Hey, are you tired of that feeling?

You know that one night, it's Wednesday, maybe even Tuesday, and you're already

wondering, where did my paycheck go?

If you are constantly running uphill feeling like you're carrying a

leaky bucket, that's no fun at all.

But what if I told you there's a secret weapon?

Yes, there's a simple biblical key that can unlock financial freedom

and finally let you breathe.

Well, that's what we're talking about on today's show.

Welcome to Ask Ralph My Daily Show.

My name is Ralph Estep Jr. I'm your financial evangelist and my goal

here every day is to help you break free from that cycle of financial

shame and do it with confidence.

Now, today's show's gonna be talking about breaking free from

that paycheck to paycheck cycle.

It's sort of what the whole theme of the show is.

But today we're really gonna get into the nitty gritty of this, and I'm

gonna give you some real good action.

I'm actually gonna share with you a conversation I had with

my youngest son yesterday.

I wanted to start today with a listener question I got, and I

got this question that said this.

It said, Hey, Ralph, I always feel like I'm running outta

money before my next paycheck.

How do I make my money last?

And more importantly for me, how do I honor God with my finances?

Hey, listen, I get it.

I can relate to that struggle.

I remember when my two boys were young, it felt like all the time we were trying

to figure out how to get Now at the time, I remember, I was paid once a month.

You talk about trying to budget.

Once a month was very difficult.

What's interesting, as I was preparing for this show yesterday, I had a conversation

with my son and we had a very in-depth conversation and I wanted to share

with you, uh, some of that conversation today because I think it really

fits in to what we're talking about.

But I wanna say something very bold here at the beginning.

Living paycheck to paycheck is not inevitable.

It's just not, and it's certainly not God's best for you.

See, my true belief is God desires you to have peace.

He desires you to have security.

He wants you to be able to be generous, and he wants you to be able to leave a

legacy and see when it comes down to it.

This all connects to a, a big Christian word called stewardship.

And I wanna go right to the Bible today and tell you about where I get this from.

And if you look at the book of Proverbs, chapter 27.

Verse 23.

It tells us this.

It says, be sure to know the condition of your flocks.

Give careful attention to your herds.

And if you think about it, this applies directly to our finances.

I'll give you a great example of that.

Here on the farm, we raised black Angus cows.

Now it was about two or three years ago, I'll never forget.

It was about four 30 in the morning and my cell phone started ringing.

I'm thinking.

Who is calling me at four 30 in the morning?

Well, I pick up my cell phone, you know, one of those early mornings.

Hello?

And on the other side of the line, he is like, Mr. Estep, Mr.

Estep, you've got a big problem.

And I'm thinking, oh boy, what's going on?

And it happened to be the person who delivered the newspaper in the morning.

And what had happened was he was driving along the road there

outside of my farm, and my cows were actually out eating outside

the gate, which is not a good thing.

Well, it turns out what had happened was we had just had a new gate installed.

It's an electronic gate, and this gate decided to open up on its own one morning.

Well, I guess the cow said, Hey, there's an opportunity for us to go.

So what did they do?

They were out the door, out the gate.

Now, truth is, they didn't go very far.

But it comes down to that same discussion in the Book of Proverbs.

It talks about, knowing the condition of your flocks and listen.

I need to know the condition of my herd all the time.

I've got 13 black Angus cows right now.

And the truth is they can't take care of themselves.

And, and here's a big takeaway from today.

Your money can't take care of itself either, and you've gotta ask

yourself this very basic question.

And this is the question I posed to my son yesterday.

Do you really know where your money is going?

I'm gonna ask you the same question as you're listening to this.

Do you really know where your money is going?

And like I said, my son asked me yesterday, he said, dad, how do I do this?

I said, son, one of the first things you need to do is what I'll

call my first actionable takeaway.

And that's tracking.

'cause this is the first step and it's really becoming aware

of where your money is going.

So I've got a challenge for you.

Here's my challenge for today, and it's gonna actually last seven days.

I want you for the next seven days, I want you to keep track of.

Every single dollar that goes in and out.

And I'm gonna give you examples of this.

If you pay for coffee, if you buy groceries, if you do any online purchases,

I said this to my son yesterday.

I said, son, do you know where your money goes?

He says, dad, I, you know, it seems like I'm always living

paycheck to paycheck now.

My youngest son is a barber.

So he makes an hourly rate, but a lot of his money comes from tips and he

doesn't know how many people are gonna walk into the barbershop every day.

So it's really important that he has a good understanding of

where his money is going now.

I said to him, I said, son, here's one of the things you can do.

You can just simply write it all down in a notebook.

I also explained to him, there are some apps, he's a, he's an

iPhone user, just like myself.

I said, you can even do a spreadsheet.

He's not gonna do a spreadsheet.

But I said to him, Hey, you know, why don't you just write everything down?

I said, here's the big deal.

Here's what you're gonna find.

I called it the eye opener.

I said, when you start to shine that light, and if you're not doing this, if

you've never done it before, it's kind of like shining a light in a dark corner.

Take that flashlight and you're looking around the room and you find this corner.

You don't know what's behind it.

Well, when you do the same thing with your finances, you might uncover

some things you weren't expecting.

And the big deal about this is it's all about awareness.

And that awareness leads to control.

And that's what I said to my son yesterday.

He said, dad, he says, I feel like my finance is always outta control.

And I said, well, son, one of the first things you can do.

Is start to develop that awareness.

So I'm gonna encourage you to do the same thing for the next seven days.

I just want you to track every single dollar that comes in and every

single dollar that goes out, join me every day because we're gonna

be building upon that every day, and it'll be very helpful for you.

So once you build that awareness, I'm not gonna give you a lot to talk about.

I promise to make these episodes moving forward about seven to 10 minutes.

And if you've noticed that, that is really my goal.

But the second big takeaway is all about budgeting.

And you're probably thinking, oh wait, here goes Ralph again.

With this budgeting plan, but listen, budgeting is nothing more than creating

what I'll call a financial roadmap.

I said this to my son yesterday.

I said, son.

If you don't know where your money's going, that's the first piece.

That's a awareness piece.

You got to explain, you know, you gotta understand where your money's going.

But then the second piece is the budget actually gives you the control.

And he loved this analogy.

I said, it's the control of telling your money where it can go.

I said, ultimately, you're in control of that.

Now I'm just gonna take about a minute, I'm gonna talk about the

most basic components of a budget.

'cause this does not have to be complicated.

It doesn't have to be elaborate.

And I said this to my son, I said, it just needs to be accurate.

So you're gonna start with your income.

Just be honest.

And when I was talking to my son, I said, listen, here's what I would do for you.

I would say, take a look at the last two months and then figure out what

your average income has been every week.

I said, use that as your income.

'cause again, he's a barber.

His income will go up and down.

We've got the Easter holiday coming up in a couple weeks.

He'll probably get busy, but for the last couple days, he was telling me

when we had dinner last night, he said, dad, it's been kind of slow at the shop.

So start there.

Start with your income and be honest about it.

The next step is to understand your expenses.

And I'm gonna start with, I'm gonna break these into really two

components and it makes it very simple.

Your fixed expenses and your variable expenses.

And it's really that simple.

Like I said to my son, your fixed expenses are your rent.

Now he doesn't have a car payment, but his.

Car insurance, his health insurance, all of those things that don't

change from month to month.

Hey, this is the set price that's, you know, like I said, for him, it's

his rent, it's his insurance payment.

He's got other little odds and ends.

So that's the first piece.

So understand your income, then your fixed expenses, and then your variable

expenses, and that's where tracking.

Data can really be helpful because those are the things that generally

fluctuate from time to time.

And many of us are losing significant money through those small, but, but those

unconscious spending decisions, you know, those daily coffee bots and I know you

feel like I'm picking on coffee all the time and it's not, not my intention,

but it's so easy to do that one.

Another one is these.

Impulse, these online buys.

You know, one of those things I said to my son, I said, Hey, do

you know where your money's going?

He says, dad, if I'm being honest.

Most of the time it goes, we're eating out.

You know, I'm, I'm, he's on his own.

He doesn't have a spouse, he doesn't have a steady girlfriend,

so he is kind of on his own.

And he said, I eat out all the time.

And I said, yeah, that can really add up, can't it?

And I said, the other thing you need to watch out for is small online purchases.

And he, he agreed with me.

He said, dad, it's so easy I could be sitting at the shop between Cutson

and I sit there and I just start scrolling through Amazon and next

thing you know, I spent 20 or 30 bucks.

You know, it's real easy, and I know you're probably, if you're listening to

this or you're watching this right now, you're probably thinking, wow, you know,

those things really do add up quickly.

And if you can bring those things into awareness, if you can bring those habits

to light, you can actually do something about it, because that awareness.

That idea of understanding.

That's why I tried to stress to my son so much yesterday in our discussion

was that awareness can lead to action.

And that's the budget.

Well, I just wanna take a minute now to summarize what we talk about.

We talk about that secret weapon of today.

Here's my big takeaway for today.

The big secret weapon is two things.

It's awareness.

You do that through tracking and then intentionality, and

that's done through that budget.

And listen, this may be some uncomfortable first steps.

You might be thinking, man, I am not ready to see this.

I don't think my son's quite ready to understand exactly where his

money goes, but I'm gonna say the same thing I said to him.

And that is, you can do this.

You really can.

You can make an impact.

All you've gotta do is remember those two things, awareness and intentionality.

Those are my two big takeaways from today.

I promise you, I wouldn't give you a lot to bite off today, but it's really those

two things, awareness and intentionality.

Now, tomorrow we're gonna talk about the dangers of impulse spending and how to

take control and save for your future.

Hey, let me just tell you right now, if you're like me.

You understand what it's like to have that impulse spending if you've ever made a

purchase that you later regretted, listen, we've all done that, but tomorrow we're

gonna talk about how to prevent that.

And more importantly, I think is how we can learn from it.

And you don't wanna miss tomorrow's show.

Now, let's, let's close today with a prayer.

Heavenly Father.

We thank you so much for your provision and for the wisdom you offer in

your word regarding our finances.

Lord, we ask for your guidance as we seek to be really, truly faithful

stewards of all you've given us, Lord, for those who feel trapped

in that paycheck to paycheck cycle.

Lord, we just pray for clarity.

We pray for discipline, and we pray for the courage to take

those first steps towards freedom.

We know it's hard, Lord, but we give it to you because you can help us.

Lord, help us to.

Honor you with our finances to be generous and to build a foundation of

security for ourselves and our families.

We know that's what you want for us.

Lord, we ask you to strengthen our resolve Lord, and help us to rely

on your provision and your peace in this so critical area of our lives.

And we ask this in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Well, again, I just wanna thank you for joining me today.

Listen, possibilities are endless.

You can get to financial freedom and the best way to do it is

by aligning it with your faith.

Now, one more thing I wanna give one more key takeaway here is I'd love for

you to become a part of our community.

The best way to do that is to join our newsletter list.

You do that by going to ask grf podcast.com/newsletter.

I wanna send you an email every day.

I want to encourage you, I'm gonna give you some exclusive content you

can't even get here on the show, and I'm gonna help you keep up

to date with all things, ask Grf.

So again, that's at ask gr podcast.com/newsletter.

And as I always end the show and I wanna encourage you today, stay financially

savvy out there and God bless you.