You know, I've never even met Andrew in person.

The one thing I've picked up on is everybody picks on the man and so here's everybody else.

No, no, see, I think.

I think he's an innocent victim of.

Of just ruthless people who harshly judge him.

He just seems to me so innocent.

I don't know.

I need to meet him to find out.

But yeah, that's just my impression.

He'll have to tell me whether whether.

I'm right or not.

That's hilarious.

Wow.

I don't trust Chris's opinion on it.

I mean, this is Apologetics Live to answer your questions.

Your host from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rapaport.

We are live Apologex Live, here to answer your most challenging questions that you have about God and the Bible.

And with that, we're here to answer those questions.

Tonight we're going to focus on, well, your finances.

Hmm.

That is something that most people.

We had a guest in a few weeks ago and a lot of people there was a lot of interest, and because of that, we asked him to come back in.

And so I'm.

But we will have.

If you have questions, want to join us?

We seem to be having a problem with the website, so.

So I will put up right down there the stream yard link.

I should just.

I shouldn't put it as a ticker.

I'll just leave it where it doesn't scroll, I guess, because it'll be hard to read.

So.

But there is, let's see.

Because for some reason we cannot seem to be able to get folks to be able to join.

And so with that.

That's not the right one.

It's not letting me do this.

I don't know why.

All right, well, let me bring in our guest.

This is Live.

This is what happens when you do things live.

Joshua, how are you doing?

Pretty well.

How about you?

Good.

So why don't you introduce yourself, your company and you know, then we could.

We could start.

Meanwhile, I'm going to be behind the scenes trying to fix things if I can, and sure thing.

So, yeah.

My name is Josiah Stowe.

I am the founder of Dominion Wealth Strategists, the only distinctly reformed financial consulting firm, and as far as I can tell, one of the only exegetically based, biblically based financial consulting firms out there.

There are some other folks out there trying to do some good work, but they tend to start with the financial services industry as a whole, as a base, and then try to do things as close to biblically as they can.

Starting there, we try to start with scripture and then whatever parts of the financial services industry that actually align with that, we utilize or will tweak as necessary to make it fit.

But there are things that we would do pretty substantially differently.

At least that's what sets us apart here at Domingo Ball Strategists.

So for folks, I put a link there that if you want to join us live and ask questions down at the bottom there just because, well, Apologex Live is usually how you'd come in and join us, but it's be.

It's be broken.

We had trouble last week and we have trouble this week.

I don't know what is going on with it.

We will have to work on that.

Thought it was just something from last week.

But with that, if you want to join, ask any questions, just go to the link there, the stream yard link that we put in there and you could join, ask any questions that you have.

With that, you and I did the episode where, you know, we had everyone from that was part of the Dead Man Walking podcast.

The sponsors and what.

And.

And whatnot.

And a lot of people had some questions.

We wanted to inv.

Invite you back to maybe answer some questions.

For folks, I do have to.

I do want to give a review that we got on a previous episode though, folks.

Someone was watching the episode we did on full preterism and left a kind of neat comment.

So I figured it was Mr.

Swifty 404, which I.

I got to find out who Mr.

Swifty is because, you know, 404 in programming world means you know, it's bad.

It means a page not found.

But, but he says, he had said as in his review, speaking of reading things out of context.

Remember the topic was full preterism.

So he said, speaking of, of reading things out of context.

My co worker is in the Word of Faith heresy.

He gave me a book recommendation to read.

I looked up each reference to the Bible and found that either the following verse, previous verse, or even the rest of the verses refuted the author tried what the author tried to infer.

I've only interacted with one full preterist before.

I was very confused about what he was trying to claim as it doesn't really make any sense in my opinion.

So Mr.

Shifty, we agree with you on that conclusion.

And, and that is something.

What Mr.

Shifty had done is something to.

To always do and we always recommend doing here when it comes to, well, reading the Bible or believing what someone says about the Bible.

Don't ever read A Bible verse.

It's a quote from a friend of mine, Greg Koko.

Read the chapter, not the verse.

Because often what you see is the very thing that people try to say a verse says.

Well, the context around it usually tells you.

Yeah, that doesn't say what you think it says.

It a lot of times says the exact opposite of what people think it says.

A great book that I'm thinking of would be Jim Osmond's book, God Doesn't Whisper where he goes through all the verses that people use to try to say God is speaking to them.

And every one of them is out of context.

And the context of every one of them actually kind of destroys what they're.

What they say the verse is trying to say.

Funny how that works, huh?

Yeah.

And that's pretty common.

We.

I was born and raised in Northern California, so my condolences.

Right.

So the.

The Bethel Redding influence was aggressive.

You've got MacArthur down in the south, you've got Bethel in the north.

And here I am stuck in the middle with all those very confused people.

So we had a.

Well, and they get money horrifyingly wrong.

Like 90% of the time.

Yeah.

They're just.

Put things back in context.

Stop reading the Bible verses individually and exclusively with your feelings, and you might learn a thing or two about what the Bible actually says.

Well, it's kind of fun.

You totally stole the transition I was going to do from that into where our topic was going to be like.

You know, the problem is most.

Most people read their Bible the way they do their wallet or checkbook.

You know, it's.

It's a little bit of.

A little bit of what they see and a lot of no context.

Right.

I mean, so.

So we had.

You had a quote that you said last time you were on the show.

Someone made a meme out of it.

I shared it.

And boy, did that get up.

People upset.

You know, I.

I realize there's a lot of people that are Dave Ramsey lovers and strangely.

Yeah.

And even.

Even people who.

Who.

Who have done very well for themselves and yet still, you know, I mean, individuals who don't actually follow everything.

James Ramsey.

Like, the, the issues that we had brought up when you were on was the fact.

And I should give the quote.

The.

The quote you had was Dave.

Dave Ramsey is the Joel Osteen of financial planning.

So that was the quote that you had.

The, the thing is that I.

I mean, the issue that we raised about it was that Dave Ramsey would say you should never get in debt ever.

Right.

And it's interesting because one of the person, the one person that was going after you back and forth for, for quite a bit actually doesn't follow that.

And that's why I was like, okay, like there are some things I think Dave Ramsey would be fine for, right.

If, if someone has, doesn't know how to manage their money at all, they're in debt and they need to get out of debt and they need some fiscal responsibility because they have none.

Right.

I think some of the, and I'm, I haven't read a lot of.

On Dame Ramsey.

I said that last time.

But I've, I've understand enough of his principles, what he teaches to see he, he's, he's going to be good for people who, who are struggling to manage their money, period.

They get themselves in debt.

Yeah, there you go.

There's a Dave Ramsey book.

And so the, there was another guy.

I'd have to try and look, see if I could find his book.

Blue, I think, was Ron Blue, I think was the name.

I have some of his books.

He seemed a little bit better.

But, but the, the issue is that there, I think there is a place for people like Dave Ramsey for those who just, you know, can't, don't know how to handle money, period, to teach them some responsibility.

But, you know, the person was going after, you would take, he would have no problem taking a loan or getting in debt to make more money, depending on.

And I gave this example, I think last time you're on.

I, I have an extremely low mortgage.

Okay.

It's under, it's under 2% now.

I was paying very quickly to pay the mortgage off, but I kind of stopped when I realized I, I can.

Even if I leave that money sitting in the bank at 4%, I'm making more than paying it off faster.

Yep.

Arbitrage.

And, and to me, this is such simple thinking.

Right.

And this is where I think so many people don't, don't think through with the finances.

It's not just the responsibility of saying, okay, I can't get in debt, but there's, there is an appropriate time to get in debt.

And we, we had, you know, Greg Moore, who is a real estate agent, he gave an example that, you know, he, he took out loans to, to buy some houses that he was able to invest and flip them and make more money.

Yeah.

And if, if people would say that's irresponsible.

Well, okay, we'll get into that a bit.

Right.

But this is, so this is some of the things that you Know, I found very interesting, because, by the way, I'll say this, and I just, I don't know, you may disagree with me on this, but there is a biblical plan for people that would fit into really needing the help of a Dave Ramsey.

The Bible provides a way for people who cannot handle their own finances, don't.

Don't have an ability to take care of their finances.

It's actually called slavery.

Okay, yeah, I see where you're going with that.

Am I, am I wrong?

I mean, is that not.

I mean, the, the Old Testament, slavery was a protection for those that cannot handle money.

They'd get themselves in debt.

And so what they had to do is they had to sell themselves to, to someone who would pay them half a day's wage.

The other half paid their wages, they were owed back.

But the master had a responsibility to the, the slave to take care of them because they've proven they can't take care of themselves.

Right.

So that may end up becoming a future meme that you, you come up with the people that need.

Dave Ramsey.

The Bible solution is slavery.

I don't think that would go over.

No, no, because when people think slavery in the United States, they think shadow slavery, not indentured servitude.

Correct.

They don't think of biblical slavery.

But, but we don't have the systems in place these days for that, for that to happen.

The, the wealthy landowners who would put you to work don't want the responsibility, nor are they the lenders themselves, because we're doing a lot of institutional lending.

Yeah.

But I, I find that the issue of slavery in the Bible to be very interesting because so many people don't understand what slavery was in the Bible.

And it was actually a protection for those that could not take care of the, Handle their own finances.

Right.

And it was only seven years at most, depending on when you ended up going into slavery and when the next jubilee year was.

So it's basically bankruptcy.

You're going to go into indentured servitude for up to seven years, and then when that time's up, your debt's done, you're released, go back, and probably don't get into debt again.

Yeah.

And, and there's there, I'm just through getting done in my Bible reading, you know, going through Leviticus and, you know, with all the rules of, okay, how close are you to that jubilee year?

How much are you going to have to pay back?

And so you don't have people who just go, well, I'm going to, I'm going to just, I know next year's jubilee.

Let me just get myself.

I'll, I'll.

Yeah.

Work that way.

Just say I'm not paying any of my bills and next year I'm all free.

There's protections against that as well.

And, and so I think a lot of people don't realize how much the Bible does talk about money.

There's a lot of people will say, okay, the Bible, you know, Jesus spoke about hell more than heaven, spoke about money more than heaven and hell combined.

That's true.

But there's a lot of areas, I think, where the Bible talks about money that we don't think about in.

Even in the Old Testament, when it talks about slavery and the purpose of it.

Yeah, so, so let, I mean, I want to start with kind of a high level for folks is give us like a biblical view in your opinion of, of money, how it should be used.

And then what I want to start diving into is what the Bible actually teaches about our responsibility with our own money.

And I know this is going to sound crazy in America, Josiah, because right now we have these Democrats that think that the way the, the way you should do things is you should give your money to other countries and other people before yourself in your own country.

I don't know if that's a biblical model.

Do we have responsibility to our own family before other people, you know, our country before other countries?

So let's get into some of those things.

Ordo amorous or something.

Yeah, I think I heard.

I mean, it's, it's really sad when the Vice President United States understands Roman Catholic theology better than the Pope who got it wrong.

When.

The Pope's not Catholic.

Everyone knows that.

Hey, there are some in this that are listening to this now that will totally agree with that because we've had some of them come in and debate us on that subject.

So, yes, there's a whole special term for a Roman Catholic that doesn't believe in the authority of the current sitting Pope.

It's these.

And I, I can't, I have trouble pronouncing it, but set.

Sa.

Canists.

Yeah, it's something like that.

We've had them come in and debate in here.

So yes, they, they are.

So, so what would be a biblical view of, in your opinion, obviously of money.

Yeah, and I think we'll, we'll have to actually start even more prologamina than usual and go back to what is money?

Period before you can go any further.

Further.

So if you, if you go in the Bible, all The way back in Genesis, I believe it's Genesis 2:10 describes a river flowing from Eden, divides to branches, and then it talks about some of the lands, you know, Pishon encircles a land called Havilah.

And there is good gold in the land of Havilah and precious stones.

So there are two people on the face of the planet and God mentioned specifically, hey, down that river there is something that you are going to utilize as a medium of exchange.

There's the basis of civilization right down there.

When you guys are no longer on a.

On a pure bartering system, there's your medium of exchange, golden precious stones down the land of Habila.

So it was already built into the created order that we are to have these things that have intrinsic value.

Although I have worked with some economists who actually deny intrinsic value.

That's a fun thing.

It's all subjective value.

But God has said these things are valuable, a type of.

Yeah, besides it, in the land of Avila, there's also bdellium, a type of resin and onyx stones.

So precious stones and the kind of resin that you could use as a medium exchange.

So God has already given us these things that store value.

Right.

And what creates value, I think is another important question.

And that's specifically work, Right?

The, the mandate for Adam to work the garden is pre fall.

Adam had a job.

So like it or not, jobs are pre fall.

They're a good and godly thing and you should do them.

He will not work, will not eat either.

Right?

So Adam had a job and he was to take the garden and expand it.

There was the garden of Eden and then the rest of good and unfallen creation.

And he was to take that garden and expand it out.

It's called the cultural mandate, if you guys are familiar with that one.

So the cultural mandate, be fruitful, multiply, expand the garden.

So Adam's work, him creating, co creating with God on a lesser level, not ex nihilo, but taking the, the items that are the, the physical matter and making it into something ordered and beautiful, taking dominion over the, the plants, over the animals, and shaping them according to human flourishing.

Right.

So that is good work.

And if you have multiple people who are specialized into certain areas, if you've got one guy who's really good at raising cattle, perhaps he has a cattle on a thousand hills or something.

And you have one guy who's really good at making houses.

Well, he could trade.

The guy with a bunch of cattle could trade like five entire cattle for one house.

Or we could fractionalize that exchange and say no.

How about we take X amount of gold and that's worth both a house and five cattle and we just use that instead.

So it fractionalizes me, fractionalizes value and the wealth that you create by your good work.

10,000 foot overview of what money is.

We're taking what God has called valuable and using mediums of exchange in order to trade for those pieces of value or in order to trade for those, those pieces of wealth which represent human work, creating something good alongside God.

So when you have a fiat paper currency that's tied to nothing that God has called valuable and you can print it out of thin air and it inflates it 3 or 4% per year, that's money at all.

We, we act.

We don't have money since 1971.

We're, we're no longer tied to anything that God has called valuable.

The actually the state has said that it can create xne hello.

In fiat declaring that this piece of paper, this piece of cotton, contains value when it doesn't.

So when it's not tied into anything that actually relates to work and wealth.

So let me ask just.

And we'll probably get more into this later, but cryptocurrency, specifically bitcoin, is that then, right?

Is that money, in your opinion?

It's a marked improvement, that's for sure.

We can't see the book.

You're holding up a book, but we can't read the title.

So why don't you tell us the title.

Thank God for Bitcoin, the Creation, Corruption and Redemption of Money, written by Robert Breedlove, James Jordan Bush, Gabe Higgins, George Markdell.

A whole bunch of people have contributed to this.

It's a bunch of Christian bitcoiners.

Phenomenal.

Really good intro to bitcoin.

I wouldn't suggest you put your money in anything you don't understand.

This is a really good starter.

The.

The learning curve on bitcoin is actually rather steep.

So this is a good starter, but you're going to need to do a lot more reading before I'd recommend you, you put your dollars, which are not worth anything, into another medium of exchange that is currently so worth something.

We got a comment here that came up.

Jesse says dominion mandate.

I don't know, brother.

You may be in danger of becoming postmill.

You'd already be there, wouldn't you?

Yeah, I'm a free constructionist.

So post, millennial, presuppositional, all, you know, full nine yards there.

Yeah, I did hear a actually relatively Respected business owner recently quote or what he said, I'm going to paraphrase a little bit, but the world belongs to optimists because they have to believe a thing can be done before you can go out and actually do it.

So optimism, I'd say, is definitely a better way to go about completing the Dominion mandate or exercising the Dominion mandate than thinking that we only have a very limited time and we're.

That that tech can, could, could potentially lead someone to wonder why we would polish brass on a sinking ship.

Well, because God says so.

Right.

The, the commands of God are very clear.

But I'd say it's, it's easier to do that in a context of optimism rather than a context of something else.

So, so I, I, because I do want to spend a little bit of time because on Bitcoin and, and crypto, I mean, I, I'll just say up front, I, I am fine with bitcoin.

I do question like, there's been a lot of discussion.

Trump is saying, you know, is looking into a government cryptocurrency and I'm against it.

And people think that's strange because I, I have bitcoin.

There's a big difference between those two.

So I, I do want to get into that.

So don't let me forget about that.

On crypto, I'd say the only issue I have with it is that it's not directly backed by something that God has called valuable.

That's really it.

That's my primary concern is that Bitcoin is currently denominated in dollars and its value is purely speculative.

Whatever other people are willing to pay for Bitcoin, that's what its value is.

It doesn't cash flow, it doesn't generate anything.

It's a potential and really good.

There's a lot of potential here.

As a medium of exchange, it's non fungible.

You can't just print that thin air.

It can't be duplicated.

It's tracked 100% of the time.

It's a lot of really great things that make it a phenomenal medium of exchange for our digital age, except for the fact that it goes up 150% per year on average, which discourages people from using it as a medium of exchange.

And it's not a good store of value either at the moment because it's not tied into anything that God has called valuable.

Yeah.

If and when Bitcoin stabilizes against commodities, if you can actually use it like a medium of exchange, and they do tie it to some sort of like gold standard or gold, silver, precious stones, livestock, and.

And property.

Right.

If it's all tied in against commodities, yeah, I'd say bitcoin could be exactly what we're looking for in a lot of respects.

Then it's just a matter of will that actually happen and will the powers that be allowed that to happen or are on the opposite end?

Could they stop it?

Because it's.

It's totally.

It's totally decentralized.

Okay.

And so for folks who don't understand, that's the difference with Bitcoin, why I'd be for Bitcoin and not for digital currency.

So if you hear about digital currencies, the idea behind it is that there's, There's a way of.

The value that Josiah is referring to is in the work of keeping a ledger.

Okay.

In Bitcoin, it is completely decentralized, which means anybody can run the ledger.

I have friends who run miners.

They have the ledger.

And so the, It's.

It's the calculations to come up with the ledger.

So when something is done, it can't be hidden.

I can't go and manipulate the ledger.

Okay.

I'm trying to keep this really simple for folks that don't understand so they can.

The issue I have with some of these other currencies, like Trump, talking about a government currency, and, you know, there was the.

Right after Trump got elected, or I think it may have been January 20th, there became a Trump coin.

And so that is.

I would, I would say that's really.

People say it's investment.

It's a really risky one because the issue with the digital currencies become who controls the ledger.

Because the, the person or organization that controls the ledger can just sell everything out from underneath.

You imagine the government doing a pump and dump.

Yeah, well, and.

And this is what has happened with many people is, you know, there's that.

I, I saw that.

The thing I mentioned last time, the Haktua girl, who, you know, who I, I, yeah, I had to go figure out who she was because everyone.

So.

But she, she got a big platform by doing a podcast or whatnot, and someone came to them and said, hey, we'll do a Haktua coin.

And you know her well.

If you know anything about who she is, you realize she's not exactly the smartest person in the world.

She's.

She's up there with aoc, which really is basically pretty dumb.

And so they basically said, hey, we'll you get this coin, we'll put in your name.

And.

And everyone could get some.

And then what happened?

She has all the responsibility on her.

And they controlled the ledger.

So if people were buying it, they just said, oh, hey, it's worth something.

And they all, they just sold everything right out underneath it.

Basically, people that put their money in lost everything.

And this is why I don't like the idea of the government saying, oh, well, we will control the ledger.

Basically what that is doing.

If you saw what Joe Biden did where he just said, well, we could just print more money and we can kind of control the economy through printing money and, and take, take away people's wealth.

Well, if everything goes to a, a system where the government has complete control and they can just wipe everything out if they want to do.

Yeah, that's not a good system now.

And Bitcoin, because it is public and because there is no central person or organization.

In fact, the, there's lots of discussion of who the founder of it was because he went by an alias and he has, he's got some bitcoin and it's never been sold.

Yep.

And so people think he died.

There's been lots of questions of who it is, but the reality is, is that that's decentralized so that there's.

The protection with bitcoin, is there where.

If you get into any of these others, I'm just going to warn you, don't.

Well, Ethereum's great.

It's totally not going to collapse until it does.

Until it does.

Or maybe you could buy some NFTs.

They're also on the blockchain.

So.

Yeah, I mean there, there's a, there was someone I knew that was.

Bought a bunch of different coins using Coinbase.

And if you don't want folks, if you're, if you're going, well, I don't know what this would.

All this Coinbase and all that, it's just different, different ways of buying and selling coin, these digital currencies.

But yeah, it doesn't count.

By the way, I'm pretty sure Robinhood puts your money in a Bitcoin etf, but you don't get a wallet, you don't get keys.

It's not actually you owning that bitcoin if you buy it through Robinhood.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Okay.

Yeah.

A lot of people are like, oh, I own Bitcoin.

Where.

Yes.

Do you actually own it or is it on Robinhood?

Because they'll sell you bitcoin, but I think it's actually just directly tied to a Bitcoin etf.

Okay.

And so Yeah, I mean, there, there are some advantages to bitcoin, especially if you have a government that's looking to, say, persecute you.

You take a look at what happened.

I, I often think about Albert Einstein when he got his Nobel Peace Prize because he was a German citizen and married to an American woman.

I think, I think at that point they might have been divorced.

I forget.

But he basically gave her the.

Gave her his.

His peace price, the $1 million.

Because the German, you know, I think it was German mark was basically worthless overnight.

Yeah.

And so that's something that, you know, where if you have bitcoin, you can just pick it up, like, hey, give it that to me in bitcoin.

And it doesn't matter which country you're in, the bitcoin is the same value and in every country, everywhere.

So you can pick it up.

And I have what's called a cold wallet.

I could just take that with me and take my bitcoin, go to another country, and all my money's there.

So it does protect somewhat against.

Well, and I want to get into this later, but, you know, we've seen where the government just shuts down people's banks and, you know, so that was one of the questions I had for you was, you know, and so bitcoin is one way, but I want to talk about other ways.

How can we as Christians protect against that?

How can we protect our money from a government that can just come in and, and cancel your.

Your credit cards, your bank?

And I actually had this happen.

Chase Bank.

And folks, this is why I'll never get any Chase Bank.

Chase cards.

Don't do it.

I, I went out and, you know, I don't know.

I'm not.

I might get canceled by saying it, but I bought one of these things.

Yeah, you know, it's, you know, yeah, it's.

It's something that, you know, is.

The Second amendment gives us a.

The right to own and whatnot.

But.

Right.

It's a.

It's a long distance hole puncher.

Yeah, a long distance hole puncher.

I like that.

And so shortly after purchasing some ammo and, and weapons, Chase sent me a letter letting me know that my personal business, my personal credit cards, my business credit cards and my bank account were all being shut down.

Could not tell me why.

It's been years now.

They still won't tell me why.

And I had a limited, you know, it was kind of interesting.

I had 30 days to empty the bank account to clear everything out and, and make sure I pay.

I had to make sure I paid the credit card bill though.

But they were going to, they were basically confiscate the money after 30 days if I didn't empty it.

And for the points on the credit card they were going to just be evaporated if I didn't cash those in.

And the letter came like 15 days in the 30 day period.

It was dated 15 days before, but I didn't get it for.

Yeah, that's, that's rough.

And, and you know, there's not.

They didn't even have to give me the 30 days.

No, they could have just done that immediately.

And, and people have suffered with that where all of a sudden, you know, the truck drivers in Canada, they're, they're protesting their government in, in the abuses of their government.

What does their government do?

Basically shut down all their bank accounts and now they can't pay bills.

They can't, you know, can't do anything.

Right.

So, so are there ways as Christians that I think that's a serious thing we have to recognize.

Are there ways that we could protect against that?

A few.

So essentially what you're looking for or that to back up a little bit, it'll, it'll transition.

A good currency is two things.

It is a medium of exchange that everyone recognizes the implicit value of, potentially the subjective value of.

I would hope it's the, the actual intrinsic value of.

But we'll say implicit for now that your, your one ounce of gold today is going to be worth whatever you spent it on tomorrow.

Right.

But it's going to be a good medium of exchange for that, those purposes.

And it's a good store of value.

So if you do a lot of work but you don't have a lot of things to buy, you can store them up and you're not wasting your time.

You don't have to stop working because you don't need anything.

You can continue to accrue value things, gardenize the planet, do good work and accrue that store of value that you can utilize later.

You can deploy that capital later at the same hopeful rate of that it was worth when you earned it the initial time.

So what we're looking for here is a store of value.

So if we can, I mean we can.

You can go back old school and buy one ounce of gold, you can buy one ounce of silver.

James Hunter at Alps Precious Metals, that's sort of his whole shtick.

He used to be in, in the, the financial sphere in traditional finance and now he just liquidates people's assets or 10 turns 10% of someone's assets into gold.

Here you go.

Here's an asset class that will not go away, won't tarnish.

Well, the silver will tarnish, but your gold won't tarnish.

Here you go.

And you have a store of value.

My only concern is it's not an investment.

It does not grow.

So if you had like five bars of gold in 1920, you could buy a neighborhood.

If you have five bars of gold today, you can buy a neighborhood.

But it did not grow in that time.

So you're not actually increasing your wealth, you're just storing it.

So if you're looking for a medium of exchange and a store of value that's totally recognized for one, that's going to be a big one, other people are willing to take it and it doesn't diminish in value while you hold on to it.

We don't really have anything.

No.

No digital currency that does both of those things.

Well, Bitcoin, again, could.

It works as a medium of exchange for certain persons who also do bitcoin, but you also get charged, frankly, ridiculous fees for transferring it between individuals.

So it's not a decent medium of exchange when there's a third party who's like, yeah, but I'm going to get my cut for making sure this transaction can even happen.

And it's not a good store of value since again, it was.

It was $100,000 a month and a half ago.

Now it's $60,000 today per Bitcoin.

That's denominating it against the dollar, mind you, which is iffy.

But we need it to be stable compared to at least commodities.

1-800-TH of Bitcoin should be able to buy your groceries for the month.

And next month, 1 8, 800th of Bitcoin should be able to buy your groceries for the month.

So it needs to be stable and it needs to be recognized and it needs to be usable by everyone in order for it to kind of fulfill those functions.

So that's generally what I think about Bitcoin as a store of value.

But what you can do instead is effectively, how do you put it?

Get something that's a good medium of exchange and get something that's a good store of value.

And ideally, that store of value is entirely detached from the digital space so that you can always use it, or so that you can always have it, you can always use it later.

So that's where having a safe full of gold does come in handy.

Right.

The government can't Take that if they don't know it's there.

But also tracked.

Gold's tracked really aggressively and it's treated like a special kind of commodity.

You can actually, you have to pay capital gains tax on the sell the sale of gold because it's not considered a currency anymore.

It's considered an asset.

It's a commodity.

So again, the government just screws the whole thing up.

You got me curious with that.

I, how do they know if I sell, if I sell the gold, how do they know what I paid for it for?

Right?

Because I mean I've been, I've, I've buy, I, I buy gold.

I've been doing it for years.

I mean a neat thing that I started doing my grandkids, I wish I did this with my kids, but my kids graduated college, they each got some gold coins as a, as a means of here.

This is an investment for you to, you know, just, you know, and was a gift.

So my grandkids, I get them a gold coin or not a, not a full ounce maybe, but I get them, you know, a, a coin for each year.

So when they turn 20, you know, whenever, you know, graduate college, 20, whatever, I'm going to give them, you know, a couple of ounces of gold, you know, and so.

But how do they know?

I mean, if I buy it online, I could see.

But if I go into a store and purchase it and pay cash, there's no record of it.

No cash.

You should be okay.

But precious metal dealers are required to file form 1099 when a consumer sells a reportable quantity of a specific booyon or coins.

So the government will track you.

They know that you sold it.

Yeah.

They don't necessarily know how much you bought it for, but they know almost certainly you turn some sort of profit.

So if you don't report it, they could trigger an audit and then they will find out.

So what would they do?

They would do, they would give you the capital gains on all of the coin, like on the full price of.

It, assuming you paid nothing, just on the profits.

So if you bought a coin, like we're talking a literal gold coin here, right?

Yeah.

You bought it for $100 and you sold it for 110.

You owe $10.

Within a year you would owe.

No, you don't.

Like if it's long term capital gains.

Yes.

On that $10, it'd be 15, 15 of the, of the, the profit.

But like I, you know, I mean some of the coins I bought so long ago.

Right.

I have.

You would be by law required to keep a ledger, keep track of what you paid for it and what, and what you sell it for.

Okay, I'm not selling that.

I'll let the kids, when I die, my kids will sell it and they'll let them deal with it.

Yeah.

And we deal with estate planning.

There's a whole estate issue there with inheriting gold as a commodity.

So yeah, effectively the, the IRS says, hey, you better tell us how much money you made.

You, you are more or less required to self report.

But there are some things that they can track and they do track those.

Again, if you're selling a certain amount of gold to an official precious metals dealer, they know exactly what you sold it for.

Now they just have to figure out how much you buy it for and then they're going to hit you with the tax bill.

Ah, interesting.

And that's because gold is treated like a commodity, not like a currency.

Because the again, the government has violated God's clear direction on what constitutes a medium of exchange.

Interesting.

So I didn't know that.

Something learned.

Yep.

Reason not to sell my gold.

You can actually thank Ronald Reagan for that.

Yeah.

Unfortunately there's some things people don't realize we really shouldn't be thanking Ronald Reagan for.

So do you folks listening?

Do you know that no.

4 no fault divorce was voted in by Ronald Reagan might surprise some folks.

Now we can understand why.

Because you know, like, well, he was divorced when divorce was really not popular.

Divorce.

He took away my machine guns before I was even born.

It's just not right.

Yeah, well, so that may be coming back.

You know, there's some fight on that, on that front.

Oh yeah.

So.

So what?

I mean, so we could.

I, I do think gold is a way of hedging your bets, protecting against things, as you said.

I mean inflation.

Right.

But it is quite literally a buried talent at that point.

Yeah.

If it's not actively deployed, if it's not actively making you money, then that is a.

Hopefully it's not everything that the master has given you.

Yeah, you bury 10 of the talent maybe as a good store of value.

But money or anything that's being used as a medium of exchange, and we're going to colloquially call money, even if it's not directly tied to what God is called valuable, needs to be deployed and actively earning more money.

It is the, the dominion mandate to expand and rather logarithmically at that.

So anything that God has given you, that he has given you to steward is meant to be used and used in a way that grows and promotes human flourishing.

So when we're talking about putting a bunch of your money in gold for safety, again, at most I would say maybe 10% or keeping your money a store of value of maybe 10%.

Everything else ought to be deployed.

Even if we're all throwing around paper money that doesn't actually hold any value, people are treating it like it does.

It seems to have some level of intrinsic value.

And so we ought to deploy it and make more.

And then you have a larger amount that you can pull out as 10% to build up your little pile of gold.

All right, so let me get a couple things, people.

Putting some things up here.

Jesse is saying my head is spinning.

Any good godly resources on how best to invest?

I can give you a really terrible resource.

He's holding up a Dave Ramsey book for the.

For the audio audience.

Yes.

Yeah, you should just invest in mutual funds.

Open up a Roth ira.

IRA and do nothing.

Like that's horrifying advice.

Just way too cookie cutter.

So any good resources?

I would say.

Well, I'm.

I'm mildly biased because I work with him, but Justin Johnson at Domingen Financial Planning, a legally distinct and separate entity that I do not work with him and not directly affiliated with.

But we do send him a lot of leads and he does wear the same shirt.

So this guy who does fall under SEC jurisdiction and I don't would be a great resource for you if you're interested in talking with someone who holds similar values.

Very similar.

Well, he's not a reconstructionist, so similar ish theology.

He's a Baptist.

He's a reformed Baptist.

He's get.

He's.

He's way better just off of those simple things.

Yeah, just off of those two things.

I'm a Baptist too, but he'd be a really good resource if you want to talk specifically about what.

What is best for you.

Because unless I know an awful lot about your current financial situation, I can't give any advice here.

Yeah.

And it takes us about 45 minutes to go line by line through.

All right, here's your current assets.

Here's your current budget.

Here's this, here's that.

Here's your time horizon.

Here's your risk tolerance.

All right, you should go with this, this and this.

So, good resources?

Oh, plenty.

Actually, I've got a ton of books back here if you're just looking for concepts.

Right.

Not necessarily for specific recommendations on stock spawns.

ETFs.

No.

Okay.

They're on the other shelf.

The case for Dividend Growth by David Bonst I'd say is really phenomenal.

And okay, I gotta be careful about what I'm recommending here.

But the case for dividend growth, I'd say start there and it'll give you a really clear picture of why we ought to put our money in things that are showing actual value as opposed to pure speculative value.

Right.

Where they're giving you money because you're part owner of the company.

And the sort of moral impetus to, if you are a part owner of a company, to have your voice heard, to actually show up to stock meetings and be loud.

If enough Christians own Disney stock, Disney wouldn't be what Disney is today.

Correct.

Because we could be loud and obnoxious and say, hey, knock it off.

And Disney's also, I believe, a dividend, a dividend stock.

So you, you will take some of Disney's money if you own part of Disney.

But I digress.

I'm not going to recommend that anyone go out there.

I'm not soliciting anything, but go talk to a financial professional who is licensed properly.

If you're looking for specifics, the case for dividend growth would be a good place to start.

Start with regards to deeper investing advice than something that a radio show host who happened to get lucky in the real estate industry might provide.

And he's referring there to David Ramsey.

So, okay, so someone is asking, what about inflation?

What about it?

It's awful.

It's, it's, it's another tax, actually.

Fun fact.

The, the only tax that you need to worry about is government spending.

That's it.

That is the only tax.

Yeah.

Because if you're not paying it directly, you will pay a.

Via inflation.

Inflation because of their money printing.

Yeah.

So that's it.

Because that's how they, that's how they're going to make up for it.

Right.

And they're spending the money.

The difference, what we, you and I would go to jail for in our home is if we just printed money so that we could just spend more, we would go to jail.

But when the government does it, it's perfectly okay.

Right.

Technically, the Federal Reserve, which is a non government entity.

Yeah.

And when, when, when it's a Democrat in office, then we just redefine what inflation is and what depression.

Depression is so that, you know, we would have a Joe Biden who, you know, they claim never, there was never an inflationary period.

There was, there was never a recession.

There was never a depression because they just redefined the terms.

A recession is two negative quarters, two negative quarters.

Yeah.

And a depression is, was eight or nine, I forget which.

Yeah, it.

Well, okay.

Two negative quarters.

I think Joe Biden had 16.

Okay.

And they wouldn't even call it a recession.

We had a depression two times over.

Yeah.

And some of the worst inflation in this country's history ever.

Because they just filled up the money supply.

They let the money printer run and we had something closer to like 2122 inflation during the height of COVID But it was reported as 4,4%.

They actually took a bunch of commodities that we normally track for inflation off because they were too aggressively growing.

No, no, we're not going to count those anymore.

And inflation suddenly came down.

Okay, so you're not tracking like groceries.

The person asking a question said that was in regards to the gold holding its value, right?

Yeah.

Gold does not inflate it general.

Well, it'll fluctuate a little bit because we don't denominate our currency in gold.

So people's speculative value for gold will shift a little bit.

That's why you see gold moving up and down and it goes up because it's being denominated against the dollar.

So yeah, a pound of gold will always increase in value compared to the dollar because the dollar is inflating.

But it's not actually increasing in value in actual value.

It's just that the dollar keeps getting less and less valuable.

Yeah.

So if you were put a thousand dollars in gold in like 1920 or $1000 in the S&P 500 1920, guess who would have more stuff?

Not the guy with a thousand dollars worth of gold.

So you do want to make sure it's deployed.

But that's why we should use eggs.

Right.

Jeremy says eggs don't look last so long.

That's the only problem.

Right.

Because.

Right.

You can glass your eggs, make them last a little longer.

But yeah, eggs don't last too long.

Gold is a great store of value and com.

It's a hedge against inflation if we're going to get technical.

So it's a, it's a hedge.

It's not an investment.

We can't call it an investment because it doesn't cash flow.

It doesn't do anything.

It just, it's a store of value and it does not inflate in actuality, the dollar does.

So it can be a good hedge against inflation.

But Again, if only 10% of your portfolio is in this non inflating asset class, 90% of your portfolio presumably is, which means you're still going to run into Basically the same issue.

Unless you want to totally remove the value that you do have in dollars out of the system and put it in gold.

But then again, you only have a medium of exchange and you need to find someone that will trade with you in gold so you can continue growing your dollars.

And I'm going to welcome in Aaron Brewster to as, as he said, he says, you know, he said, what's up?

In the chat, he said, what's up party people?

So we'll welcome him to the party.

So, and I, I'll say, I'll say again, folks that are watching, if you want to join live there, there is a problem with the website.

We'll work that out.

Usually you go to apologizelive.com to join, but I do have the Streamyard link there.

If you want to join, ask questions.

If you're going to ask.

I'm just going to say this up front.

I should have said this the beginning.

If you're going to come in asking Josiah questions about your personal finances, I'm.

Going to ask you a bunch first.

Well, I'm going to say, well, let me put it this way, Josiah, if they want to get more personal, because now this would not be the forum to be answering those things.

But how could folks get a hold of you?

Social Security number is.

No, no, no.

Yeah.

If you did want to sit down with me, we do a introductory overview.

It's about an hour.

I'll tell you a little bit more about the company, who we are, what we do, and then do the necessary data collection.

Then I'll spend the next three to five days actually crunching the numbers so that we could do a hour and a half long consultation with all of my recommendations.

In order to do that, you can go to www.reformed.money.

that's a quick redirect to our website, dominionwealthstrategist.com you can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter or X.

Now it's called in Instagram.

All of those will have the links directly there so that you don't have to type anything in if you don't want to.

Let me ask this question of Jesse.

Jesse said couldn't connect.

Jesse, were you able to connect using the Streamyard link?

I'll be curious to find that out because Aaron was able to come in using the.

Actually both you guys came in using that link.

So that link, where, where is that on the site?

Because I didn't see that.

I just clicked on the duck like I normally, normally do.

Well, because I sent you the link, but for some reason.

That's why I put this.

Yeah.

So if people.

If people.

Well, if people want to join.

You can't right now.

You can't go to apologeticslive.com and click on the doc.

You have to go to streamyard.com/ and it's 5x, g, e, a, b, u, u, d2.

That's why I left.

Can you put that into the comments?

Just really rolls off the tongue.

Yeah.

I wonder if I could.

I might be able to.

Let's try that.

So I don't want to derail anything that you guys are.

But you're going to.

But.

Well, no, no, no.

But I want to ask permission and if it's okay, I want to.

Let me.

Because maybe it's not a derailment, because if it's about money, it's about money and.

And money philosophy.

Well, you've already derailed.

So we're waiting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

You are.

Okay.

Okay, cool.

All right.

So.

Okay.

Well, that was enough of that.

We'll just put him backstage.

No, no kidding.

I'm kidding.

So I had this idea.

I was studying through Genesis a while back, and I found it was very interesting.

So God gives Pharaoh this dream.

Seven years of plenty, seven years of famine.

Joseph comes in and he.

He explains the dream.

Then Pharaoh puts Joseph in charge, right?

And then Joseph has this plan.

And I'm gonna oversimplify it, okay.

Just.

Just for sake of keeping it short.

And that plan was communism or socialism.

But.

Yeah, well, no, no, no.

So.

So.

So here's what.

Here's the thing.

The seven years are plenty.

Basically, Joseph, Egypt took 20% of what was produced during those seven years.

The Egyptians kept 80% of what they produced right.

Over those.

Over those seven years.

Right.

I don't know that we could actually look at the numbers in the Bible and figure out exactly when people started to need to go to Joseph, the Egyptians in particular, and say, hey, we need help.

But I get the impression it was pretty early on during the.

During the seven years of famine.

But what's interesting is this.

Whereas the Egyptians burned through 80% of what they accumulated over those seven years.

Joseph then took the 20% that he accumulated over those seven years and not only fed the entire nation of Egypt, but all of the surrounding areas, right?

So everybody for seven years, for the most part, survived off of the 20%, right.

When, you know, they.

They burned through the 80% before.

So I have.

I had this thought.

Now, obviously, I don't think it's.

You're going to hear it and you're like, well, yeah, if a person can do that, that's a great thought.

And the thought is simply, you know, what, what if our understanding of standard of living is totally messed up?

I mean, far too many people, as far as I know, and being a biblical counselor who works with people about lots of different things, including, including finances, far too many people are getting into debt, spending more than they have.

A lot of other people are just what comes in, goes out.

Some people are putting away their 10% into their savings, right?

But what if we reevaluated our standard of living to the degree that says, okay, I'm going to live off of 20, 30, maybe 40% of my income.

The other 80, 70, 60 is going to go into savings or things like that, investments, whatever the case may be.

Now that sounds crazy because all of us are like, man, if I tried to live off of only 20% of my income, I would be, you know, that would be a completely different standard of living.

And that's where I stop and say, is that bad?

Like, maybe reevaluating from that?

Again, I'm not saying it's biblical, I'm not saying so we have to do.

But I just thought it was so interesting that what Joseph did with the 20% far out shown what the 80.

And it makes me wonder if we're a lot of the poor financial decisions we make or we make because we think that we need the 80, when in actuality we don't.

I'd say it depends, because the median American right now is really struggling.

I think median income is 70 ish thousand dollars a year.

But that $70,000 doesn't go nearly as far as it used to, like at all.

And I think the average US American, which is including children who don't make any money at all, is somewhere in the neighborhood of like $42,000 a year.

If you were to try to live on 20% of that or 30% of that, you can't make rent.

20 or 30% of your income is usually just rent.

Sometimes 50 or 60% of someone's income is just rent.

And it's baseline, like the cheapest rent you can find in a given area.

So if we were to try to practically implement that now, we'd all be living in vans down by the river, scrounging through the forest for ramps.

If you're here in the south and foraging as I go along, may I.

Insert just an observation?

We're not sharing Social Security numbers and we're not sharing bank accounts and whatever else, but I can say as an individual who.

My salary for my non profit is 500amonth.

Please everyone go to shoesloveparent.com and donate.

Well, actually I, I'll say this, it, it, I mean, you're saying that.

But folks, we actually do have something set up for the Brewsters because they, they still haven't.

You know, I know we're giving a lot to Ukraine, but you know, for people like Aaron who got smacked with the hurricane, Joe Biden gave, well, nothing.

He gave, he gave Ukraine billions of dollars as a gift.

But Americans had to pay a loan.

So we do have, I'm showing it right there.

If you want to support the Brewsters to help them out because they're still, well, they were underwater, you know, literally.

But we have a givesendgo.com SFE it stands for striving fraternity.

So if you guys do want to help the Brewsters out because they are still behind on that, we, we could surely help them, give them, get them some, you know.

Well, we've replaced our H Vac, but we, but you know, all of the water damage and whatnot has, we haven't been able to fully help support, so.

And they don't have insurance, so.

And now, you know, when we say that he's living on a meager income, you now know how much his income actually is.

Now I say that because.

So since 2014, when I was early 2000s, I was a schoolteacher at a Christian school, so I was working two jobs at the time, so I was making about 40 or $50,000.

And in the Chicagoland area at that time, early 2000s, you know, we were able to, we purchased a home.

But still living in the suburbs of Chicago, you know, the Streamwood area, that took a lot of, you know, care to do that.

But ever since 2014, when we moved to Victory Academy for Boys, working at a boys home, we have been under the poverty level.

And what I've, what I found just personally and obviously I'm not saying that this works for everybody, but I am, I am saying that, you know, by God's grace, I don't necessarily know and I know you're just, you're, you're being silly and being hyperbolic, but I don't necessarily know that, you know, that if we have that idea that we need to forage and we need to live by the van down by the river.

Yeah.

Then I think that continues to reinforce the idea that this is impossible.

I couldn't possibly do that.

But you know, when people get creative and God blesses and God totally blesses, like, you know, I mean, our living arrangement right now is, you know, most people aren't going to be able to do what we're doing and God is providing.

But I do, I do want to just put it out there just as an encouragement that, man, oh man, we have seen God take a dollar bill and stretch it a mile in so many ways that we never thought was possible because we said, you know, we have to be financially wise with this money because we don't have the money to not be wise.

But anyway, go ahead, go ahead.

And you do see it.

So I do agree in principle that most people are living either they're seeming almost requirement they have to live at or beyond their means.

There's a general American principle.

If you have money, you spend it.

It helps the economy.

Right?

So I see most, I mean, dealing with finances all day, every day, sitting down with clients.

Most of them have zero discretionary income because it's tied into a bill or to servicing a debt that they shouldn't have taken out.

And they have nothing left over, which means they have nothing to go in their storehouse, which means the $500 a month they're putting toward the tithe is actually putting them in a worse financial position where they need help from the church now.

So we, we want to make sure that when we're helping clients, we're maximizing that discretionary income.

Let's take down all of the bills that you don't actually need.

Let's not take the Disney vacation this year.

Several for like five or six reasons, but certainly financially, that's one of them.

And let's make sure that you're not spending money that you don't have and not buying things that you don't need.

And I don't want to lower someone's quality of life, but if they're living beyond what would be, I'd say, frugal or wise, we also need to take that into account.

If you're making $80,000 a year, you don't have to keep up with the Joneses.

You can live like someone who makes $42,000 a year and pocket the difference and actually grow it.

And in 20 or 30 years time, if you're, if you're good with your growth, if you're, if you're careful with it now, you can live like someone who makes $120,000 a year for the rest of your life.

Or better yet, you continue to live at $42,000.

And you're so generous building something for the kingdom.

But I say far too many people find themselves in luxury, get used to it, and can't see themselves diminishing their quality of life for any reason, let alone a good and moral 1.

1.

And right there you, you struck an issue for folks is a lot of people struggle financially because of the decisions they make.

And some of it is poor decisions.

So they get themselves in debt and they think, oh well, the next big scheme will get me out of debt as they dig themselves deeper.

But for a lot of others, say.

Anything about quickly gotten gains.

Yeah.

Where for others it's there.

The struggle that I think a lot of people have is they get used to certain things.

I, I do enough counseling with folks, even when it comes to getting jobs, things like that.

And people put, they put limitations on themselves that are their own limitations.

Okay.

So you end up in a situation where, you know, I'm just thinking of a recent counseling that I was doing with someone that had every reason under the sun why they could not take a certain job that would provide for their family.

And it just, I mean, no matter what I said, and so eventually it came down to.

So you just don't want to change from what you're doing.

Yeah.

Right.

And, and so then don't come to me saying, you know, it's like you're, you're putting this limitation.

I can't do.

Do that.

Why not?

Because.

Just not who I am.

Right.

And yeah, that's.

Maybe you're not hungry enough yet.

As I'm sure Brewster will agree.

As a biblical counselor, you can lead a horse to water.

They come to you for counseling.

But then when you actually give them the advice that they needed and the solution and the way forward.

Yeah.

They dig in their heels.

I love my guy.

I know he's a chiropractor.

He's got a sign on his, on his.

When he brings people in, in his office, he's got to sign up on the thing.

You know this, and I'll paraphrase because I don't exact.

I remember exactly what it is.

I should, I should take a photo of it.

It says your recovery is directly tied to which one of us is the doctor.

Yeah.

Aaron is.

Aaron, as a biblical counselor, is going to take that and probably have that like.

But providentially, I haven't run into too much of that in my particular industry.

People tend to come to us with a more, I wouldn't say submissive.

That's the wrong word.

They're here for advice.

They know they've messed up or they know they need help, they come to me, and then it's just a matter of being tactful, building a relationship, and then kind of earning the right, so to speak, to speak into their life and say, this is what you ought to do.

Based on my expertise that I've demonstrated already.

Yeah.

So it takes some time.

I have had some formal training in like newest counseling and that seemed to work out really well in this industry even because I'm essentially doing financial counseling from a biblical perspective.

Yeah.

So that's amazing.

That's great.

It's really narrow.

But going to seminary certainly helped.

Spending five years in the army as a chaplain's assistant, being a.

The de facto guy to handle all of the lower enlisted problems, certainly helped as I transitioned into finance.

Well, you use the term.

No, that of counseling.

So you're clearly talking about Nank.

You're talking about acbc.

Oh, yeah.

Yep, yep.

I love acbc.

I'll be there at the annual conference this year.

So that's good training.

That's awesome.

I love that you use that in what you're doing.

From a financial perspective, that's amazing.

Exactly how it should be working.

Right.

I don't think they were expecting that when they taught me.

And I should, I should mention.

So I made the comment about what happened with Joseph being socialist because if you actually look and I mean go and reread that account.

Notice I didn't say story because it's an account, it's a historical account.

But what you end up seeing was Joseph ends up okay.

Everyone needed the money.

They need their grain.

They're coming to Joseph.

And what did Joseph end up doing?

He basically transferred all of the wealth, the land, everything to the government by.

Okay, we'll, we'll take 20% for seven years.

But in the end, the government owns everything.

People gave up their land, their money, everything.

Yeah, I will say, though, I mean, you said socialistic and I was like.

I was like, okay, okay, okay.

From a business perspective, I mean, they weren't going to give away the seeds for free in a way like you'd almost expect, like a Marxist mentality would be like, you know, the welfare system, that we just give all of this grain away for free.

In fact, in that, in that, in that scenario, they would actually charge all the Egyptians, but they give it away to freed all.

Exactly.

Right.

But, but from a business perspective, I mean, they did the most intelligent thing.

We have all your money, you've spent it all on seed.

And so now we'll take, you know, your Animals will take your land.

Right.

You'll take you, in a way.

And what they ended up working out was a very interesting tax structure.

I mean, to be completely honest, I think 20% steep.

But depending on who you are in America, that's probably.

You'd like to pay 20% taxes across the board.

So.

So in a way, I don't know that I'm 100% against it because, I don't know, I guess maybe some way it could be considered socialistic.

Yeah.

In the, in the end.

And I, I'll just give a thank you for the person who just donated to Aaron and his family.

We do appreciate that.

So if others want to do that.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

GiveSendGo.com SFA this is, this is.

I mean, this is what, as Christians, Hey, I like what one of our other podcasters, Christian podcast community, said, you know, we should do the easy thing, because what Aaron is going through, still trying to recover from this hurricane.

That's the hard thing.

Easy thing would be to help support other Christians.

I mean, a crazy idea.

I mean, our government wants to take all our money to, to, you know, fund abortions and transgenders and everything else.

We can use our money to help other believers.

But I want to get into some of the, Some of the questions.

Tara asks this question.

What's the best thing to invest in?

So we've talked about.

We've talked about things that are.

Whether they're investments or not, like gold and bitcoin.

People think of bitcoin as a investment.

You know, it's really a currency, but.

Right, right.

You would not say biblical currency, aren't you?

Huh?

I just want to say.

I want to say before he says anything, and this is just really for the, for those of us who know, invest in the chips right now, everyone, please go put all of your money into the chips.

It needs it.

It needs it so bad.

Which chips?

Doritos, Lays, whatever you want.

No, no, no, no.

The, The.

The.

The chip market right now.

The super.

Oh, superconductors.

Gotcha, gotcha.

Yeah.

The stuff that goes in the AI is hard core, tanking the entire market.

Right.

Well, okay, so you know what I find really interesting?

Totally off topic, but with these, with the whole thing of AI, Right?

You have liberals promoting the idea of nuclear energy.

Yeah.

I mean, if you.

For those of us old enough to remember Three Mile island and all that, like, you know, the liberals were totally against one of the cleanest, safest types of energy, you know, saying, oh, it's gonna destroy the World and, and now because they want AI so badly and their electric cars because there's no way to.

The, the reality is you're using petroleum to get your electric, for your electric cars.

So, so they want, you know, it's like you want to end petroleum by producing more, needing to produce more of it.

And the AI, these, so now they're, they're promoting, you know, nuclear energy.

It's like crazy.

I just find it interesting.

But so yeah, so the question was how, what, what, what should, what are some good things?

And obviously not.

You're, you're not giving financial advice to individual people because you don't know.

But generally, I guess the question, are there things we could look to?

You know, I know my, and I think you, you alluded to this, but my son in law tells people, you know, just the, The S P500, if you just invest in that, you pretty much will, will do better than any, you know, money market or mutual fund or things like that.

Because those are doing terrible right now.

Yeah, The S P500 is for those of you at home, just a, an index that tracks the top 500 companies in the United States.

That means it's relatively stable because you're betting on the top biggest players in the United States.

But it also means it grows relatively slow because who grows slowest?

The people already at the top.

There's not a whole lot of upward momentum, a lot of room.

So if they're averaging maybe 10% rate of return as a whole index, that's great, that's a good benchmark.

But if you're doing something else, there might be some other things out there that do outperform, perform it very consistently.

So the S P is just kind of like the, the vanilla ice cream of investing.

It does work and it is great.

And in fact, vanilla was up until relatively recently the most expensive spice in the world.

So it's nice, it does good things.

But you should probably sit down with a qualified financial professional to go over everything and you will almost certainly outperform your wildest.

Well, maybe not your wildest terms.

I can't even imply a guarantee.

There's the potential that things will go better.

And I think that's about all I could say there.

But to sort of subvert your question, the best thing that you can invest in, and I'm going to use invest colloquially because I'm not soliciting for any securities, is yourself actually increasing your ability to create wealth.

If you get a certification that allows you to get a job where you can be paid 30% more.

That will pay a certain kind of colloquial dividend for the rest of your life because you're able to earn way more money.

So the money or the best place for you to put any additional money besides gold or bitcoin, somewhere in the, in the middle there is actually going to be yourself 90% of the time.

Increase your level of education, increase your competency, increase your earning potential, and that will definitely have a higher rate of return than practically anything else.

So let me give a practical.

In a different way to, to what you're saying, because this is something people may not think about.

You think about one of the biggest expenses we all have.

People think about retirement.

One of the biggest things is, is medical.

Medical expenses there.

It's a huge.

And by, if you're younger, by the time you get to the point where you can retire, if you can ever retire, medical is going to be far more than it is today.

And so, you know, I've, I ended up making the choice that I'm, I invest in things for my health because if I spend money and folks, regular listeners, you know, I, I do crazy things like cold plunging, I bought a cold plunge, I have a sauna in my house.

They really help with, with health.

Right.

Why would I do that?

Why would I spend that money?

Because I'm, I'm, I'm spending money in today's dollars, saving what I plan to save a lot more money in future dollars in health care expenses.

Now that may not be realized.

You know, I could get hit by a car.

Okay.

But at least, you know, everyone will be like, okay, well, he was just nuts while he was alive now because anyone that gets into a cold plunge, oh, look, there's his daughter giving her, giving him a kiss tonight.

We always like that.

And so, but right.

So there's a thing of.

There's other ways to think about how to save dollars today and, and to save future dollars.

Yeah.

Or better yet, to save future bitcoins.

There you go.

You know, if it fixes those two primary issues, that'd be great though.

I've, over the years accumulated a lot of silver, so bullion and coins and whatnot.

And one of the things I'm finding is difficult is that, okay, I'll back up a little bit.

When I was in college, I was on ebay and I could buy silver for less than spot price, which was insane back then, and I could sell it for more.

I did that a lot early on when this is.

Silver was trading for like, you know, 7 8, $9 arbitrage.

Yeah, it was beautiful.

Nowadays though, you can't do that.

Nowadays you try to sell things like that on, on, on ebay.

You're, you're, you're paying a significant price for listing it.

You go to a pawn shop and try to sell it, you're not going to be getting spot price for it ever, ever, ever, ever, ever.

And that's one of the difficulties too.

I mean, obviously you can get into precious metals in lots of different ways.

And I think precious metals have great value for lots of different reasons.

But as long as people out there, you realize you get into gold, you get into silver, it's not like, oh, I bought this for X amount and I can easily turn around and sell it for more even, even after the price goes up.

Because you need the price to go up high enough to cover the cost of what it's going to have for that exchange of selling it all.

It ends up just being one of those things where unless you, unless you know a guy, it can be more challenging than it used to be back in the good old days.

Yeah, there's a whole website called the Silk Road.

But don't go there.

You say that and they say don't go there.

No, it's like a darknet marketplace.

You could buy anything.

Kind of some issues there.

Yeah, but you would get spot price on silver.

Probably, probably.

You might even get under.

Who knows?

Who knows?

Yeah.

But back to the health thing, because the other guy that I work with, Justin Johnson over at Domingue Financial Planning, a totally separate legal entity that does security stuff, he is also a fitness coach, he's a power lifter.

He's won multiple state records in the state of Washington.

And so he also helps out with, with all of our agents.

So, you know, we can get, you know, big and swole because I'm a string bean and it's nice to finally put on some muscle, but that's probably wise as well.

Don't, don't live so cheaply that you end up taking years off your life and end up spending thousands and thousands of dollars on medical, medical expenses.

You want to make sure that you have a baseline and this is an emergency fund of sorts.

It's a way to keep yourself from spending lots and lots of dollars.

And this is the sort of thing that compounds as well, also increases your earning potential.

If you're a guy in finance and you're, you're skinny and you got a nice watch on, maybe you'll get a few more clients than the guy who's like, super fat and can barely fit into a suit.

So it can these sort of almost intangible elements that can all compound to make sure that your earning potential stays as high as possible.

One, a big one is going to be health.

That's a huge marker of success and competence.

It's something that I think I have found most people that deal with financial planning don't think about in.

In encouraging clients to do.

But you look at the fact that we live in a very unhealthy country, and so the majority of expenses.

I mean, what is it most Americans do?

The doctor says, here, take this pill, pop this pill, and you'll, you know, you'll.

You'll feel better.

I mean, the doctors I drove, I drove my cardiologist nuts because he was like, we, you know, your blood pressure's too high, your cholesterol's too high.

We got to get it down.

And he just is like, okay, take this medicine.

Take this medicine.

Take this medicine.

You'll be on it for life.

Life.

And the reality is that medicine that they tell you ends up destroying your kidney, which causes your blood pressure to continue to rise, which means they have to increase the dosage, and eventually you're, you know, sitting on dialysis.

Okay.

And.

And that all that becomes super expensive.

And so.

And now what the.

What the reality is now you're.

You can't earn as much when you're sick.

You cannot just.

Reality.

You can't earn as much when you're.

You're not feeling well.

You're.

You're not going to be as productive.

And so, you know, doing things, doing things that will take care of your health is something that is really, really important.

It's important for people to realize that, you know, this is the long term.

As I said, you're saving future money.

Okay?

It's the difference when Pl.

Talk about if you're going to put in money in a IRA versus a Roth ira.

One you're paying the taxes now, one you're paying the taxes later.

Which one's going to be better for you?

Well, if I had a crystal ball, I could tell you, yeah, we don't know what the tax rate is going to do if.

If a certain other person had won the.

The presidency, I could say where it was likely to go.

Yeah.

But.

But now outlooks totally changed.

A lot of financial planning had to shift with.

With the changing administration.

So, okay, a little more optimism.

Let's change things up, try and get things to hit on target.

But.

But one thing I can Say is your health is long term is not like, this is one we do know.

Right.

We do know the outcome.

Your health will die, degrade.

Okay.

And so I would just say, I mean, don't take that lightly.

If, if you're not in good shape, if you're overweight, you know, you're, you know, you're, you're very heavy.

Like, like Aaron over here.

That was like a joke for folks who are listening on, you know.

Yeah, Aaron's trying to like make his cheeks look big.

This super thin Aaron.

But no, the, if you're not in good shape, that is something to take serious now and say, you know what?

I, I got to start making improvements here because it, it's, that saves you a lot of money that you, you, you know, will need to spend later.

So it's, it's a, basically spend it now, spend it later, you know.

And I mean, one thing I'll say this is, you know, if you want to, there's.

When it comes to health, there's studies for everything.

And so I, you know, there's studies that will tell you that some things are bad for you and some are good for you.

But I could tell you this.

If, if you want to at least enjoy thinking you're getting healthy, make sure you have a good cup of Squirrelly Joe's coffee because at least, at least it'll taste better than any other coffee.

Hey, the caffeine, they say it's good for you, it's bad for you, but just the enjoyment of the flavor.

That'S.

Doing something for your health.

Decaf will kill you, man.

Forget that stuff.

No, this is, this is the real thing, man.

Yeah, Squirrely just has one decaf and he doesn't like it himself.

Yeah.

He calls it honesty.

And I keep busting like, okay, yeah, that's exactly.

That's my point.

It's, it's the worst named one of his of all his bags.

But if you want to get yourself a great cup of Squirrelly Joe's coffee, go to strivingforattorney.org Coffee and if it's your first time, use the promo code SFE for either 20 off or a free bag.

I forget which one you get with with that.

So.

But do go out there to striving fraternity.org coffee and I'm going to ask a favorite.

Make sure that you go to that link like this month and order Squirrelly Joe's Coffee.

Do some big orders.

Because I, I've called out some people and those of us who scrolly Joe is sponsoring a bunch of us are going to be doing some well, more creative type of promos to basically see who can outdo each other in creativity and whatnot.

I, I talked with Keith Foskey about this.

So he jumped the gun and put out a, a picture of, of the, you know, different, different types of coffee with different Greek words so that you'll have to go figure out what the Greek is there.

But you, you, you decide what type of coffee drink you are, whether you're, you know, going to be a man or be soft.

I'll let you decide.

Adiaphora on the adiaphara.

But it's all scuba to me.

Oh, Greek humor for folks who, who don't know Greek.

Well, my, my one semester sitting next to a guy who's taking Greek paid off.

It was all for this moment?

Yes, it was just for that one moment.

All right, so let's see there.

This.

Jeremy had a really good point when we are talking about investing and Jeremy said, Andrew, start today even if you cannot retire.

Because when I was talking about retirement, you can set your children so that they can.

Now this is something in our culture I do think Josiah, we should spend a little bit of time talking about because people don't have that long term view.

My father had a, you know, a plaque on the, on the yacht.

I grew up on a boat.

Okay.

So on the yacht he had a plaque that just said he who dies with the moon.

Did not know that.

You didn't know that?

Yeah, I did not know that.

So he, he was a professional captain of his own boat.

He became a professional captain because it would save him insurance.

But he could, he could, he could technically marry people if he goes far enough out to sea.

And so you know, he, he had a thing saying, you know, he who dies with the most toys wins.

That was one plaque.

The other was, you know, the, the one who dies with only a penny left wins.

Interesting concept with that.

Right?

So you take those two together.

It was, it really pictures what people think.

It's like all the, we were talking about the limitations people have put on themselves.

It's because they want their toys, they want all these things they don't want to give up.

But at the same time the goal for so many people is I want to spend all my money instead of saying for me just me personally be a little vulnerable.

But for me what ended up happening was I ended up, you know, spending most of my money on my kids education so that they would have advancements and where, so my kids both Graduated college with no debt and a car.

So they each got a car, a used car, no debt, and a gold coin.

Right.

So.

So I set up to make sure that they were in a better position than I was, you know.

You know, I started off pretty well, but being homeless, you kind of use up all your money and, you know, get hungry.

But, you know, I didn't want them having that.

So I've set them up.

And there's things you can do that for most people don't think about.

Maybe folks, you're listening.

You're younger, you have kids.

When my kids turned 18, and we're going to see what Josiah thinks about what I.

What I did, whether he thinks this is good advice, but I'll give you mine.

I'm not the professional, though.

One of the things I did when my kids turned 18, my kids got a credit card in their name that they then added me as a second person.

The reason I did that was the card was in their name, building them credit.

But guess who you.

Who spent money on that card and paid it off?

Me.

I used it every month, and I ran charges and I paid it off immediately.

So by the time my kids graduated college, both of them had a credit score of over $800.

And so when they wanted to go and get a loan for their car because they.

The way it worked my.

They both thought they could do better with that.

And so they got a good interest rate because they had a great credit score.

Right.

And so the, you know, even though I gave them some money for the, they.

They paid a little bit of a loan because they could spend that money in other areas and make more than they would on the loan.

And so there's things like that to think about, but.

But parents don't often think of.

When my kids turned 18, both of my kids, I bought them life insurance where I pay it until they were old enough to have a job.

Because at 18, a universal life is really inexpensive.

At 18, it cost me $100 a month.

Yeah, I can afford that.

Gul Virl or iul, I think it's.

I'm not sure actually anymore because my son is turning 30.

It was a long time ago that I.

Probably not iul.

Those are relatively new on the scene.

Yeah.

Is it actively invested or is it just like you pay one thing per month and there's no cash value that accumulates?

No, it accumulates cash value.

Okay.

So, yeah, it might be a small g.

Well, so.

So what it is, it's something where.

When they, you know, by And I could, we could pay more and they could put more into it, but it's basically by the time they're about 45, 50 years old, they could stop paying for it and have, have a cash value with the, the life insurance would be paid for by the cash value, but they keep paying it.

They have something to pass on to their kids.

So I'm providing for my grandchildren by, by setting them up with that.

And so it has a decent amount of cash value in it right now that's something that, because I had the.

They couldn't afford it at 18, but I could and so I took my own money to invest in them and they have this for life and because you know, I started it so early, it, I mean I can't afford a universal life for myself being my age.

Right.

But I have to do term life insurance to provide for my wife if something happens.

But for my kids, because I started so early, I can provide for them.

And now, now that they're old enough, they took over the account and they can now afford it because you know, they have incomes.

Right.

And so there's, there are things that I think as parents we have a responsibility to.

If we're not going to be able to retire, we should make sure our children can.

And I'm gonna totally contradict you.

Good man was not made to retire.

This man is.

As long as we have breath, we ought to be working, being productive.

I didn't say I would retire.

I don't even want to give my kids.

Well, I mean I want to give my kids the option.

They should be able to retire at 20, that'd be great.

Or at least fiscally they should have the potential to, to retire at 20, but they should work their entire life, deploy that capital, make, make a lot of money.

Oh, I'll never stop working.

The idea of retirement is so ingrained in the American like I'm going to take a 30 year vacation, go collect seashells and you know, yeah, for my last years of life.

And oh no, you fell into irrelevancy and you didn't do anything useful and you spent up all of your children and grandchildren's inheritance in the meantime.

Not that I have really strong feelings about this specific subject or anything, but retirement is like the bane, the multi generation, like the, the old approach of like providing for your kids and providing an inheritance for your children and grandchildren.

Retirement has been as far as I'm concerned, the biggest drain on that happening.

People being selfish with the money as they go into their non working years.

Well, and that's where I think we're, we are in agreement because I think the thing is that too many people think about their own.

Look, it's, Christ condemned this in the, in the Bible when Jewish people had a man made tradition that they would give, they would donate their money to the temple called Corbin and say, well, and the way it was worked out conveniently is the, you are the steward of that money, but it's donated to God.

And so when you die, it goes to, to God, but you get to steward it until then.

And therefore you don't have to have the responsibility of taking care of your parents.

Right.

And so it was the same form of thing of I'll just use my money on myself rather than take care of my parents who, who maybe can't physically work or my children is in an inheritance.

And I think I agree with you that retirement has, has greatly damaged the idea of, of wealth that we pass on to our children.

So they should be able to do more, more with the money.

Right.

Okay, so this is really strange, but how many parents thought of this?

So when my kids were in college, since I was pro, you know, taking care of them, I actually had a fund that both of them had access to to con, to basically as a charity for them to, to give to other people.

So if they were, if they were in college and they were going out and one of their classmates couldn't afford to go out, grab a slice of pizza, they had a certain amount of money every week they could spend to bless other people.

Because I wanted to train them to have the mindset of not looking at money as for me, but money as for how I can use it for others.

Yeah.

Churches aren't the only entities that can have benevolence funds.

Correct.

I mean, a good amount of my money goes toward others.

I mean it just, it just is, it's the way that, that I do things way that I raise my kids.

And I, I'm glad that both, both of my children take care of others not just financially, but because of the financial training.

They see it in other means where they see people need and, and help out.

Right.

And you can't pour from an empty cup.

Correct.

So making sure that your own financial household is in order is almost a prerequisite for being able to help others.

Certainly in the financial realm, obviously you can be hospitable in your shack, but I think it'd be better to be able to host a Bible study in your home with 30 people and for them all to be Warm, comfortable and seated comfortably around a fire pit or something.

Right.

So the more that you have, the more capable you are of being generous to others.

Correct.

And being able to do so wisely and repeatedly so that you're not draining your asset class.

So eventually you are the guy in the shack.

But you gave so much to the church.

But there was a story about a woman in the Middle ages, actually I think it was during the time of the Crusades or even earlier, who was known for giving to the poor so aggressively that she would actually go take out loans in order to give to the poor.

And it got to the point where she couldn't qualify for those loans anymore.

So she went and took out like really dangerous high interest debt just to give to the poor.

And she actually basically destroyed an entire city's economy because of her benevolence trying to give to the poor.

But she was basically a single person subsidizing the entire homeless population which grew under her watch, mind you, and it destroyed her and her family economically in the process and nearly took down the, the city.

So there, there's a such thing as like too much benevolence, too much sacrificial giving.

Right.

I was just thinking about the peanut butter Christmas where that family, you know, they eat nothing but peanut butter and corn flakes, right.

So that they can give to the benevolence fund, but they end up finding out that they were the recipients of the benevolence fund and that the fun was only slightly more than what they gave to it.

That's where my mind went.

And, and most churches end up receiving tithes on the Pareto principle.

20% of the families give 80% of the funds.

Right.

So you who are poor and are like at the cusp of requiring church finance, the two copper coins that you're putting in there is not meaningfully affecting the church's ability to function.

But you, if you keep that money and steward, it well may be able to no longer require the church's help in the first place.

You can be a net benefit to that community.

Well, so, okay, you mentioned the church.

Hold on, let me get on my soapbox.

All right, so do you know who, who typically needs the benevolence fund the most in the church?

The elderly.

The pastor.

Ah, Bear.

And I'm not kidding because most people don't think through.

Look, the most pastors are not going to be going and asking for a raise.

They're not going to share their financial needs.

They're not going to be explaining, you know, because it, it looks self serving.

Right.

Because how do they, how do they make their living is through the church.

So if they, it looks like they're asking for a handout or, you know, so a lot of churches are, are their pastors are struggling and they, they don't even know that there's a need.

You know, I'll give a real, real case scenario that I was involved with, but a church where the, they were giving for over 25 years, giving the pastor $1500 a year toward retirement.

And Josiah's shaking his head violently.

No, and, and after almost 30 years, I, I just said, okay, just think about this.

Do I did the math that basically that's like, you know, he's going to retire and live off of about $16,000 salary.

Right?

No, I was thinking even if he's doing 10% because I'm assuming that was a fifteen hundred dollar contribution to a 403B which are not actively managed.

Well, he's netting 6% on fifteen hundred dollars.

Yeah.

And so no one thought about that.

And someone just goes like, I can't live on $16,000 a year.

That's right.

How do you expect him to.

Right.

And you know, but Van river.

Yeah.

I mean this is something that people don't even foraging.

I, I was, I was on a committee where we were hiring a pastor and because the church had a parsonage, the pastor wanted a, you know, he wanted to have a 403B, kind of like a 401K, but it's, you know, but some sort of retirement.

And I remember talking to the, the deacon and he says, well, he's got the parsonage, he doesn't have to pay for housing.

So why, you know, why would we have to pay him a, you know, mortgage?

And I remember going, I'm like, this guy, his name's Bill.

Bill was retired.

I said, Bill, you know, do you got to pay for your house?

He's like, no.

I said, why not?

He goes, because I paid that off years ago.

I said, you mean when you're working you paid off your house?

Yeah.

So if you wanted to downsize and move somewhere, what we, you know, and you needed money to live off of, could you sell your house and use the equity to buy a smaller house and live off that?

He goes, well, yeah, that's what we're planning to do.

You know.

I said, okay, how could he do that?

Because when he retires, what are you doing?

You're kicking him out of the parsonage so someone else can use it and now he's got no equity and no pension.

And it was like, oh, I never thought about that.

A worker deserves his wages and you shall not muzzle the ox.

And people don't think about it with the.

So that's my soapbox, you know.

But, but seriously.

Well, I'll to piggyback that.

I'll say that I've moved 22 times in my life.

I've attended and have been a member of a lot of different churches.

Have you ever thought of just trying to get along with people.

But Matthew 18, I don't know.

But.

One thing.

In all those churches, there was only ever one.

This was a church.

Man, oh man.

I, we were there for too short a time.

I would have, I really would have loved to have stayed there.

But it's when we moved from Wisconsin down here to North Carolina and it was up in Michigan and they, during the budget meetings they would invite pastor and his wife to leave so that they could talk about exactly how much they were being paid, you know, and talk about, you know, increasing it, you know, and talk, talk about their financial needs and whatever else.

It was really very beautiful.

It was the most transparent budget meeting I ever had where we're, where they were regularly, at least annually, if not biannually reevaluating the pastors, he wasn't making a ton of money, right.

But they, they were so careful to make certain that they, they were caring for him and he had what he needed for retirement, for even for vacations and things like that.

And it was so beautiful.

And I've never seen that anywhere else.

Well, so let me give, let me give, you know, son to think about with that though too.

Is that so?

You know, at my church we have, we have great deacons.

We.

And they, they want to make sure that they care.

I mean every, everyone loves our pastor and so, you know, they wanted to make sure because I, I said it's my soapbox, right?

I always say, like we're never paying the pastor enough.

And so they actually went out and paid.

One of the guys paid to get, get a report to see what pastors make.

And so he's looking at, goes, well I, I think we're paying them pretty well.

And I, so I said okay, but here's something to think about.

This just, this is the, the issue so many people are just ignorant of.

He, he looks at this report where it says here's what pastors make in the area.

But that also includes people that are bivocational.

It's not that they're living off those incomes.

So you yet you might get a guy that's making $10,000 a year at the church and that's what's reported.

Well, that's going to skew that because a majority of pastors are bivocational and they don't make enough to feed their family.

And so they do other work.

But when they report it to the government, when these people, they do based off of 990forms that the churches have to do and they have to say how much is.

Is given towards salary.

Right.

So if you look at striving for eternity, the total salary that we do, that we Give is about $20,000.

Is anyone going to live off $20,000?

No.

No.

The opposite of survivorship bias.

Yeah.

Okay.

So the reality is that's going to skew anything that you know that for when you look at something like that and they, they just didn't think about that because when you're in ministry you think about these things.

Right.

But if not, I would look up.

Like the median income for someone with a master's degree in my area.

That's.

And that's what you do.

Yep.

And so it, but it's a thing where even when people think, Aaron, they, they're trying to do well.

Right.

I mean, I know some churches, they were like, well, we, we gave our, you know, pastor a thousand dollar increase.

Yeah.

When inflation is like, you know, you gave them like a, you know, 5% increase when inflation's 15.

So you're giving them a pay cut, you know.

Right.

And people don't think about that.

Right.

Yeah.

There's not a whole lot of church business classes at most seminaries, certainly not many that are worth their salt, and you're effectively becoming the CEO of a 501c3 corporation.

And what are you going to do when you're not given the proper tooling, when you're not given the proper education on most of the ins and outs of things other than how to read through Babbing's reform dogmatics and preach through Romans.

Yeah.

Well, okay, so it's, I'm going to put Aaron on the spot because it'll be fun.

I can put myself on, but it'd be more fun.

Aaron, you, you have, you're the executive director of a 501c3 nonprofit.

Correct.

Evermind Ministries.

That is true.

That is true.

Do you love asking people for money to support the ministry?

As he's, he's, he's putting his head down in chamber.

Okay, now let me ask you this.

If slops out of the camera.

Yeah.

If you had to ask people for money for striving fraternity, could you do that?

Oh yeah.

Easy, easy.

And if I had to do it for Evermind Ministry, no problem at all.

Yeah.

I was going to mention earlier there's this really great thing happening at Bob Jones.

There's one of the staff members there is trying to raise a million dollars.

That's where my, my kids are students at.

Trying to raise a million dollars for.

Okay, wait, hold on, hold on.

For, for Josiah's sake and others your kids are, are attending Bob Jones University.

My son attends in person.

My daughter is an online student.

Okay.

And they're eight.

Hold on.

And their ages are 17 and 15.

There you go.

Is that, is that not normal?

Yeah.

And, and what ages were they when they entered college?

13 and 11.

There you go.

They took their first courses there.

That's what education is supposed to look like.

The department of Education going away.

Hopefully it will again make education great again.

So this, this, the staff member is trying to raise money for, raise a million dollars specifically for students who, who can't, you know, who can't come because of finances.

Right.

But what he's doing is he is going to do an Ironman competition.

So like, you know, he's, he's biking and swimming and riding over like 20, almost 30 miles.

Right.

He is going to do one of those a day for four consecutive days.

That's crazy.

It's called the Iron Man 40.

Yeah, but that.

And because he just, he just turned 40 this year.

Right.

Wow.

So he's four years old.

He's gonna do an Iron man for four consecutive days.

And this is his thing.

Right.

He's trying to raise this money.

And I have zero problem, zero problem telling people like, this is amazing.

Go check it out.

But even the, the, the tongue in cheek, silly.

We're all kind of joking here.

I only make 500amonth.

Please go to truthlowparent.com donate.

You know that that is uncomfortable to say.

It is so uncomfortable to say 100%.

And it's, it's like even my board is like, Aaron, you've got to say things, these things more.

And I'm like, I don't want.

I, I'm 100% with you because I do.

My board tells me the same thing.

Yep.

But I'd have no problem promoting, you know, Evermind Ministries.

Not.

I would have no problem doing that.

I have no problem doing Living Water any other ministry.

The same reason that your pastor is not going to let you know that he's got a financial need.

That's, that's really what it comes down to.

Right.

It's, it's uncomfortable because yeah, that's where you're kind of making, you're living, you know, and so it seems self serving.

So we don't want to do that.

And so you can't rely on your pastor to say, hey, here's, here's how we're doing.

Right.

As, as members of your church, you, it's the, God has stewarded you with money for you to help not only the church, the neighborhood, you know, but your pastor.

So it's, it's something where, you know, so many people just don't like.

I have heard more than a dozen times churches that feel that they have the, they have to keep their pastor humble.

What they mean by that is keep him having money.

And I hear, yeah, yeah.

Josiah's putting his hands, his fist in his hand.

The, the reality is, is that you're not the Holy Spirit.

It is not your job to keep him humble.

I, I like what, you know, if you know the story of John MacArthur.

They, he gave them a number when he went there of what he thought he needed to just get by and they gave him twice as much.

And he, he balked at it was like, no.

And, and the argument, I guess one of the deacons gave him was, you know, we're going to make sure we take care of our pastor, but it also allows us, you know, if, if you have an issue with money, we wouldn't see it if you don't have the money to spend.

So we're going to take care of you and if you have a problem with money, we would know it.

Right.

Yeah, there's, there's a reason that a, an uncomfortable number of our clients are pastors.

The sort of.

Well, an uncomfortable number of our charity cases where we have no way of ever making any money off this client at all.

All.

We take everyone regardless.

But a lot of them are pastors.

So you're saying that, you're saying I can afford your services?

Oh yeah, because we're free.

But the.

But the.

Or free regardless, no matter your network.

The.

There's actually one pastor in particular in Northern California.

He's actually running three parishes.

So he, he's or he's founded three and he's running them and he can't make ends meet in Northern California, not on the salary they're giving him.

So he's got three churches trying to support him and he can't even make ends meet Or I suppose it's, it's functional.

We managed to work with it.

But pay your pastors, my gosh, they are some of the most valuable resources in the world and you're paying them like they're a fry cook at McDonald's.

So, so my first pastorate.

Oh, I forget, I forget what.

Basically I wasn't getting paid minimum wage.

I think it was half of minimum wage.

The, my second pastorate I got paid $200 a week.

My third pastorate, I got paid nothing.

So.

Because it's not like you took out $65,000 worth of private student loans in order to get that master degree.

Well, you know, it really said like, you know, the reality be it is, you know, the, the, the third church closed with, I think it was like 70, 80, 000 in the bank.

And I think I did get a Christmas, I think I got a couple hundred dollars for Christmas one year.

Right.

This is the reality there's.

And people don't think about it.

And so, so, and I've shared this on, on my Rap report podcast when I went through a series on what is a pastor.

But you know, hey, my wife and I realized our pet.

We, we felt our pastor wasn't getting paid enough.

And so we, we went to the deacons and said we're, you know, we decided we're not going to go out to dinner.

We're not, we, there were certain things we could cut out of our life so that we could give.

And we said this is how much we want to give extra for him to, to increase his salary.

And if other people in the church start doing that, your pastor might actually be able to take his wife out to dinner once in a while.

Because I, I know many pastors.

I, I have the, the privilege of traveling around and meeting a lot of pastors and speaking with them.

And I will often when I'm in town, take the pastor and his wife out for dinner.

And it is not unusual because I'll sometimes ask when was the last time you, the two, you went out for dinner?

And they can't remember a time because they couldn't afford it.

And yet people in the church wouldn't think twice, many of them of being able to go out for dinner.

In fact, when we're doing budgeting, I usually recommend A family puts 100, $120 at least in the dining out budget so you can take your wife on a nice date night at least once a month.

120Amonth.

Yeah.

I gotta tell my wife.

Yeah, they've Also got kids.

I'm gonna assume they're gonna bring something home in a doggy bag.

I don't have kids.

I wanna, I wanna talk to my wife.

Hey, let's do 120 dinner.

That'd be fun.

Yeah, right?

One nice stately dinner per month, if you can afford it.

That's gonna, that's gonna pay dividends for your marriage, that's for sure.

I will say this though, about Andrew's story about taking people out to dinner.

I do want to say he does.

He has.

I've been there multiple times when he has done that.

I try to be there when he's done that because then maybe he'll do it for me.

But you have to be careful though, because there was one time, the very first time I met Keith Foskey.

The time I met my, my long lost twin brother and my best friend.

The day I met him, we went out to a Buffalo Wild Wings.

And I could have sworn, I could have sworn I would have said before a court of law in front of my pastor to everybody.

I, I could have sworn.

Andrew said he was going to get the check because I had seen him do it so many times on and so forth.

He said, I don't remember what it was he said, but he said, I.

Said I was, I was going to the bathroom.

He had gotten up to go to the bathroom, but he had said something about a check and whatever else.

And I felt so confident that I announced to the table, oh, no, no one check.

Andrew said he's gonna get it.

And everyone's like, he, he did.

Because they were actually like, how many of us were there?

There was like 2, 4, 6, 8, maybe 2, 10, 12 people.

And they're like, they're like, really, really, really?

So Andrew comes back and I, and I now I'm, now I'm doubting myself.

And so I clarify with Andrew.

He was like, well, I didn't say that.

And I'm like, oh.

So I ran off and I find the server and I'm like, I'm so sorry.

Like, I misspoke.

He wasn't going to do that.

So you got to feel like a charismatic for a day.

I did, I really did give away someone else's money and then prophesy and be wrong.

Yeah, well, the joke there was the last time that the first time I met Keith, we were at a Buffalo Wild Wings.

And for folks that don't know Keith Foskey, if you go to your Calvinist podcast or your Calvinist on YouTube, he does these denominational videos where different denominations, how they would shoot guns or own an airline and things like that.

And so we started.

Greg Moore just goes, hey, how would a.

You know, how would different denominations order Buffalo wild wings?

And so he goes, well, the Methodist would get the cauliflower wings, you know, and he started writing a script.

Well, it became, you know, he did over.

Very funny skit about it.

And so because folks knew that all of us were there, he does this skit.

And it.

This is absolutely hilarious.

Even though it's making fun of my.

My view.

The dispensationalist at the end disappears when it came time to pay the bill.

And they're like, oh, the dispensationals is pretty to be raptured so you can get out of paying the bill.

And so it was kind of funny because Keith Fosky people were like, oh, so Andrew didn't pay the bill.

And Keith had to, like, admit.

He goes, well, look, you know, I left before the.

The bill got paid.

He put some money on the table for his.

But he left beforehand.

And he goes, but I will say for the record, Andrew bought me lunch the next day.

And he has seven dispensations of ranch.

Yes, somebody.

Somebody in the.

In the comments, they're wondering if perhaps.

Yes, Tara says, maybe he said, one sec.

Like, you're getting up to leave.

I'll be back in one sec.

I just said one check.

Yeah, I swear.

Well, there was someone that was commented about, you know, when I was saying about giving toward others about Matt Slick, and, you know, I mean it.

My paying for Matt's lunches were so epic that this.

This is this.

Actually, I'm going to play a clip that was on someone else's podcast, but they were.

They had Matt Slick on their podcast and this happened.

Happened.

Was Andrew the one that helped you get the podcast back up?

Yeah, he did get the podcast.

He didn't help me.

He did it.

So don't.

Don't you think you owe him a dinner for that?

Oh, no, he didn't.

Got him.

It took Matt nine years to buy me a dinner.

Nine years.

That man was trying to outsmart me and find a way to buy me a dinner, and he did it in epic style.

Right here on Apologetics Live on our hundredth episode.

We had all these guys in here, and he had food delivered to the house, and.

And I refused it.

The poor.

The poor woman trying to deliver this food.

And she's like, there's no one here by that name.

And I'm like.

Because she asked For.

She asked for Matt's, like.

I'm like, no, there's no Matt's, like, here.

And I slammed the door.

So my wife eventually opened the door and took the food.

He got it.

He got it.

It was great.

I knew eventually he'd get it.

But.

Yeah, I mean, but we say this in, in, you know, joking and whatnot, but it is something very serious.

How much.

How many of us.

How many of those listening?

How many of you have a budget, as I do, to give to others?

Are you willing to give to complete strangers?

You know, I would go many years ago, and I would.

Worked a secular job, and I'd go in the morning, I'd go to a Wawa.

It's kind of like a 711 convenience store, get my coffee.

Just Wawa runs.

Yeah.

And the people at the counter knew me because I had a very simple policy.

I would.

I would buy my coffee and I'd buy the coffee for whoever behind me, and I would leave behind a gospel track.

And they knew that track was for the person behind me.

And I was going to be out of the store before they even knew what happened because.

And it amazed me that no one ever figured out that I hadn't paid.

But the cashier's ringing up.

What's.

What they have.

Like, it never seems to dawn on anybody.

And I pay, and then I just walk out.

And she.

And, and they would know to say, the guy in front of you is a Christian.

He wanted to bless you.

He, he, he.

He bought your coffee.

But he asked see it.

You read this in Jersey?

Yeah.

Well, it's more shocking in Jersey that someone would buy someone's coffee.

Someone buy coffee.

But, you know, do you have a budget toward blessing others with your money?

Most people don't think about that.

And yet I would argue we have a responsibility.

We have a stewardship of what God gives to us.

But so many of us hold on to it so tightly.

Kind of Josiah, like you were saying, planning for our own retirement so we could kick back and do nothing.

We hold on to it so tightly that we don't take on biblical responsibility for our neighbor.

I mean, I, I probably could retire, could have retired, like legit retired if I just didn't give away money to people I don't know or people that I do know in, you know, just to be a blessing to them.

Right?

But, but folks listening, let me ask you what's what is more important to you?

Your ability to retire comfortably or your ability to take care of those that God brings in?

Your Path.

So that's a benefit for 30 years versus a benefit for eternity.

That should be an easy trade.

And part of it, not to your.

Detriment, mind you, give out of your abundance.

But we do want to make sure that you're.

You're not.

So you're not holding on to your money so tightly that you forget that it's just a tool.

Correct.

And.

And that's the thing, Josiah, that I think you really try to focus on with folks is to help them see that.

Yeah, there are, There are going to be tough times where, you know, and anyone that knows my background.

Right.

So I, I was homeless.

I had no me.

I.

I was a deacon in the church with thousands of dollars in the benevolence fund that I was too proud to let the pastors know I had a need because I was the one in charge of the.

The deacons fund.

Right.

And.

And so the reality is, is that Judas.

Judas had a whole plan for that.

I just.

Yeah, he was, he was pilfering it.

Look, not all Jewish people are like that, Aaron.

There's some.

And statistically, one out of 12.

Yeah, there you go.

So.

So.

But I mean, the thing is that we.

It's.

I really will argue that.

I think that the fact that I, you know, God has blessed me.

I'm not.

I mean, especially compared to my family, I'm not.

I'm not rich.

But, you know, he's blessed me with a lot, I think a lot, because I don't hold on to it so tightly like it's mine, because it's not my money.

And I think, Josiah, that's a lot of what you try to do do with.

With your clients is help them to, you know, start to see that, hey, first off, this isn't your money.

It's God's money that you're a steward of.

And now how do you.

How do you make more of it so you can do more for God?

Right.

The mindset is for God's kingdom, not my selfishness.

Would that be fair?

Yeah, because we don't want to confuse piety and poverty as if you being the widow, giving your two mites is somehow more pious than being someone far more capable and still doing the right thing for those who goodness, like I can be more moral if I remove the temptation.

So if.

As if that's the axiom that we're supposed to be operating on.

Yeah.

I want to help people see money for what it is to take care of their needs, to steward their own household well, and then to work Sort of concentrically outward, like, take care of yourself because you can't pour from an empty cup.

Take care of your family because he who does not is worse than a non believer.

Take care of your church after that.

Or your community.

Actually, I would say your business.

If you run a business, take care of your employees, then take care of your community and your church and then the nation and then missions.

And I see so many people get that backwards where they're not even giving to their church and they're giving to the North American mission board.

No, you got that backwards.

Take care of your own household.

Then you can give out of your abundance and steward all of it well along the way so that there is even more abundance to give.

And let me actually jump on something you said, and this, this will seem strange as someone who is the executive director of a nonprofit parachurch ministry.

If you are donating to a parachurch ministry more than you are donating to your church, repent.

Okay?

If we have.

If I.

If I was to find out that I had people donating to our ministry and they're not donating to their church, I would probably return the money if I had found that out.

Okay?

I.

You.

You have to take care.

It starts at home, and your home is your church.

I don't care what.

Parachurch ministry has been a blessing to you.

Your church better be more.

And whatever great preacher you hear on the radio, he should never be better than your pastor, who actually shepherds you, because the guy on the radio doesn't shepherd you.

He doesn't know you.

I mean, in some cases, maybe, but the reality is he may be a better preacher than your pastor, but your pastor is the one that shepherds you, so you take care of him first.

Okay?

So I have all these soapboxes I keep getting on, so let me go.

That's essentially what we're trying to teach people to do, is to think biblically, to think concentrically, and to not be so focused on just getting rid of your money because it's somehow the root of all kinds of evil, that it's the root of all evil, as a lot of people seem to think.

I can't serve God and ma'am, and therefore I can't make any money.

Right?

There's just a whole lot of a load of misconceptions out there that we're trying to tactfully, carefully, and individually correct, get people back on track so that their children and grandchildren can steward the wealth that they were not granted because of the mistakes of their Parents and their grand grandparents.

Yeah.

And so just trying to correct the, the generational wealth course of the entire church.

And there's seven of us trying to do that, so.

But we do have plenty of room in our schedule.

So if there's anyone who would like to take advantage of our services reform money, that's our website.

We'd be happy to take you on, happy to help you out.

This is what we do all day, every day, is just help people steward their wealth as best they can without blanket advice or just general recommendations, but actually tailored advice for you so that you can get the most out of your money.

So let me ask you.

No, I have to.

Well, I have to ask.

So when you said that your services are free, you weren't kidding?

No, no, we're not.

Everything except estate planning and business coaching.

So this is where I was gonna.

I think you're gonna ask the same question I was gonna ask, but.

Okay, go ahead, Joseph.

How do I get paid?

That's right.

Yeah.

So it's, it's a brokerage agency.

So if, if we take the average American, he's woefully underinsured.

So if I, as a life insurance producer end up getting you enough life insurance and I get the cheapest kind that actually suits you, the commissions on that are actually not small at all.

So those keep the lights on.

We just let those, those chips fall where they may.

There's enough of our clients that needed life insurance that incidentally, as part of their plan, we ended up getting that taken care of for them that were really well paid, so that we let that particular plundering of the Egyptians pay for everything else that we do for free.

Neat.

Okay, so we got, we got two questions left for you.

One was asked very early on about taxes.

So is it biblical to pay taxes as Christians?

I mean, you're, you're, you say you do.

You're reformed.

You're the only reformed, you know.

So is it biblical to pay taxes?

If only I hadn't just written an article about that.

So go to dominionwealthstrategist.com or reform.money.com My second article down that I posted on February 20th.

Render unto Caesar taxes of biblical law.

So a whole article on the theology of taxation, but Matthew 22:21 says, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's into God the things that are God.

That means that you give.

And Romans 13 actually later states very specifically that we are to pay taxes to whom taxes are due.

That doesn't mean that the state is moral in imposing those taxes.

That doesn't mean that we aren't to call the state to repentance for requiring more than God does.

And it doesn't mean that we shouldn't call our state to repentance for spending more money than they make and for printing money out of thin air.

Right.

Loads of things that we can call the government to repentance for and actively fight for.

But when the tax bill comes, it is not your place.

It is not the individual's authority to determine whether a tax is just or rather you can determine if it's just or unjust.

You can't determine whether it's moral or immoral not to pay it.

However, the US as sort of a loophole because I want that to sink in.

You do need to pay your taxes as they come to you.

But the US tax code is vast and overcomplicated on purpose so that you can take advantage of these loopholes or the people who know what they're doing can take advantage of those loopholes.

They are not loopholes.

No.

Because they're written into the law.

Yeah.

So if you utilize the incentive structures that the US tax code gives you, you might end up paying like a net 6% tax after everything's said and done.

After you get.

Unless you're in, unless you're in my category.

If you're in my category, you actually, you have zero income tax.

Like nothing is taken out.

There you go.

And yet somehow you get a tax return.

Yes.

I mean that's built, I mean that's.

So that, that, that the welfare system is also built into the tax structure so that people who put nothing into taxes still can get, you know, a bunch out if they're, if they're really, really low in the bracket.

In fact, that's 47% of Americans receive more back in taxes than they paid.

And so it's sort of a massive welfare system.

Also, most people fill out their W4s incorrectly and end up having way more withheld over the course of the year than they had any business to giving the government an interest free loan for 12 months.

Yeah.

So I was working, when I was working at the school in Chicago, I think I had to claim 12 dependents in order to have it break what it should have been where it needed to actually be for the income tax.

The goal is to not owe anything and not get any return at the end of the year.

That's the goal.

Yeah.

And I tried to get as close as I could.

Which.

Yeah.

Which tax breaks you would qualify for?

So that you can pay less in advance.

But the government does give you some time to shore up the numbers if you end up on the wrong side of the calculation.

So it's not a huge deal.

But for most people, if you make over, I'm going to arbitrarily say $50,000 a year.

It might behoove you to get with a bookkeeper, an EA or a cpa.

CPA is probably a little overkill, but for personal finance, a bookkeeper and EA that can file, that can actually look at your money and ideally tell you how to spend next year's money so that you can qualify for even more breaks.

Yeah.

All right, so the last question, the last question has absolutely nothing to do with finances, but I think it'll be fun.

So Trey asked the question, tell me more about what it means to be post mill reconstructionist, presuppositional reformed Baptist.

He's being, he's being sneaky Trace, one of my agents, I'm sure causing all kinds of mischief in the chat.

And, and, and I, I had thought that by looking at the chat and I just was like, you know what?

I, I, I, I think that's fun.

Let's have, let's answer Trey's questions.

Trey and Jeremy have been pretty active in the chat, so I can tell.

Yeah.

What's it like being a Reconstructionist Baptist?

It means that I don't fit into anyone's camp.

And I went to a Reformed church and they didn't like the fact that I was a different kind of reformed.

So now I go to a non Reformed church where they don't care.

Right.

Because there was no community there for me, apparently.

But what's it like?

I'd say it's glorious.

It's wonderful being right about everything all the time.

It's a little rough having to explain that to everyone and especially the presuppositionalism.

That seems to be a hot, contentious issue right now because there's a big Thomism push in certain parts of the reform community.

And I'm like, no Bible says start there, end there too.

Like, don't canonize Aristotle as a saint.

That would be great if you could not appeal to Plato more often than you appeal to Christ.

But I digress.

So it's, it's a, it's a wonderful place to be in as long as you know how to argue well and take things on the chin and, and go go out for meals after you tear each other apart in a debate.

It just takes a certain kind of grace.

That's for sure.

And that's why we could get along so well.

So.

Yeah, I mean, I like, I make it simple when people ask me what I believe.

What the.

What I believe is called rapportianism.

My last name is Rapaport.

You have to ask me because, you know, just.

I don't fit into any system perfectly, you know.

Now that sounds better than, you know, Matt Slick is in the same boat.

But, you know, saying I'm a Slickite, you know, that just doesn't, you know.

No, yeah, it doesn't sound good.

Are you, are you a MacArthur or are you a sprawl?

Well, I, I believe that Sproul agrees with me today.

And for anyone that doesn't know who R.C.

sproul is, he passed away.

So what I'm implying is that his theology, which is now corrected, is in.

In line with mine, but I, I'd be more in line with MacArthur than Sproul.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

But, yeah.

And I do think that people paint with a broad brush, especially in theological debates.

Oh, you're a X.

That means you believe X, Y and Z and they start arguing against things that you don't actually believe.

Yeah, but I'm.

I'm a full blown Reconstructionist.

But I disagree with almost every Reconstructionist on baptism because most of them were Presbyterian and I'm a Baptist.

They wrote 19 books on one subject.

That's great.

Gary north wrote a 31 volume commentary on the Bible.

That's just economics.

Okay.

Just a 31 volume economic commentary on Scripture.

Phenomenal.

Really great book.

And then every time he talks about how you need to build up generational wealth so that Christendom can advance since your children are Christians, I'm like, all right, let me crossed that section out.

He got that one particularly wrong.

Right.

So it's, it's just a weird position to be in, I'd say.

But I, I do think I'm exegetically consistent.

And I think at the end of the day, trying to be, trying to believe what the Bible says as best you can, that's what we should.

Utilizing not just biblicism, but a little bit of church history as a guide is about the best we can do.

And I happen to be in this particular camp where I've got a feet in both waters for the time being.

And Trey's an Anglican, so he's also in a weird boat being a Reconstructionist Anglican because there's one of those and it's Trey.

Oh, well.

So Josiah, let's as we're gonna wrap up let folks know again how they can get a hold of you or anyone else from your team and some of the things that you might be able to do for them.

Before you do that, Trey just says true story.

He's our only Anglican on the team too, so I like to give him a little bit of a hard time.

Yeah so my name is Josiah Stowe.

Second time I've said my name on this whole show.

I am the co founder of Dominion Wealth Strategists, the only distinctly reformed financial consulting firm and as far as I could tell, the most biblically based financial advice that you're going to get.

Because we do try to make a positive argument from scripture rather than trying to shoehorn in the Bible into traditional finance.

You can reach us at www.reformed.money just because we're reformed, we're about money.

So should be easy for most people to remember.

Or dominionwealthstrategist.com if you want to tire out your fingers.

We're also on Facebook, Instagram X and LinkedIn, but nobody follows us on LinkedIn.

I don't blame you and you're more than welcome to set an introductory overview with us.

All of our meetings are free of charge.

All of our advice is free of charge.

But I do need to know you and your individual financial situation before I'm going to tell you what to do with your money.

So don't come to me asking for advice.

Come to me, meet with me, let's chat.

Then I'll give you some advice whether you want it or not.

So if you, if you'd like to take advantage of those services.

We do a lot.

We try to be a one stop shop for all things financial for the entire church.

One of our taglines is all of Christ for all of Life and all of finance for Christendom.

Another one is from baptism to burial.

Dominion's got you covered.

That's more of a Presbyterian dog whistle though, because we're all Baptists, one Anglican Presbyterian.

It works really well on cross politic, I'll tell you that.

So we do a lot.

We help with income optimization, debt management, savings accounts, life insurance, retirement planning, estate planning, planning, business coaching.

We do group life and health.

We've got a tax guy, basically everything all under one roof.

And if I say the only thing that we don't currently do and I don't have a and I don't have a resource for is property and casualties.

So if you need home and auto insurance, I'll find you a local broker dealer for that.

But basically everything Else we should be able to help with either directly in house or through our network of resources.

So again, happy to help you guys.

Happy to take on any client.

I just don't work with Mormons, Roman Catholics or Jehovah's Witnesses.

And that should be for hopefully obvious reasons to this.

Yeah, but you work with Anglicans.

I do.

In fact, I'll work with atheists before I work with Roman Catholics.

And you know, I, I understand that.

And for folks who know what side.

Of the fence they're on, not the people who think they're in the camp and they're not.

Yeah.

So for folks who heard you cracking up and laughing while you're trying, I, I did, I did like enjoy putting son A Trey just goes baptize your babies.

So.

But Josiah, thanks for coming on.

I think, I think it was helpful for folks, if you guys, if you do have some need for financial advice and whatnot, I encourage you to call Josiah Reform Money.

Next week we will be joined by, if you're familiar with John Harris from Conversations that Matter, they're putting on a conference in New Jersey with another pastor that I know well and they both Pastor Jeff and John will be on.

We'll talk about the conference.

If you listen to my Rap Report podcast, you already have heard of, of Jeff.

He is from the Evangelical Free Church and stood up to the denomination on the issue of social justice.

And they who are so welcoming of so many threw him out for doing so.

And so in a very underhanded way.

If you go back and on my Rap Report podcast, Jeff talked about his experience there.

But we're gonna, he's gonna come on along with, with John Harris.

We're going to talk about the conference, talk about the need for the Truth Conference and some of the topics that will be discussed to encourage you guys to consider coming out and some of the things that they are doing.

Since Jeff wasn't the only one thrown out of the Evangelical Free Church, they are working on some ideas to try to have a strong church network work that would stand up for truth.

I know there's others who think they're going to stand up against social justice and, you know, be a strong network and, and what they've done is built a nice platform for themselves, but they don't exactly do things quite biblically.

So.

But what they're going to try to do with True Script and the Truth Network, I think is what they're thinking of calling it, but is, is to actually have it based on the truth of God's word.

So that is next week, the 20th.

Some of you may remember way back when we had missionary gamer come in and a guy who actually did gaming for the purpose of the gospel, not an excuse to play video games and make it sound spiritual.

But he's going to come in an article that he wrote and feels very, very strongly about on the virtual church.

Covid has risen up to this idea that you can have this virtual church and he is going to give a case for a.

Well, the fact that you can't do virtual church.

Ecclesia doesn't happen in ones and zeros.

Say that again.

EA does not happen in ones and zeros.

Yeah.

The gathering requires your physical presence.

Yeah.

During COVID when people were like, you know, know.

What about church, you know, says you have to, you have to get together in person.

I'm like the name Ecclesia to gather.

Right.

So yeah, it's.

It's kind of in the name.

Providentially.

They did make an exception for protests.

So all of us Protestants should have.

Fallen under that banner, you'd think.

But yeah, no, it doesn't quite work that way, does it?

I will say that I will not be here next Thursday because I have the opportunity to be at the great homeschool convention in Greenville, South Carolina, where I'll be exhibiting every Truth, Love family, as well as having an opportunity to speak on expectational education.

Which kind of wraps back around to that little short conversation we had about kids in education.

So I'm looking forward to that.

So I will not be here next week for that conversation.

There you go.

Tell John, love it I said hi.

Is he gonna be there?

Pretty sure he's been advertising.

Nick Freitas is going to be there and Joel Sellatin is going to be there.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Lunatic farmers and all.

That's gonna be a fun one.

Oh, yes.

So we, we will not have a show, just so you know, on the 7 27th of March.

So I will be.

I, I have a family activity going on.

But for those of you who really believe the King James is the only Bible you should have, I really want to encourage you to come October 17th because we'll have Luke Wayne, who used to work with me there at CARM Christian Apologetics Research Ministry.

And he is, he.

We, when he worked for carm, we had him write a whole bunch of articles on King James Onlyism.

And so if you believe that the King James Bible is the Bible for all of us to use, then Please come on April 17th and have your world rocked.

And if you want to get your world rocked when it comes to your finances.

Contact Josiah at Reform Money.

That's going to be his new tagline.

No, it won't.

His.

His.

You know, hey, hey, Trey.

His.

His new tagline for the company is going to be, yo, baptize your babies.

Baptize your babies.

Terrible.

At the very least, make sure that you provide for them.

Provide for your baptized babies.

So, hey, it's not even a dog whistle anymore.

That's just wrong.

Really.

It's very pretty.

Well, I.

I want to thank you for coming on.

I think.

I think it was helpful.

You know, it's not often that I get.

Have someone come in and.

And people like, we want more time with him.

We want.

We have more questions.

So I'm glad that you were able to come in.

I know the audience is a bit light probably because of a conference going on right now, and a lot of our listeners are at that conference, so.

Or watchers.

So we also will get the website fixed.

I know we didn't get anyone really coming in last week or this week, and sorry about that, but we will fix the website.

So until next week, try and remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.

And we'll see you next week.