Getting Control of Your Finances
Tom Shrader opens a series on self-control by examining financial discipline through biblical wisdom. He identifies signs of financial chaos - spending more than you make, lifestyle inflation, hoarding, and working only to retire - and offers scriptural principles for making, managing, and spending money wisely. The teaching emphasizes working diligently, living within your means, avoiding debt, and finding contentment rather than chasing wealth.
“You're out of control if you're spending more money than you're making.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Getting Control (2016)
Recorded: 2016
Duration: 39 min
Themes: discipline, finances, self-control, contentment, stewardship, wisdom, money, debt, struggling with debt, young professional, business owner, new believer, mentor, grandparent, financial stress, retirement planning
Scripture: Proverbs 25:28, Proverbs 10:4, Proverbs 12:11, Proverbs 28:19, Proverbs 23:4, Proverbs 10:2, Proverbs 13:11, Proverbs 27:23, Ecclesiastes 5:10-15, Proverbs 30:8-9, Proverbs 24:27, Proverbs 22:7, Proverbs 27:16, Proverbs 27:12
Theological Themes: sanctification, becoming holy, biblical wisdom, stewardship theology, spiritual discipline, wisdom literature, proverbs, christian living
Full Transcript
The theme verse for this series is on your outline. It's Proverbs 25:28: "Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control."
I'm going to be absolutely brutally honest with you. My two biggest limiters in my life, and they're huge, is that I'm lazy and I'm not disciplined. That's a bad combination. That is not good. I don't say that boastfully, but what do you do with that person? If you're a sales manager or you're a coach and you got a kid who's lazy and lacks self-control, pretty much practice squad is where you're headed and bottom of the sales force.
What I did all of my life is use my schedule to discipline me. So I would schedule myself so tight, I would teach so much, I would have so many meetings that I'd have to be prepared for those. And so I'd get them done.
The Framework of This Series
I'm going back and the topics for this series are schedule, so that's time, appetites, that's desires, career, and finances. What I've learned in these series is it's helpful to review this for yourself. Like today there's probably five or six times where I'm going to go "okay this is that verse." You're sitting with a friend having coffee and you go somewhere in the Bible it says. There's three or four of those in there today. Three or four asterisks that you want to develop a list on your phone of these verses you go to.
But also as you get older, more and more often younger businessmen, businesswomen, your grandkids, they're looking to you for some sort of insight. Or if not looking for you, you're in a position to give them some insight. So like one of our first points today is so basic, and in fact most of this is, that it's almost embarrassing you have to say it, but we're living in a culture that's not going to embrace these things that you see today that are so fundamental.
One of the things, and I remember telling you I'm in the car with Jamie and we're at Williams Arizona, and He said what are you learning? What have you discovered? And I said to Jamie what I learned is the Bible is true. And He did not feel compelled to stop the car and write that down. But what I meant is for the human condition, the third week of the month is my meeting week, and so I've been in meetings Tuesday and Wednesday. We're in a meeting Tuesday, and we're in a pastor's meeting for our Gilbert team. And we're talking about how if you follow biblical principles, even as somebody who denies Christ, it's amazing how these principles work.
Biblical Principles Work for Everyone
I'll meet with people frequently who would say, I don't buy that hooey. And then I'll say, well tell me about your family. And they'll, either accidentally or somehow through tradition, they'll lay out principles for their family, and they're all biblical. So we want to do that as we talk about finances.
Now let me give you a heads up. If you want in-depth stuff on finances, if you go to the Priority Living website, so it's prioritylivingaz.org, at the top you'll see options. One of them is audio archive. And if you go down to May of 2011, you'll see an eight-week series we did on financial foundations where we talked about ownership, which by the way is a key lesson for everything we do. Savings, borrowing, lending, investing, giving, all that stuff. If those are the things you want, and it's really good stuff, then you need to go to that.
Today is a little bit different. We're talking about getting control of our life in a big sense. And you know, I know, you know, that it can get very pessimistic very quickly. As it gets kind of like things are out of control, I tend to throw in the towel and say it's all screwed up, it's out of control, and I neglect, okay, really important, I neglect to focus on the things I can control.
Focus on What You Can Control
To me it's like golf. Okay, I'm never going to hit it long. But I can be a good golfer if I'm working on the stuff I can control. How to hit a wedge. I ought to be able to hit a green from 70 yards. I ought to be able to putt. I can't control my height, but I can control my width. I'll focus on the things that I can control, and the timeless principles that are there.
Let me take a little pressure out of this. I'm not selling anything, and I'm not a financial planner. I'm not recruiting you to come into my umbrella. If you came up and said do you have a card, I'd say no. Okay, I got nothing for that. All I want to do is to have you think.
Signs You're Out of Financial Control
So as you evaluate your life, or if you're like me, the lives of the people around you, how do you know if you're out of control? Here's the list. You've got them.
Number one, we'll fill it in. You'll be going nuts. Who spends more than they make? There's a stat that drives me insane. The government spends $1.40 for every dollar they take in. Now, that makes me mad. How dumb is that? How are you going to get it fixed? The average American spends $1.12 for every dollar they make. That's just as stupid. You're out of control if you're spending more money than you're making.
Secondly, if your lifestyle continues to rise with your income, so all of a sudden, every time there's a little bump in the income, you have to move to a new neighborhood. You have to buy a new car. You have to get a new trinket. People who make this kind of money wear this kind of watch with that kind of pen. Go there to eat.
I had a friend last week call and say, can we go to dinner? My wife and I would like to go to dinner with you and Sandy. I said, okay. We eat early. Get a table at like 2:30 or 3:00 maybe. He said, well, we've got to get a babysitter. It's going to be 5:30. We went to this place. It was a place I didn't know. Soup was $14, which is safe would be because I wasn't going to have soup. Salad, now they're eating Brussels sprouts. Everybody's eating Brussels sprouts. I don't want any Brussels sprouts. The guy, Pierre, whoever the guy is, said, what would you like to eat? I said, here's what
I want a piece of meat, not too much, and some potatoes and bread. We don't have bread. Could you run to Fry's and get some? I don't do that. Here you go. This is the absolute truth. He said, would you guys like dessert? I thought, well, yeah, maybe. Yeah, that'd be good. The first thing was chocolate cake. I don't eat a lot of desserts out. This chocolate cake was like nine bucks. I thought, wow. I said, chocolate cake, double chocolate cake. Sounds good.
He brought this. I'm not exaggerating. The plate was like this. This was the size of a cake. It was this thick. They're drinking wine. We have a Chardonnay that we mix with pineapple. I don't know. Everything's too hard. Mogan David. I don't know. They all have the thing. I'm thinking, it never occurred to me to the end, because I don't anticipate paying for this. It never occurred to me then, what does this cost? I'm driving home, and I'm figuring, we just had a 300-hour meal, and I want to swing by Smashburger and eat on the way home. We haven't had anything to eat. Well, why don't we go there? Why don't we pick this place? I can't talk. But that's where you eat, if you make a certain. See, all of that escalates.
The Third and Fourth Signs of Financial Lack of Control
Here's the third thing. Who retains any excess income for financial security? This is beyond saving. This is hoarding. Now, here's why this discussion is tough. Because you want specifics. What's fair? How much should I save? I don't know. I already started by telling you that's not my gig. I don't know.
I came across this story, which is a wonderful story. In 1857, the SS Central America was a ship that was transporting gold from California to Washington, D.C. And 160 miles off the coast of South Carolina, it started to take on water. Three tons of gold on board. 456 passengers, most of them prospectors. They spent 30 hours bailing water, trying to get it out, and they couldn't get it out. As the Wall Street Journal is describing this story, they end with this. Many of the passengers were dragged to the bottom of the ocean, weighed down by heavy gold money belts they refused to remove from their waists. You're out of control.
Number four, who retains excess for future inactivity? It's a mindset that I see shifting. So as I drive around down our end of town, I see a lot of signs for active adult community. And I'm always waiting for the one that says passive adult community. What would that be like, an inactive adult community? You come in and they're looking, I don't know. But the mindset, and it's probably of many of you, was work 40 years, work 60 hours a week, to get to the last 10 years to do nothing. So in our equation, those are just kind of things that would indicate I'm out of control.
Four Questions to Address
So four questions to address. Number one, what should you do to make money? It is beyond comprehension that we have to say this. But it's really true. Big verse, Proverbs 10:4. Lazy hands make a man poor, diligent hands bring wealth. Here's what you need to do. Accept the connection between hard work and income. In other words, here's what you ought to do to make money. Work. You need to get a job.
I'm one day watching TV, as I regularly do, and I'm flipping. And I come in, and just as I come in, there's a guy, like I think William Devane is the coolest looking guy. I don't know why. I think William, I wish I looked like William Devane. I think he looks really cool. And it's a guy that looks like William Devane, and he's got on a Navy suit, but it's not the Navy. It's that cool, rich blue and a white shirt and a really cool, subtle, bold striped tie. And he's got like one leg up on a mahogany desk and library books behind him. And just as I come in, it's like William Devane. If you can just see Him saying, would you like to work 10 hours a week and make $350,000 a year? Travel the world. See all the exotic places. Stay at the best places. Eat the best food. Go to the Super Bowl and the Masters and the Final Four. And I'm thinking, wow, this is my deal. And I'm trying to find paper and pencil, 1-800-EASYSTREET. And all of a sudden the guy says, fat chance, it doesn't work that way. And I had popped into a replay of a Saturday Night Live skit.
The Reality of Work for the Next Generation
And in our world, it seems like we need to come back to this again and again and again. That as you're dealing with the next generation, so let's just kind of stipulate, most of you in the room are playing 14th hole of life or 15th. Some of you are in the grill. And I'd get that to go if I was you, but that's a different thing. But as you look at the generation around you, one of the things that you see, and as you deal with them, and we deal with a lot. I'm in a meeting yesterday with probably 40 pastors that are under 40, is this idea of work. It's not that they don't work, but it's the idea that it's what you do. How should you make money? Well, you should work.
Moving from Dreams to Reality
Here's the second thing. And this gets all dicey. Move out of your dream world into the real world. Let me read two verses to you. And there's a subtlety here, but one's kind of, cause and effect, if you will. Proverbs 12:11, he who works his land will have abundant food, but he who chases fantasies, means literally worthless paths, lacks judgment. So you say, and that's a stupid thing to do. Proverbs 28:19, here's the result. He who works his land will have abundant food. He who chases fantasies will have his fill of poverty.
Now, I don't want to be a dream killer. I love the shows, Men Who Made America, People Who Made America. Here's Mrs. Fields, and she could bake a cookie, and look at what happened. Here's Walt Disney, and here's Ray Kroc, and here's Steve Jobs, and here's Bill Gates. But the reason those stand out is those are the exceptions. There's nothing wrong with a dream, but I need to understand that I live life along the way. My daughter, Sarah and I, she's doing some business stuff, and it's really, really cool for me to watch her. Yesterday she
asked me, "What do you think is a sound leader? What are the characteristics of a sound leader?" She was talking about the girls that she's working with and motivating her team, and she was talking about balance. Sarah's 35 and has four kids. Gracie's the oldest. Gracie's nine and has never spoken, so she has a certain challenge. Sarah came into the house Thursday, and water was pouring through the roof. She got upstairs, and there was about three inches of water in the upstairs. She's got a lot of challenges in her life.
She said to me, "These girls are driving me nuts, because all they tell me is how busy they are." She's saying, somehow we've got to make all this stuff work together. Somehow, it's that word—I hate it—balance, but it's to hang in there. It's to appropriately select your dreams.
Stay Loose: Don't Wear Yourself Out for Wealth
Here's the third thing: stay loose. Proverbs 23:4, "Don't wear yourself out to get rich." Nothing wrong with working hard—you want to do that—but it comes at a price. I watch way too much television, and I love biographies. Football Life, the David Faraday interviews, anything with life. There's an interview show now that Jack Buck is doing, and it is really good. It's one-hour interviews, and he did one with Troy Aikman. He just did one with Michael Phelps that was really good.
Jimmy Johnson was his guest last week. I don't know what I thought of Jimmy Johnson, but Johnson was talking about how hard it was to be successful, and how much time it took, and how it came at a price. I wanted Buck to go deeper there and to say, "What does that mean?" But he kind of said, "You don't get all the time in your family you'd like."
A friend of mine is in an industry—he's in the top 20 guys in his company, big company, a nationwide company—and the top 20 guys get together every year. Top 20 sales guys. These are the upper, upper, upper one percenters. He loves to go—stimulating, the "my watch is bigger than your watch" kind of stuff. So he came back, I said, "How was it?" He said, "Tom, it was really different this year. Maybe I just had eyes to see it."
I said, "What do you mean?" He goes, "Well, there weren't 20 of us, there were 19. The guy that's the most successful is 40 years old. He wasn't there—he was having triple bypass surgery that day. He was the guy the year before that said, 'I only sleep three hours a night,' that guy." So he said, "There are 19 of us, take me out. Of the other 18, every one of them was going through a divorce or had been remarried."
Now, I don't know that there's cause and effect there, but there's that connection. They're certainly higher than national stats. As they talked, of these super successful guys, there was a sense that this came at a price. Don't wear yourself out trying to get rich.
What Should You Anticipate as Income?
Here's the next thing. What should you anticipate as income? Well, here: don't earn what you can't defend. "Ill-gotten riches are of no value," Proverbs 10:2. I make sure how I make my money. My guess is none of you are flying a Cessna 150 down to Mexico today and picking up a load of drugs and coming back. But remember, this is a dated illustration. Maybe some of you are now that I look at your faces.
Years ago, remember The Last Temptation of Christ, the movie? It came out, it was so controversial. At Town and Country down here at 20th and Camelback was a movie theater. I was down there one night, saw a guy, and they're out picketing. They're picketing this movie. I saw him, and I waved at him, and he's going, "Come on." I said, "No, I've got to eat."
So I saw him about a week later. I said, "How'd the picketing go?" He said, "It was good. I've got to tell you something really funny. A couple days later, I'm with my financial manager guy, and we're going through our portfolio. I am part of a mutual fund that funded the making of that movie, and I didn't realize it." So I can be engaged that way.
Avoid the Lotto Mentality
Here you go. This works. Avoid the lotto mentality. I really dwell on this because I think it's probably always there, but it seems to really be prevalent now. Proverbs 13:11, "Dishonest money dwindles away, but he who gathers money little by little..." In another passage in Proverbs, the author talks about a steady plotter. I don't even like to say it. I'm a greyhound, man. I'm not a steady plotter. There's nothing fun about little by little in any area.
It's like at your Christmas party. I'll be somewhere with Sandy, and they'll say, "Sandy, are you working out?" She'll go, "I don't know." "Well, what are you doing?" "I don't know." "Are you swimming?" "Yeah." "Well, how much are you swimming?" "I don't know, an hour a day maybe." "Are you running?" "Well, a couple times a week." "Are you going to the gym?" "Yeah." "Tom, what are you doing?" "Well, I really support her in all of her efforts. And I walk."
See, you don't want to do that. It's how you sell these P90 things. All these guys watch this P90 deal, and they don't want to just eat less and exercise more. Now it comes to money, and it's the same thing. They're lined up out the door to buy these lotto tickets. What's interesting is it's because it's at $1.5 billion. Apparently $100 million wasn't enough to inspire people to go and buy a lottery ticket.
I saw this, and I've really tried to live it faithfully. My dad and my mom taught me this. My dad worked at the same bank for 43 years. Didn't make any money. Banking, not necessarily an area where you're going to make a whole ton of money. He made more money at the end of his life. He would, every January, have us go down and set up a Christmas club where we'd put away a couple bucks a month so that when we got to December, we'd have $24 to buy Christmas gifts. He'd give us that little envelope with the portrait cut out.
My Parents' Approach to Money
Out, and there'd be a picture of Lincoln and a $5 bill in it. When Susan passed away, I was going through her stuff, and I found a key to a safety deposit box. I thought, wow, this is perfect. I don't know what's in there. It's going to be awesome.
I'm driving home, and I go, okay, I remember we had it now. I go in, and I open it. There was our will, and there were some birth certificates. I'm thinking, I'm going to get nothing out of this. Then I found a stack about this high of U.S. savings bonds.
Well, half of them had the name Haley on it. Half had the name Sarah on it. None of them had Tom on it. $5 savings bonds, $25 savings bonds that my dad would buy the girls when they were born on a birthday. My mom saved dimes, not nickels. I think that was too little. Quarters were too much. Dimes.
She'd put them in a big box. When she got what she thought was enough, she would get the boys together, and we'd get the green wrappers. The green wrappers were $5. We'd wrap dimes, and then she would put them in the freezer. My answer to that was she always wanted cold cash. I don't have any other answer. I assume she thought nobody would steal her dimes.
Little by Little: The Steady Plodder
My point through this long story was my dad was a steady plodder little by little. When he got to the end of his life, unlike most people who made a lot more money than him, he had enough money. He took care of himself.
We're sitting down one day, and the lottery had gotten to $10 million. I said, "Dad, what would you do with $10 million?" He said, "I don't want to talk about it." I said, "What would you do if you won $10 million?" He said, "I'm not going to win $10 million." I said, "How do you know?" He goes, "I'm not going to buy a ticket. I'm not going to spend a dollar. Why would I spend a dollar on this?"
If we can take something, whether it's in sports or business or exercise or dieting, whatever it is, little by little. Here you go. Stay in touch with reality. Know what's going on with your money.
Know the Condition of Your Flocks
Proverbs 27:23: "Be sure you know the condition of your flocks. Be careful to give attention to your herds." Once a month, there's a story of somebody who made $35 million in their career and has nothing. Mike Tyson went into prison with $30 million and came out broke. That's pretty hard to do, unless Don King's your manager. But that's pretty hard to do.
I'll talk to guys and they'll go, "I'm not sure what happened, Tom. I've been making six figures for 15 years and I don't have anything." Well, what happened? "Well, I just lost track." What will happen economically is inertia will kick in.
The Truth About Money from Ecclesiastes
Let me give you a passage. It's a super go-to, you-need-to-have passage. Ecclesiastes 5, verse 10: "Whoever loves money never has money enough. The more you have, the more you want. Whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income." Huge principle.
Ecclesiastes 5, verse 11: "As goods increase, so do those who consume them." Verse 12: "The sleep of the laborer is sweet, whether he eats a little or much, but the abundance of the rich man permits him no sleep." The more you have, the more you worry about it.
The guy who's slugging it out, making a few bucks an hour, was not near as discouraged as you were yesterday when the stock market went down 500 points. That's the thing about dough. How do I get it? How do I save it? How do I protect it?
Here's the go-to. Ecclesiastes 5, verse 15: "Naked a man comes from his mother's womb, and as he comes, he departs. He takes nothing from his labor." There's the perspective.
Don't Count on What You Don't Have
What do you anticipate His income? Well, only that you can count on. Don't boast about tomorrow. I'm literally this week, after I decided to do this lesson, with a guy who's telling me he's about to make this big purchase. I said, "That's really cool. How did you decide that?" "I got a deal that's going to close in July." Let me give you a tip. There's a whole bunch of deals that go into escrow that never close. You're going to make that purchase? You're going to buy that deal?
We were talking the other day about furniture. In our first house, we had this huge living room, and the only thing we had in it was a balance beam that was about this far off the ground, and the girls would do gymnastics in there. Then we added a table and a whiteboard so they could do school in there. If you go back and you talk to our kids about growing up, they'll talk about that balance beam and that table.
People would come to our house and kind of look and go, "That's a little odd. Why don't you get some furniture?" I would say, "Here you go, because I can't pay for it." They'd say, "But you could, I mean..." You know where that's going. "Well, go down. You can get a bedroom set today with no payments until 2030, and you'll be dead by then, Tom, so what difference is it going to make?"
You only count what you can see. Then you count on God for His sufficiency.
An Odd Prayer About Money
Proverbs 30:8-9, with a little star by it. It's an odd sort of prayer: "Keep falsehood and lies far away from me. Give me neither poverty nor riches, but only give me my daily bread. Otherwise, I'll have too much and disown you and say, 'Who is the Lord?' or I'll be poor and steal."
That's an odd prayer. Just give me enough to get by. You give me too much. It's human nature. You give me too much, and I'll put a "God's house" plaque on my address on the front door, "Praise Jesus." But inside I'm going, "You know how I got this stuff? Not through God's blessing, through my ingenuity, through my strategic plan, through my vision." It's very hard.
It's amazing how this town, in I would argue three or four weeks, has fallen in love with the Arizona Cardinals. This tells you how bad the Suns, the Diamondbacks...
Authentic Success Stories
ASU is absolutely falling in love with Larry Fitzgerald. What you see is you don't get this bravado, all that stuff with him. You kind of get from him a normal guy. He was at the Fiesta Bowl breakfast this year, walked in, and he was molested by a thousand people before he got to his table. Never once did you see anything but class. This is like a class act.
You start to talk to people, and they'll give you the token to God, but even as you say, "Why did you succeed?" they say, "God blessed me." You go, "I know that, but give me the real reason. What did you do?" I have to be very careful here.
What You Should Do With the Opposite Lifestyle
Here's a principle: determine your expenses after you know your income. Proverbs 24:27 says, "Finish your outdoor work, get your fields ready, then after that build your house." Don't go and find the car you like, the house you like, the lifestyle you like, the school you like, the things you like, and then go, "Now I'm going to get a job that's going to be commensurate with that."
Here's the second thing: avoid debt like the plague. Proverbs 22:7 says, "The rich rule over the poor, the borrower is a slave to the lender." Debt is a killer. I'm watching this endless debate on college debt. It makes no sense to borrow $250,000 to get a college degree to get a job that pays $35,000. You can't pay them back. It doesn't work out.
We define debt as an instrument that allows you to acquire a possession or experience for which cash is not readily supplied. I'm talking to somebody, they're dead broke. They got nothing. That's why they want to meet. "Tom, I got nothing. I've lost it all." I'm not sure what you want me to do, but I'll pray for you, I'll help you. We'll be hanging out if you want.
I get their Christmas card, and it's the family in Hawaii. I'm going, "How can this be?" So I call them, I said, "Hey man, I got your Christmas card. Is that like a Photoshop deal or did you..." "Oh no, it's so bad that I just figured, we'll just go to Hawaii." We laugh at that, but that's that mentality. I have to avoid that.
Control Your Upward Hospitality
Proverbs 22:16 says, "He who oppresses the poor to increase His wealth, or He who gives gifts to the rich, both come to poverty." Be careful with what you do. Be careful, especially for the people around you that you treat.
Here you go, this is from Proverbs. Enjoy moderation. Proverbs 25:16 says, "If you find honey, eat just enough. Too much of it and you will vomit." Enjoy moderation.
Get real. Proverbs 13:7 says, "One man pretends to be rich, yet has nothing. Another pretends to be poor and has great wealth." Why would I pretend to be rich and have nothing? Well, that makes sense. But why would I pretend to be poor? Well, all of a sudden I'm confronted with the responsibility of wealth.
I'm talking to a guy and He's one of these guys that wants me to know He's got a lot of money. This is a subjective term, because some of you won't think that's a lot of money. But in the course of it, He said, "I've got like, I just finished my stuff and I've got like 12 million bucks." I think it's a lot of money. So I thought, "Okay, well, let's apply principles to that."
I said, "You know, that's pretty cool. But that's a big burden." He said, "Yeah, I don't want to lose it." I said, "No, not so much that. But Paul says, 'Instruct those who are rich in this present world to be good, to do good.'" And He said, "Oh, I'm not rich." Well, we would pretend to be poor. I don't want the responsibility that comes with wealth.
What Should You Include in Fixed Expenses?
Solve tomorrow's problems today, instead of solving today's problems tomorrow. Proverbs 27:12 says, "The prudent see danger and take refuge. But the simple keep going."
We had a man in our church, 28 years old, died. Absolutely tragic. Had three kids. Absolutely tragic. I'm with the family and discover this 28-year-old kid had no life insurance. That's almost a moral issue to me. They go, "My..." I have a million dollars of life insurance for $19 a month. I'm not selling anything. Let me get it to you again. I'm not selling anything. I'm just saying, it's not like this is a surprise. It's surprising that it was at age 28. But you're planners. You're prudent. You put it in a safe place.
You invest it where your return is assured. You invest it in the things of God. I'm with a guy the other day and He said, "The year end kills me." And I said, "Why is that?" He said, "I got a stack of letters this high from Christian organizations wanting money. One of them was yours." I said, "Okay, I'm all right with that." And He said, "That kills me." And I said, "You know what? That excites me. God's doing that much. God's doing that much stuff around the world and you get a chance to participate in that."
How Do You Know You're in Control?
So let me go through it quickly and we're done. How do you know you're in control? Number one, have a job you can enjoy. Number two, have an income that you can anticipate. Be prudent in it. Don't be wild and dreamy. Have a lifestyle you can support. Live in moderation. Have a reserve you can access.
So we're talking about money. How you make it, the principles, pushing back from inertia that will just inevitably take you to more and more and more. And it will really take you there when you sit and you watch television and everything around you is telling you, you need this, you need that, you want more of these.
Next week, and this may be the reason that I'm doing the series, it's for my own benefit. Next week is schedule, time, principles of time. You lose money, you can go get more. You lose today, there's no place to go to get it back.