Resources from this episode:

Show Notes:

Money is a part of our life. Whether we like it or not, we need it to live and we can choose to either manage it well and let it be a blessing to us and those around us, or if we neglect it, we'll likely end up with not very much of it and it will be a continual point of stress for us.

Today I'm excited to share five money mindsets that Will and I have embraced throughout our marriage that have been such a blessing to us and have kind of been the foundation of how we handle our money.

This episode will be full of practical advice, but all of that practical how-to is going to stem from these money mindsets, and I hope that they're a blessing to you.

For the full episode, hit play above or read through it below.

As I was starting to make an outline or craft this episode, I really wanted it to be super practical. So I started out with the title, “Our five best money decisions,” and that quickly turned into 10 money decisions and 15 and 20. And it was a long list of all these really practical things that we've done and learned about money and how to handle money through the years that I wanted to share. But what I realized is a lot of those practical decisions we've made came from these umbrellas or these mindsets that we've kind of embraced, kind of without knowing it.

And as I just looked back at our marriage and our adult lives and how we've been handling money, they kind of fall under these mindsets. Also, they could be called like foundations or attitudes about money. And so those are really the things I wanted to share, but I do want to say it's still going to be full of practical advice.

#1: Frugality

So the first one is a foundation of frugality and I, we were actually on a hike with our friends who she's been on this podcast before Emily Thomas, you can find her blog at emformarvelous.com. She and I were talking about what a gift it was to start out our marriage really understanding what it means to live frugally. And if you know my story, you know, I come from a wealthy family so it did not come naturally to me, but starting out on a budget shaped my habits and my view of money in such a solid way.

What I see all around me now is people getting married and immediately getting the big house and the nice car and the credit card and all these things and they rack up so much debt and they're spending as much as they make or more, pretty much right out of the gate. And that simply sets you up to spend as much as you make throughout your life, which will leave you really with nothing leftover.

So this foundation of frugality has been such a blessing to us, because even though we don't have to be as frugal and as tight with our budget now as we were, I don't feel the tendency to spend like crazy because those habits have already been formed so early in our marriage.

We used an envelope system. We filled those envelopes with cash in every single area of our budget that had cash in it. We literally only used cash for those things. Clothing, food, when I went to the grocery store, I never used a debit card. I mean, I always had my cash and I knew how much cash was left in the envelope. At the end of every single month, we lived in a really small apartment, our rent was like around $500 a month. I mean, it was, we lived on a small, small budget. We didn't live entitled, like our apartment did not have AC. It did not have a dishwasher. It did not have an ice maker. We made it as cozy as possible. But man, those were the days.

It was not very glamorous at all. We stuck to what we could afford. We actually decided to live on less than we made, and we stuck to that. We seldom ate out, hardly ever got coffee. Starbucks, restaurants, I mean, those things were treats. We did not have a gym membership. I mean, we, we lived very frugally and that foundation really makes us think hard about anything we spend our money on, which is a good thing. Okay.

#2 Debt freedom

We have pursued debt freedom as a way of life from the very beginning. Well, and I went through financial peace university by Dave Ramsey's organization. Highly recommend if you've never gone through it. If you're an adult and you're breathing, you need to take that class. It's so good. You can take it online. Now it'll change your life and how you manage your money.

We decided we wanted to be out of debt as fast as possible, including our house. That's been our way of life from the start. We wouldn't even consider buying a car if we couldn't pay cash for it. We've always bought used cars with the exception of a car that was gifted to me as a graduation present from my dad and step-mom, which I'm very grateful for. But we never had credit cards and we used that gift of my car and we literally drove it for, gosh, we just sold it. So I drove that car for, I think, 13 years. And then we just now bought another car and it's used and we paid cash for it.

With my business, I never went into debt for my business. Never. I had a business banking account. I had a business debit card. I bought used equipment. I didn't pay myself a dollar out of my business for two whole years. Anything I made, I just kept using that money to buy nicer lenses or better computers. And I attended workshops and I, you know, paid someone to do nice branding for me, my website, all of that. But I always waited for the cash to come in and then I would spend it.

Being debt free is just a decision we made of how we wanted to live life. And you might be thinking, “Well, Nancy, what about credit score? What about points on your credit cards? You can get free flying points and all that stuff.” And all I have to say is you can do life without a good credit score. You can. No, sometimes it makes some things harder. It makes, you know, qualifying for a loan or things like that harder at times. But also if you show them your savings and you show them that you’re up-to-date on all your bills, it's another way for them to check your credit without actually checking your credit score. So there's ways around that.

Dave Ramsey teaches a lot about that, but we've just kind of embraced, you know what, we'd rather for those few things to be maybe a little bit more difficult and us just to not have to worry about credit cards ever, or being in debt.

You can go back and listen to my episode about how we became debt free, completely paid off our house this past year, just a few episodes ago, but it has been probably the biggest stress relief to not have debt. To know we are never in debt, we’re not going to be in debt. And now all we get to do is build wealth and give and save for exciting things. And the big, the biggest part of this is just that we just don't have the stress of debt.

#3 Never expect anything from anyone

This third mindset is I think so important. And it's simply just to never expect anything from anyone. Just never embrace any kind of entitlement behavior from anyone, don't ever expect, an inheritance to come, don't ever expect help from a family member. Financially always rely on personal responsibility.

Now that's not to say if you know, if Will and I hit a really hard time in our lives, I’m not saying that we're so holy and so good that we'd never ask anyone for help. I'm not saying that. We've been very blessed that we haven't needed to ask for that from anyone. And I realize some people are in really tough situations and that's just not an option, so I'm not judging you if you've ever done that.

I'm just saying the mindset that we have taken on as in regards to our money is just one of personal responsibility. It's up to us to take care of our home and our household. It’s up to us to save for our future and our retirement. We are not expecting anything from anyone. And what that does is it's really, it's really just a good, healthy way. I think more so than how you view your money, how you, how you view your relationships with your family, with your friends, with anybody around you.

If you never expect anything from them, then you're never upset with them because they're not giving you what you expected from them. You know what I mean? It's just the sense of entitlement that can be really toxic in relationships. And we just decided that we wanted family to be about family and not about money. And so if there is ever a gift that comes our way and there has been every once in a while, a financial gift that comes our way, we receive it with such gratitude, but it's such a bonus to us because we never expected it. Hope that makes sense.

#4 Be an intentional giver

Be an intentional giver. You know, you're never more like God than you are when you give. And I'm not just talking about money. I mean, I know this podcast episode’s all about money, but when we have the heart of givers, when we are generous with our clothing, with our things, with our space, with our home, with our money, that, I mean, God is the greatest giver of all. He gave His life. He gave everything for us. So we, as the church should be generous people.

And so the baseline for that as believers is to, to constantly tithe 10% to your local church, 10% of your increase. You just automatically, it goes back to the church, and that's biblical. That is according to scripture that we should return to God what's already His and beyond that is our offering our, our extra giving. You know, that goes, that can go to your church. It can go to other ministries. We love to find organizations that we believe in that we can partner with, that we can get behind financially, because the truth is, is that is their work. That's what they do all the time. And they need money to do that work. And we believe in that work, but we can't do that work in our homes, if that makes sense. International Justice Mission is a great example. They are fighting human trafficking globally and partnering with governments and doing the really difficult dark work of freeing human slaves and who are in sex trafficking and work all kinds of slavery. And they do that, and we want to give our money to that. We want to get behind that. And it feels good when we can make money and then give it to organizations like that.

Organizations like Human Coalition, organizations like Compassion International, I mean, those are just to name a few. You're welcome to look them up. What they do, I mean, it's just incredible, but getting behind partnering, partnering with organizations who are doing good, it makes you want to earn more money so that you can do more good in the world. I mean, it's really, it just gives so much meaning and depth to work, to earning money because then you really start to feel like you're making a difference, which is really awesome. I love the verse, Proverbs 11:24, too, it talks about giving. When you become a generous person, blessings just come to you, give freely and become more wealthy, be stingy and lose everything. That's in the Bible that is in the Bible that says you give freely, you're going to be more wealthy. And what we found is the more that we can loosen our grip on our money, the happier we are and what a joy it is to see our money go and really affect the lives of other people.

#5 Let money be a tool that brings you together, not drive you apart

Money can be stressful, no doubt, but it's usually stressful when you don't have enough of it or you can't agree on how to handle it or you're ignoring it and it's just doing its own thing. Dave Ramsey says, if you don't pay attention to your money, it'll grow legs and walk away. And I love that because it's so true. When we just ignore it, we just spend, we just do whatever we want, it just kind of disappears. That's not the money's fault. Money's just a tool.

It’s like a brick, it’s a-moral—I love this analogy—Money is like a brick. You can use a brick to build a hospital, or you can use it to bust through a window and you break the window. Same thing. You can use it for good things: building hospitals, churches, freeing people, you know, just really amazing stuff or you can use it for addiction and destruction and really hard things. But it's a tool.

It it's not good or bad itself. Will and I have always spent time out talking about our money and being intentional about it from the very beginning of our marriage and making a plan for it. And yes, we have had fights about money and yes, it has been stressful at our budget meetings sometimes. And it also has drawn us closer in our marriage as we set goals for what we want to save and do the hard thing and stick to the budget and give it away and spend it on fun trips.

Those things have really brought us together. We're currently talking about budgeting for possibly adding on a screened-in porch to our house and taking some fun trips this year and what we want to give to this year. And, you know, we did the same thing when we had very little money, we still planned and budgeted. There were just lower budget trips and lower budget, fun things we wanted to buy. I remember when we were first married, I saved up six months of my own blow money, which is like my fun spending money in our budget for an iPhone. I didn't spend anything for six months on anything else. I just kept putting my cash. I got $40 of blow money a month in the early days, and I put it all in an envelope and I spent it on an iPhone.

One of those really old, like first generation iPhones. And you know, it just makes you really intentional. But those kinds of things, when you look forward to doing that, when you look forward to taking trips together and you know, making a home renovation, it brings you closer together. So just recognize money as a tool. Don't resent money. Don't say “I'm not a numbers person”, or “I'm not a money person.” Just look at it and say, you know what, it's a tool, I'm an adult. We get to use it in a way that brings us together. We have to be the adult. You're making these decisions. Be intentional about it.

And when you do that and when you even get through some rough patches as you do that, it ultimately will bring you together. I'm so excited. I just, I don't know. I just think about this year and Will and I just talked about our money for the year and what we want to do with it and our goals and what we want to spend and what we want to save and what we want to give, and those conversations are some of our favorite conversations to have, because we've been doing this for 13 years now. And we just love talking about money together because we see what we can build and do and grow together. So, I encourage you, let money just be a tool that brings you together. And a side note, it's so fun to start teaching our kids about money, to teach them how to save and give and spend the money, and then to see the things that they buy, which are just ridiculous, what they buy with their own money. It's just so ridiculous, but just to see them get excited about it and start to learn, okay, this is a tool God has given us.

It's up to us to give it back to Him, save it, spend it—you get the picture, but it's really sweet to see how money's bringing our family closer together as well.

So quick little recap, our five money mindsets that have really helped us throughout our marriage and our adult life is having a foundation of frugality, pursuing debt freedom as a way of life, never expecting anything from anyone, being an intentional giver, and letting money be a tool that brings you together.

Resources

Now I'm going to share a few of our favorite books and resources on money. Highly recommend all of these.

God and Money—such a good book. Probably the most scripture-heavy, biblically-based book written about money.

Simple Wealth, Inevitable Wealth. I don't think you can find that one on Amazon, but Nick Murray wrote it and it is all about investing, and if investing intimidates you and you don't have any retirement account or anything like that, go buy this book and read it. It breaks it down. It has a whole glossary of the terms. It helped me so much.

Financial Peace University. I mentioned that earlier. Go to daveramsey.com, take the course. Well worth every dollar. It’s worth way more than it costs. Honestly, Dave Ramsey's radio show an amazing resource. If you just need to get hype about money, listen to his podcast. It's so good.

And the next book I have not read yet, so I can't totally recommend, but a friend of mine has really recommended it. It's called the Psychology of Money. I'm reading it in the Book Club this year. I'll be doing a podcast about it soon once I'm done reading it, but I'm really excited to learn more about that.

Well, that is it for today. Thank you so much for listening to episode 142.

I'm going to close with words from Dave Ramsey, who said,