00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on Episode 5 10 of the inspired Stewardship Podcast. I'm Mark a Ho, author of Building wealth and Living in Faith. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures toe live out your calling. Having the right relationship between faith and money is key to doing that. And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this. The inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott made her so you can look at things now as you're getting ready for January and begin setting those intentions and begin that process of growing your income and cutting your expenses to get where you wanna be in 2020.
00:01:10 That's one of the reasons I've been talking about planning and reflecting this ties into your finances as well. Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship Podcast will learn to invest in yourself,
00:01:35 invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world. In today's episode about developing your influence through stewarding your treasures,
00:01:52 I talk with you about why now is a great time to save money for Christmas next year. Howto look at things now that will save you money next year and why this is important as we talk about stewarding your treasures.
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00:02:26 and a small commission will come back to support the show. If you enjoy the show when you're ready to buy from Amazon,
00:02:33 just use inspired stewardship dot com slash amazon. So right before Christmas, if you were like me, you started noticing in the at the end of November and early December,
00:02:45 post after post and podcast after podcast and message after message about saving money for Christmas ways, you could save money for Christmas.
00:02:55 The interesting thing is that often times. When you start seeing those, your decisions and your actions have already been taken for months and months ahead of time.
00:03:07 That got you to the point where you are now when it comes to the money you do or don't have for Christmas.
00:03:14 And now here a few days after Christmas, you're looking at what you did for Christmas, and you're probably starting to think about trying to deal with the mess.
00:03:23 And what's interesting is right now is a great time to begin thinking about Christmas for next year and beginning to think about how you would save money for that next year to create a Christmas budget now for next year's Christmas and take the next 12 months so that each month you put a little bit of money back and then when December comes around,
00:03:48 if you did $100 a month, you'd have $1200 in December to spend on Christmas without worrying about it.
00:03:57 If your budget is bigger than that, then maybe you need to put back more than $100 a month.
00:04:01 If your budget is smaller than that, then you can afford to put back a little less. The truth is,
00:04:08 making that decision right now can really begin to make a huge difference. A year from now, you can begin to make your plan and setting that intention.
00:04:23 Having that plan making that decision is actually incredibly powerful because the interesting thing is that plans probably not gonna work perfectly.
00:04:33 It's not gonna work exactly the way you set it down today, but just by having a plan, you're much more likely to be in good shape a year from now.
00:04:43 This is one of the reasons that budgeting and setting those attentions is so powerful is because that actually helps you execute.
00:04:52 Yeah, there's some other things, too. There's some practical things you can do. So, for instance,
00:04:56 right now is a really great time to buy wrapping paper. It's a really great time to buy artificial Christmas tree.
00:05:04 It's a really great time to buy Ah, lot of different things because there's a lot of year in sales where people are trying to clear out the things that they didn't sell as a retailer right before Christmas because they wanted off their shelves before inventory time comes around in January.
00:05:25 So look for those deals, But don't just buy him and say, Oh, I'm saving money because it's on sale.
00:05:32 Buy them if you actually have the money saved up to buy them because see, that's the interesting thing.
00:05:41 If you buy something for $700 that's normally $1000. You didn't save $300 you spent 700. So the truth is,
00:05:52 you still have tohave the money to spend it. You know, there's other things you can look at what I talked about setting aside money for your Christmas fund.
00:06:01 Your first thought may have been, Hey, I can't set aside that money because my budget, barely balance is is it is.
00:06:07 Well, then you need to look at what you're doing with the money you make and you need to.
00:06:11 That's cutting expenses, and you need to look also at the money you make. That's thinking about what can I do in this coming year to increase my income?
00:06:20 You know, as a coach, that's one of the things I work with on people is recognizing the fact that there's two sides to this equation and both sides are important so you can look at things now as you're getting ready for January and begin setting those intentions and begin that process of growing your income and cutting your expenses to get where you want to be in 2020.
00:06:45 That's one of the reasons I've been talking about planning and reflecting this ties into your finances as well. This is so important because the truth is,
00:06:58 if you don't take the time to begin looking at what's going on in your life to make choices to take control.
00:07:08 If you keep doing what you've been doing, you'll keep getting what you've been getting. And if that's good,
00:07:14 then wonderful. What can you do to make it even better? But if that's not getting you where you want to go,
00:07:21 then it's time to take a step back. It's timeto work with a coach. It's timeto work on yourself.
00:07:27 It's time to read a book. It's time to expand your mind in some way and look at the world differently.
00:07:34 Stop doing exactly what you've been doing and expect to get different results. Instead, look deep and think about what do I need to change?
00:07:43 What do I need to break free from? To make 2020 The best year of my life instead of just one more year that I've survived.
00:07:56 Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener,
00:08:08 we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen. But act on what you've heard and find a way toe.
00:08:16 Live your calling. If you like this episode on the stewardship of treasures, you can sign up for our treasures tips by going to inspired stewardship dot com slash treasures or text in the U.
00:08:34 S. 44222 Treasures tips and we'll send you five weeks of our best tips on stewarding your treasures until next time investor time,
00:08:48 your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact world.