Sunday, August 17, 2025

MoneyWalk 313: Discipline Produces Growth

This program will help you undo financial bondage.

Many people suffer great personal financial and business loss and are forced into foreclosure and bankruptcy when dire economic situations occur, like the stock market or housing market overall value being reduced by ten percent or more or products and services they sell are no longer being bought in high numbers by customers. However, these are often not the real culprit of their financial problems. If they were not quickly and continually spending all their income / revenue and had over time built a reasonable amount of emergency funds and liquid investments, then they would be able to make it through these trying times without great loss.

Recessions on average occur once every decade and only last an average of eighteen months. If they only had to withdraw a small portion of their wealth during downturns then they’d be able to make it until the market returns to its former levels, and they’d receive of its massive increases that usually occur until the next recession. Customer loss would also be helped by good personal and business financial stewardship displayed prior to the recessionary intervals. This includes wise decision-making, eliminating unnecessary operational expenses, selling old excess inventory at low prices to build reserves, stop making products and offering services that don’t have profitable sales results, wise marketing / advertising campaigns, and pivoting as necessary to draw in the customers necessary to support your business and keep it going.

Those who don’t employ good money management practices will experience unemployment and loss of income. It will seem like, all of a sudden, they have more in monthly debt payments than their monthly income / revenue can handle. However, this really happened over time because they failed to see consequences of poor stewardship during good economic cycles. Many people had a heavy concentration of assets in one company or one sector of the market and usually in a faddish one whose value had long ago risen to astronomical levels. Then, the value fell precipitously when the bad market reared its head. All of sudden the assets they thought would protect them are not enough to cover the debt payments they owe.

Poor stewardship practices that result in people experiencing a downward financial spiral are failure to:

**Refuse to quickly pursue a debt-free lifestyle.

**Establish a budget to intimately know income and appropriately manage expenses.

**Eliminate debt during past rising economies and bull markets when they had increased revenue and income.

**Quickly reduce unnecessary expenses prior to seeing signs of economic trouble.

**Build an emergency fund in high yield savings accounts at banks or credit unions in order to take care of their expenses in emergency situations.

**Put at least 10% of gross monthly income in investments that have a long-term history of average annual double-digit growth. 

**Diversify assets overtime by putting portions in different classes of investment with seven or eight brokerage houses (Vanguard, Fidelity, TIAA-CREF, Charles Schwab, etc.).

**Understand that getting more debt will not help them alleviate financial problems.

Increasing financial education will help you understand that taking on more debt does not lead to debt elimination rather it leads to debt accumulation. It also helps you find equity investments that have a history of solid long-term growth so you can choose them for your diversified portfolio and control emotions to maintain your investments when there are short-term market gyrations. Most people do not reap huge long-term growth because they constantly buy investments at high prices and sell them at low prices. Your long-term conservative yet moderately risky plan will cause you to buy investments at low prices and sell them at higher prices. It will help you avoid speculative investments and business deals that would become worthless before you could sell them or get your money back.

Short-term losses in the equity market will occur for even the most astute investors. However, they quickly subside and the market roars back to a point much higher than it was before it went down. In addition, recessionary economies and bear markets do not negatively affect every business and type of investment. There are always some that thrive when others experiences losses. Thus, you have the ability to overcome losses and experience tremendous growth when you engage the biblically based discipline of good stewardship.

Deuteronomy 28:12, Ecclesiastes 11:1-2, Acts 6:3, Romans 13:8

Please pray for this ministry and email questions to parlor@ameritech.net and share the links below with others who need guidance. May the Lord bless you richly as you follow His plan!

Share https://kminfo.org/ministries/financial-freedom weekly with family and friends so these bondage-breaking articles and other financial information can help them gain helpful insight! @everyone

The book at the link below provides principles and practical steps that help you use the Power to Get Wealth. By 1992, we had $135,000 of debt and a negative $35,000 net worth. Financial bondage and turmoil led me to seek principles and a process for employing good stewardship. As a result, we became constructively debt-free in 1998, mortgage free January 2004, millionaires in 2012, multi-millionaires shortly thereafter, and retired in 2018 in my mid-fifties from public servant jobs while giving abundantly to fund the gospel of our LORD Jesus Christ. The same power is available to you!

https://www.amazon.com/Power-Get-Wealth-Randy-Parlor-ebook/dp/B08QCH5MVH/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=Randy+Parlor&qid=1638336718&s=books&sr=1-2

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

You can also connect with Randy Parlor on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google Blogger, WordPress, Pinterest, TikTok, Tumbler, and You Tube.

 


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