Transform Your Finances: Smart Steps for a Secure Future

So, what we're talking about here is the truth, not complicated, not easy to do, but am I going to have the courage to do it? And then when inflation happens, when I've got to really start whittling away at those student loans because the government didn't pay them off for me, I'm doing the right thing. I'm taking the right step.

And then to see what God does. Russ Crossan joins us today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. He's going to be talking about how to better manage your finances with God in mind. Thanks for being along with us.

I'm John Fuller. John, this issue of financial management is always the top two in marital strife, typically. We've been watching that for almost 50 years now here at Focus on the Family.

And it's either physical intimacy or financial pressure that really starts to put cracks in a marriage. And for that reason, we're here today to talk to you, talk with you about what it means to put a plan together, follow the plan, and try to stick to that so that it doesn't become one of the big issues in your marriage. And I think that's a good goal.

It is. And I'm going to be taking notes, Jim, because despite being married for 45 years, we haven't had major fights about money, but it's always been hard to kind of grab hold of what is this money going toward? Where's it all going?

Yeah, that's good. I'm glad we have Russ Crossen joining us. He's the chief vision officer and senior partner of Blue Trust. He's helped families and couples steward their finances for 45 years, I think it is. And he's shared his expertise in a little book that's really powerful.

It's called Your Money Made Simple, The Key to Financial Freedom. You can learn more about Russ and this terrific book on our website. And we've got the link in the show notes. Russ, welcome back to Focus on the Family. It's been a few years. It has, Jim.

Thanks for having me back. But it's good. You know, one thing I've noticed about financial experts is they usually come from brokenness. I mean, they experienced it. They had to dig themselves out of a hole. And I think you and your wife, Julie, were kind of like that, right? You had early difficulty in managing money.

Is that accurate? Yeah. I mean, you said earlier, this is an issue that couples deal with. We have different backgrounds. We have different personalities.

We're different as male and female, right? Bring those things together. So yeah, when I met Julie, I looked at her checkbook ledger and she didn't have anything subtracted. And I said, well, what's going on here?

She said, well, I know there's enough in there. So that was one issue that was an issue to start with was, hey, was she going to keep track of things? And then we began to realize that we had to figure out how we were going to work together on this financial issue and how we were going to make it a non-issue. And that's really the goal, Jim, is to make money a non-issue in your marriage. So it took us several months to figure out how we were going to use our money and agree together on how it was going to be spent and deployed. And it took a little while, but we, um, for 45 years now we've been on the same page on that.

So I'm grateful for that. You know, it's interesting that setup we just talked about when two people come together, they get married, you know, typically in your twenties, your thirties, um, hopefully sooner rather than later from our perspective of focus on the family. But it's a natural tendency to struggle in this area because you're coming from, you know, probably student jobs, you know, you're making maybe 15, 17 an hour nowadays, I don't know.

And, uh, things are pretty good. You know, you're making maybe two grand a month and you're going, wow, I could live off this easily. Then you get married and, you know, expenses mount up. And in that regard, uh, how would you speak to a young couple to say kind of the warning sign, I'm thinking of a highway sign that says beware low bridge ahead, you know, beware tight fiscal budget ahead.

Yeah. Jim, if I could say anything to a young couple is try to the best of your ability to live on one income and save that second income. Usually when you get married, you're both employed. If you can live on the one income and save the other, it'll just get you off on a good path. And this is all about path and direction. You know, direction determines destination. And so if I can start off and live on one income and say that other income, now I get ahead of the curve.

I don't have to use credit cards. I can begin to save for a down payment on a house. And so that's probably the number one thing for a young couple. And that means you have to do without, I mean, Julie and I, um, we couldn't afford a Christmas tree early on, so we just cut a limb out of a tree. And my brother came over and said, what is this?

Charlie Brown Christmas. Right. But we just, and we didn't have a dining room table for three years.

We would hold the sofa table in. And so you just, if you make it hard on yourself early, it'll get easier later. But if you start off, you know, just spending just two incomes, like you said, you're both making 30 grand, that's 60 grand and you're having a great time. Well then kids come along and some other things. It's like, okay, now what? And so start with one income and live on one income and save the rest.

You'll, you won't regret that. You know, what's so interesting about budgeting is, uh, I think in the book you may call it the B word budgeting, just the, the symptoms that are created from that meaning anxiety, frustration, maybe even some anger that can come out of that. As a couple, you start fighting over financial decisions.

So, um, again, how do you look at the symptoms and say, okay, if we do this correctly, it'll take away those things. Well, the interesting thing about a budget GM is just kind of like with our kids, they do better with discipline and knowing where the boundaries are. And so really there's freedom in control. Now my wife didn't like the B word. Okay. So we called it plan spending. You call whatever you want, but you have to figure out how to deal with, with your money and how you're going to spend it. Let's define budget for a minute, Jim, if we could. Most people think of budget as everything I would propose to you that you're giving your taxes and your minimum debt payments are not budgetable items because they're already determined for you. They're non discretionary.

Okay. Cause your taxes are going to be a function of your income. You and your wife, if you're married, are going to decide what your giving level is. And if you have minimum debt payments on credit cards and cars and things like that, that's already set for you. So all you really have to quote budget or plan around is what we call living expenses. So I would encourage people to start changing in their thinking that I'm dealing with my living expenses. And by the way, living expenses drive everything. In the book I have a formula and the living expenses enumerate or the formula and it tells you how much you have to make.

And the higher that number is, the more I have to make to live and give and pay my taxes. And so I would just say that the reason you're budgeting is to keep this lifestyle in some form of control so that you can begin to have some financial freedom. You notice the subtitle of the book is the key to financial freedom, not the key to financial success or financial independence. I can't tell you how to be successful and independent, but I can tell you how to be free.

You can be financially free if you spend less than you make and you do it for a long time. You say, well Russ, that's easy for you to say. Now I've been doing this 45 years and there's nothing new under the sun, right? That will give you freedom.

Yeah. You know, in that context, when you look at, you know, the spiritual connotation of all this, I had a business mentor years ago who helped me when I was working in business and that's how Jerry Lawson, terrific business mentor. He had a big insurance company and he and I just connected and he would call me and he would, he would mentor me. And one of the things he said to me is, you know, the early church had a lot of independent business people, Priscilla business women too, who were freed from the shackle, I guess, of having to make money. So they had vineyards, et cetera. And he said, and they were some of the most powerful evangelists of the early church because they were freed from kind of the day to day labor to go out and proclaim the gospel while their vineyards were taken care of and gardens and all those things, whatever they were in the agricultural sphere. But think about that, that I love to where you can manage money in such a way that you're not bound to something. So you can do more of the work of the gospel.

Isn't that a great goal? And see, I would say what I'm sharing is simple, but it's not easy to do. That's why this is not easy, but you have to have the courage to say, okay, if this is true, if spending less than I make is the key to financial freedom longterm, if that's the key to financial freedom longterm, then I'm going to have the courage to do that. And I'm going to do without early on, I'm going to live on one income and I'm going to get off on a good footing.

And you won't regret that. And I think that's, people say, you know, with the economy, you know, what about the economy and the market and all that? You know, if you fundamentally do these principles, spend less than you make, begin to get out of debt, be generous and diversify your investments, you can handle any economic environment, economies come and go. You know, I do want to get to a quote you have in the book because I think it kind of puts the bow on everything we've talked about so far. It says, you said the reason you have to deal with your money is not so you can have more money.

That would be a worldly perspective, but it's so that you can have more life. And again, that really is it. It's money is just a tool. It's not anything more than that.

Yeah. Jim, I wrote a book 31 years ago called your life will spend. And really what it shows is that we're trying to balance life and not to get in, get to the end of our life and have any regrets. And so money sits right in the middle of this diagram, what I call the life overview diagram. You manage your money, try to have balance in life and not get to any of your life and have regrets and invest in spiritual and social capital. So yeah, you, Julie and I have never budgeted quote or had a spending plan for our lifestyle to have more money.

We've done it so we have more freedom to live life and try to have balance. And balance is an elusive thing, but you can have it if you manage your money. Let's get into some specifics because I'm sure some couples are saying, yeah, but you're not trying to live on our income, which isn't enough. And that kind of comes down to the thing.

It's not enough. And I think you had a story about a couple in crisis. It was seeping into their marriage. They were arguing over their money, creating financial strain, all of those things. You advise them to make some cuts. And what would that look like for the other million people listening that might be in that space right now? Well, Jim, everybody thinks they don't have enough. A little bit more would be just what I need. It's the common.

And then I would be content. It's the common comment. So I learned this early on in my career, 40-some years ago. I was making $15,000 and I went to see a doctor in California. He was making 40 times what I was making. So if you can do the math, that's $600,000. But he was spending $700,000.

I know if you're listening to this, you're thinking, that's crazy. If I was making $600,000, I'd never spend $700,000. But I came home, walked in the apartment, told my wife.

I said, I learned a very important lesson on this trip, honey. Financial contentment has nothing to do with how much you make. It has everything to do with spending less than you make. And guess what, Jim? In 45 years, Philippians 4.19 is true. My God shall supply all your needs according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. I've never seen anybody not have enough to meet their needs. So God will have you have enough. Your income will be enough. Maybe not all your wants, but you will have your needs met. And so do you have the courage to live within that number that God's provided through your vocation?

And so I think the first thing people have to realize is, you know, I'm working hard at what God's called and equipped me to do. That generates X amount of income. Now it's up to me to figure out how I'm going to live within that income. Give me some specifics again to help the listeners, the viewers on YouTube, just to understand, like with that young couple, you see, you get the spreadsheets, you know, this is like an investigative CPA. So you follow the money. You're looking at their spending habits.

You can see it right there. What are some of those typical things that couples can trim and still live okay? Well, you know, it's, this is where everybody, you know, has to wrestle. We're all going to stand before God and make an account for what we've done, what he has given to us, and we all have different priorities, right? So for Julie and I, priorities were paying off dad and maybe not doing as much on the vacation front.

So the ones that are most optional are like vacation, gifts. Julie and I, those are the ones we really had to watch because we'd get out of control on gifts and things like that. Those are the things I was with a person the other day and he had a huge number there for his pets, you know, like four and a month for pets. Now I could judge that and say, that's a little bit too much for your pets.

And he had a pet walker and things like this. And so I think, Jim, the most important thing is that folks get all the numbers down. I would say two things about budgeting. Make sure you're realistic. And in the book on page 63, there's a page you just need to fill out. Be realistic about the numbers and don't leave anything out. Some people fool themselves. They leave out car repair.

They leave out auto repair. So the most important thing is to get all the right numbers down. And here's where, as if you're married, you need to work together to come up with realistic amounts. I think one of the things I've learned over the years, Jim, is that the reason people don't budget is they don't distinguish between monthly items and non-monthly. So what they do is they budget everything monthly and then they give up on their budgets in February because they budgeted 100 a month for vacation, 100 a month for kids' clothes.

And then the kids get sick. They want to take their wife away for Valentine's. And it just doesn't work because they think in 100 a month when they should be thinking 1,200 for the year for these categories. So I would just say that to make a budget work, you have to distinguish. And Julie and I have learned this as couples.

We've met with them. They said, oh, now I can make a budget work because I've taken out those seven or eight categories that are non-monthly, auto repair, home repair, vacation gifts. And so I would just encourage listeners to make a budget work.

And we talk about that in the book. You have to distinguish between monthly and non-monthly. Yeah, but in that regard, do you need to go a year before you can save up for that vacation and take it?

Is that the discipline? No, no. But what it does mean is you have to have no budget work without any cash in the bank. So I have to have a little bit of cash to start with because then if I budget at 1,200 for clothes for the year and I find a great sale and I want to spend 300 in January, I'm still on my budget right. I'll still have 900 left. But I have to be able to spend the 300.

I can't be waiting until the 100 comes in. If you start off and say, okay, I'm going to have a budget, not just to feel restricted, but I'm going to have a budget to make sure I'm spending less than I make. Let me say one of the mistakes people make is they start with their take-home income, Jim, rather than their gross, and that starts off a problem because all that stuff being withheld is your money. And so one of the places people, and I want to get into this because this is a real critical thing about this, is retirement. Well, I was going to ask you about that because you said sometimes you over save for retirement.

I'm going, what? Well, think about it. We're starting our family, you're starting your career and you're hurry to quit. So you're a young couple.

Think about that for a minute. And retirements didn't even start till 1933, the social security act. And now what we've done is we've told people, Hey, you need to get busy starting your career. You need to start your family and then you need to start saving for retirement so you can quit.

Jim is crazy. We need to extend our time horizon and get this retirement thing out of our thinking, especially as we're starting off, because that's a big stressor. Sometimes you can't afford to fund retirement. You say, well, you're a financial guy, Russ.

Yeah, I am. But the point is one of the biggest places people can cut, one of the first things we tell people is cut your funding back to maybe just the amount they're matching. And sometimes you can't even do the amount they're matching because you need it to buy kids braces. See, this is the other thing, husband and wife. Men are like, they got their retirement, honey. She's like, I need cash, right?

I need cash for the kids activities. So that's where you get some real friction. Julie and I met with so many couples. They'll come in, they'll have all this money in retirement and they have no money. And that's a huge problem. And so I would encourage people, I hope you can fund retirement and I hope you can fund it at least to the level if your company is matching you. But guess what? If you don't make sure you're spending less than you make, and some people don't know that. And so they're borrowing to fund retirement, Jim.

They don't know what they're borrowing to fund retirement. And so retirement is a huge stressor for couples because, and they bought the lie of the world that that's the goal of working is to retire. But work is good.

It's a gift from God. We're commanded to work. And so just extend your time horizon a little bit.

And I think that would help free up a lot of people. And you say, well, you're a financial guy. Don't you just talk about retirement? I want you to have life. There you go. All right, Gene, we're going to have dinner tonight. I'm not making that retirement payment. We're going to go out for a meal.

Just in the now. Well, this is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and Russ Crosson is our guest today. He's written a terrific book, Your Money Made Simple, The Key to Financial Freedom. Of course, we have that here at the ministry. Stop by our website.

The link is in the show notes. Russ, you mentioned in the book you believe not all investments are financial. That, of course, piqued my interest. But you said that you need to invest in your marriage and family over the years.

I'm not sure that everybody would connect those dots. So what does it mean to invest in your marriage and family? I mean, we've got ideas here at Focus on the Family.

What do you mean by it? Well, I put this under the category posterity investing, and posterior that generations come after you. So for example, when the kids were young, I invested in house help to help take off some of the stress of Julie around the holidays.

I found out that was a real good investment. And you could say, well, that's an expense. I think, Jim, if people could just add to their financial plan a line called posterity investing, it will change their whole paradigm, even though you think it's an expense. Maybe you pay for your kids to go to a marriage retreat or whatever it is.

I paid my kids to do scripture memory or do book reports. And so that was an investment in their spiritual growth. And so I just think the idea of posterity investing needs to be on our radar screen. Like we talked a little bit earlier, there's five things that you can do with your savings once you make sure you're spending less than you make. Retirement, personal investing, you can give more, you can pay off debt, and then you can do what's called posterity investing. I would just encourage listeners to not just default to retirement, not just default to putting more money in the bank, but when you have savings, when you have surplus, maybe some of it should be invested in your family, something, maybe a unique vacation. Come out and see Ventures and Odysseys, meet Whit out here.

Hey, that's a great idea. Well, my boys grew up on that, okay? So we'd make long trips back to Kansas where I grew up and we'd get in the car and listen to Adventures in Odyssey. In fact, as my youngest son said, Dad, that's how I learned the Bible.

I didn't learn it in my Christian school. I learned from Whit. Oh my goodness, that's great. You'd be surprised how many people write that to us. I mean, that is great.

It's a wonderful series. Yeah. Russ, there's another concept in here I was really struck by because in our culture, we're so image conscious. And you talked about limited spheres or something to that akin. Share what you were talking about there.

Yeah. You know, John, it's interesting. We live in a culture where it's all about what we drive and where we live. And so back to those trips I was just talking about, we'd get in the car and leave Atlanta and head back to Kansas to see the grandparents. And we had a tradition where we'd get off and drive on two-lane roads. I wanted the boys to see Americana.

So you'd be driving down these two-lane roads and we'd eat at the local cafes where they'd say, you aren't from around here when you walked in, right? And the menu was on a grease board. The boys said, we want to eat at McDonald's. We want to eat at Pizza Hut. You knew that when you have your kids. We're eating here.

Just listen to Vincent and Odyssey while we're driving and we'll be good. Yeah. But what happened, John, was I began to notice, come up to the outside of these small towns, there'd be a big house up on the hill. This is a guy that has financial capital. You know, white fence, 40 acres, Hereford cattle out front. He's the doctor.

He's the dentist. He's the business owner in town. Houses are still nice. They get smaller as you go through town. Then you go across the railroad tracks and they're a bunch of double-wide trailers. Fifty miles down the road, the same scenario would play out. Big house, a guy that has financial capital, probably pretty impressed with himself. And then it dawned on me.

The guy in the one town doesn't know the guy in the next town. So if you make it your goal to amass money, you'll always and only impress a limited sphere of people. I mean, how many people know where you live and what you drive? I hate to tell you, not very many, but this helps me keep perspective. This idea of, I'm not going to make it my goal just to have more and bigger to impress people.

I'm going to try to use my money to invest in posterity, invest in what God's doing around the world and impact on a limited sphere of people. Yeah. One of my kids went through a season where it's a really expensive watch that he wants to wear and it's sort of like, well, who are you trying to impress? That's kind of the bottom line. Yeah.

How many people see that? And see, I would say back to what you started, Jim, with the young couples, it's easy to drive around and get discontent. You see big houses, you see stuff, but if you stop to think, wait a minute, who really cares where I live? Why would I get my financial house out of order and get out of balance to impress a limited number of people? This helps me even today, 45 years in, I can drive around North Atlanta and see these really nice places. Julie and I live in a 65-year-old ranch house, you know, one story, it's been around for a long time. I like it though, it's small, it has little closets, you can't accumulate a bunch of stuff. But the principle of limited sphere helps me keep perspective. Manage my money, don't try to keep up with everybody and impress a few people.

That's fun. Russ, let me ask you, because it's, you know, I have extended family members who struggle financially, and it's a reality. One in particular is a single parent mom with four kids, and it's, she's a waitress. And you know, this is the reality for millions of people, you know, they're not making a great deal of money. And even that idea to put aside money for a car is out of reach. So when you look at the single parent, for example, whether that's a mom or dad, there's more dads now today that are single parents.

How did they manage some of those difficulties on a single income? It may not be enough, like I said, a waitress, they feel so underwater that there's no oxygen. Well, you know, we start where we are, and we have the courage to start climbing out where I am. And that's where, you know, hopefully, people around them are noticing these things. Hopefully the church can help. Yeah, that's what I would say. But your job is to the best of your ability, because like I said, Philippians 4.19 is true.

My gospel is probably all your needs. And so it might be an unexpected check or whatever, but your job, first of all, is to, all right, I'm going to quit doing the Starbucks coffee, or I'm going to do whatever to do the best of my ability to live within my income, whatever that income is. And then trust God to meet my needs, because he will, Jim.

I mean, you've seen it, I've seen it. And that's what I would say. And I would just say to listeners, start where you are and have the courage to do it the opposite of most of the people around you, because most people are just like, hey, you know, this will all work itself out. No, spend less than you make, do it for a long time. And also do get engaged with the church. I mean, this is what the body of Christ should be about. I'm thinking particularly for that single parent mom who needs help. I mean, she just needs help.

Julie and I were fortunate to come across a couple who had like seven kids, and they really needed reliable transportation. And so God put on our heart to step in and help with that. And so there's people like that, as long as you're in a body, and as long as you're doing your part.

Yeah. That kind of leads, Russ, to something that you and Julie have learned. I mean, you mentioned being generous in how it hasn't been, where you've had a lot of resources. So for those who are maybe at a point of being okay, and it's not a struggle, how can we look around and meet needs in a way that honors God? Well, Julie and I implement a program called a God Pocket. This is money that we've given away. We're just waiting for the Holy Spirit to tell us who and where to give it.

I like that, the God Pocket. But Jim, I've got some in my pocket here, but he's not telling me to give it to you today, okay? So it's okay.

That's all right. But I think once you have surplus, remember I said there's five things you can do with it. You can put it in retirement, put it in personal investing, pay off debt, invest in your family, and giving is the fifth thing. So you could increase your giving. And I would just encourage people.

What I've observed is that most people have never stopped to say, why am I not being more generous when it's within my ability to do so? And so just here again, don't just default to building a bigger pile. In addition to financial capital, we have other kinds of capital as well, right? I think you touched on that. Yeah, you've got your time and your talent, your treasure, your dispensing truth. That's another one of the capitals that we're responsible to steward well.

And so I just think that it's important. What I've seen is people just, they haven't stopped to think, why am I still accumulating? And when you get to a certain level, you probably don't need to keep accumulating.

The pile's big enough. And we go to Psalm 78, 5 to 70, commanded our fathers to teach them to their children that the generations to come might know they would teach those yet to be born to put their confidence in God, not forget the works of God, but keep his commands. What happens is when we get blessed, we put our confidence in the pile and we don't put it in God. And our kids and grandkids need to see us continue to walk in faith.

And so one of the ways we show that faith is we maximize our generosity. Yeah. Right at the end here, you know, I'm thinking, I am not a grandparent. Are you a grandparent? Not yet. Not yet.

Nothing I know of. You are a grandparent. I am. So when you're looking at being a grandparent, I mean, I think there's two types of grandparents in the Christian sphere. You know, very generous. These are things we could do, help with braces, help with college, with our grandkids, those kinds of things. Then there's the other grandparent, which is I raised myself from my bootstraps and that's how I learned to be the man or woman I am today.

And my grandkids need to do it the same way. And that may be true, may be valid. How do you balance between those two, not extremes, but those two perspectives?

Jim, you just used the right word and that's balance because I've heard both of those. I bet you have. And I can just tell you from personal experience, it's fun to be able to bless your kids if you can and your grandkids, but the principle is you don't ever let them depend on it. Don't overdo it. Don't overdo it. And the tax laws kind of go against you there because they can tell you you can do certain things.

I would say no. When it comes to blessing your family, just mix it up. They never know when it's coming. They never know what the amount's going to be.

So they can't depend on it because they have to go work then and build their lifestyle around what they're doing and not think they're going to get something from you. And I think an example of that, Jean's mom and dad as parents helped us with the down payment and that was really a great foothold for us to get our first house and get moving in that direction. And it was all governed by the tax code, what they could give tax free. But what a great benefit for us and we're grateful to them for that. Russ, this has been so good. And what a great quick read.

And again, the flip chart that we talked about off air. I mean, this book is really a flip chart of how to get involved, how to, very practical diagrams on how to get going and how to lay your expenses out. And again, no matter what your income is, how to manage what God has given you and then plan for the future. Your money made simple. The best way to do it, if you can make a gift to focus of any amount monthly or a one-time gift, we'll send it to you. $5, $10, that's okay. But we'll send you the book as our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry.

Those dollars in our economy, in our budget, go right back to saving babies lives, saving marriages, helping parents to be better parents and so much more foster care. I think it's the best investment in ministry. So get ahold of us, get a copy of your book by making a donation today.

Yeah. Contribute online. We've got the link in the show notes or call 1-800, the letter A and the word family. Now coming up tomorrow, Dr. Randy Schrader explores some great new habits for your parenting. Desire to be a parent is great. Motivation is great.

But what really makes the difference is knowing how to build a strong parent-child relationship. Thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. If the fights with your spouse have become unbearable, if you feel like you can't take it anymore, there's still hope. Hope restored marriage intensives have helped thousands of couples like yours. Our biblically based counseling will help you find the root of your problems and face them together. Call us at 1-866-875-2915. We'll talk with you, pray with you and help you find out which program will work best. That's 1-866-875-2915.