MoneyWalk 377: Don’t Be A Fool

This program will help you undo financial bondage.

A wise man sees danger ahead and avoids it whereas a fool sees danger and walks into it. There’s a stark eternal contrast between unbelievers / disobedient people versus people who honor the LORD through intimacy with Him and giving of their income and assets to help draw people to Him and disciple them within the Church (His body).

At some point, people get to see the path we have chosen during our short existence on earth because the result for those who honor Him shows up in ministry usefulness with a grateful, joyous disposition whereas for the unbelievers and disobedient the result shows continual destructive forces ravaging their lives and oftentimes finances. People will reap earthly problems, destructive forces in their lives, and eternal damnation when they live outside of relationship with God in Christ and do not with their whole heart repent of their sin before they die and seek to obey His will for their lives. They do not like to hear it because it’s not politically correct in this day and time, but it is the truth according to the bible and needs to be heard whether people receive, believe, or follow it.

Long before they take note of the spiritual death they are suffering, decay is overtaking their lives and trying to close the door to the gaping hole that can only be filled by the presence of the Holy Spirit. Yet, this destructive situation is so subtle and insidious that it is practically unnoticeable to the person who made up his / her mind that He does not want to hear or respond to the LORD’s loving call. In the day you hear His voice harden not your heart, for all who call upon the name of the LORD Jesus shall be saved. To sidestep the destructive forces that sin will bring into your life, you must obey His scriptural standard for salvation, which is by grace through faith, and not of works. To have rewards poured upon you via windows of Heaven, you must also be obedient in developing intimacy with him through thanksgiving, praise, worship, prayer, bible study, Church fellowship, God-pleasing service to others, displaying the fruit of the Spirit, and obeying bible instructions for each area of life including finances through gainful employment, tithing, offering, planning (budgeting), debt-elimination, no cosigning, saving, investing, and diversifying assets.

The devil is so crafty, knowing death by sin won’t display itself for a long time, that he’ll present a picture showing harmful financial, relationship, and lifestyle activities as being good for you. You must remember he will ultimately be cast into the pit of Hell with those whom he convinces to follow his ungodly designs. We need to warn as many as we possibly can (family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and acquaintances) of satan’s plan and implore them not to follow it and heartily encourage them to accept Jesus Christ as Lord & Savior and seek to do His will from this point forward.

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

Proverbs 22:7, Malachi 3:8-12, Matthew 6:33, 1Timothy 6:9-10, James 5:1-9

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

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

You can find many other MoneyWalk articles on Facebook by looking at the NOTES created by Randy Parlor at https://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=100000444069041&sk=notes.

You can connect with Randy Parlor on Twitter and Linkedin

You can also view and/or listen to MoneyWalk articles at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXnztOIesOKIrSd_H6c-8mQ

MoneyWalk 376: Let Truth Be Your Advisor

This program will help you undo financial bondage.

Some pundits say you must own a business, invest in risky ventures, or earn a high income in order to eliminate poverty in your life to usher in wealth. However, the bible does not identify these pursuits and situations as the only way to abundance, though in a debt-free manner they could be paths God will use to enrich you. Scripture points to simple biblical principles that bring abundance into your life no matter your income.

First, seek to be intimate with Him via thanksgiving, praise, worship, prayer, bible study, fellowship with believers, and service to others. Second, tithe to your local Church and give to other worthwhile ministries that introduce many people to Christ and disciple them. Third, engage legitimate work to earn abundant income and put yourself in a position for raises and promotions throughout the years. Fourth, seek to live on far less than your take home pay and take action to eliminate debt and unreasonable expenses. Finally, save a reasonable percentage of your income for emergency situations and purchasing diversified equity investments for the long-term (stocks, real estate, and entrepreneurial endeavors) that will provide far more growth than fixed income and similar accounts (savings, CD’s, money market, stable value funds, etc.). I like the idea of investing 10% or more of your income as it equates to a tithe and offering and seems a reasonable amount in which to value your present and future in the wealth building arena.

The truth that should be your advisor is, when God’s will takes priority over your desires, then faith and obedience will help you build wealth to glorify God in the earth, which includes properly caring for yourself, family, the Church, and others.

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

Genesis 14:20, Habakkuk 2:2-4, Proverbs 27:23-27, Acts 4:34, 2Corinthians 8:13-15

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

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

You can find many other MoneyWalk articles on Facebook by looking at the NOTES created by Randy Parlor at https://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=100000444069041&sk=notes.

You can connect with Randy Parlor on Twitter and Linkedin

You can also view and/or listen to MoneyWalk articles at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXnztOIesOKIrSd_H6c-8mQ

MoneyWalk 375: Debt-Free Living Is Wise

This program will help you undo financial bondage.

Eliminating debt enhances your short and long-term financial condition by positioning you to set aside huge portions of your income for wealth building endeavors (saving, investing, and entrepreneurship). This focus stops you from engaging a “spend first” mentality and moves you away from immediately seeking a way to fulfill your desires. It puts you in a place where you get all His desires for you in His timing, per His plan and purposes for your life, calling, career, etc. Aren’t His desires and timing better than anything you could imagine for yourself?

While engaging this process, continually honor the LORD by tithing and offering because these practices contain supernatural power to open the windows of Heaven to bring you great blessing you could not muster on your own and they are essential for providing for yourself, family, the Church, and others in the manner He desires. Abundant giving and debt elimination do not eradicate your ability to be fruitful and prosper like some naysayers suppose. Rather, these spiritual practices please the LORD even though the pathway they are on are different than the pathway many of your peers take. The biblically-based path requires faith, obedience, and fortitude to engage. Regardless of how the math might look on paper, following this path results in a far greater ability to draw money and resources to you to help pay off debt much faster than you otherwise could while producing excitement in your life because you are partnered with the LORD to bring about His will in the earth and fulfill your purpose.

Paying off your remaining mortgage and car note when you have money sitting around earning very little interest is a wise practice that produces great financial blessings for you. When you do not have enough money to immediately pay off your entire mortgage, quickly talk to financial institution officers about refinancing your home and car at the lowest possible interest rate and closing cost. Perform necessary calculations to ensure the monthly savings you obtain via the reduced monthly mortgage and car payment will totally recoup the refinance costs within the number of years you plan to keep the house and car. Go the extra mile and ask the officer to provide you with a no cost or very low cost refinance. Sometimes you ‘have not’ simply because you ‘ask not!’

When you are in a very tight financial position with little emergency funds, and extra income and drastically reduced monthly expenses do not seem to be an option you can quickly engage, it could be best to sell your current home and car to more quickly eliminate debt and stay in a debt-free financial position, especially when you can get another suitable home and transportation at a much lower monthly payment including monthly maintenance costs. This is only a temporary position because your new debt-free position will allow you to aggressively save money to get a much better home and car without mortgage payments that strangle your financial future. This type of focused debt elimination will cause super and natural blessings to overflow throughout your life.

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

Deuteronomy 28:12, Proverbs 22:7, Luke 16:8-10, Romans 13:8, Ephesians 5:15-17

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

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

You can find many other MoneyWalk articles on Facebook by looking at the NOTES created by Randy Parlor at https://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=100000444069041&sk=notes.

You can connect with Randy Parlor on Twitter and Linkedin

You can also view and/or listen to MoneyWalk articles at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXnztOIesOKIrSd_H6c-8mQ

MoneyWalk 374: Building On A Firm Foundation

This program will help you undo financial bondage.

The truly wealthy give abundantly to spread the gospel throughout the earth, consistently keep their expenses below their income, and invest excess cash over long periods of time, in things in which they hold equity participation in order to receive greatly increased value, growth, and return (i.e., businesses and real estate via stock or ownership). They understand that wealth will not be built by those that have a “spend, spend, spend” mentality nor by those who regularly borrow money in order to get the many depreciating assets they continually desire (clothes, jewelry, cars, houses, etc.). First and foremost, their true wealth is in Christ and the increasing intimacy they seek with Him. This then leads their focus away from constant spending to get unnecessary items to impress themselves and the world around them. The love of the LORD reigning in their hearts encourages the mindset give first, save next, and spend last.

They would much rather give abundantly to see people introduced to Christ and become believers and disciples than they would to receive the myriad of material things produced to tickle people’s fancy. This mindset and pattern of living then produces an earthly situation for them (via increased income earning opportunities and investment growth even while continuing to abundantly give) whereby they are able to have many fine and increasingly expensive material things throughout their lives, because of the deferred gratification they displayed as a normal part of their behavior after putting on the mind of Christ. They wind up being able to enjoy things they get because they are obtained without debt and thus worldly economic forces, such as depressions and recessions, cannot snatch them out of their hands via repossession and foreclosure. Their obedience to Christ and simple financial plan based on biblical principles allows them to have sizeable savings and investment to get them through the short financially turbulent periods that occur once every decade or so.

They are not hooked on such material things emotionally or sentimentally or any other way and could at any time necessary give away or sell these things if they felt like ownership or maintenance of them could negatively affect their situation regarding cutbacks necessary due to a decrease in income or the ability to continually and abundantly give, save, and invest.

Purchasing a house can be a good thing for many people when done the right way. Great benefits could be peace from noisy or rowdy apartment dwellers, more space, and a mortgage payment (including principle, interest, home insurance, and property taxes) that normally would not rise to the level that rent increases would rise over the next decades of your life. However, irresponsible home purchasers, those who impulsively get houses they truly cannot handle on current income, those misinformed about the costs of maintenance and repair and who do not have a huge savings and investment cushion to handle them, those who impulsively move to higher cost homes when their incomes cannot handle that level of extra expense are generally no more wealthy than the average renter in their same income bracket. Beware, our nation would not be experiencing so much predatory lending and home foreclosures if it is automatically true that purchasing a home and getting a tax deduction for it will make you wealthier than those who do not purchase a home. Do not get a home when you do not have at least 20% of the purchase price saved for down-payment and closing costs, when you do not have a reasonable fund for maintenance and repairs that may occur, when the monthly mortgage payment would be greater than 25% of your take home pay, and when you have not drafted a plan and budget to eliminate the home mortgage within 7 years from the purchase date.

Unfortunately, many people are told that wealth is built by the 15-36% tax deduction they get for every $1 in interest they pay on home mortgages. If this seems right to you, how about for every $1,000 you give me I will give you $150 to $360 back next year? While I would grow more wealthy over time, do you still think that exchange would make you wealthy over time? Other people are told they can leverage debt to the hilt to start a business or buy real estate and become as wealthy as they want to be. Of the hundreds of friends and thousands of people we know we have not met any who became wealthy by getting home mortgage tax deductions and we have not personally known any that became wealthy by leveraging debt for real estate or business. Generally, less than one percent of all people who try these methods become economically wealthy, which leaves ninety-nine percent who do not. Urban mythology is how you should label most stories you hear about people maxing out credit cards and taking on substantial debt to become wealthy via borrowed capital. Stay as far away from such methods as you possibly can. Learn to give abundantly, live debt-free, and makes sure you set aside reasonable savings and money for proven long-term equity investment because this is the pathway that will economically bless you now and much more as you move throughout your future.

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

Genesis 14:20, Proverbs 22:7, Proverbs 27:23-24, Romans 13:8, Hebrews 7:8

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

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

You can find many other MoneyWalk articles on Facebook by looking at the NOTES created by Randy Parlor at https://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=100000444069041&sk=notes.

You can connect with Randy Parlor on Twitter and Linkedin

You can also view and/or listen to MoneyWalk articles at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXnztOIesOKIrSd_H6c-8mQ