MoneyWalk 180: Why You Need To Budget

This program will help you undo financial bondage.

A budget is a projection of future income and expenses that you expect for your household over a specified period of time. Expected income and expenses are derived from pay stubs and bills. It’s almost impossible to use the income God blessed you with in the best possible manner without keeping an updated 3-6 month budget on computer or paper. Very few people can keep an accurate budget in their heads!

Budgeting to produce surplus money to eliminate debt and building savings and investments will make you a good steward of the income God has entrusted to you. A budget’s purpose is to bring structure to spending income, identifying future expenses, and helping reach short and long-term goals. By doing so you will:

1. Better understand your present financial condition

2. Better understand the debt-laden mess you created in the past

3. Identify areas of wasteful spending

4. Identify the need to reduce expenses or earn additional income.

5. Plan better to overcome periods when expenses exceed income

6. Make better financial decisions to meet future goals

Long-term benefits of budgeting are organization of your income and expenses and related paperwork, engaging a spiritual / principled / methodical process proven to put in you in sound financial shape when adhered to, prioritizing and always remembering to honor God through tithes and offerings, incremental debt reduction, eventual total debt elimination, ever increasing asset building through saving, compound growth via investing, the ability to adequately respond to future emergencies, and peace and joy in Christ as you prosper immensely.

Let this process work for you so that you truly can be a wise man that builds a treasury while taking care of all your current God-given responsibilities instead of being the fool who spends everything he gets and thus has only poverty and a curse in life while on earth. Remember, there is much treasure in the ground of the poor man, but it is wasted for lack of judgment.

Please pray for this ministry and email any questions. May God bless you richly as you follow His plan!!!

Proverbs 21:20, Proverbs 27:23-24, Habakkuk 2:2-4, Luke 14:28-30

Please forward these bondage breaking articles to other people who can use helpful insight!!!

You can find books authored by Randy and Karen Parlor at www.Amazon.com

MoneyWalk 179: Retirement Accounts Off Limits

This program will help you undo financial bondage.

The bible teaches us to tithe and live debt-free. These practices bring disciplines to our lives by crucifying fleshly desires, and requiring us to trust God for provision. In order to faithfully use these financial principles we must exercise contentment and self-control by seeking to live off less than 70% of our net income. To help meet this goal it’s better to pay down credit card, car note, furniture account, and other higher interest debt before paying down and eliminating home mortgage principle.

You should not use money in 401k and IRA plans to pay off any of the above debts because removing money from these tax-deferred plans will increase your income tax burden and you will have to pay a 10% penalty for withdrawing the money without a resulting increase in savings and investments over the long run. You would have to pay the IRS approximately 50% of the amount withdrawn, which generally makes such withdrawals a very bad decision.

Yet, it may be feasible to stop your current contributions to these plans and use this money to pay your debts down to reach the land of debt freedom from every type of loan other than your mortgage. The reason being that revolving charge card and many other non-mortgage loans usually have much higher interest rates (10% to 30%) that impede your ability to get ahead financially. Continuing to obtain these types of loans and making minimum payments on them will keep you in bondage for many years into the future.

Once all non-mortgage debt is paid off, you should then re-direct all of your excess income to build your emergency fund to six months of income and afterward you should redirect your excess to pay off your mortgage and commit to remaining debt-free once it is paid off.

Finally, you should then put at least 10% of your monthly income into retirement accounts including a Roth IRA (both husband and wife). Any remaining excess income should be redirected toward other investments and larger charitable contributions to your local church and other worthwhile ministries. You should not speculate on investments that require you to borrow money in order to try and leverage growth. Debt-freedom is the high position the Lord wants for you.

There are too many horror stories of foreclosures on property and brokerage houses calling margin loans for them to be the tool you use to try and build wealth. Very few people make it out of the bondage such loans bring on them. Save your excess cash until you have enough money to make an educated cash purchase of the property or equity position (after much expert counsel from other people that have prospered under God’s financial plan) that you believe will provide great future growth.

Following this pathway, you will find over the next 10 to 20 years that the combination of debt-freedom, diversified retirement account investments, and paying cash for diversified investments outside of retirement accounts will catapult you into the wealthy place that God has for you whereas the debt-ridden position you formerly held would have subjected you to financial bondage and its resulting negative consequences (broke, busted, and disgusted all your days).

Please pray for this ministry and email any questions. May God bless you richly as you follow His plan!!!

Deuteronomy 28:12, Proverbs 3:9-10, Luke 14:28-30, Romans 13:8

Please forward these bondage breaking articles to other people who can use helpful insight!!!

You can find books authored by Randy and Karen Parlor at www.Amazon.com

MoneyWalk 178: Divorce Ungodly Stewardship

This program will help you undo financial bondage.

Many people divorce for illegitimate reasons and the angry atmosphere created causes them to make decisions that negatively affect their family’s future. The atmosphere can be so contentious that spouses spend all they can and borrow more to fund lawyers in order to try and take away as many marital assets as they can from one another.

Many spend tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and court costs fighting to get the upper hand because of the anger they let fester prior to and during divorce proceedings. As a result, they drag out proceedings over a much longer time period than would otherwise be necessary to settle affairs. In numerous situations, this brings extra debt and provides less money to each divorcee when matters are finally settled by the court.

Another thing that works against divorcees and those in the process is the Friend of the Court system awarding child support that seems to be a huge amount of the net income of the spouse that pays it. In addition, a court may order alimony for some number of years against the spouse with the higher income and/or greater probability of building greater future assets. Such support is only a fraction of the support the children and ex-spouse would receive if the spouses united in Jesus Christ and remained that way.

The separation of love and finances from one spouse to the other greatly perpetuates financial difficulties for both parties. If they were already at the edge financially or over the edge prior to the divorce proceedings, then it will be even more chilling financially because they effectively double major expense they used to pay together and incur even more expense fighting one another.

Scripture does identify a few reasons legitimate in the eyes of God that one spouse may have a right to use to divorce or separate from the other. Yet the reasons many are using today and the amount of divorce taking place today appear to be an abomination of the plan that God designed for mankind’s betterment and that Christ desires for His Church as a means of exampling the love He shows for His Body.

If we want the best that the Lord has for us, then it is best to exhibit good stewardship in our martial relationship as well as our relationship with money. Both married partners focused on pursuing His will for each other and the family unit are much better than both of the divorcees being forced to operate in single parenthood. This is true spiritually, physically, emotionally, and financially, for when one falls the other is able to pick him / her up and help move the family unit into greater prosperity.

Please pray for this ministry and email any questions. May God bless you richly as you follow His plan!!!

Proverbs 13:23, Matthew 5:32, Mark 10:3-9, Ephesians 5:28-33, Colossians 4:5

Please forward these bondage breaking articles to other people who can use helpful insight!!!

You can find books authored by Randy and Karen Parlor at www.Amazon.com

MoneyWalk 177: It Is Not What It Looks Like

This program will help you undo financial bondage.

Many people that earn or previously earned six figure or million dollar incomes actually live in poverty by God’s standards because they are not rich toward God in tithes and offerings, their eyes are solely and wholly focused on being rich at all costs, they disrespect and mistreat other people that are not at their supposed level, they oppress people that work for them, and/or they go into debt to live above their current income.

Many of them chase elusive get rich quick schemes sold by slick salespeople with glossy advertising. These propositions look good for a moment, but generally fizzle out shortly thereafter leaving the investors with a heap of worthless promises. Or, a slick salesperson, whose material lifestyle they covet, spends their investment money on his lifestyle thus stripping them of this money because they are not able to collect any of it even after the feds get involved (think Made-Off with your money).

Many others fall for day trading and multi-level marketing schemes that they are not able to grasp and do not have the skill to employ that rob them of valuable resources that could be used to slowly and steadily build their fortune. Many invest in businesses without godly motives and proper guidance and get caught in a web of bureaucratic red-tape, deceitful advertising, immoral employment practices, and family destroying work hours that will come back to haunt them in this life and/or the life to come.

Giving little to ministry work, people in need, and toward healthy family and friend relationships, they suffer many negative consequences that result in divorces, broken relationships with children, and lack of peace, joy, fulfillment, and eventual bankruptcy and foreclosure - thus stripping them of the material things they chased that were most important to them and of the things like relationship with the Lord, family, and friends that should have been most important to them.

All of these negative consequences can be overcome by setting the proper priority for your life by asking the Holy Spirit to reveal His purpose for your life on earth. Now set your goals to walk on that path and know (have faith) that God will provide all your need according to His riches in glory. Never let the pursuit of money, material things, power, or prestige separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. For His glory, simply employ biblical principles in the management of money and levels of influence He entrusts to you. After all, it does not profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul.

Please pray for this ministry and email any questions. May God bless you richly as you follow His plan!!!

Proverbs 22:7, Malachi 3:8-12, 1Timothy 6:9-10, James 5:1-6

Please forward these bondage breaking articles to other people who can use helpful insight!!!

You can find books authored by Randy and Karen Parlor at www.Amazon.com