Discovering the secret to thriving financially isn’t just about getting a bigger paycheck; it’s about the wisdom to manage the funds that remain after the bills are settled. I’ve learned through both biblical teachings and my own journey that integrating faith into our money matters can unlock a path to unexpected prosperity. In this candid conversation, I peel back the layers of cultivating financial wisdom in tough economic times, sharing anecdotes from my own life about conquering the debt monster, especially the snare of credit card borrowing. I’ll walk you through the principles I’ve lived by to achieve a debt-free existence, sprinkling in practical tips for anyone aiming to take control of their finances.
During our discussion, you’ll get an insider look at the trials and triumphs of marrying faith with creativity, all while maintaining a steady course towards financial well-being amidst the storms of economic uncertainty. Join us as we explore the melody of life where discipline and faith harmonize to create a symphony of success against all odds.
Key Takeaways:
- Prosperity is not determined by how much money you make, but by how much money you have left over after paying off debts.
- Stop using credit cards and live off the money you have.
- Pay off existing debts and avoid buying things on credit.
- Declare a month of lean living to cut back on expenses and save money to pay off debts.
- Once debts are paid off, individuals can start living even and use leftover money to buy things with cash.
Where To Dive In:
0:00:00 Introduction to the podcast and book recommendation
0:00:50 Introduction to the topic of getting rich in a bad economy
0:01:50 Learning that God wants to do good things in life
0:02:57 First way to prosper: stop living off other people’s money
0:03:39 Prosperity is not determined by how much money you make
0:05:02 Second way to prosper: pay for what you already have
0:07:03 Third way to prosper: declare a month of lean living
0:11:48 Collecting money saved during the lean month
0:12:14 Living lean to save money and pay off debt
0:12:44 Stories of people during the Great Depression
0:14:31 Goal is to live even and pay off credit cards
0:16:41 Buying with your own money instead of credit
0:18:23 Living even and having money left over for prosperity
0:18:58 Reminder about the book “If You Only Knew”
0:19:28 Other resources available on the website
0:19:59 Mention of a music CD available
About the host:
Steve Gray is the founding and senior pastor of Revive Church KC. He has been in the full time ministry for over 40 years and was launched into national and international recognition in the late 1990’s as the leader of the historic Smithton Outpouring, and again in 2009 when he lead the Kansas City Revival which was televised nationally on the Daystar television network. Steve is also a veteran musician, songwriter, recording artist and published author. His books include When The Kingdom Comes, Follow The Fire, and My Absurd Religion.
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Transcript:
0:00:00
Oh, you got to hear today’s podcast. What’s it about? It’s about how to prosper or how to get rich in a bad economy. And I’m going to give you the first four ways to do it in this podcast coming right up. Hey, let me catch my breath for just a second and tell you and remind you about the book. If you only knew, a guide to the clueless generation. You need to get this book and get caught up. It’s not very thick, it’s not very long. You can get through it really fast, and it delves, it says on the back, it delves into the heart of a gathering storm, one poised to engulf the very core of our economy, our religious beliefs, and the american way of life. You need to get this book to know what you can do, how you can pray, how you believe, what action should you take to get yourself ready for what could be a big storm to change the world forever? Get the book. If you only knew.
0:00:50
Hey, everybody, welcome to another more faith, more life podcast. Today I’m going to help you understand how to get rich. Yeah. How to prosper and why you can and how to get all the help so that it works for you. Now, I have ten things, but I’m not going to get all ten. Maybe I’ll get through two, three of them today. How to prosper in a recession, how to prosper with inflation, how to prosper with just a poor economy not operating. All right.
0:01:14
Now, before we get into that, though, I want to lay the groundwork of how I learned this, because I learned it by understanding that God wanted to do good things in my life. I did not know that. I’d never been around anybody that said that just went to church like a kid to a regular traditional church. And then as I became an adult and I became a school teacher, high school teacher, and during that next year of my second year teaching, I became a Christian, was filled with the Holy Spirit and drastically and mightily changed.
0:01:50
And so I was very fortunate that I picked up just instantly when my new life began in Jesus, that God wanted to do good things for me. And that then I learned about that God wants me to succeed and wants me to prosper because prosperous people that have the right heart are going to help his cause, because we’re going to prosper the kingdom back. And once I learned that to include God in my finances and money is, I think it’s the number two subject, if statistics are right, was Jesus number two subject that he talked about in the Bible was money.
0:02:28
And he only, I don’t know how many times I used to know the number, but he only said, you must be born again once. But throughout the whole New Testament, he talks about how to handle your money because it’s such a powerful thing. Money is a master, as I teach people, and wants to master your life and wants to control your life, and I want you to get out of that. All right, so how to prosper in a bad economy when inflation is up.
0:02:57
And right now, I don’t know exactly what you might be paying, but let’s say you’re making payments on a credit card, and it would be 18% would probably be low, up to 26, 27%, 25%. And so you’re not going to get ahead doing it that way. All right, so listen to this. This is my number one, how to prosper in a bad economy or with inflation or even, hopefully not a depression. Okay? Number one, rich people don’t live off other people’s money or a more scriptural. No, that’s a good way. You can still say rich, but prosperous people don’t live off other people’s money.
0:03:39
Now, I may have said this before, you may have heard it, but prosperity is not how much money you make. And that’s where most people start. The mistake is they maybe go get a new job. And one of the things, of course, they really want to know is how much am I going to make? And then maybe they get the job and maybe they got a big bump, big raise or whatever. They’re making more money maybe than they ever have.
0:04:07
And so they share it with their friends in our church. People like to get up in church and say when they got a blessing, a prosperity blessing or something unexpected finances, they want to share it with people. But either way, you begin to share, hey, I want you to know, let’s say I got a 10% raise or I’m making 20% more money this year than I did last year. And so that sounds so prosperous. Okay?
0:04:31
But prosperity is not how much money you make. Prosperity is how much money you have left over after you pay everybody else. If you don’t have anything left over, you’re not rich, you’re not prosperous. Okay, so how do we get there? All right, and we’re going to understand that most people, unless they inherited money, started out lean, started out small, and worked their way up to riches or not being in debt.
0:05:02
And I’m fortunate enough for many years, many years, Kathy and I have no debt. Okay? I don’t know if it’s 20 years or whatever. But however long we lived here in Kansas City about and we got out of debt, we don’t owe anything at all. And so you can do that, too, because it seemed kind of daunting at first, especially in the housing market. It can seem so daunting, like, oh, how would we do this? But it can be done.
0:05:27
There are ways to do it, which is probably another talk that we should have. But anyway, the main thing I want you to realize, for rich people or prosperous people don’t live off other people’s money, okay? So now if you want to get rich, you’re going to have to change that. And so you have to stop using credit cards. And I say that this way because I use a credit card all the time. But when I use a credit card, I’m spending money on that credit card that I have.
0:05:57
I’m not using a credit card to pay for something that I don’t have the money for. And so I’m going to pay these other people over time so that I can have it now. And there’s ways to get around that, too, if we have time to talk about it. But I don’t use a credit card for money I don’t have. Live off the money you have, okay? And so the first thing you got to do is stop using credit to buy things or to live or whatever. You can’t do that because the credit is going to eat you up. You’ll never get rich off of somebody else’s money.
0:06:31
And the credit card system is not made to make you rich. It’s not set up to make you prosperous. It’s set up to make somebody else prosperous because they’re taking the percentage that you pay every month, not just the principal, but the percentage higher, like whatever. And they take the interest that they can get out of it, and then they invest that and make money off of what you owe them. So you got to break that. You got to start taking hints. So first thing, stop using credit, all right?
0:07:03
And spend or live off the money you have. All right? Now, after you stop buying things on credit, you understand I’m talking about using it. You go to some store and you buy something on credit knowing you don’t really have the cash on hand in the storehouse, all right? So now you’re just going to keep going and going with that, and it’ll wind out of control eventually. All right? So that’s number one. Rich people don’t live off other people’s money. Start living off your own money, all right? That’s the beginning.
0:07:39
Number two, now you have to pay for, because I want to make you prosperous. You can start getting rich. You have to pay for, though, what you already have. So number one is you’re not going to buy anything more on credit. That’s done with. Okay. And you’ll find out how you can do this if you get the system rolling. Okay, then number two, pay for what you already have. Now, depending on how much that is, that could take a little while.
0:08:10
Take a little while. But so you’re going to go seasons, where you don’t use a credit card unless it’s just for convenience on money you already have. Right. So I might go to a hotel somewhere, and obviously I’m going to use a credit card, but I’m not using a credit card just to live in a great hotel. And then I’m going to figure out how to pay for it later in increments. No, I’m going to use a credit card because I can pay for it right then, but it’s just not convenient.
0:08:37
You don’t get a statement, and credit cards are good in that way. But you got to pay it off every month. You can’t go past it. Right. If you use a credit card, you have one month to pay that off with money you already have. Okay, then number two, though, if you’re like most people, you have things in your home that are not paid for. You’re paying on them like tvs or sound systems, cameras, games, whatever, maybe appliances, even.
0:09:08
So, now you have to stop that flow. The only way you can stop it and get rich. If you want to get rich, you got to go through the process. Everybody that didn’t, unless they inherited money, had to do things like this. And so now you have to make payments on everything you have already and not buy anything else. Okay? If it’s an emergency, the refrigerator goes. That’s a little bit of an exception.
0:09:34
But even then, if you can work on this system for a little while, you won’t have to use your credit card to buy a refrigerator. Okay? And once you get to that point, now you’re getting into prosperity. All right. So then number three, if you can do it just by yourself, if you live alone or you’re married or you have married and kids, okay, number three, declare a month of lean living. You understand the word lean, right?
0:10:05
Buy a lean steak. It doesn’t have much fat on it, right? You’re going to take the fat out of your life and you’re going to take one month and it’s lean living month. And tell the kids, tell yourself, tell your friends, that’s what you’re going to do. So that means you go back to the old fashioned way of living, which when I was a kid, it was like that. It’s not that nobody went out to eat ever, but maybe on Sundays, but even then people didn’t go out to eat like they do today.
0:10:34
And they go home and they eat and they fix their food and they eat it. A lean month would mean you’re not going to go to the movies, you’re not going to run up any other bills. You’re not going to obviously buy something and keep the credit going, credit scheme going, and instead you’re going to live lean. You’re not going to go out to eat, you’re going to cook your own meals. You’re going to not download a bunch of movies that cost you money any place during that month that you don’t have to do, even though you like doing those things. This month we’re not going to do this. And then you take all the money in the lean month that you would have spent out going out or on movies or whatever you do go here or there.
0:11:20
Maybe you go to a football game and it costs a lot of money. You don’t do that this month. None. Zero. And you take every penny you can find in the house and you put it somewhere for safety to save. That’s the month you don’t spend. And it’s surprising how you can get even the kids or the kids, or maybe you get your parents if you are a kid, or husbands and wives to almost make it an adventure that we’re going to look for every money we can where we can cut back.
0:11:48
Let’s look in the couch, right? And check all your pockets. Let’s find everything we can find. This is the month of lean, and it’s our challenge that we’re going to be proud of ourselves at the end of this month because we lived lean and we collected as much money as we can. And especially if you have a larger family and kids and everything and you go out to eat, you know, it’s expensive and then they want a bigger tip now, too.
0:12:14
If you cut that out, you’d be surprised how much money you can save living lean for one month. Then what do you do with the lean money you got? Obviously you’re going to apply it to the credit card, to the things you already have in your home that are not paid for yet. So you’re going to take a lean month and enjoy the adventure. My parents and Kathy’s parents and grandparents, obviously they all lived through what was called the Great Depression.
0:12:44
Now, my parents would have been kids or junior highish grade school and routing there, and I guess her parents, too. And so we could, when they were living, we could talk to them about it. What happened? What was it like? And some people did pretty well. Both my grandparents grandfathers, which one? Two I’ve never met. I never met either one of them, but both of them on both sides, my mom’s side and my dad’s side worked for the railroad.
0:13:14
And the railroad was a good paying job then, so it was lean, but it was not zero. And they could afford then because they had some, they could afford to help somebody else out. And my mom would tell me people would come to the door and knock and ask if they had anything to eat or a bowl of soup or anything. And so they were fortunate enough to be able to do that. My dad, his family, his parents opened up a store and it’s not going to work because they opened up a store. They bought like a small grocery store, little one, and they would buy all the groceries and then they’d allow people who didn’t have any money because of the depression to come in and take the food. And the person would say, I’ll pay you later. And they’d say, okay, but I don’t know how many years they did it, but you already tell that’s not going to work.
0:14:02
But it was a good gesture to help people in need. Okay, so the lean month, you’re going to take that money and put it where you’re going to put it on the credit cards, all right? Then after that, you get through one, two, three. You have what I call you’re going to start your month of living even. You’re going to break even. All right? So this is the goal. So don’t use other people’s money. Pay for what you already have.
0:14:31
Declare a lean month or two if you want to, and take everything you can get like they did in the depression. They would look for a penny in the house, any penny they could find, a dime. And you go through and you collect every bit of money you can and everybody’s going to cut back. And then you apply that to your debt. Now, you may have to do that for a while, but anyway, eventually you’re going to get to the land, what I call the land of even or living, even a month of even.
0:15:00
Now, when you get even is that means everybody’s paid, okay? Everybody’s paid. And then you’re even, okay? And now if you do need to buy something, now you buy it with money you have, with money you have left over. So you pay everybody else first. Don’t go out to eat before you pay everybody. Pay everybody else first. What do you have left over? Okay? And whatever you have left over is now the beginning of prosperity or starting to live like a rich person.
0:15:39
I’m going to buy with money I have. That’s my money, not somebody else’s money. So getting out of debt of the credit cards may take a while. You don’t want to try to go even too soon, living even too soon, okay? Because if you do what you’ll be doing, you’ll pay everybody who wants money. So the credit card company wants $25 a month, okay? So you say, well, I gave them the 25 and I gave that credit card 25. We paid utilities and now we got everybody paid.
0:16:10
But you don’t have everybody paid because you still owe a whole bunch of money next month. So that’s not good to then treat yourself to something because everybody’s paid. If you’re paying 25 or whatever, the lowest minimum, you’re never going to get it paid off. So the goal is to start getting things paid off. And it really feels good to get to the point. And I don’t know how long it’ll take you. Now, I wouldn’t say you have to pay your house off in this time period. That’s a whole nother thing you got to do that. I’d have to talk at another time about.
0:16:41
I’m talking about the daily living, though. The utilities are paid, the rent is paid or whatever. Mortgage is paid, insurance is paid. And now we’re putting a larger set of money onto those credit cards and we’re not using those credit cards anymore. All right. So the plan is that you have enough to get even. So now you’re living even. And if you do that long enough, you’re eventually going to come to. When you get to buy something, you don’t buy it with somebody else’s money.
0:17:09
You buy it with your money and it’s yours. You own it. Nobody else owns it. You own it. You bought it outright, not on credit, not using somebody else’s money. And they’re getting rich off of your money that you make those minimum payments. So we’re going to go one more time. Here we go. And there’s more to it. But the first four rich people don’t live off other people’s money. All right? Pay for what you already have declare a month of lean living.
0:17:38
Well, I guess I should have said rich people don’t live off of other people’s money. That’s number one. So don’t stop using your credit cards. Live on the money you have. You may have to really cut back for a while. Pay for what you already have. You may have to really cut back for a while and start throwing money as fast and as much as you can toward what you already owe. So if you don’t run up any more bills with it and you start paying and living, lean on that other, then you’ll get it eventually. So declare a month of lean living you could do every other month. If you want to do a month of lean living, then the next month we’re going to relax a little bit. And then the next month is another lean living and throw as much money as you can to your debt. And then after you do that, you’ll be in the month of living even.
0:18:23
And finally, when you live even, anything left over is what makes you rich or what makes you prosperous. And you can use that if you want to, to buy something but with cash or whatever you do, but not credit cards. Got it? Well, that’s the first four. How to prosper in a bad economy, in inflation, recession, whatever. And if you do this, these are really important things. It’s not that hard to do. It’s just some discipline and wait, you can wait. You don’t have to have that big tv right now. Wait, do this. And then when you go out to buy that big tv, you walk in and you pay cash and it’s yours. Isn’t that good?
0:18:58
All right. I’ve enjoyed talking to you today. I want to remind you of the book. If you only knew is now for sale. Was for free for a long time, but now it’s for sale. Not very much money. You go to the website morefaithmorelife.com, or you can go to my other larger ministry, stevegrayministries.com, whichever you can remember. And you can get that book you can get when the kingdom comes, which is a resource if you’re interested in renewal revival.
0:19:28
Great stuff that works for you. And you can understand how our church handled it at the time. And my absurd religion is still there. You need to get caught up on that. And I don’t think I have a music CD on there yet, do I? Let’s check real quick while we got one more minute. So I’ve been a musician longer than I’ve been a Christian, but I used that after I became a Christian. And so I’ve recorded some things, had some stuff, songs played on the radio at times over the years.
0:19:59
And now I put out a CD, and I’ve been singing solo. There was no reason to do it. I didn’t want to make more life. Okay? I didn’t do it to make money, because. I just did it because I wanted to do it. And I wanted to do it with more of a middle eastern sound. I’d never done that before. So it’s called you will restore. It’s there, too. You might be surprised to hear. Maybe it’s better than you expected. Maybe.
0:20:28
I’d like to know that. Okay. So there he goes. The stuff you can get to help you live and how to prosper in a bad economy. Till next time. Bye.
