00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 605 of the inspired stewardship podcast. I'm Jennifer Lozado, author of inheriting chaos with compassion. I encourage you to find the ways to be loving with your family both before and after you pass. And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Mader.. Why is this important to me? Why do I want more money? What is the emotion that it's going to get me? And then here's what's funny.
00:00:44 Usually then when you identify that, you can begin to identify ways that you can get at least some of that emotion right now. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcasts. 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 and the inspired stewardship podcast, who will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can impact the world and today's episode about investing in others through stewarding your treasures.
00:01:32 I talk with you about why money isn't good or bad, how money can be a force multiplier and how to make sure you use the tool of money in alignment with your actual values. As we talk about stewarding your treasures, wouldn't it be great if you could support this podcast and do it without costing yourself an extra dime? It turns out you can. All you have to do is use inspired stewardship.com/amazon when you're ready to make a purchase via Amazon and a small commission, we'll come back to support the show.
00:02:09 If you enjoy the show when you're ready to buy from Amazon, just use inspired stewardship.com/amazon money. You know, it's one of those those things that you really cannot escape, at least in the modern society from having some sort of relationship with money. We need it to pay rent. We needed to buy food. We needed to take care of our family. We needed to pay for our mortgage. We needed to buy a car. We need it to whatever. There's an endless list of things that you need money for,
00:02:44 but the truth is money is not good. Money is not bad. Money is neither here nor there.
00:02:51 It's really a value neutral thing. It's not the money that has value. It's what that money gets you.
00:02:59 It's what you do with the money. It's how you use the money. Money is simply a tool that we use,
00:03:08 but instead we often have a relationship with money where we think of money as the goal. We think all I need is more money and all of my problems would go away.
00:03:20 If I simply had enough money, everything would be better. Everything would be taken care of. All of my worries would be gone.
00:03:30 All of my problems would be gone. Everything in my life would suddenly be perfect, and the truth is that's not true.
00:03:41 You know, money isn't the goal. What you get with money has to be the goal. The deeper why,
00:03:50 the deeper reason. Here's an exercise for you. Sit down with a blank piece of paper and at the top right $1 million.
00:04:00 Imagine on Monday of this week, someone handed you a million dollars and said, you have to spend this million dollars by the end of the week,
00:04:11 make a list of all the things you would buy with the million dollars, all the things you would do with the million dollars.
00:04:16 What? What things would you fund? What experiences would you go on? What would you invest in?
00:04:22 What would you save for? What would you spend on? And then imagine that next week it happens again.
00:04:31 And then again, and then again, and then again and again and again and again. At some point,
00:04:39 what you will notice is the things that you're writing down begin to shift from objects to things that you really care about,
00:04:50 that you really value. You'll start thinking about starting a foundation that give scholarships to kids who need college but can't afford it.
00:05:02 You'll think about giving money to a charity that you really care about. You'll think about growing a business or a legacy that you can leave behind to your children that will truly change your family tree.
00:05:18 Trust me. At some point you run out of stuff and begin to pay attention to the things behind the stuff.
00:05:28 Money isn't good or bad, but it is a tool that we use. Now, the truth is you may think to yourself,
00:05:36 well that's all well and good, but if I just had more money than I would be able to think this way much easier.
00:05:43 You know, it's having more money that allows people to focus on money as a tool. And maybe there's some truth to that.
00:05:51 I mean, obviously if you're barely scraping by and right now it's hard for you to scrape enough money together to pay for food.
00:06:02 Your focus on money is very focused on survival. But I'm talking about moving beyond that and to moving to your relationship with money so that you can not just survive but thrive.
00:06:16 How you can find the things that really matter to you and then use money to begin to move towards those things.
00:06:25 Taking small steps along the path, making changes that begin to move you towards milestones that are really the big rocks that you want to take care of.
00:06:37 And you can do this. It's possible. I've seen it happen time after time after time. You know what's interesting is I've coached a variety of clients over the years.
00:06:47 I've coached a single mom who had a child at home and made $35,000 a year who managed to pay off some student loans and get out of debt,
00:06:58 fund their own education, grow their self, and eventually be making an income closer to 60 or $70,000 a year taking care of the things that they needed for their own family,
00:07:12 funding their child's college fund, funding their own retirement and living comfortably, even though they made not a huge amount of money throughout that entire time,
00:07:26 and what was important is she was focused so much on making sure that she set things up so that her child would be taken care of,
00:07:34 her child would be safe and secure. That was what was important to her. I've had another client who made $250,000 on average every month,
00:07:46 not a year. Every month he ran multiple businesses. He had multiple streams of income. Some months.
00:07:52 He literally could take home half a million dollars or more. Other months, it was much less than that and he would struggle by bringing home 150,000 or a hundred thousand yeah.
00:08:05 The truth is with that kind of money, what was the decision making for him? You know, from a money standpoint,
00:08:13 he was making decisions about whether or not to buy a private plane. Yeah. Or whether it was better to fly first class everywhere he went.
00:08:25 You laugh, and that's so foreign to so many of us, but the truth is when he stepped back and begin to identify what was really important to him,
00:08:35 he did do the things that I was talking about. He set up some foundations for charities that he really cared about,
00:08:41 not because anyone told him to, but because he recognized that that was more important to him than owning a private plane.
00:08:51 The private plane was a convenience, not a necessity, but it couldn't have been that way if he didn't step back and identify what was important to him.
00:09:03 See, the truth is the amount of money you have is a force multiplier. If you're trying to do good in the world and you have a lot of money and your focus is on that priority and the thing that's really important to you that's behind the scenes.
00:09:18 If you have a lot of money, it will allow you to put a lot of force or effort towards that thing that's important to you because it multiplies that force it,
00:09:29 it brings more time, more energy. It allows you to hire other people to do things. It allows you to put more energy in that direction.
00:09:40 If you have less money, it may take a little longer. It's also why it's important that you focus on both sides of the equation.
00:09:48 You don't just look at cuttings spending. You also look at what you're spending on and how can you increase your income.
00:09:55 You create priorities for yourself, spending priorities that allow you to put your money in alignment with your deeper values.
00:10:06 But to do that, you have to actually define what matters. You have to think to yourself, why is this important to me?
00:10:15 Why do I want more money? What is the emotion that it's going to get me? And then here's what's funny.
00:10:23 Usually. Then when you identify that, you can begin to identify ways that you can get at least some of that emotion right now.
00:10:33 Before you quote, make more before you save more, before you cut all your expenses instead of struggling through and looking at it as something that's good or bad,
00:10:47 something that you have to fight against or even a goal that you have in mind, you begin to have a relationship with money where you see it is not the end,
00:10:59 but rather the means to the end and you have an end that's more important to you so that you drive forward towards it.
00:11:09 Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast. As a subscriber and listener,
00:11:21 we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling.
00:11:32 If you liked this episode on the stewardship of treasures, you can sign up for our treasures tips by going to inspired stewardship.com/treasures or text in the U S four four two two two treasures tips,
00:11:53 and we'll send you five weeks of our best tips on stewarding your treasures. Until next time, invest your time,
00:12:01 your talent, and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.