come to me asking me for financial advisement.

Just pay me 9.99 for 3 months and I'll teach you how to be a millionaire.

So hopefully that gives you a little bit of confidence.

I'm not trying to pump up some product or get you to buy something.

But I do have some education that might be relevant for what it's worth.

I have a business degree from Southern Adventist University.

I taught high school and college math for a short while.

And let me tell you, the math is more important than the business.

You don't need to have a business degree.

You don't have to have an MBA in order to master your personal finances.

Adding, subtracting, decimals, fractions, exponents might be nice.

So I mentioned I went to school at Southern, I have my master's from Southern, but more importantly, I got my master's debt free.

I'll be sharing that story, how that happened later on this hour.

Also, something that might be interesting to you, my wife and I, we paid off our house in 2 years.

Bought our house in 2013, paid it off 2 years to the day later.

I'll be sharing that story with you this afternoon when we talk about debt.

In 2015, so some numbers now, 2015, my wife and I had our baby in August.

So the first half of the year, we were a two-income family, one-income family after the baby came.

We gave away 21% and we saved 55% of our income.

The baby must have like nuked our budget, right?

Well, we did have some increased spending by 1 whole percent and by the way, this is not necessarily telling a whole story because in 2015 for half the year we had 2 incomes In 2016, 1 income.

3 member household all of a sudden, and we increased our spending by 5% or 1%, even though our income dropped by almost 50%.

So you gotta understand, the percentages don't tell the full story.

And what's interesting to me, what I was very happy about, which was 1 of our goals, was that in 2016, for the first time, the amount we gave away was higher than the amount that we spent for ourselves.

We're going to talk about that in a moment.

There's a principle behind why we chose to do that.

But 2016 was the first time we ever that we were able to do that.

And 2017 is not over yet, but if you want to find out our numbers, I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself here, but we have a website, savingthecrumbs.com, the website and everything's coming on the next slide.

But every year in January or February, we give a annual report of our financials.

And not only do we give you our percentages, we actually tell you how much we earned.

So if you are 1 of those really curious people and you wanna know how much money does this guy actually make, I actually tell you on the website.

It's below the US median income, I'll just tell you that, household income, we're below the median.

But 2017 is gonna be coming out in about a month and it'll be interesting to see what happens.

I'm curious, I haven't crunched the numbers.

My wife stays at home, takes care of the baby.

I work in a ministry, I work for Audieverse.

You see my logo here, I have to represent.

2. Give a Portion to Seven: Understanding Risk and Insurance

So if you have trouble seeing the screen on my left, you're right You're welcome to come over This is our second seminar session and specifically we're going to be dealing with risk and insurance.

But I think it is going to be a helpful topic for those of us who have to deal with such realities.

Quick question, Is there going to be time for Q&A?

It depends how quickly I can get through it and also what kind of questions you have.

Right now, this particular seminar, I have a feeling, because we're going to be a little bit late, and then we have another meeting right afterwards.

I don't want to run into the main meeting.

This afternoon, we might have a little bit more, you know, if it's the last meeting.

And tomorrow morning, I'm hoping it'll be a little shorter.

I'm trying to pack in as much information as I can since we're talking about money and I want to give you your money's worth.

So if you have questions, you can come to me privately and I'll talk with you.

All right, let's pray and we'll get started.

Father in heaven, thank you so much for bringing us safely together again as we begin the second session.

Speak to us, again, give us wisdom on how to manage some very practical aspects of our financial lives.

All right, so for those of you who weren't here, I'm gonna give a little bit of introduction.

Not introduction, but a little sales pitch, I guess.

Session number 2, give a portion of 7, understanding risk and insurance, you must be thinking, give a portion of 7, what does that mean, where does that come from?

Savingthecrumbs.com, this is our website where my wife and I write about personal finance.

You'll find a lot of information on there.

This particular hour that we're dealing with insurance is completely new.

It's not on the website, and it's not anything I've presented anywhere before.

So you guys are the first ones to ever hear this presentation.

It is not found in this seminar session from GYC 2 years ago and if you want to go back and listen to all 6 hours there's other stuff there.

Here are just a few things that we refer to when we think about risk.

Fire, I was just in Santa Rosa, California.

And we drove through the neighborhoods that got scorched.

It is unbelievable the devastation there and Redwood Adventist Academy, our school, I was there, saw it firsthand.

Accidents of course happen, medical emergencies, illness.

We all have heard of people who got hit by a car, car accident, got sick, cancer, heart attack, whatever.

We had hurricane after hurricane, right, all through the year.

But what about, how does this tie in to our personal finances?

Well, the simple answer is all of these things cost money.

A simple way to think about risk is events that happen that causes us to lose money.

You get in a car accident, you have to replace your car.

Your house burns down, you have to buy a new 1 or replace it.

Risk is correlated with the loss of money.

All of these things we group together, we call risk, but I like to think of them as a ticking time bomb.

So when we think about risk, I want you to have this mental picture in your mind.

Each of us have a time bomb that is strapped to us all the time.

And when it does go off, we don't know how big the explosion is going to be.

It might be a small explosion, or It might be a nuclear explosion.

But the reality is, because we live in a sinful world, we all have this ticking time bomb known as risk in our lives.

All we can do is manage it, and thus the term risk management, right?

But when it does go off, what's the ramifications?

Okay, so that's how it ties into personal finances.

It might cost a lot, a lot, a lot of money, or it might not cost that much.

You understand what I mean when I say risk now.

We have things that are financially risky or potentially catastrophic in our lives at any moment.

Hurricane might come through town or fire, earthquake, whatnot.

Okay, well generally we rely on someone else.

So when we have some sort of emergency, whatever the need might be, usually the first line of defense are friends and family.

3. Increasing the Talents: Investing for the Future

All right, this is the hour you've all been waiting for, I guess.

That's what I've been sensing with the questions I've been getting.

What do you think about cryptocurrencies?

I've already been asked like 5 times today.

So if you listen carefully by the end of this seminar you'll have a pretty good idea where I stand on that.

Session number 3, increasing the talents, investing for the future.

Where is this concept, increasing the talents, where is it found in scripture?

We're gonna take a look at that in a moment.

So for those of you who aren't familiar, savingthecrumbs.com is the website where my wife and I write about personal finance.

And also, Audioverse, 2 years ago, GYC 2015, I did a seminar, whoops, on called Beyond the Tithe on personal finance.

You can also go there for further information.

There are a lot of things covered there that I'm not covering here.

And in particular, back then, Bitcoin wasn't quite as big of a craze as it was it is now.

But you probably wish you got some back then, at least those of you who are paying attention to the markets.

We need to start from scripture and derive our principles by which we evaluate or why invest, how to invest, how do we approach this?

So we already mentioned the parable of the talents, and this is what Jesus says, or the master said to the servants, Matthew 25, 27.

You ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming, I should have received what was my own with interest.

So in a sense, did they have the same performance?

He didn't lose the capital, he just didn't grow it.

So He says, you should have invested my money.

And you know, when we talk about the parable of the talents, it's frequently we take that parable and we immediately spiritualize it.

Everything under the sun is a talent except money.

It's like you have your speech, you can sing, you're artistic, you're good at math, whatever their talent might be, you should increase it for God, but money?

Well, the very symbol or the illustration as used, money, it is a talent.

And to make that abundantly clear, let's see what LMY has to say.

Councils on Stewardship, page 113, paragraph 1.

The followers of Christ are not to despise wealth.

They are to look upon wealth as the Lord's entrusted talent.

By a wise use of his gifts, they may be eternally benefited, but we are to bear in mind that God has not given us riches to use just as we shall fancy, to indulge impulse, to bestow or withhold as we shall please." So the important point here is that yeah, we should increase the talents, but not for our own personal gain or glory, but for the purposes of God.

Alright, a couple other principles and then we're going to tie it together.

Christ's Object Lessons, page 352, paragraph 1 says, Horded wealth is not merely useless, it is a curse.

In this life, it is a snare to the soul, drawing the affections away from the heavenly treasure, because where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

And so we're told here that we should not hoard our wealth.

But yet, we just read, we should invest, but don't hoard.

So you see, there's a balance here where We should be growing the resources God has given to us, but don't hoard it.

Okay, let's take a look at this statement also.

Councils on stewardship, page 250, paragraph 1.

Had you and your wife understood it to be a duty that God has enjoined upon you to deny your tastes and your desires and make provision for the future, instead of living merely for the present, you could now have had a competency and your family have had the comforts of life.

The purpose is to save up, invest, so that in the future when we, generally speaking, is when in a time when we don't have as much earning capacity, our family will not suffer lack.

They can stop the comforts and the conveniences of life.

So to provide for the future, that's why we do it.

To meet our needs, not to have an ever-growing cash pile.

You remember the story of the rich fool in the Bible?

We filled up our barns, let's build a bigger barn, let's fill that 1.

And then, soul take thy ease, eat, drink, be merry, and God says, you fool, tonight your soul will be required of thee.

What shall a man gain if he shall gain a whole world but lose his soul?

So that's the principle here, but yet, providing for the needs of the future.

Preparing for the winter when summer's around.

Testimonies for the Church, volume 5, page 156, paragraph 1.

Brethren, awake from your life of selfishness and act like consistent Christians.

The Lord requires you to economize your means and let every dollar not needed for your comfort flow into the treasury.

So this answers the question, what about the surplus?

So let's say I'm investing and I have more than I need.

Very clearly, let it flow into God's treasury.

God does not say give me all your money first.

God says take care of your needs first and then the surplus let it flow into the treasure.

4. Therewith to Be Content: On Debts and Budgets

I apologize for going over the last time.

Just curious, how many of you were here for all previous 3 sessions?

So I guess all of you are gonna get 1 free Bitcoin afterwards?

No, just joking, just joking, just joking.

We're gonna we're gonna continue finish off the day And we'll let you go Hopefully I won't go as far over like I did last time.

So let's bow our heads together as we begin.

Father in heaven, thank you so much for being with us so far this day with the various topics we've talked about, giving us wisdom to how to analyze and deal with some of the issues that have come before us.

I pray that you will be with us now as we talk about getting out of debt and budgeting.

Give us clarity of thinking as we manage our finances in accordance to your will.

So here, this hour, we're going to be focusing specifically on debt and budgets.

For those of you who have been asking, this is my website.

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Series

For the Love of Money: Biblical Lessons on Personal Finance

3. Increasing the Talents: Investing for the Future

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Beyond the Tithe: Practical Lessons on Personal Finance

5. Trading the Talents: Principles on Investing

1h

Stewarding God's Gifts: Faithful Planning for Life & Legacy

03 Making Sense of Savings and Investments

58m

End-time Finance

06 Occupy Till He Comes: What to Do Now?

59m

Finding Financial Peace

1h 12m

Unusual Business

Managing Your Finances in the End Times

1h 20m

Trading the Talents

Trading the Talents: Part 1-Biblical Principles on Investing

50m

For the Love of Money: Biblical Lessons on Personal Finance

5. Consider the Ant: Real Ways to Save

1h 8m

For the Love of Money: Biblical Lessons on Personal Finance

1. Prosper and Be in Health: A Financial Health Message

1h 6m

Sound Doctrine