Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My name is Joshua. I'm your host. Today is Friday. That means we have a live Friday Q&A show.

The way these shows work, just like call and talk radio, you can call in and talk to Dave Ramsey or you can call in and talk to me. Call in and talk to Dave Ramsey, you get about a minute and a half and you get through tens of thousands of callers or you can talk to me, in which case sometimes I've been known to give people 45 minutes worth of show.

So I hope you'll join me next week. If you'd like to join me for next week's Q&A call, sign up to support the show on Patreon. Go to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance, patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance and you will find me there. We begin with Hap in California. Hap, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today, sir?

Hap Ramsey, CFO Alphabet and Google: Hey, good to talk to you, Joshua. Personally, I'm glad to be talking to you and not to Dave Ramsey. I will try to not take 45 minutes of your time. I'll just try to keep it short. Well, two quick things. The first thing is just to share I'm a little bit elated right now because I wasn't even planning this, but I just had a conversation with my boss this morning where I asked him for a raise and got it and I'm just really happy about that.

And I wanted to share because I feel like the path to developing myself and increasing my confidence and all that to be able to be in this place is a lot of it, not all of it, but a lot of it I kind of credit to listening to you on this show, honestly.

So I just wanted to say I really appreciate you for that. Thank you. Thank you. Tell us how you did it. What were some of the steps that you've been taking at work, some of the things that you've been doing in your personal life, and when did you come to the point of being willing to ask for a raise?

Well, a big piece of it is I have a really, really good relationship with my boss, which I mean, he's a really good guy and I know I'm outside of work too and have him. So the decision to leave my old job to work for him actually came at the beginning with a decrease in pay, sort of more of a startup situation.

But just being young and having the confidence and I guess the vision to see the longer term potential upside was kind of a risk to take at the beginning, but now it's sort of paying off. And he's just really encouraged me to do a really intentional job of evaluating myself consistently actually in terms of the dollar amount that I bring to the company.

And he's always had a pretty good rule of just giving me as a rule of thumb of if you can provide 3x of whatever you that number is divided by three and that's always something that you can be confident and feeling deserving of in terms of being an employee.

So that's just been my mindset for the past, ever since I've had this job really. And so he's been open about giving me the space to pursue these types of conversations and book time with him to chat through those things and he's been open with me. But it's still scary to ask the question and I'm still growing through that.

But yeah, does that sort of give you a bit of a margin? Yeah, it does. And what I'll just affirm to you and to every other listener is simply this. The most difficult thing that a business owner, a boss, an employer generally has to do is to find high quality employees.

It's very difficult. Employees spend, employers spend a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of effort to find high quality employees. It's very difficult. Even something simple, right? And I'd encourage you if you've never hired somebody, try to figure out how to hire somebody. If you need to hire a housekeeper, hire somebody simple in your life and you start to see things from the other side.

It's very difficult for an employer to find really high quality employees. And it's also very risky for an employer to find very high quality employees because there's a process, kind of the courting process so to speak, when you're trying to attract an employee to your firm. Yes, you're going to need to know them but you have to sort through, you have to advertise for the job or get the word out in some way, start to collect resumes and applications.

You have to interview lots of people and there's a good chance that people in that interview process are, some are probably telling you flat out lies. Everybody is selling themselves to the best, the very best way possible. They're trying to make themselves seem like the best fit. And so there's a good chance that you might get it wrong and it's very hard for companies to get it wrong.

There's a lot of time and expense associated. And I mean just look at the amount of money that a company will pay to a recruiter. I can't remember the exact percentages off the top of my head but I would guess it's at least 50% of the first year salary, depending on the industry, depending on the job.

But if someone's going to hire somebody, they'll pay a recruiter a significant sum of money. Let me not put percentages out that I don't actually know. A significant sum of money and I wouldn't be surprised to hear a recruiter say, "Yeah, I get 50%," some more of the first year salary is a finder's fee.

So just imagine that if your boss is going to pay you X number of thousands of dollars, they're also going to pay someone else X numbers of thousands, tens of thousands of dollars to get somebody. And so it's difficult to find good employees. It's difficult. It's risky and it's difficult.

Now when a company has an employee, they're dealing with a known quantity, a known entity. They can understand who this person is. They know how you work. They know what you're capable of and what you're not capable of. They understand who you are. They know if you get along.

They know if you have personal problems. They know if you don't have personal problems. They know who you are. So in that situation, if you are an asset to the company, if you are a good fit for the company, if all of those things are true, that you're productive, that you're a hard worker, etc., it is very much within the company's best interest to keep you.

And a slight marginal change in your salary going from $20 an hour to $23 an hour or going from $92,000 per year to $107,000 per year. In the grand scheme of things, that's a very small cost for the company compared to the cost of replacing you. And this is why employees who are high-performing employees, who are valuable assets to the company, in many cases have the upper hand.

Now there is a reality that you have to identify the market. You have to understand, am I easily replaced? And this is why it's so important to have valuable, unique skills. If your job is simply saying, "Hi, welcome to Walmart," standing at the door, there's a certain value to somebody who knows the Walmart culture that gets along to the manager of that store.

But they can fairly easily find other people who are capable and competent of saying, "Hi, welcome to Walmart." On the other hand, if you have unique skills, you have unique insight, you have unique industry experience, you have unique relationships with the clients, a company does not want to lose you.

And they're going to be often willing to increase your salary in a commensurate way to your contributions. So step one is make sure that you are developing yourself, that you're a good worker, that you work hard, that you're diligent, first in, last out, all of those things that we all know from the simple things of keeping a desk clear and being kind and dressing well.

None of those things are out of fashion, but they need to be buttressed by being at the top of your heap with the technical skills and you're current on the latest trends that affect your industry and you're filled with creative ideas and you're good at communicating those ideas and selling yourself.

So do all that stuff. And then as you're doing that, make it a regular habit to continually ask for more compensation. And if somebody is productive, that question, that request, the worst that can happen is no. I mean, I can't imagine a situation in which a valuable, useful employee gets in any worse situation because they ask for more money.

There's just no downside to asking for more money. Now maybe if someone's just a total loser and a jerk, then I don't know, maybe there's some terrible boss out there, the guy comes and says, "Hey, give me more money." And he says, "No, I ain't giving you more money." And what's more, you're fired.

But if you're a good employee, there's no downside. The only thing that the person can say is no. And the nice thing is this, even if they say no or even if they say no for now, by asking for more money, you are affecting your reputation in the eyes of your boss.

You're telling your boss, "This guy is not someone to be complacent. This guy is looking for more money." And your boss will think, "Maybe I should pay him more money." And sometimes they'll come a week later and say, "You know what? I'll pay you more money. You asked a week ago.

I didn't realize that I was underpaying you, but I realize now that I am underpaying you and I'm going to pay you more money." Sometimes you'll ask again six months later and they say, "Yes, I'll pay you more money," because they were primed for it because you asked them six months before.

Sometimes it'll just make them realize, "You know what? This guy is going someplace." Because if you're doing all those things at your job, if you're genuinely productive, if you're genuinely leading your industry, if you're genuinely developing yourself and contributing and looking to increase your contribution, you are a valuable commodity in the marketplace.

And your boss is going to know, "Hey, this guy is aggressive enough to continually and regularly ask me for a higher income." That probably also means that he's aggressive enough to be looking around the industry. He's aggressive enough to be looking for other opportunities. So I'd better make sure that I'm paying him what he's worth or that I'm somehow helping him with a total compensation package where the total benefits are going to be his best offer because your employer is competing against every other employer around you and they know that.

And so it's very much within their interest, if they can, to make marginal increases in your pay to make sure, "Yeah, I'll give you a little bit." And even if it's a small raise, those little raises add up significantly. And so very, very important that you continue to do this, especially—well, I was going to say especially in your early career.

It's true because the compounding power of those little jumps and then big jumps in the early part of your career make a big, big difference over the long term. So I wanted just to take a minute to talk about it from your employer's position that you have to understand that if you're a good and valuable employee, then it's within their interest almost every time to increase your pay as much as they can.

There may be situations where they just can't justify it. They can't justify it to their board of directors. They can't justify it to their bank account, in which case then you can ask for something else. You can say, "Hey, could you give me this other thing? You can't increase my salary, but could you allow me this other thing that I'm looking for?" And a lot of times they can do that as well.

So there's no downside. If you're a good employee, there's no downside to doing what you've done and there's a lot of upside given that you just got a pay raise. So congratulations. Go ahead with your question, Hap. Hap Lebowitz Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for saying that. I wonder if it's, how do you rewind when it's live?

I want to listen to that again. Paul Abrams It'll be, the show will be published about an hour after we record, so just check your podcast feed and you'll be able to hear it. Hap Lebowitz Cool. Okay. I'm going to be famous. This is great. My real question, so I'm not super familiar with this and I'm sure you're probably familiar with California, but just whatever you can riff on from what you know, an investment property versus a secondary residence or vacation home.

My wife and I are highly considering/probably either way moving forward with taking a small, small cabin off the hands of people we're connected to. They used it as a vacation home, family stuff, but it kind of bled over into letting friends use it and that ended up for them setting up a website, having a reservation kind of system and they were connected in the church, were connected to the same church.

We're interested in having other people use it and using it as a ministry opportunity and just something that everyone can enjoy alongside us. But, and we're also interested in having that make sense for everyone considering we'll have to do a bit more management and go clean it and stuff like that.

But I've been warned about the trouble you can get into if somebody mistakenly thinks that your vacation home is actually functioning as an investment property or a short term rental type thing. So I'm just curious on your, if you have any experience with that or if you can maybe elaborate on some of the guidelines to make sure that we're just using it in the correct way and following all the rules.

Will your, will, so let's assume that you used it as you imagined using it. Will the financial income be significant? What would you guess? How much would you guess it would actually be? So we actually talked to the owners about this and they weren't really trying, right, from a business perspective or from a management, they didn't market it, they didn't whatever, but they just kind of took word of mouth referrals and they didn't put it on Airbnb or anything.

Nothing like that. They only rented it to people they knew really well or had recommendations from people they knew really well. And they, it ended up, they said on average about 80 nights a year. So it's really not a lot. And I think on average that would end up covering like their mortgage.

They encouraged us that we could be much more aggressive, double the price, you know, hype it up a little bit more and we could probably get so much more out of it. But that's the point at which I'm like, well, I don't want to, if that's not what we're supposed to be doing with it.

But I imagine there's not even a really a goal to get more than, you know, half or a little more of the mortgage paid for each month at most. Well, from a financial perspective, it is, there's no question that from a financial perspective it's in your interest to use it as an investment property.

If it's desirable property, if you could make money on it and if that would fit your lifestyle, then there's no question that it's better just to use it from an investment property. I can't think of any argument as to why you wouldn't except for the hassle of managing it, the hassle of having someone clean it, the hassle of negotiating, going back and forth with people on Airbnb or whatever platform you wind up using.

And so if you're willing to deal with those hassles, then I think the investment property is certainly the way to go. Let's talk about the difference. The difference I think just simply comes down to what's deductible and what's not and also possibly when you go to sell a property.

So if you have a second home, that you use a second home, number one, there are some rules on it that you need to live in the house for part of the year and that you can't rent it out. I think it's more than 180 days a year. You can't rent it out more than 180 days a year.

And so if that's the case though, then you will be able to, you'll qualify. You can deduct your mortgage, you can deduct your property taxes, but you're not going to be able to deduct a lot of your expenses if it's just simply a second home. Now one nice thing is that there is a de minimis limit that is available on any property that you own where if you rent the property out for 14 days or fewer in the year, then you can take that income.

It's not taxable income. It's totally tax-free income. You're not going to take any deductions associated with the income, but it's totally tax-free. And so this is always a nice wrinkle. If somebody lives in a very desirable place, maybe you live in a place where the masters come through and for two weeks you can rent out your house and you can rent it out for $8,000 a week and rent out your nice big fancy house for $16,000 when the masters is in town or some local event, maybe the Kentucky Derby or that kind of thing.

So if you have, if there's some kind of seasonal scenario, any homeowner can rent their house out privately for 14 days or fewer and that's tax-free income. And so that can be worth paying attention to. However, if you're renting it out for more than 14 days, then you can't take it tax-free.

You will pay taxes on it, but you can apply some of the expenses to the income, I think, ask an accountant, but I think based upon your occupancy versus the occupancy of a renter. Now when you go to sell a second home that you haven't lived in as your primary residence, you don't get the $500,000 Section 121 exclusion, the tax-free sale on your profit.

And so that's one downside. For an investment property, you basically, the benefit of an investment property, of identifying it as an investment property, is that all of your expenses that are associated with that are now applicable to your, are deductible against it. So all of your expenses would be deductible comprehensively with the exception of excluding whatever your personal expenses were in the property, whatever was not actually part of the real estate expenses.

But I think that there'd be a lot more benefit for you of saying, "This is an investment property, marketing it actively, using it as an investment property. Yes, you can still stay in it on occasion, and you'll need to not deduct the expenses that you have associated with staying with it, but even expenses to go and work on the property and check on it, things like that." Now your mileage becomes deductible of driving out to the lake to check on the cabin and make sure that everything is okay.

So it's just, I think, from a tax perspective, I don't see any question why having it as an investment property wouldn't be a superior solution for you. Remember that you could always, if it ever worked out in your lifestyle, you could move into the property at some point in time, and in moving into it, you could live in it for a couple of years and then always have the tax-free gain after you've lived in it for two years.

But I don't know of any argument as to why you wouldn't just say it as an investment property if you're willing to do the work. And I would say that one other thing, one other benefit of doing that, sometimes when you have a second home and you use that second home charitably and you say, "Hey, stay at my second home," that's a tremendous blessing, right?

And I think that's a nice thing to be able to do. Many people have blessed me in that way and said, "Hey, go and stay at my lake house or go and stay at our mountain cabin." It's just such a blessing because it opens up experiences for people that they wouldn't be able to afford.

But sometimes those things are not as appreciated as if people know the actual benefit of it. So from that perspective, I don't see any downside to the fact that you rent this thing out on Airbnb for 200 bucks a night and you tell your best friend, "Listen, why don't you guys go take a week at the cabin?" They know that's a genuinely valuable gift and it's more clear than if you didn't do that.

So I don't know, maybe there's downside to that, but I don't see any reason why you wouldn't just say this is an investment property and use it as such. Yeah, I mean, I guess I don't either. I'm curious, if I can ask for your patience, what happens if we change our mindset?

Say we particularly like with our mortgage or the implications with that if we get a certain rate on it or whatever, but then we change our mind about its use. Do you know, how does that work? Yeah, there's not really any implications there other than what's specified in the mortgage contract.

So if I buy a house today and my plan today is to occupy that house as an owner-occupant, this is going to be where I'm going to live. I buy the house today and then tomorrow I get a job offer in the next state over and I move for that job offer because it just fell out of the blue and I move for that job offer.

So there's no real reason why I can't just say, "Okay, I'm going to put this property in to my, I'm going to keep this property as an investment rental." The one thing you need to be careful of is if there are any requirements in the mortgage contract. And so, for example, it's not uncommon that a personal mortgage contract might require residency by the borrower for one year, personal residency by the borrower for one year's time.

And so those clauses, they matter, but there's also probably some leeway in terms of what does that actually mean? What does residency mean? And so if you are just going to apply for a residential mortgage for the property, what does it mean that I live in the property? In some cases there is a clear definition.

If the contract states you must physically reside in this property for 181 days a year, okay, well that would be clear. But in my knowledge, in my understanding, that would be uncommon. And so I wouldn't have any problem saying I have a second home up by the lake and we go out there on weekends and on vacations and I spend a total of six weeks there.

I live there, right? That's my second home. I'm not trying to make them think it's my only home. It's just that's my second home. And so some of these terms are a little bit imprecise. And the basic idea is that the mortgage company doesn't want their mortgages being used by a professional real estate investor.

They want somebody who's going to occupy it. So an Airbnb situation I don't think would break that contract, but you'll just need to read the actual numbers and find out. So there's no reason why you can't go back and forth in these. And this would be a simple example or another example as to even how, since we're talking about tax planning, in the long run this is a useful scenario as to how you can actually gain with your properties over time.

So you might have a personal residence that you live in today. And so let's just make a hypothetical scenario. Let's pretend that you're very location agnostic, that your wife is cool with moving every few years and you want to build a real estate portfolio. You can buy a single family house today.

You can qualify for it with a personal mortgage. And it's just the mortgage is underwritten based upon your income and based upon the details of the house. It's very, very, very simple. Assuming that that mortgage requires residency for one year, you live in that house for one year. And then one year later you go ahead and you rent out that house, you find some renters and you find another house and you buy.

And then a year later you do it again. Then a year later you do it again. Then you do it again. This is called the nomad real estate investing strategy. The idea that you just qualify for these houses based upon personal mortgages. And so now fast forward. Let's say you do this over the course of 10 years and you now own 10 rental houses.

So the house was a personal residence, then it's a rental. Well now you can go back and let's say you want to sell and maybe your first house that you bought has doubled in price. So now you move from the 10th house back into the first house and you live in it for two years.

Then at that point in time you go ahead and you sell that first house for a very large gain but now you qualified for the $500,000 exclusion for a married couple selling a house that's a personal residence. So you can take $500,000 of gain. Then you can move into the next one, live there for two years, maybe it's sold and you can take $500,000 of gain.

And so you can continually increase your basis and you can do that every two years and take that tax-free gain. In the meantime you can still do 1031 exchanges on your other properties. So if you've got gain but you want to swap one property out, you can sell that property.

Do a 1031 exchange of the gain into another property. And so for somebody who actually was that flexible in their lifestyle, which I've never met somebody that was that flexible. My wife is pretty flexible but I don't think she would be willing to do that. But for somebody who's actually that flexible in their lifestyle, willing to move so frequently, you can do this by going back and forth between investment property and personal residence.

You can do this in a very, very tax-efficient way and it's all legal. So keep that in the back of your mind. Cool. Last question for you really fast. I guess it was the guy I'm talking to on the mortgage side who had encouraged me to treat it as a secondary residence.

For some reason he had kind of encouraged me against treating it like an investment property. It's like, "Oh, you don't want it to be this way." I'm sure maybe it's just him trying to get me a better rate on the mortgage or whatever. But it kind of sounds like my next step is to just push back against that and ask him exactly why he thinks that.

Is there a way for me to get exact clarity? And then of course read the fine print of whatever contract I signed to know exactly the specific difference or why do you think that might be? I don't know. I guess I'm confused at this point. Yeah, I'm confused at these words.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So here's the thing, okay? Let's keep it simple. Because I think what you're getting drowned in is you're looking for a precise definition to terms that don't have a precise definition. What is the difference between a second home that you go and spend a month at during your summer vacation and an investment property that you go and spend a month at during your summer vacation?

What's the difference? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, it's just, the point is there's not really any difference in the way that I specified. It's just a matter of nomenclature. Right. Right? It's just a word. And so the term second home versus the term investment property is going to have a meaning to the mortgage broker.

They're going to say, "Oh, if you are trying to get this as an investment property, then it's going to go with this kind of mortgage. If you're trying to get it as a second home, then it's going to go with this kind of mortgage." Those terms have meaning to a mortgage broker, but that's not related specifically, unless their contract actually says it is, it's not related specifically to what the IRS says.

Now, the term second home versus investment property, those terms do have meaning to the IRS, but I went over those words. It has to do with how much is it used, et cetera, and how you're approaching it. They do have meaning to the IRS, but the IRS and your mortgage broker are not connected.

And so that's where all of these terms are a little bit fuzzy. And there's in some cases an intentional ambiguity, and in some cases there just is ambiguity. Where do I live? That's a hard question to answer sometimes. Does that come down to where I own a home? Well, what if I don't own a home?

Where do I live if I travel a lot? I use this stuff with my own lifestyle, which is simply, where do I live? Well, I live in multiple places, but depending on the context, I say this is where I live for certain things. And so when someone says, "Where do you live?" I say this answer or that answer, because the idea of where do you live, we think we understand that.

And in an older context where you have one house and you work on your farm around your house, it's a very clear concept. But it's not such a clear concept for those of us who have different lifestyles. And so I would say that you just ask the mortgage broker and say, "What is the difference between the second home and the investment property?" And whatever is advantageous to you, ask them, "Okay, if I have the mortgage, what is the contract going to say?" Read what the contract is going to say and say, "Can I live with this?" If you can live with the restrictions of whatever the contract says for the mortgage company, then get the mortgage that's most favorable to you.

The IRS and how you classify a home with the IRS is almost certainly completely different from the mortgage company. It would be—now, the only place it would enter in—we're going so deep here—but the only place it would enter in is let's say that you committed fraud and the mortgage company said, "We'll give you a mortgage as a second home and we'll give you this rate and we'll give you a mortgage as an investment property, we'll give you this rate, and you choose the second home because it gives you a better rate." And you commit fraud.

You misrepresent something to the mortgage company. You say, "Yes, I'm going to do this." And so now, through some series of circumstances, which are extremely unlikely because as long as you pay the mortgage, most mortgage companies just want to get paid, but you default on your mortgage and now the mortgage company sues you.

Well, in theory, they could say, "We're going to subpoena your tax returns and look, you represented to the IRS that this was an investment property and look, you were recorded on a podcast to Joshua Sheets saying that this might be an investment property and then after the podcast, you sent your best friend an email that we're able to find that said that I'm getting an investment property, so you committed fraud, so therefore, you know, we got this." That's how this stuff comes in is that in theory, eventually, maybe down the road, somebody could figure out how you classified it, but in practice, have you ever had a mortgage company request your tax returns to see what your personal house was and where your physical presence was?

Has your personal mortgage company ever asked you how many nights of the last 365 did you sleep in this particular house that we have a mortgage on? That's not – these are imprecise words and you just need to read what the contract says. That's what matters. As long as you can abide by what the contract says, then go with whichever one gives you the better deal.

Okay, yeah, that gives me a super clear path forward. Thank you so much, Joshua. I really appreciate it. Cool. My pleasure. All right, we go on to looks like Dan in Missouri. Dan, welcome to Radical Personal Finance. How can I serve you today, sir? Yes. Thank you, Joshua. I have a – it's kind of a philosophical question on saving versus giving and the way I think through that in my personal finances.

So my main problem with the general idea of financial independence for retirees early is that we call for the spending function versus saving and that not a lot of products are given. And as a Christian, as a – living in a Western country with a lot of money, you know, I'm rich and I'm first Timothy 6 says, "I'm too good, too rich, and good work, generous, and ready to share," it's a big part of my lifestyle.

And so how I solve for both putting a high importance on saving and a high importance on giving, which are opposed to each other, the more I give now, the less I save for later. How do you think through that personally and any advice you have for the way I can do that?

Can you ask me an easy question, please? I wasn't – I don't know if I can – this one's a tough one. It's certainly a very real tension. Certainly a very real tension because who was it? There was a well-known preacher who if we went and looked for, he was well-known for saying make all you can, give all you can, save all you can, something like that.

And when we give in, when you touch the philosophy of some of these things, it's really difficult because there's a wide range of subjective experience to this. And you get into a point – we get into some pretty thorny areas of theology, get into some pretty thorny areas of hermeneutics, you know, philosophy of interpretation, of epistemology.

The question is very, very, very thorny. And I'll tell you – I don't want to bury the lead with my answer. My answer is it's a distinctly personal decision that each person will have to make in faith before God. And I'll tell you how I get there in my own opinion as we talk about it.

So the first thing with regard to saving. Let's start with saving. Saving is a thorny and difficult topic to work through biblically depending on your particular tradition, your particular interpretive lens that you put on scripture. For example, I have a friend of mine who years ago gave me a book, and the book was basically a very literalist, fundamentalist interpretation of Christ's command of "Don't lay up for yourselves treasures on earth." And it's "Don't lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves cannot break in and steal, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." And his conviction was that command is a proscription, a forbidding of laying up for yourselves treasures on earth.

And so he would very actively seek to not lay up treasures on earth. So for him, he felt that saving was something that he couldn't do in faith at all. No significant form of saving. And there are other very important commands of Christ that would lead one to believe the same thing.

Jesus said, "Take no thought for tomorrow." Take no thought for tomorrow, what you will eat, what you will drink, or what you will wear for tomorrow, and it will take care of itself. And so when you look at things through that lens, it makes all the sense in the world that he would choose not to save.

On the other hand, there are different passages in the Bible that would seem to very strongly encourage saving and forethought. We could go to the Psalms or the Proverbs, "A prudent man foresees the danger and hides himself." You could see all kinds of biblical Proverbs. And so you have to look at it and say, "What lens do I look at these things through?" And so do I look at things through a red letter as primary?

Did Jesus come in to institute a radically new form of living? And so when Jesus said, "Take no thought for tomorrow," he was giving a command that annulled all of the instructions from the book of Proverbs? That's I think a legitimate argument associated with that. But it's less common, but that's a legitimate argument.

And so some people would take that perspective with regard to saving. So there are those who say, "I'm not going to save anything." Now my personal trouble has often been with those who take that position has often been, "Well, what do you do with the money instead?" So I have known people who are so abundant in their giving, they're very, very cautious with their expenses, and they're very abundant in their giving.

And I would never point a finger... First, I don't like to point fingers at anybody, but I would never point a finger at that man and say, "Oh, you're wrong. You're earning $100,000 a year. You're living on $25,000 a year, and you're giving $75,000 a year away, and so you're wrong." I wouldn't say that.

On the other hand, where I've often been troubled is I have known people who, in my opinion, made plenty of money that they could save, but they didn't... And they gave money, right? No man answers to me. I'm not to judge anybody of how much they give, but I had the impression or the sense or the clear knowledge that they gave a little bit of money away to others, but mostly what they did was they just spent their money and wasted it, and they lived not frugally.

They didn't accumulate anything. And then they justified it after the fact with this basic idea of, "Well, I'm spiritual because the Bible says, 'Don't lay out for yourself treasures on earth.'" And I look at that and I think, "Is that the mark of a spiritual man?" And for me, that's always been something very distasteful.

I've never wanted... I've never aspired to be like that person. And when we look on a global basis, this is what's so difficult, because every single one of us is rich. Every single one of us is rich. And when you say to somebody, for example, if you're preaching and you preach from...

I think it was the verse I quoted about Jesus, Matthew 23, I think it is, where he said, "Take no thought for tomorrow." Sorry. "Don't lay out for yourselves treasures on earth." That verse preaches very differently in a suburban, middle-class, suburban, white-steepled Baptist church than it does in a little hut in rural Nicaragua.

It just preaches radically differently depending on who you're talking to. And it's a verse of tremendous comfort to the poor, to the slave. It's a verse of tremendous healing to there, and it can be a verse of tremendous judgment to the rich, suburban, white-steepled Baptist church. And so I think that there's a real...

We've got to face these things head on and not run from it and realize that the verse is there, but then understand what's the meaning of it. Now, that's a little bit on saving. So some people believe that I shouldn't save. Some people believe that I should save everything.

And I think that here, once again, it's very easy to get into some extreme positions where you start to say, "That doesn't give me the flavor of Christ." I'm generally unimpressed by people who can't balance their finances enough to take care of the things of life. You've probably known people who, they don't save anything, and everything is a matter of an emergency.

They have a flat tire on the car and it's an emergency. And they just go from emergency to emergency to emergency. And then on the other hand, though, you know people who are genuine misers, who they're so fixated on the money, they're so fixated on selling everything, that in my opinion, they go too far.

And the money has a... Again, I prefer not to be any man's judge on things like this that are intensely personal or I don't have the data. But you observe people and you say, "Money has got that guy's heart." He's captured by the prospect of having money. And if Jesus said to him, "Go and sell all that you have and give to the poor and come and follow me," he would go away sorrowful.

You can just see it. It's obvious that the money has them. And I don't find that to be a flavor of Christ. I don't find that to be something that I encourage either. So that's on saving. What about giving? On giving, there are different perspectives. I think that I've never known somebody who would say that I shouldn't give.

And so that would be, I guess, maybe someone's out there, "I just, I'm not going to give." But I've never met a Christian or anybody who would profess the name of Christ in any way who wouldn't say that giving is a virtue, that generosity is a virtue. But now we go to, to whom do I give and how do I give?

And so the first thing would be, well, do I give to my local church? And then we immediately start to discuss the tithe. The tithe is, I think, a more complex issue than is often given credit. On the one hand, in the Mosaic law, the tithe was clearly required of the children of Israel.

And so if we go back and we look at the tithe, we can see that it was required that the children of Israel set aside and give to God 10% of their increase. Now most of that was not wages. Most of that was not money. Most of it was agricultural goods.

Most of it was wheat or oil or flocks, right? You know, a sheep or a goat, et cetera. And the function of it was crystal clear in scripture. The function of it was very, very clear. And it was to support the children of Levi, the tribe of Levi, who was the priestly tribe.

And so you had 11 tribes of Israel that were divided. Those 11 tribes of Israel were granted land that they could live on, that they could use productively, but the tribe of Levi was set apart to the service of God. And so those priests had to be supported by the people.

They were doing God's work. They were working in the temple. They were making sacrifices and offerings to God. They were attending to the temple and all of its associated labors. And so they needed to be supported by the people so that they would have something to eat. And so you can very clearly see the function and the system of the tithe.

Now go over to the New Testament. And the question is, does that translate over to the New Testament? I would say that in much of the modern world, including Protestantism, Catholicism, and Orthodoxy, I would say that the majority teaching is that yes, it does. But here we run into a split, a split of a doctrinal split, and it has to do with a view of the law, a law versus grace, which is a tremendous schism across Christianity with the schism of, are we under law?

And if so, what law is that versus are we under grace? And if so, what is that grace? Now the common, what I would say the most common thing is, at least across Protestantism, would be that we are under grace, right? We're saved by grace, only grace, grace alone.

The common way to say it would be grace alone that saves, but it comes with other works, right? There are things that you do out of that place of grace. And so most Protestant churches would not preach that you have to tithe in order to be accepted by God.

They would teach that you're accepted by God, and so because of that, you should want to tithe. But here we once again get into this difficult thing. So there are significant schisms across Protestant Christianity related to what law are you under, right? Are you under, there's the classic thing from the 1970s, no law but Christ, right?

And many, many Christians and many Christian denominations have a distinctly antinomian flavor, this distinct sense that if you place any burden on me, that you are going beyond what Christ has called you to do. And so many pastors wished that their churches would tithe, they wish that their congregants would tithe, but they shy away from preaching very vigorously about the tithe due to this antinomian flavor that runs through their theology.

There are many people, there are, so that's not across the board. So then of course there are many denominations who believe very clearly that tithing, 10% of your increase, 10% of your wages or your profits towards your local church is an exact and obvious and perfect thing to do and that you should do it and that the church is the new Israel, right?

There's a theological, and this is where the break is so difficult. There are some Christian denominations that believe that the church is the new Israel, that when Christ died on the cross and when the veil in the temple was rent from top to bottom, that that was the clear sign of a break of God's working with Israel as his special people.

And so in that act, God clearly said, "Israel has broken my covenant. Israel has broken my covenant and as such, I'm done with her. And theologically, I'm divorcing Israel and I'm marrying the church." And that God's final judgment on Israel came in the year 8070 when the Jewish temple was destroyed, when the Romans destroyed Israel and the people were scattered, that that was God's final judgment on Israel.

And so these theological traditions believe that God is not working with Israel. For example, the modern nation state of Israel has no theological significance whatsoever to God, that it's just simply a nation state just like any other nation state, that the people of Israel are no more theologically significant to God than the people of Bahrain or Jordan or Oman or the United States or Russia, that it's just simply a nation like any other.

Now that's very common in many parts of the world and in many theological traditions. That's less publicly common in the United States. In the United States, there's much more of a theological belief that the nation of Israel has a continuing significance to God, that the nation of Israel, that when the nation of Israel was formed after World War II, it was in 1948 I think, when the nation of Israel was formed, that that was a sign of God's fulfilling his covenant mandate with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that he would give them this land to their ancestors.

And as the Jews were gathered together from all the scattered lands, that that was a very significant event to God. And so these traditions believe that the modern nation of Israel is a nation to whom God still has – that there's a modern nation that continues as God's chosen people.

Now this is a little bit tricky to work through because there's some significant meanings to either saying the modern nation of Israel doesn't have significance to God or it does. And so if it does, it opens up kind of this two-system thing, which is very difficult for Christians to answer.

Well, if Jews are God's special people, then do they need to respond to Christ? Do they continue in Judaism? How are they saved, etc.? It gets really, really, really, really difficult as you parse your way through the issues. Now thankfully, most people never get into this, but theologians are trying to build a structured, coherent system.

You kind of take your position on these issues, and then that position largely guides what you're doing. And so back to the church is the new Israel. So if the church is the new Israel, then those traditions, those theological traditions that say the church is the new Israel, they have no problem saying the church is the new Israel, and so therefore the church is the priest – those are the priests that are functioning.

And so those priests need to be supported by 10% of the congregants' increases. And so they have no problem with that being agricultural goods and agricultural societies, but in the modern society where most of us live in a financial society, then that's a financial contribution. So – and they're very strong about that.

And I think there's very good arguments, right? Anyway, there's very good arguments. On the other hand, there are many people who believe that, for example, what is it, 1 Peter? We are a nation – ye are a royal priesthood, you are a royal priesthood, that we're a nation of priests.

And so there are many people who would say that there is no priest and layperson. There is no longer this priestly class or priestly caste in the church, but that we're all involved, that we're all priests. And so as such, then why should one special class of people be supported by the others at the risk of – why should one special class of people be supported financially just so that they can preach, just preach, preach, preach, preach?

And I think that some of these arguments are very compelling. For example, I think it can be easy for people when you see, "Oh, there's these pastors and they get paid and all they got to do is preach a sermon one or two hours a week and maybe pray a little bit, go to the hospital, visit with some people in their study and study Greek and Hebrew all day.

Isn't that easy? Isn't that a nice life?" Now, of course, pastors know that things are more difficult than that, but that in that situation that people make a good argument. Why should I support this guy to be the holy guy up on there? We're not offering sacrifices on the altar anymore.

We're not – you're not burning incense anymore. Apologies to my Catholic and Orthodox friends who do that. But we're not a two-class system any longer. And so this is where it's so confusing in Protestantism. Again, go back to a place where there's either – it can be a Protestant tradition where there's a very clear priesthood or Catholicism, Orthodoxy, where there are priests.

And so, okay, I got to support the priest. But in the looser realms of Protestantism, then this becomes more difficult. So I've given all these perspectives, and I haven't answered the question specifically because the question is going to have an obvious answer to people based upon their tradition. And it's some of those who aren't part of the more traditional hierarchical expressions of Christianity where it does become more difficult, which is where I would guess that you're coming from.

If you were coming to me and you were in the Orthodox Church, you wouldn't have that question so significantly. And so when I look at it, I'll give you my answer for it. When I look at it, I'll tell you where my sympathies lie. First of all, I am a Protestant, and so my sympathies are in that realm rather than in the realm of Orthodoxy or Catholicism.

And in addition, my sympathies are very much on the simple church model, the context that I have a very hard time with the idea that Christianity is something for the professional classes. And as I see it, the institutional churches and the very hierarchical institutional churches do a whole lot less for the strength of their congregants than do simpler forms of church gathering.

And I'm intentionally foregoing lots of moderating statements just to say something clearly, but I'm not judging any man's heart. I have to give a couple, but I'm not judging any man's heart, just saying that when I look at the functioning that I see in the scripture, to me, what I read in the book of Acts is a simpler system.

And when you go to a simpler system, it changes some of the financial scenarios. So for example, I have never been, with the exception of a brief time last year, I've never been a part of a large institutional church that had to maintain a building. And in that situation, if you have a church that has to maintain a building and they have to pay for the air conditioning bill and they have to pay for the 401k plans, etc., then you understand, okay, I need to support the local church.

And when I was briefly last year, part of a more structured, organized church prior to that getting shut down by COVID, then I supported financially because I understand that I have an obligation to help care and share the expenses of this organization. However, for the last six months of COVID, I've had a church gathering in my home, which is kind of the way that I've always experienced church in a very simple way.

There's 20 to 30 people that get together every Sunday and we gather in my home. And we have breakfast together and then we gather and we talk about scriptures and we pray and we invite people and we are functioning very much like a new fledgling church. And it's just because everything was shut down.

And so in that situation, who do I give my tithe to, right? Who do I give my 10% to? It just becomes very strange if you are from a simpler tradition. It becomes very strange to think about, if I'm preaching this Sunday, why should everyone give me thousands of dollars just because I preached a sermon?

That's different. But even in those simpler expressions, which is where my sympathies lie and my experience lies, even in those simpler expressions, even in the simple church, right? That would be the missiology word that would be used in a modern seminary, the simple church. Even in that context, though, you cannot get away and escape from the very clear Christian teaching to support those, right?

The Bible says very clearly in the New Testament, not an Old Testament thing, the Bible says very, very clearly that you are to support those. A worker is worthy of his wages. Those who labor in teaching and preaching are worthy of double honor. And so that's very clearly financial.

So you have very clear commandments in scripture to give, to give to support ministry, to give to support missionary work, to give to support financial relief, et cetera. And so in that context, just because you're in the New Testament, you're not absolved from giving. So let me give you what I have come to at this point in time as my current understanding.

I am nervous, although I see the benefits of preaching about a tithe, I am nervous about preaching that extremely strongly at this point in time. It is very clearly a system that was clearly important and mandated by God prior to Christ, but it is not so clearly a system that was mandated by God after Christ.

I have a very hard time preaching from the New Testament on the requirement of a tithe. And so I'm nervous about that. So I haven't done a lot on it. I haven't done shows on tithing, but I'm nervous about it theologically. Now on a couple of these big theological issues, I've been wrestling with a lot of these for about the last five to 10 years, trying to understand my own thinking on it.

And I'm not at a place of rest in my own understanding on some of these issues, where I'm still working it through and trying to discern, okay, what's the right solution? But what I do look at it is I say that if BC, then it was mandated by God that all of the children of Israel would tithe 10% to support the work of God.

If that was true BC, then why should my requirement personally in AD be any less? Why should I not personally be giving more in AD? Because when you look at the preaching of Christ, what you see is that on so many issues, Christ took the standard that was given to Moses and he raised it.

So you see this most pointedly when Jesus said, "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, love your neighbor, do good to those who despise you, do good to those who persecute you." You have heard it said that – we're talking about divorce, right?

The Pharisees were asking Jesus, "Can a man divorce his wife for any reason?" Jesus said, "You've heard it said that such and such, Moses commanded you to give a certificate of divorce. I say to you, don't divorce." But I say to you, don't divorce. And so on almost every issue where Jesus was preaching, you have heard it said, "Don't commit adultery." But I say to you that if you look at a woman with lust in your eyes, you've already committed adultery with her in your heart, that things were raised.

And so the basic structure that you see AD, Anno Domini, after Christ, you see that almost all of the requirements of the old were raised. I can't think of any requirement from the old that was not raised in the new. And so given that, then I say I have no fear whatsoever about saying that any Christian should clearly be giving away at least 10% of his income.

Where I do question a little bit though is if that is held as a legal thing. I have a hard time, and especially I have a big question if that all goes to support the local church. So I have a very hard time in some of the circles that I travel in going to some big monster mega church in the favelas of Brazil.

And or I have a hard time going to some big monster mega church in Nigeria where the pastor rolls up in a Rolls Royce and he's got a private jet and he preaches to the people who are utterly destitute, "Come and give. And if you give to God, after all, Malachi says, 'Give, test me in this, give, and will you not find the windows of heaven opened up and poured out upon your life?'" I find that utterly repulsive and I want nothing to be involved with that.

And so when you look at situations where you see somebody who is in great need, I have no problem saying to somebody who has very little, "You should be giving." But I want to honor the giving of time, I want to honor the giving of resources, and I want to honor the giving.

And I want that giving not to be to some big monster mega church organization, I want that giving to be local. I want – I have a spirit of giving. So for I've come to it, is I've come to it to say that God honors my giving and that I need to be a giver.

And a minimum goal, not something that's a stretch goal, but a minimum goal or a minimum standard should be 10% of my income. I should at least start by setting aside 10% of my income and designate that to giving. Now if I'm involved with a local church where there are responsibilities and functions of that local church, so for example, maybe I'm gathering with a group of people and we have a building, we've chosen to build a building.

Frankly, I'd just as soon tear down half the buildings and put churches back in neighborhoods where they're not so subject to – where they're more useful in many situations. But I'm not utterly opposed to buildings, just that it just doesn't strike me as particularly useful. You wind up putting yourself in a difficult place when you build these big buildings.

One of my biggest issues with buildings is just that it stunts evangelism. If your church has a building and you can seat 500 people, if everybody in your church went and invited somebody to church to the church meeting this Sunday, if you're using a Sunday meeting as a primary form of evangelism, and if half of those people came, all of a sudden you've got a problem.

And so buildings naturally are very, very difficult. So in many contexts, especially in Western contexts, I'd much rather see churches function flexibly. I'd rather see people meeting in a gym where you can go from 200 to 600 and back to 300 with minimal expenses than these big, big buildings that cost so much.

I'd rather see people meeting in homes where I can gather from 20 people to 50 people and it's not a big deal. Now in other circumstances though, where homes are much smaller and it doesn't work, then I'm not opposed to buildings. I just think that buildings stunt growth and buildings have this event – again, these are my opinions – I think that buildings have this unanticipated end result of having everybody looking towards the front, which creates this priestly class that does the spiritual work.

And so instead of what I see in the scriptures where Paul says that ministers are given – teachers, evangelists, apostles, prophets, and pastors – that these ministers are given to the local church for the equipping of the saints for their work of ministry, then it feels to me like a lot of my travels, what we do is we get that wrong and we think that the preachers are given and the teachers are given for the building up of the saints, just for their own benefit, when in reality it's the saints who have to do the spiritual work.

And so, forgive me, but I see benefits to having the simpler model. And so when you give, then the – so if you're part of a church where there is a – you have a pastor who's serving, you have a responsibility to support that pastor. If you're part of a church that has a building, you have a responsibility to support that building.

If you're renting a place to meet in, you have a responsibility to meet that. And so you need to allocate money towards that. And to the extent that the church is a – that the church in whatever function it has is able to manage that money effectively and you're able to see an increase from it, then I have no problem with it.

But what you have to do, and this is where it gets theologically difficult for some people, what you have to do is if you see the church wasting its resources, then you need to withdraw those resources. And that's difficult because a lot of people don't want to do that.

And so my question is, are you getting a good return on your money? And what I would wish to see is that many people started with the mindset that I'm going to give 10% of my money, but I would wish to see that more of us took more ownership of that 10% and how we did it.

It's not to say that you can always – that there's not benefits of working together. I think there are benefits of working together. If you can support a certain program or a certain thing, a certain outreach, a certain missionary, a certain thing that's done administratively, that can be helpful.

And so for those who see that and can work together, I think they should. But what I'd like to see more people do is do more personal giving, because in personal giving you have the opportunity and the ability to expect requirements, to expect a gain. And I believe that if we ask God for those opportunities and those circumstances, that he'll give them to us.

He'll bring the people along that need help. I'll just share one example. For a while now, I've been supporting a lady who is in very dire financial circumstances right now. And as such, because she's in dire financial circumstances, she was previously employed, but a couple of years ago she started to have some health problems and she wasn't able to work and she's just been in complete poverty.

And she has older children, but her children are not caring for her. And I don't see in the place that she's in, I don't see in the place that she's in how she's going to make it, especially given the scenarios that we're in with regard to the pandemic. And so I've been supporting her for a time, and yet in my supporting her, I have the opportunity as an individual to be relatively free in the sense that I can be free in helping her in the way that I think is best.

And so in the beginning, what I started with is I chose to give her food, right? And basically she didn't have any money for food. I said, "Well, I need to give her food." And I started to give her money, but very quickly, instead of just giving money, giving money, I got involved and I said, "Let's find a solution.

We have to find a solution." And in giving to her, I'm able to look and talk to her. And it's not going through some board, through someone else, it's coming through me. And I'm able to talk to her and I'm able to say what's going on and to counsel her and try to find a solution.

Now in this situation, due to the pandemic, I don't think she's going to be able to be employed here in a local area. So I've helped her with some of the finances locally. I paid off some of her debts. I've supported her. But more importantly is I'm trying to find a solution where she can get back on her feet.

And so that solution in her case, she has dual citizenship with another country where there's a better economy. And so my solution for her is I'm supporting her. I've encouraged her to move to the other place. I'm paying for all of her expenses to get there, paying for her to buy her clothes and things that she has.

And I'm paying for expenses for her to go and get there and then supporting her for a short time while she gets her feet under her until she can get employed. And so I say that simply to say that I have, as an individual, I have a tremendous degree of leeway that no government aid organization, no church aid board would ever have.

And I can move fast and easy and I can, in a sense that I can solve problems because I don't have the burden of oversight. If I were part of a church board that was part of a charitable aid board, we would have to develop some kind of process where we knew that we were treating people properly, equally.

So we would have to have some kind of application process where somebody brought a paper and said here, here's my need and will you help me and here's my expenses, et cetera. And those things can be good. I'm all for appropriate care and managing them. And on a small level they can work.

But on an individual level, I have utmost flexibility with my giving. I have the easy ability to say here's a need and I can solve this need. And I can solve the need for as long as I see that solving the need is a good thing and I can stop solving the need when I see that it's not a good thing.

And so that's the benefit that we have as individuals. So I think that where we should start with our giving is primarily individual. We should support others, but we should start with individuals. Sorry, we should support the local church, especially to the extent that the local church has expenses.

My local church at present doesn't have expenses. And so in that situation I don't have something that I can tithe to, right? What would I be doing in that situation? So we should support our local church because we've given a responsibility. We should be involved in and we should make sure that that church is accountable for how it's done.

And we should support things in that local church, especially to the extent that they're fruitful. So if there are certain ministries or if there are certain forms of outreach that are fruitful, then we should do it. And so right now maybe running a food bank would be an incredibly fruitful thing to do and be very useful.

We should do that. And I think that if the local church can be organized in such a way that the deacons and the responsible leaders can help the administration so we see that people are getting help that they need and not just handouts, then, you know, handouts with no responsibility attached, then we should continue to do that.

And that can be a fruitful form of outreach. I think we should look in our personal life and say, "Where are there opportunities for us to give?" and give there. And as we're wrestling with the question of how much we should give versus how much we should save, I see no answer and no solution other than to ask God to give us a witness by the Holy Spirit as to what his answer is for you or for me.

And I am entirely comfortable to leave that up to God. I'm entirely comfortable for you to come to me and say, "I believe that God is telling me that I should give 10% of my income away. I should save 40% of my income for my future and I should spend 40...

whatever. 20, 40, 40. I can't do math. You know, I should give 10%, I should save 50%, and I should live on 40%." Okay. I'm also entirely comfortable if you come to me and say, "I've prayed about it and I believe that God has shown me that what I should do is I should give 50% of my income away and I should live on 50%." And I think this has to be left at a place of personal freedom before the Lord because each person has different circumstances.

I can't go into a Christian in New York City or in London, England and say, "You're spending $10,000 a month? Are you kidding me? What's wrong with you? Don't you know that people around the world live on $2 a day?" I can't go into that because in New York City or in London, England, $10,000 a month may just provide a basic level of comfort for a family to be able to be held together.

On the other hand, it's not my place to go into anybody's life, but that would be very different if I were living in Biloxi, Mississippi. And so each of us has to look and say, "What can we do?" And I'll give you more examples. One of the things that I have realized is that I don't think it's a credit to God when people live excessively frugally because they don't know how to make money.

I don't see any way that it's honoring to God if I live like in a hovel, right? I live in a shack and I say, "Well, I'm just this pious person where I live in this dump." And somebody comes along and like, "Aren't you a Christian? Don't you serve the God who claims to have a cattle on a thousand hills and here you are living in a dump?" I think that that can poison relationships.

I think it can poison marriages. I think it can poison relationships with children. I think that it's very easy to go too far. And so I would be very nervous about living like a miser and making my children suffer, my wife suffer, et cetera, just because I'm doing all this pious giving.

I'd be very nervous about that. On the other hand, there is excess. And I think that that excess has to be looked at as well. And so I don't see a solution. I don't see a clear biblical mandate. I've talked about the tithe. I think that's a good minimum, but I think that it's something that should be understood as a minimum.

But I don't think it's something—some people have this belief that says, "As long as I give my 10% to the local church, I can do whatever I want with the other 90%." I had a friend of mine who was a Jewish rabbi, and he expressed it most clearly. We were talking about the subject from a Jewish versus Christian perspective, and he said, "Listen, Joshua, you're crazy.

As long as I give my 10% to God, I'm done. I can do whatever I want with the other 90%. I have a hard time with that from a Christian perspective because I believe the basic Christian ethic is that God owns it all. He owns all of me. He owns all my money, all my life, all my time, and I have to go to Him and ask Him in faith, 'What do you want me to do right now?'" And so—yeah, go ahead, please.

So that's the end of the tension that I struggle with. Much like we can talk about spending and saving as not being true to your distinction, you know, am I saving up for a house? You know, at some level, that's consumption just a few years down the road, versus capitalizing.

Am I saving up to produce more in the future? And I think if I set the percentage of my income or resources that I want to give away every year, and I'm continually trying to increase that, just like I am with my savings and my savings, maybe this is a different question, but is it possible to have a portion of my savings being essentially capitalized for giving?

And that's where these lines between saving and giving blur, like the blur between saving and spending. Yeah. Where I have come to, and I want to hear where you've come to, and that was quite the monologue, but where I've come to on the subject is that yes. So at the moment, right, what am I doing?

I'll just tell you what am I doing personally at the moment. At the moment, when I earn money, I set a certain percentage aside into a separate giving account because I don't want to be caught without some money to give. And I find that by setting money aside into a separate giving account, I'm looking for opportunities to give.

I think that there's a great danger of having everything earmarked for spending or saving because you stop looking for money to give. And I found years ago when I first started setting aside money into a separate account, you start to see it grow, and you're like, "I need to give this away." But I feel no compulsion that I have to give it away today.

I can let it grow for a while, and I'm looking for opportunities. I'm looking for things that I can give money to, and I want those things to be productive. Now, I'm also actively saving and accumulating, and along the way, what my attitude is, I believe that God has given me a lot, and I believe that I can use it to create more.

In the same way that we can't get away from what Jesus preached about, you know, "Don't lay out for yourselves treasures on earth," in the same way we can't get away from what Jesus preached about, "Don't take no thought for tomorrow," we also can't get away from the parables of the good steward.

All right? Jesus very clearly, in the parables of the good steward, he very clearly taught that when the master goes away, he expects to come back and find an increase. The thing that is very important to me to emphasize is that when Jesus was preaching that parable, the reason he used the word "talent" was because a talent was a sum of money.

Now, in my understanding of the etymology of the word "talent," in the modern world, we use the word "talent" to refer to some kind of innate ability, innate skill that we have, some ability, some way that we're better at something than someone else. We use that in the modern age that comes from this parable, largely because we've taken this parable to enhance and say that God wants an increase.

But in the original context, it was a form of money. It was a sum of money. It was bucks. It was dollars. It was yen. It was money. And so I believe that God wants an increase on our money. And so this is where I've come to. What helped me a lot was as I walked away from most of the mainstream forms of increase of money, especially just mass market mutual funds, and when I did that, I saw much more value to my investment dollars than I ever did previously.

I went through a significant personal tension for a while where I had all this money in mutual funds, and I thought, "How on earth is this at all helpful? The only benefit I'm going to get from these mutual funds is that I'm going to get richer. Okay, well, I like to get richer.

That's fun. But it seems to me a really, really shallow return on investment if I just get richer." And I looked at some of these companies, and I thought, "These companies, some of them are flat out immoral. Many of them, how do I look Jesus in the eye and say, 'Yes, I invested your money into this company' when they're clearly engaged in things that are absolutely abhorrent to the gospel of Christ?

How do I do that?" And so when I walked away from that, it helped. It gained me a lot of peace, and I started to see, "Okay, I see how. If I can invest my money into something where there's more benefits from it, then now I see how it can be helpful." And so I like to use as a simple example a rental house.

A rental house is a tremendous asset for an investor. Why? Well, a rental house needs work. And so now, let's say I've got the guy who says, "I don't have any work." I can say, "Listen, buddy, why don't you come over and I'll pay you to paint the house?" And something as simple as taking money that's in an index fund and using it to buy a rental house allows me to create work for people.

And that work for people is something that can be useful. So now, instead of talking to the homeless guy on the street and saying, "Here's some money," or, "Here's some food," or, "Here's a tract," and don't you know there's a homeless shelter, I can say, "Listen, I've got some work.

Would you like to come and work with me?" And many businesses go beyond that. So small or privately held businesses provide a tremendous platform that which you can use them. I've said this publicly before, but I have a client of mine who I'm deeply jealous of. But this client of mine has a business in the automobile business.

And he has the ability to hire guys who don't have a high school degree. He primarily hires men because it's heavy, hard, difficult work that most women don't want to do. And so he has the ability to bring in guys that are high school dropouts and give them a job.

And he's got a hundred, a lot of these young men working for him. And as I look at it, my heart bleeds for these guys who have no opportunities. And I look at it and I say, "My client's not a Christian." And I'm forever telling him, I'm like, "Dude, you've got the best opportunity for evangelism in the world." And he takes it seriously.

He takes his mentoring role seriously. And he does a good job with it. But it's opened my eyes to an expression of investment that for me is very, very important. Now, the nice side benefit of his business is that it mints money. It's the most obscenely profitable thing I've ever come across in my life.

And yet he's got this incredible opportunity where he's got dozens and dozens and dozens of young, difficult, broken men who he can help. And I've wanted so much to make this side project. I haven't done it. But I wish that so many more Christians, well-heeled Christians, would stop putting their money into Wall Street and would start investing it locally.

Because I see that as ways that now you can really fulfill that dual-fold mandate. You can make a lot of money and you can do a lot of good. And it's one of the things that I've been working hard in my private life to try to figure out the answers to.

But I think that it solves that in a lot of ways. Because as I see it, there's no reason why you have to choose between them. There's no reason why you have to choose between doing it. Even with regard to giving. And I've got to stop. But I'll just say this with regard to giving.

And I want to hear your thoughts on this. But when I give money, I don't like to give money where it's not going to grow. So I'm happy to give money. I rejoice in giving money. And I believe that there are circumstances in which giving money where it's just gone is right.

You say, "Here, I'm giving to you." But to use the example I shared from my personal life, I told this lady that I'm supporting. I told her, I said, "Listen, I'm not going to keep giving you money for a long time. And so why am I doing all this stuff for you?

Why am I moving you to another country? Why am I buying you a new wardrobe? Why am I helping you with settlement expenses and whatnot? I'm doing it so that I can stop giving you money. Because you're not going to be a charity case. You're not disabled. You're perfectly fine.

I'm not going to keep giving you money for years and years and years. And this is going to be Joshua's pet project. I don't believe in welfare. And so I'm going to give money where there's going to be a return. And in her case, I'm going to require her to return the money.

Now I might have her pay it back to me. I might have her pay it back to someone else. But I'm going to require a return on my money. And I think that even with giving, this is the proper attitude. That when I give to something, I want to give in an area where I know it's going to grow.

I was involved a number of years ago with a project in Africa. And we gave and we bought a farm for a guy. And this is a guy who was in a situation where he had four or five children, I think. And then he adopted 12 orphans. And he had no ability whatsoever to pay.

He had nothing to do. And so we bought a farm and we gave it to him for a farm. Gave him a farm. It was a big financial gift. But in that situation, that farm has become a tremendous center of outreach and ministry. That farm has supported these at least 16, I think 20 children now, something like that, helped them to establish themselves.

That farm has provided. We've invested into the farm. That farm, for example, we dug a well. We gave the money to dig a well on the farm. Well, that well has kept the whole village supplied with water. And the nice thing about the way that it was done is that the return on that gift has been huge.

Not in terms of money back, but in terms of a return on investment, it's been well worth it. The man who was the farmer is involved with a dozen or two churches. I shouldn't give too many details away, but a dozen or two churches that are basically all flowed from the original gift of the farm.

And so I think that even in giving, we should be looking for a return, but that part of that return is financial, but part of it and a significant part of it is in souls. How do you lay up treasures in heaven? You invest in souls. You invest in people.

And as you invest in people, people are what's in heaven. So when you're investing in people, then you're investing in heaven. So that's how I see it. I'm going to quit because that was an absurd 45 minute monologue. Tell me your thoughts, Dan, and how you've worked through these issues.

Yeah, I see it as people and organizations doing good things to give money to, whether that's working with people just getting out of prison or women in crisis pregnancy or people working to translate the Bible into languages. And there's all sorts of opportunities to support causes that you think are worthy of it.

And so I try to do that, support people and groups and organizations that I believe are genuinely needing help. And I'm always cognizant of saving for myself in the future. Someday I am going to have health problems and it is what we're called to take care of our family first.

You know, I need to take care of my parents. So there are things I need to save for in the future. I think it's good that it be a never ending question because if it's the difference between Christianity or at least the flavor of Christianity that I identify with, one of the big differences between Christianity and many other major religions is the accountability, the sense of accountability.

You know, I spent a lot of time thinking about and studying Islam. Islam is a profoundly simple religion compared to Christianity. The requirements for a Muslim are so simple, they're so much easier to explain, it's so much easier to discuss than it is the requirements of Christianity. And yet this concept of a personal God, which I believe is the cornerstone of Christianity, is a concept that is absent in Islam.

And so to me this is one of the great things, the great tensions that should never go away, right? I'm responsible to God for how I use my time. And so I need to be able to be in faith, you know, to be able to be doing what I'm doing in faith.

And sometimes that means sitting at a, you know, a couple weeks ago, sitting at a five star resort with my children, teaching my children to swim. And I was there in total faith. I wasn't thinking, "I should have taken this money and given it to the poor. After all, you know, I would just be so much better if I'd taken this money to give it to the poor." I was sitting at a five star resort, a beautiful pool, teaching my little children how to swim.

And we did nothing but enjoy ourselves in what we were doing. We ate nice food, we swam in the pool, we had a great time. And I was in faith because I believe that what I'm doing in that situation is I'm fulfilling number one, God's taking care of me, right?

I need a vacation. A master doesn't make a steward work like a dog all the time. But more importantly, I'm sowing into my children's lives. Now in that situation, I was very fortunate that I was able to invite a friend of ours, a family who is a missionary family, who lives on overseas support, some local support and overseas support.

And I was able to invite them along. And it was a nice thing where I was able to combine two things. I was able to take them to a place where they would never be able to afford. I was able to take them along, pay for all of the expenses, have a really fun time with a missionary family that has children that are similar age as my children.

We had a great time. It wasn't, we didn't sit around and open our Bibles up and have four hour Bible studies. We just hung out by the pool and we had a great time. But I was spending money and doing it in faith. On the other hand, there are little expenditures where often I sense the Lord check me.

I was like, "No, you don't need to waste money on that. Don't spend money on that." And I feel like that's how it should be. I'm not trying to raise myself up as an example, just trying to share from personal experience. I'm responsible with my time and I'm responsible with the money.

But I'm responsible to ask the Lord, how does he want the time and the money to be spent? And that in that process, we're cultivating the relationship with God that is genuinely powerful or it's not a matter of a divine mandate that thou shalt give 10% of thy funds to thy local temple.

No, it's a matter of, "Lord, what do you want me to do today in it?" And what I would say to buttress my position is I would say, what did Jesus say? Jesus said that when he was preaching at the end of his life, he says that the advocate, the helper, the comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

He will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. And so my final answer after that somewhat confused monologue is simply that God, the Holy Spirit has promised to teach you, Christ has promised that the Holy Spirit will teach you all things.

And so if you want to learn how to manage money and how you should manage your money, ask God. Ask him, how do you want me to manage my money? And I'm content personally with there being a wide range of answers to that question. And I rejoice in hearing people's testimonies.

It's fun to share your own testimonies of God providing for you. And I can believe wholeheartedly that it's absolutely within God's will for one person to be a missionary, living on faith, living on support and contributions from another person, never knowing where their money is going to come from tomorrow.

And I have no – I don't believe that person is unspiritual if they have no retirement savings, if they have no savings for a car. I could sit here and talk for another hour about firsthand stories that I have heard of God's miraculous provision for people that I know.

Right when they needed it, God provided for them. I also have no issue whatsoever of recognizing that just because one person is a missionary in a little mud hut in Africa doesn't mean that another person isn't a missionary in a skyscraper in New York or in an expensive swanky college town or in anything.

I often feel like one of the things that I do wish is I wish that more people would approach their life and their jobs as missionaries. And I'll just close with this just personal thing. Feel free to ignore this. I believe that we as people – notice I didn't say Christians – but I believe that we as people have an obligation to help our neighbors.

God's commandments are not exclusively for Christians, which is why I generally don't talk to Christians. I generally talk to people because God's commands are for all of us and all of us are required to love our neighbor, whether you're a Christian or not. We all are commanded by God to love our neighbor and to provide for our neighbor.

I appreciate and I see good work coming from all kinds of relief companies. I'm happy about that Charity Water, who to my knowledge has nothing to do with any kind of religious thing, is digging wells for people all around the world. I think that's great. I'm happy that Samaritan's Purse is doing relief work all around the world in the name of Jesus.

I think that's fine. But I'll tell you what I do wish we had more of, is I wish we had more people who didn't do relief work but just preached. I've spent a significant amount of time in some expat missionary communities and I've observed that it seems to me, feels like about 80% of modern missions is related to relief projects, right?

Feeding the hungry and helping the poor and whatnot. And it feels, it's very unusual for me to come across a missionary who's focused on preaching and that's what they're doing is they're preaching. They're not setting up a food camp or something, they're preaching. I understand why that is. It's easier, it seems easier to most people to get donations and support when they can say, "Well, look at this project that I'm doing and support this project." But just a personal plea to my missionary friends that listen and to those of us who support missionaries financially so that they can be full-time engaged in preaching, is that I would love to see more of our work and our effort focus on preaching and teaching and a little bit less on relief.

I am wholeheartedly a supporter of relief work. I've publicly supported projects here. I've used donations, which I need to give an updated report on some of the work that we've done, and I've not used any donations from the audience to support preaching and teaching. But I think that we could do a lot more in the world of preaching and teaching and that I believe that if we ask God and say, "God, where do you want your money going?" I've never experienced him not to answer that.

So that's my answer, Dan. Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today. I'm sure that you've heard these topics, which I appreciate, to be examples from the Christmas march. Yeah, my pleasure. I'm glad to be here. I'm glad you asked the question because I've had on my list of shows, I've had shows to talk about, or I've had topics to say, "Oh, let me talk about tithing," or "Let me talk about giving," and whatnot.

In fact, I actually do want to do a lot on giving. I have a lot of this. I do have a lot of it that I can do, some from a Christian context, but a lot of it just from a "here's how you think about it" context. But what's difficult is, as you see with my 45-minute monologue, there's so much involved.

And what you find is you think, "Oh, talking about tithing should be simple." Well, some people can do it simply, but it's actually a really, really difficult theological issue to talk through. Most people, thankfully, don't understand it, but there's some big issues associated with it. And so, you know, with my predilection towards thinking about things comprehensively, it makes it difficult for me to do.

So I'm glad you asked the question, and I hope that our comments and my comments were useful to the audience as we wrap up today's show. Thank you all so much for listening to today's Q&A show. Never a dull moment here on a Friday Q&A show. Hope you enjoyed it.

Thank you for listening, and I'll be back with you very soon. Remember, if you would like to join me for next week's show, go to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance and you'll be able to sign up to support the show there and trigger me with any question you want. Until soon. Ready to meet stylish shoes that are also comfortable?

Say hello to Rothy's, the sustainable shoe brand that proves looking great can feel great too. New styles feature their InLove insole for extra cushion, arch support, and all-day wearability. Check it out in the Point 2 and update to their best-selling flat. Or try the Almond Loafer or the brand new Ballet Flat.

With so many styles to choose from, there are endless ways to wear Rothy's. Get $20 off your first purchase at rothies.com/perfect.