00:00:00 Thanks for joining me on episode 660 of the inspired stewardship podcast. Hey, I'm Matt ham, author of redefined rich, and I challenge you to live richly by listening to the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott Mader. Part of it is deciding what is it that's most important to you so that you develop the target and hit what you're aiming for?
00:00:31 Because all too often, what happens instead is we don't prepare for the future and design our own future. We just arrive in the future, surprised at what is there waiting for us. 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,
00:00:56 your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll 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 yourself through stewarding your treasures. I talk with you about preparing financially for the future, why it often takes a disaster to make us realize we need to do this and why the right time to begin is always right now,
00:01:35 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. If you enjoy the show,
00:01:59 when you're ready to buy from Amazon, just use inspired stewardship.com/amazon as a financial coach. One of the things that I often end up talking to people about is preparing financially for the future. And the interesting thing is, is right now with everything that's going on in the world and COVID, and all of this, there's sort of this increased attention to the idea of the fact that we can't predict the future that unexpected and unplanned events happen.
00:02:32 Sometimes those events are ones that are directly applied to our lives. Sometimes they're global events, sometimes they're local or national, whether it's a huge storm that comes through or a hurricane or a pandemic, we have things that come into our lives from outside that are going to affect us. And one of those effects often comes about, and this played out in your finances and your money.
00:02:59 And so one of the things that I talk to people about is preparing financially for the future. Eh, this is it's simple. Sometimes it's just having some money in the bank, having an emergency fund, having an amount of money set aside. That's there just to provide for financial emergencies. It's sometimes about insurance. Now. I don't sell insurance and I don't recommend particular products or anything like that,
00:03:26 but I can help educate people about what kinds of insurances are out there and help put them in touch with people who do provide the right products that can help you, whether that's health, insurance, life insurance, all of these products are designed for us to transfer risk from ourselves to accompany to somebody else, and they can be beneficial as tools. It sometimes is about a state planning.
00:03:52 We often think about estate planning as something that only rich people should do, but the truth is all of us need to think about what's going to happen to our assets and what's going to happen to our loved ones upon our passing and prepare for that through some good planning. And again, that's something I don't sell and I don't make recommendations, but I can put people in touch with it and I can help educate people on why that's important.
00:04:18 All of these are aspects of preparing financially for the future. And there's lots more to it. It can be about sometimes those things that we do just taking care of, making sure that the money that we have coming in is being used for the things that are most important to us that are they're being used correctly. And well, not just spent on the latest and greatest gadget or tool or fun thing that we're doing.
00:04:48 It can be about preparing to buy an asset, whether that's a piece of property or something else, it can be about whether or not you choose to live with debt or not. It could be about whether or not you use cash or credit. All of these are financial Decisions that have an impact on our future. The interesting thing is oftentimes the thing that has to happen to cause us to pay attention to that is some sort of disaster.
00:05:19 Something bad has to happen. It could be a global bad event. Again, like the local pandemic, the thing that's happening right now, globally, the COVID-19, or it could be something like a personal event, the death of someone who's close to you or having a loss of a job. Oftentimes it takes some sort of trauma to make us realize that we haven't laid our financial future and done a good job of preparing for that future,
00:05:50 which no real reason why it should take a disaster more or less. The things that I was just talking about are things that everyone sort of knows are the right things to do, but we don't do them. We don't pay attention to them. We don't think about making sure that we've taken care of it. Not because we're bad people, but because we're busy,
00:06:09 life is happening. And so part of my job sometimes as a coach is to slow people down so that they can go fast. So they can really think about what is it that they need to do to prepare for the future, who do they need to take care of? What are the steps that they need to go through to make sure that they can move from point a to point B in the most effective way possible?
00:06:33 And the interesting thing is, is everyone's point a is different cause where we start is different from everyone else. And even everyone's point B often has differences too, because how you define success and what your targets are to be financially prepared for the future, depends a lot on what you want to have in the future. And the last thing that I wanted to talk about with this is the other thing that I see happen a lot is people think I am fill in the blank age.
00:07:02 I'm either too young or too old to worry about this. I'm too young to worry about planning for retirement because you know, I've got years to work on that, or I'm too old to change my ways. You can't teach a old dog new tricks. And both of those are limiting beliefs, their complete and utter bunk. It it's just like the old adage about planting a tree.
00:07:26 What is the best time to plant the tree 20 years ago? When's the second best time right now? The same thing happens when it comes to preparing financially for the future. I don't care what you're going through right now. The best time to start working on it is right now. If you're having the best year ever financially, it's a great time to get started.
00:07:48 If you're having the worst year ever financially, it's a great time to get started. If you're struggling right now, it's a great time. If you're thriving right now, it's still a great time because there are always more things that you can do. Part of it is deciding what is it that's most important to you so that you develop the target and hit what you're aiming for?
00:08:12 Because all too often, what happens instead is we don't prepare for the future and design our own future. We just arrive in the future, surprised at what is there waiting for us. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast. As a subscriber and listener, 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.
00:08:48 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. And we'll send you five weeks of our best tips on stewarding your treasures until next time, invest your time, your talent and your treasures, develop your influence and impact the world.