Welcome to the for the gospel podcast, where we're all about providing sound doctrine for everyday people. I'm your host, Costi Hinn, and on today's episode, I have invited a dear friend and brother of mine. He's a deacon at our church who oversees some of our stewardship practices and our budgeting. He's also a CFO. Ryan Shackelford, welcome to the For the Gospel podcast, brother. Thanks, Costi. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, grateful. I want to give a little bit of background briefly about Ryan and his wife, Shayna, and their family so that everybody listening understands the context, you know, why I have him on. First, they have been a family that's been with us since day one, even before the church plant. And if any of you know or have even heard of the challenges of church planting, budgeting stewardship, uh, money, foresight, all of that is an incredible mountain that you have to climb. You got to take that hill. And Ryan was one of those guys that jumped in right away. You're also a CFO. Do you want to share a little bit about the wide um gr piece of ground you cover? You're not like just a guy sitting there. You have you do accounting, you helped it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so our business says medical advice sales in the state of Arizona. So I'm managing basically all functions of our back office from you know the financial side to HR, various different things that that we do in our business. I'm involved in even some business development as we approach new product segments and we're hiring people all the time and things like that. So it's a family business. So I work with my dad and brother. It's been fun. That has its own challenges, but we enjoy it. And um, it's been it's been awesome to be out in Arizona um as of the last couple of years and get to know Costi and get to be involved at the local church at Shepherd's House and kind of a fun story meeting up with him. But um so far, so so so good out here, and we're we're excited to continue to grow in the different ministries that are going on at Shepherd's. I love it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I've I've described you and and pretty much all the men in your family as male lions. You're all absolute warriors. Uh, you love the Lord, and I'm grateful that you guys are all part of our church. And what I've observed, and again, why I wanted you on, is your eye and ear and mind for stewardship and for budgeting, planning, strategy, all of that's great. But one of the really fun things that I don't know if people will know, and so now I'll tell everyone, is you're 30 years old. So you're in that little kind of middle range where you're not some self-proclaimed expert. I know you always say, I'm learning, I'm on the journey, I'm learning, you're very humble about it. At the same time, you're 30 years old, and you are not blowing budgets, you're not messing up our finances at the church, nor your own or the business. I hope not. So far, it's going really good. And you also at 30 aren't in fiscal disorder. Your home is in order, I've observed that. That's the only way you would have been a deacon. I've we've interviewed your wife, we've seen the way you live. And here is my rub as a pastor. Men in today's culture, let's start there, it's all people, but really men in today's culture, and I was one of these. They don't know how to budget, they generally they're not planning ahead. If they're like I was when they were single, they're like, Oh, whatever, I'm just living my life. They get married, and you know, this their wife is like, hey, what's the plan? What's the I don't know, we'll just spend and figure it out. It's like a you know, having no plan is a plan to fail, you know, the old adage. So I wanted to have you on as well to to kind of help be an example to the next generation of like, hey, look, here's a guy who's 30, who's not a zoo out there when it comes to budgeting, and would still say you're learning.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, totally. I think that I think that we're still refining the process, even in our marriage and how we communicate about financial goals. Uh, you know, you get to specific points in your life where you're trying to grow your family, or you have, you know, you know, there's a specific thing that you're trying to do. So we're trying to always be on the same page, my wife and I, make sure that we're clear in how we're spending our resources and and taking care of business because uh and we can jump right into it. But one of the things that has been really helpful for me is that when I have a plan, I don't have to think about various things, I don't have to be anxious about the future. I know that we have you know some framework that we're gonna operate on, husband and wife, going forward month to month. And so far we've been able to adopt that early in our marriage, and it's it's carried on even to now. Um but I assume that as life changes, kids get older, uh, you know, there's different variables involved that I'm gonna have to learn and adapt as we go. So how long have you guys been married? Uh basically eight years, I think. Almost eight years. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You have three kids. Three kids. You have adopted two. Adopted two, yeah. How many jobs have you had?
SPEAKER_00Uh probably three real ones, and I uh after my first job. So basically, my first job was kind of not my favorite, didn't last a whole year, and then moved on to my real career. So hard worker. Have you ever missed a credit card payment? I have missed a credit card payment. How many times? I've probably missed more credit card payments in the business than I have personally. So I tear care of my home before you know, before my So you're normal.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. You're normal, you're human, you're not perfect. Um, but you have a plan, and that's what I want to talk about. You have a foundation, and this is biblical. Stewardship and this side of the Christian life is biblical. It's practical. I think we often overlook it, and I don't want us to do that. I want our audience to be equipped in this. So let's start first and foremost. Is it important for every single person to budget? So whatever the life stage, or are there people who they just didn't turn this episode off?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't think anyone should turn the episode off because I think there's some some major uh benefits to budgeting. And and I think people will have different ways of going about it, but ultimately having a plan and how you steward your financial resources is going to be the most important piece. So I think number one, God planned creation very orderly chronologically. You know, it's pretty clear that he had an idea of what he was what he was doing. So I think that's a good example of of why we should. Um, I think I think too, there's just basic wisdom in creating some accountability for yourself in how you do things in your life. It can be budgeting in this case for your financial responsibility, but there might be other disciplines that you deploy in growing in godliness, you know, waking up early, reading your Bible, those type of things. So it's just another avenue to create some discipline, accountability, a foundation for you to operate by. Um, I think for me it creates clarity in how I go about my daily business in terms of when I'm gonna go swipe my card somewhere. Is this something that we've we've talked about and made a plan for? Now, I think that's gonna be dependent on every individual person's circumstances, but I do think that everybody should be in some capacity budgeting. How granular you get is gonna be unique to the individual, but um it teaches you to live within your means, to have wisdom in how you develop a budget, to how you want to deploy those funds. Um, I think early on when you first start your career, at least for me, teaches you to deny yourself and have some delayed gratification because people want to buy what they want now, which is you know, credit cards make that possible. Yeah, it's a pretty dangerous thing to have if you're not equipped to deal with it. So I think that uh I think that all those things are are reasons why every Christian should budget.
SPEAKER_02Speak to the idea of a credit card, and let me just self-deprecate here for a second and expose my own mistakes. Way back in the day, like way back, I was single, and I think I was starting shortly after to date Christine, and then we got engaged, but I was traveling still. No, actually, it was a little bit before Christine, kind of a hybrid. I was traveling still with some of the family, and it'd be, you know, big checks and some of that stuff. And I had also big ideas about money and whatever. I went to the bank, I was up in Canada, I went to the bank and I applied for a credit card. I'd never had one before. And the guy said, Oh, with your, you know, with what I see that's hitting your account, and you said you travel a lot. I see a lot of international purchases because you know we're all over the world doing a bunch of shenanigans. He says, Let me let me do this, let's get you two credit cards. I want to get you two cards, $5,000 limits on both. He sold me. I didn't. I'm selling you big time. And I felt so special, Ryan. I was like, Oh yeah, because I'm international, whatever. So they make you feel special. He says, Let me give you two. I want to do a US card and a Canadian card, because remember, I lived in Vancouver, and what each one will have $5,000 limits. When you travel and you're out there, use the US based on the currency and exchange rate, and then you can. And I'm thinking, I'm so cool. Like I'm the man. I got two credit cards. I'm gonna I racked them both as fast as you can blink and then fought to pay them off. And every time I made like some big money or some trip, I'd be clearing off the card. I'd do it again. That was the beginning of my financial understanding or my financial habits. Speak to are credit cards helpful for building credit? Are they dangerous? Because I could have used you, you know, 15 years ago.
SPEAKER_00I know. I think I think it's a personality thing for sure. I think that um some people are gonna be cautious and some people are not. Some people have big dreams and think that they can, you know, they're gonna, you know, if they get in debt, they'll just find a way to pay it off because they're yeah, they're good at what they do or you know, various things and they're not calculated in how they spend. But I think that credit cards are pretty dangerous in the sense that you can go spend a lot more than your means can can repay. And then, you know, those interest rates are are really, really tough to pay off unless you're clearing excessive amounts of income beyond your normal monthly expenses. So I think for for anyone who's like starting out trying to get into controlling their finances in a calculated way, I wouldn't recommend it. I think that there's the common feedback is well, I want the points, you know, I want to spend on my credit card so I get the points and and all those things, and then they end up spending on their credit cards to get points which are worth like you know a cent compared to the entire purchase. So if they would have just not done that purchase, they would have netted far more money. Totally. Um, and so I think you get into trouble and then it's really difficult to get out if you're not calculated. And so um, I'm not against credit cards, I use a credit card, I pay it off every month, but I think that um it can create some habits that are not ideal in in your family. And I think um if you find yourself in whole, it it makes it tough to operate a budget, you know, based on the means that you have. Totally. No, that's super helpful.
SPEAKER_02I want to get into some of the um starting point practicals, and we're gonna we're gonna go several different places still in all of this, and the the material you've laid out is just phenomenal. I could probably go two-hour long form today or do multiples, but let's start with this. Uh, how should someone start? So if they're already listening to us and they're going, man, I'm sold, this is convicting already. I was told like three weeks ago I need to do this and I haven't been. Where do they start? Is there a program? Is it Excel spreadsheets? Is it uh they should they read a book? Like help somebody start right now.
SPEAKER_00I think there's a few different options you have. I think it's again gonna be, you know, are are you a note taker? Are you an Excel spreadsheet guy, or um do you want to use software? Because I think software makes it easy. Um, but honestly, just starting and creating something um in a notebook is gonna be valuable for you. Um I think so choose a format, choose a notebook, choose a spreadsheet, get a digital software that can track your spending. Um, you need to make sure that you know what your inflows are. So if you're on a salary, you might get paid twice a month. You can easily calculate what you net um after taxes and things like that. If you're gonna be hourly, I would say kind of average what you normally work on an hourly basis. I'd say be conservative. I'm always conservative in my budgets. You know, if if something happens and I make a little bit more one month, then great. It's going right into savings. Yep. It's going right into some other some other avenue that we know you're even pre-decided.
SPEAKER_02Because even as the church, as we've budgeted, we the projections in in giving and in quote unquote revenue, what they would call it, you know, in the business terms, um, you always you always underestimate, rightfully so. I don't say you lack faith. I want to be with you there. We're always going, okay, let's be conservative. Then if the Lord provides more, then we want to pray and strategize and be wise stewards. But it has blessed the church to not be overly aggressive.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's I mean, you're good at you know, leading the charge and painting the vision and going and and I guess in the business world, going and being the head of sales or business development, those type of things. So those guys exist, like in my company. I'm not that guy. I'm the guy that's way more conservative, making sure that we have enough cash flow to fund the company. And so I do that in my personal life as well, which is worst case scenario, I've got this, and maybe I don't struggle with materialism necessarily. I struggle with, you know, do I have enough to survive six months, twelve months, or whatever it is if something were to happen. So that's that's my bent, and I think that'll um every person will be different in that way. But uh as far as create a format, know your inflows, and then uh what we do is we talk about giving um after that. So basically, um how much are we gonna give to the church? Um, and I I do believe everybody should should be giving. It's not your money anyway, um, it's the Lord's. So I think we we talk about that primarily, my wife and I. And then you have your non-avoidable expenses or fixed expenses, which would be rent, utilities, phone, gas, groceries, things that you're gonna spend money on every month. If you want to get an idea, you can go check your credit card history or your bank statements, and you know, Chase does a little dial that tells you last month, you know, how much you spent on groceries or gas or whatever. So that's a good starting place. Then you have what's left. What are your financial goals? Do you want to get married? Uh, do you wanna, you know, are you gonna have a kid in the next year? Are you gonna, you know, be pursuing some other you want to save for house or whatever it is? Um, those things need to go on. Do you have debt? Do you want to pay off debt? Outline those things. So basically, inflows, giving, fixed expenses, your financial goals as a family, and then what's left. And I think that would be called discretionary spending, basically. And we get as granular as we want to get as a family, but you can do it, you know, if you're struggling paycheck to paycheck, or not struggling, but just you don't early on in your career, or you don't have a job that's you know, super you know, you're not super consistent or whatever it is, but you can basically get really, really granular if that's the case. If you need your electricity bill to be within 25 bucks so that you don't have run out of funds for the month, you should get that granular. Um, for us, we have some breathing room, and so we budget in things like you know, if we want to spend money on a hobby or if we want to spend money on coffee shops, we have a line item in there that basically gives us the freedom to feel like, oh my gosh, we're we're going out a couple times a week to get a coffee, my wife and I, or whatever. We need the caffeine to to keep going and with all those tips, focus with the budget, you know. Um and so we budget for those things, and I think even some excess in there, miscellaneous, whatever, just so that we feel like we can maintain it, because I think one of the big barriers to budgeting is that you know, something unforeseen happens, it's blown up, and you're like, I'm done with this, I don't really want to do it anymore. Um, it's really hard to track, and you know, I you know, or you're just lazy and you don't want to do it. Yeah. So we've we've budgeted discretionary things and you know, other things we want to accomplish with our kids if they're in sports or if you want to go to the gym or whatever it is, you should you should put that in there.
SPEAKER_02I have two questions that I know you can answer, but I I I'm thinking of them now. Number one, and let me ask both first to kind of front load you. Number one, I'd love to hear your thoughts, putting you on the spot. If someone is in debt, should they stop giving to the Lord's work and pay down their debt? Because that's a common one. It's a big question, it it deserves some practical biblical legs. But number two, with the granularity, will you after that, so deal with that, then after that, speak to the likelihood that we spend more than we ever would imagine when we when we get granular, we see that. Yeah. A coffee here, uh this here, a gas station here, a bag of chips there, a Gatorade here. And I remember why I'm asking too is I remember early on in our marriage, we were down till like we were never had enough money, and it wasn't because we were overspending. And when we ditched our iPhones, we did Republic Wireless, which is like cricket. We went from like hundred bucks a phone thing to fifty-six total as a family, and uh it was like fifty-six fourteen. And I was being granular, and I remember it was a game changer. I found 150 to 200 bucks a month that we were yeah, so I'd love you for you even you now in your career, you're you're more stable, it's not like your first year of working. You're still granular in a lot of ways. So speak to that after and maybe give us some wisdom. But first, the big question you're in debt, do you still give something? Do you you know biblically? Talk to me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think I think that I would say you should you should probably give. Yeah. Um, I think that you should go pick up a second job if you need to pay off your debt too. Like go find hours somewhere. There's a lot of opportunities, you know, if you're willing to work hard and make a little extra money. Let's say that I'm still always hustling to to find opportunities to flip stuff on eBay or you know, offer up or whatever it is. For that too. In our small group, I'm I'm an auction guy. You're the flipper. Yeah. So there's opportunities out there to make a little extra money, but I don't think that that should I don't think you're poor decision making leading you into a a potential hole of debt. Now, I I know there's some circumstances where debt might be um unavoidable or you know unfortunate or you know, but a lot of times it's because it's kind of a self-inflicted wound. And I d I just I don't think that you should you should be sacrificing, you know, giving to your local church um over paying those bills down faster. Um I do think that you should be really aggressive in going and finding extra ways to make money so that you can pay your debt off in a timely manner. But I as a whole, I think giving is a priority. Yeah. Um I think that it's not our money, and I think that we've tried to live that way in our own life. Um and so I would say give. Yeah. Biblically, that is the obviously that's the correct response.
SPEAKER_02You're the deacon of stewardship at our church, you know, you know this. But yeah, biblically we give it's it's not about the amount, it's about the heart. And I love what you said, and the balance is there. If there's people listening right now and some of your debt was not self-inflicted, hey, that's part of life. Balance budget accordingly, keep the Lord's work in your list of priorities. But interesting that we often self-inflict our debt, and then we we, in a sense, not meaning to per se, but we punish the Lord's work, yeah. Go, well, I can't give it the gospel because I it's like you we that doesn't make any sense. Speak to the the granular practice for the person that's like person that's like I've listed all my utilities, I still don't have enough money, and you're going, Yeah, hold on, um, you need a Starbucks line item, maybe.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I think that to to go to that question because it's actually a a part of a few different topics, like when you're married and you, you know, you have a husband and wife, and they haven't ever talked about budgeting. Well, sometimes you have one of the pair that might not want to do a budget because if they got granular, they'd feel like there's a a much higher sense of accountability than they are used to. Totally. And so you find these items on your list of things you look at historical spending, you're like, man, I spend 250 bucks at Starbucks every month. And I should that's probably a lot for our income level. And so I think that that's something that is important, and you will find things as you as you get granular that you can save save on and maybe don't fit your overall goals um financially for your family. I mean, we like I said, I'm a competitive guy and I need a goal to to push towards. So if we have a budget to save a certain amount of money or we want to go and save for an adoption, and I am not granular with how my outflows go, then when I look back at my statements and I see that I overspent these categories, I'm gonna be I'm gonna be kicking myself because I'm preventing myself from growing my family, or if we wanted to be generous, you know, at our lo at our church, my decisions are are inflicting, you know, some some wounds that I didn't intend because I wasn't granular with how how those things were going going out.
SPEAKER_02What creates that? I gotta interrupt you again. I want to pick your brain. What creates that? Like, come on, you're is that because you played baseball at the Masters University? Is that because your dad and your brothers are very you're all the very type A driven guys, your your mom's a go-getter. Like what who why are you the way you are? In which me at 25, me at 30, even eight years ago, I had goals, and anytime I've wanted something, I've gone for it all the way. But I miss I got the car towed by not caring where I parked. I missed payments and was like, whatever. Like, where does a young man learn those disciplines that they would then care? Like, uh is it the heart changes? Is it you learn from others? Is there wisdom in your life? Because you care about stuff that come on, like people are probably even now going like, oh yeah, I guess, and you're so driven. Where does that come from?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think uh I mean, we in prepping for this, even just reviewing a couple of books that I've read in the past, and then even some passages of scripture, I think the parable of the talents comes to mind for me is the master gives you know, hands the steward some some talents and says, Hey, you know, when I come back, you know, everybody needs to meet. Yeah. So and I think that I've been given um specific gifts and skill sets that um I want to make sure the expectation is that these these servants get an ROI on what they're given. And so I think for me, that's return on investment, if in case we need to ROI. Um and so I think that for me, the Lord's given me specific gifts and I want to make sure that I'm not wasting those. Gifts, that if he's given me opportunities to do things in my vocation, that I'm very disciplined in doing them so that I can have an ROI that equals, you know, increased generosity, that equals us helping others, opening our home, doing a lot of things that I think are good for furthering the kingdom of God. And so if I'm not dialed in, I'm just wasting dollars potentially on things that are not of eternal value. And so we've tried to maintain our standard of living, you know, as there's ups and downs of job success, you know, whatever it might be. Uh we've tried to maintain how we live throughout that process, and then the excess is not ours, and we don't spend it so that we can spend it on things that have have eternal value. That's not to say there's not specific instances where we'll make decisions that might have tax benefits or that'll have specific uh value to my family as it grows, gotta fit three car seats or things like that.
SPEAKER_02But uh like you're allowed to buy a new car, you're allowed like you enjoy your life. You go on a vacation or you do some you've been doing Brazilian jujitsu here and there. Yeah, yeah. You you've been you do recreation. I mean Shana goes and gets her hair done or whatever, like the boys are going to do so you're enjoying your life still, which first Timothy six, when Paul's telling Timothy to instruct the rich to be rich in good works, generous already share. Then he says, for God's given us all things to enjoy. So you're allowed to enjoy life. It's not like we can't have a coffee. Like we're we have coffee right now, which thank you, by the way. You treated me to coffee and you brought it here. You weren't thinking like, man, we can't have a coffee because then we won't be able to adopt a baby and give it to the gospel. But you have general goals that drive what you do. That's what you're saying.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I think that you're talking about you know, a coffee being a couple of bucks off of, you know, my if my goal is to do a specific thing, this shouldn't derail me. Buying a coffee shouldn't derail me for the city. Because you've been disciplined overall. You have a plan. I I would say we're not perfect, and you're gonna have months where I have a category where I don't even budget an amount, I just record unforeseen expenses. You know, you're gonna have something like come up that costs you money that you couldn't plan for. But if you're disciplined 90% of the time, those overages are not gonna be not gonna be a huge factor in your life. And so that's how we've tried to live for the last eight years of our marriage, and even before that, um, was if we can set some foundations and we have some habits in place, then when we do have bad months, we're not we're not stressed about it as much. I mean, ideally, we don't want to waste money. Ideally, we don't want to get a you know, a speeding ticket that costs us 500 bucks. But those things happen and and we're prepared because we've been consistent for out you know, all 11 of 12 months. And so that's kind of the goal.
SPEAKER_02So good. What you're describing, I'm just thinking right now out loud, describes if we would read the word consistently, then maybe there's a day where you wake up and it like in my house right now, there's a newborn, and I'm thankful as a pastor. I interact with God's word all week long as a vocation. But man, I might wake up at 5 a.m. for the greatest quiet time since you know the Puritans, and baby Lydia has other plans, and she's screaming, and Christine's like, I'm sorry, can you hold her really quick? I'm gonna go and then Timothy wakes up and he's wet the bed or something because he's still young, and it's like we're we're in go mode, and I I'm I didn't get the like you know, Puritan monk by candlelight quiet time. What sustains me is I generally spend my life in the word. For you, you we've been talking, we've been talking carnivore diet. You've been doing carnivore for like you know three, four months, trimming down, and you're gonna do you and Tyler and some of the guys you're doing jujitsu. Well, if you were to uh I think we were joking around recently, you're like, I'm gonna I'm gonna ruin everything by having a handful of blueberries, you remember that? Yep. You know, that's not gonna ruin anything because you've been eating, you know, steak constantly for four months. It's those disciplines. So with budgeting, the same idea. If the trajectory of and discipline of general life is run well, you can in a sense plan to have some, you know, the 10, 5% overages or unforeseen things, they don't sink the ship. And I think what you're describing is a general principle that every Christian should be thinking through. You discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness, you live your life in a in a consistent way, then just like with sin, even, we generally pursue righteousness, we all stumble in many ways, James says. Well, you don't live a life of just habitual sin, but we do sin and we confess that sin. Whereas the unbeliever just does whatever all the time. So what you're describing, I think for money, people usually leave that one out. And if we get really honest, we do the same thing, I think, with food, we do the same thing with other things that are sort of ours, and they're all spiritually connected to an eternal perspective, which I want you to kind of unpack some of that as well. Talk to us about eternal perspective when it comes to money and the principles that drive you in that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think ultimately we've talked about it, but God is is the owner of all possessions, and so I think for for me continually remembering that I could have a really good year, but ultimately those things, you know, it's not an opportunity for me to live in luxury. I think um I've been reading Randy Alcorn's book on managing God's money, and it it says it there's a quote that says, Abundance isn't God's provision for me to live in luxury, it's his provision for me to help others live. God entrusts me with his money to build my kingdom on or not to build my kingdom on earth, but to build his kingdom in heaven. And so I think that that eternal perspective is always on my mind, especially recently. We've been having a lot of conversations on stewardship and um been reading books about it, but I've been evaluating my own life. Why do I go into the office every day and grind and try and obviously I'm called to do my work excellently as unto the Lord, but there's a component of it that I recognize the my vocation is not necessarily eternal, but it provides me with some resources to invest in eternal things, and so that eternal mindset creates a drive in me to do well in my vocation, not for personal or selfish gains at the end of the day, but so that I can steward those those I guess the excess uh with wisdom and in a way that would honor Christ. So really good.
SPEAKER_02Do you have can I ask you some questions? Would you throw out some names or books or even softwares? You've mentioned books, you've mentioned programs, all of that, and notebooks and Excel. So out of all the basic uh programs, if you had to pick between notebook, spreadsheet, whatever digital software, would you start with an Excel spreadsheet where you list out all of your expenses, then you list out, you know, what they are, and then you put revenue somewhere or income on that spreadsheet and compare the two. Is that a good starting point?
SPEAKER_00I think it's fine to set set a static budget if you wanted to just put it in Excel. I don't I think the issue is you got to think bigger about budgeting as a as a whole, is like how do you plan to track it? Because it's really it's really not as effective if you set your budget up and you put it in Excel and then at the end of the month you look back and see how you spend. And nobody's no feedback day to day. So I would recommend software. Um if you can if you want to pay for some of it, some of it's free. Um you have I I will I'll tell you what I use is uh I use Dave Ramsey's app, I forget what it's called. Uh it's called Every Dollar. It's spend it tracks every dollar you spend. Yeah, so you set up a budget to the dollar, so it's very, very granular. Like you you say set your inflows and then you budget to your outflows to the to the cent, essentially. Um and you can track that manually. You can enter your budget, you can enter every expense you might spend on your credit card or debit card or whatever you do, you can enter those manually. I I pay for the annual subscription, so my credit cards are synced to the app. So every day, every day I wake up in the morning, I'll refresh it, and I'll post those transactions automatically. I don't have to go manually. And does it enter it?
SPEAKER_02Does it know like if we had coffee at a coffee shop that was called like Aroma or Mythical or one of these names?
SPEAKER_00It's not that fancy. There are there are probably But like Trader Joe's, will it read that as groceries? I just put it as groceries, smoke annually, but it'll bring the transaction in. There is some softwares I've used Mint in the past. Oh, which is by Intuit, uh, which is um pretty decent envelopes spelled with an M. Yep, envelopes. But I mean, people also do, you know, they'll set their static budget in Excel and then they'll literally put cash in envelopes for each other. Which is um a way of doing it that actually, you know, you look in the envelope and you don't have any left for your coffee or whatever it is.
SPEAKER_02You don't get credit card points doing that, but you literally will run your home well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you will, because you'll you'll be out of cash to spend. So I think that those things Dave Ramsey has good content, I would say. Um I would splurge on a coffee to share it with somebody else, or we'll spend money not on rice and beans to have people over to our house for dinner. So you can take you can take his content and and he obviously is good uh counsel when it comes to paying off debt and things like that. Yeah. Um I don't think anyone's perfect in in every aspect of their their content, but um so you have Dave Bransey stuff. Um Randy Alcorn has a couple good books on on managing money, and I think that even his book on heaven is helpful too, and you know, you have the eternal perspective as well as like managing money on one hand. Yep. Um his books are the one called The Treasure Principle, yeah, and then the other one is managing God's money, yeah. Really good. So that one's really good. Um I read that recently, and it's been it's been really helpful to even just talk through it with my wife as a reminder.
SPEAKER_02Speaking of your wife, before you keep listing out, uh can you speak to busy moms? And the you got you're tracking spending, yeah, and like in your home, your wife, your wife, like right now as we speak and do this, she's got three boys and she's going all day. Are you helping with tracking? Are you monitoring the spending? Like, how does that work? Where you're like, come on, Shay, I need you to track these 18 receipts. And she's like, Ryan, I chased Rhodes down the hall. I got Hanson in my arms, you know. Turner's outside, throwing balls over the neighbor's yard, hitting home runs again. Talk to me and speak to our audience about the practicals. Are there some tough decisions that husbands need to make? Are there sacrifices you make? Do you stay up late sometimes helping her? Like, what does that look like?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, good question. I think if you're consistent, the workload is not really that difficult. I mean, it's really rare that we probably have five transactions in a day. And so every morning, as part of, you know, again, I'm I'm an I'm an accountant, so I have a very detailed list of, you know, in the same way that I have my budget, I have my to-do list and all that stuff. So I have a routine of checking those things every day and processing those transactions according to the budget that we spent. And so we'll talk throughout the week, just in passing, like, hey, you know, we have 300 bucks left in the grocery budget or whatever it is. And I and I will say that we're not as granular as we probably used to be. I think that we have larger categories for some overage. And if it's groceries, we maybe we host, we love hosting. And so we've we we'll have people over and maybe we'll spend a little more on food in a given month. But again, that's not a bad thing for us because I think that there's value in fellowship and those type of things, ministering to people in our church. Um so we just have open dialogue. Uh, we do, you know, when we'll we'll try and go out on dates um as much as we can. I I know dating your dating your spouse is a really important thing. You just had a newborn though, so you have a little bit of runway to figure that out. Yeah, we so when we do go out on dates, we do have a little bit, and I know that uh what's our what's our other podcast on for the gospel? Date night with the woods. I I listened to long ago. Maybe it was you had them on and talking about date night and calendar and all that stuff.
SPEAKER_02Tony Cash Calendar and Conviction, just the famous like Tony and Brie ism. That was what we all learned early on, the three C's.
SPEAKER_00But we do talk about at least our financial goals, if not calendar and all those things. We've we've done that for a long time. And so it's kind of a rhythm. Uh I would say now we don't think about it as much uh as we did early in our marriage, and even um even talking about that stuff when you're dating or like in premarital or uh once you're engaged has was something that we did and talked through. And so the foundation is there that we don't have to really worry too much. We kind of have a cadence at this point.
SPEAKER_02I want to go there for a second. Uh you are a real blessing to our church in a lot of ways, but a lot of the college students um have found you know advice, wisdom in your home. Your wife leads a young college women's discipleship group, you know, and and you've been getting involved with with students as well. The need to plan before marriage, I'm gonna ask you some uh rapid fire questions. Number one, should they tell their future spouse, so dating or engaged, doesn't matter, let's just say they're not married yet, should they disclose how much debt they have, if they have a credit card debt? Like what should they know even before um the big next steps?
SPEAKER_00I mean Yes or no? I think I think I'd want to know personally like if Shana had, you know, 100 discussions loans, yeah. I mean you deserve to know that. Funny story, and I'll just I'll just tell you this. As soon as so I graduated from college and she was about to start her junior year. And uh we got engaged basically after one semester after I'd left, and I found out that she was gonna go back and take out student loans to go back to school. This is my favorite story. And so we decided that it would be best that she dropped out because we didn't want to take on any more student loans. Totally. And were you confident? Like you're like, I'm gonna be a CFO. Did you have your immediate job? What did you have? I had a job. Yeah. I knew what I was gonna make. You're in finance. I knew that at the very least she could go get get an hourly employment somewhere, and and she had some opportunities at a local school to go be an aide and things like that. So it wasn't completely devoid of wisdom. And it was just really expensive to go to private school. And so we decided that it wasn't best for us to absorb that. So I do think that there is I would want to know if I was the right call, by the way. In retro in retrospect. I guess I mean now sh and and the reality is now she has three kids at home. She's busy doing doing her thing with the kids, with her with other family friends that have kids running around town, going to parks, doing all that. Incredible.
SPEAKER_02And so I think I would want to know if I was her MRS degree, they call it the missus. She married Ryan Shaq.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And got out of there without a boatload of debt. You beat the system. I guess so.
SPEAKER_00You totally did. I guess so. She could always go back if she needed to. Like if if we felt like she wanted to go get a degree or something, she could go back. You beat the system, though. But I think I would want to know. Yeah. I want to know I don't know that it should be a deal breaker for somebody. No, and I'm not asking like that. You know, if you find out that you the person you're dating has got $150,000 in student loans, if that's a deal breaker, I don't think so. But you just want to go in eyes wide open. I would want to know eyes wide open because I think if you're looking to add your incomes together and see what the infos look like, what your payments gonna be on that day. Totally. You need to make sure that you can support a family. Yep. And so I think that supporting a family once you're married is part of the the logic to even approach marriage. And so if you can't support your wife because you don't make enough money in some cases, or the collective doesn't, yeah, then you probably need to figure that out.
SPEAKER_02Another rapid fire question: should a father future father-in-law require a young man to formulate a budget and show on paper, I'm not being ridiculous here, not like overdone legalism, but just simple. Should a future father-in-law require a young man before he gets to walk that aisle and stand up at the altar to receive the daughter, present to some degree the plan for how he will support or at least show a planned budget or a spreadsheet. As if you're a father-in-law, like are you going, hey man, I love it, we're all in on you. Couple things I want to, a couple bridges I want to cross with you. Here's some things I want to hit, let's do this. Is an encouragement, not as like a if you want my daughter, not aggressively, like I'm cleaning my gun in the garage stuff. Yeah, but simple. Should young men be, and if not, then the father-in-law says, Well, I want you to meet with Brian Shackleford, the deacon of stewardship at our church, and come up with a spreadsheet, let's get you some help, because I want you to be my son-in-law, but I also know the pain in a year if I don't bring this to your attention. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Again, that's no. I mean, I have all sons, so at this point I'm not ever gonna have to have this conversation, but But if one of them held Turner, like I want to see a spread, how are you gonna support my daughter, son? Oh, my kids will be my kids will have been raised in a home where we talk about that, and I and I hope to implement some of these truths in their lives. Your sons can have all of them. Yes, so that we so that they're they're available for that conversation. I mean, do they need to show them a spreadsheet? I don't know. I think that there's gotta be a relational aspect of the MOS, you know, and so if they know that you're dialed in and have a job, you know that job can support a family. I think that all those questions are a fair game. Whether or not they ask you to give them a present profit and loss on your sure on your life, yeah, um, is is another thing. But I think for the most part they should have a a man should be able to show that he can have his finances in order.
SPEAKER_02Yep. Another question should a young woman, so let's remove even the father-in-law kind of that idea for a second, should a young woman listening right now, Christian, godly, young women, even think of uh women and young men in our church. Wonderful, awesome, uh they're eventually they're gonna date someone or get engaged. Should a young woman on her own, in her own accord, require uh a man that is consider that wants to marry her, and she may think the world of him, to clearly articulate the plan for how he will support her and partner, and even if she's gonna work and all that, and she doesn't have young children at that point, she's like, I want to work until babies or all that. Should they answer all the big questions about that before walking the aisle?
SPEAKER_00I think so. I think they should be confident that the man they're marrying is is able to I think it's part of being a man is to be able to support your your home. So I think that if they can't articulate an answer that that's concerning our red flag, in my opinion, I I mean I would be asking if if guys are being discipled by me and they're, you know, approaching a young lady that they want to marry, I'm gonna ask them those questions too. And I want to know confidently that they can articulate what their plan is and that they're not completely out in left field where they don't even know what things cost in the world. You know, they think they have a great job, but it it's not enough unless she works, they have to have that conversation. So I think that fair game. And I and I would say for both parties, men and women, there should be an observation period of time in, you know, you observe someone's personality, you observe their walk with the Lord. Do they do they live a life that's spirit-filled? I would say this is also a component of even before engagement, or you know, if you're looking for a future spouse, you should make sure that they're not just letting it fly with the credit card. Yeah. So those things are important, and I think are fair game for both sides.
SPEAKER_02I want to jump ahead now to a different type of life stage. So fast forward uh 15 years, 10 years from what the demographic we're discussing is college or young adult, they're about to get married, working professional. You're married, you're five, eight years in, two years in, whatever. Established marriage. The wife, let's just use that example, or the husband, either, but for sake of this conversation. Uh the wife says, I'd really like to have a budget here, sweetheart. I'd like to have a plan. You know, you say we have a plan, I see the spreadsheet, we have a budget, but you never play by the rules. You kind of just do what you want, or flip it. The husband says, Hey, we got some goals, here it is. And the wife's like, Please, there's still like $500 sitting there in the account. I can go buy whatever, or there's two grand, or I can do this, or oh, whatever. And one spouse is not honoring that. What would your advice be and where do they start? Now, as a pastor, I already know I counsel the situations, Pastor Brett does, we deal with this, but from your standpoint as well, what's missing there? What would you do if that was Shana telling you, hey, we gotta dial this in, or if you were saying, Sweetheart, come on, we need to lock and load, and she's going, Oh, whatever, Rye. Like, talk to me about that, or other deeper issues.
SPEAKER_00You know, yeah, I th I think that there'd be my my first question is to be like, Why is there that kind of feeling? Because I th I would think or assume, maybe that's bad, but I would assume that there's some heart issue at play uh within your within your marriage at that point, because I think you need to be a team. Unf you know, fortunately for me, we've been on the same page when we have these discussions. If she was ever like, you know, I want to spend this or that, I I just think that either we're not communicating well enough, we're not taking the time to walk through what our family's goals are, we're not on the same team in those cases, will lead to some disconnect in how you spend money and maybe some arguments around money. Obviously, it's stressful if you are barely making ends meet and you're you know, there's n it's tight and somebody overspends and there's gonna be disagreements and things like that. So um that's a factor as well. But I I I think that there's also cases where you probably don't play by the rules because you think that there's no accountability on how you spend your money as well. Um I think that's a re honestly, that's a reason why a lot of marriages have. Financial issues is lack of visibility between factors. Yeah. Is between partners, is there's no visibility on the finances. And so, and part of that is maybe there's a heart issue that you don't want to show your wife what you're spending your money on, or you don't, you know, or vice versa. And so it creates some stress and tension, and and that's it's usually accountability related, or you don't want to give things up that you enjoy spending money on that are probably not in the best interest of your family. So I would say underlying heart issue is probably there. Um and then something that you need to deal with on a on a marriage level with your with your spouse, being on the same team with the same goals and and making sure that you can agree to those and and move forward.
SPEAKER_02Really good. I'm hearing back to perspective, eternal perspective, a biblical worldview on money, on marriage, relationships, on even authority and submission. This came up a little bit, you know, yesterday at church, and we talk about this all the time. Authority and submission, often in marriage, we think, yeah, you know, the man, I'm the head of the home, and my wife submits to me. Well, we also need to keep in mind, and probably even more so, that even as men or as a budget setter, let's say for you, you're the head of your home, that you submit to Christ, and every man is under authority, and he only exercises headship like Christ. He's the sacrificial husband, he's a protector and a provider and a guide like Jesus. And I think you're you're pressing in on something that's so important. When we're talking money, it is an area that doesn't belong to us, it belongs to God, so it has to move through the filter of scripture and that worldview. A couple kind of last questions. Um, you know, what are some of the things that you are doing to still be a learner? Like you are 30, you're doing a great job with this. We have great discussions as a stewardship team on the church side, your home is in order, but you know you got to land the plane. You've got, you know, 30, 40, 50 years of this. And for you, I think you're you have three sons. They're watching the way you live. And if we think of discipleship, it's caught, not taught. It's not, you know, do what I say, it's do as I do. They're watching you. What are you doing to keep being a learner, teachable, humble in this area of your life and stewardship?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think just continually checking my heart for um the motivation behind spending. I think I I talked about it earlier. I don't necessarily struggle with materialism or wanting, you know, fancy, you know, fancy clothes or fancy shoes or whatever that is. I struggle more with trusting that it's the Lord's ultimately at the end of the day, it's not mine. You know, is my is my savings account big enough to weather any you know storm that's gonna approach and those type of things. So I think going to the Lord and making sure that my heart is right, that I trust his sovereign plan, that I'm doing my best by the power of the Spirit to uh spend my money in a way that is God honoring. Um, that if I look back at my bank statements every month, um I look and see my priorities are included in that, you know, that if somebody was to look at my credit card statements, they wouldn't be like, what a, you know, this guy's wasting all of his money on things that don't matter. And so having some accountability in place, I mean, practically it's finding software that I think is cool because I like software and finding something that makes it easy to maintain that gives my wife visibility at the same time. Um, just creating some some guide rails there for us. Um and then having conversations with guys that I trust that are also spirit-filled and batting stuff around in a small group setting or with guys that keep me accountable. Yeah. And I think we've done that in even in our fellowship group. We've had really good conversations around this this topic, and I think that's been super helpful for me. And as we go, you know, not all of us are full in full-time ministry, most of us are vocational, and and so in many of the small group settings that we have, we we continually go back to why do we go into our jobs and do our best to make money? And it has to be because there's an internal perspective and internal mindset. Amen. Amen.
SPEAKER_02Well, that is where this all drives with for the gospel with us as local churchmen together. Every single resource, all that we have, it belongs to God. It needs to be leveraged for his glory and for his gospel work and for his kingdom, both here spiritually and then now, uh, one day to come that we look forward to his kingdom and his rule and reign on earth. Any final thoughts or or encouragements to people?
SPEAKER_00I would just say start as soon as you can. Um, start creating some financial foundation for your family, whether you're premarriage or you know, you're single, whether you're married and have been married for 10 years, create some foundation so that you can be held accountable to what your priorities are and make sure that they're operating within a within an eternal perspective. So start the foundation now and it will get easier as as life goes on. You'll be on the same page and you won't have any you know major hiccups. Love it. Well said.
SPEAKER_02Well, just to recap for all you who are listening, Managing God's Money by Randy Alcorn was mentioned in this episode as a resource. Uh The Treasure Principle is another resource by Randy Alcorn. And then just to round off that trilogy, we've had Randy on the show before. He's such a humble, incredible guy. Uh, Heaven, his book, will help you have eternal perspective. And then uh Excel spreadsheets are helpful. Even Googling budget templates. If you were to Google budget template on Excel or home budget template Excel, you're gonna get some tools. This isn't hard. We know how to search for everything online we ever want on Instagram and everywhere else. Make budgeting a priority. And then the Dave Ramsey app, the every dollar app is a great app for tracking your spending. Mint was also mentioned. If you just Google Mint uh Financial app, that will be a great help to you. And then if some of you want to get fancy, I'd look up various versions of QuickBooks that you can use personally. You will benefit tremendously from this. And if you have more questions about money, DM for the gospel or email them in. We'd love to address them in future episodes. And if you're a member at Shepherd's House, uh you can cheat the whole system and just go find Ryan on a Sunday and ask him all your questions about stewardship. Man, thank you so much for the way you just live all out for the gospel. Thanks. Thanks for having me on. It's been fun. Appreciate you. Well, for more resources and all the free series and videos and resources we have, you can go to forthegospel.org. If you don't already, be sure to follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter. If you want to partner with our ministry after you've already prioritized your local church, the Lord's blessed you and you feel like this is a great ministry to support, you can do that through our give page on for thegospel.org. I'll be back next Monday with another episode. For now, keep on living for the gospel.