Living Sacrificial Lives in a Profligate Age – Interview with Rory Groves

The government’s debt ratio of 135%, but the average American household is hilted up 350%. Inflation is going crazy no matter who we put in office. If we want change, we’re going to have to return to God’s economic ways as families and churches. Kevin talks to Rory Groves about taking your finances back into your own hands…how they have implemented biblical economies in their homes…and the sacrifices and mindset adjustments it requires.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Friends, welcome to Generations. This is Kevin Swanson. The survey is in. The June numbers are in for the U.S. federal deficit. Donald Trump is a bigger debt spender than Joe Biden. But we all knew that. For the first nine months of this fiscal year, Donald Trump's government exceeded the nine-month average of deficits for 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025, the four years for which Biden was responsible. Well, we're topping $1.4 trillion for the first nine months of deficit. We're on track for a $2 trillion deficit this year, to include our little dallions in Iran that compares to the Biden four-year average of $1.67 trillion, representing another 20% increase on the deficit. Now, those of you who have been with me for a while will remember this. Back in 2016, I suggested that if a nation was going through a fire sale, they should hire a president who had himself already made it through three bankruptcies. Well, interest payments on the federal debt now run about $1 trillion a year, already exceeding the entire U.S. military budget. That's a milestone, first hit in 2024. JP Morgan's Jamie Damon warns of a coming bond crisis as annual interest payments already top $1 trillion. That's more than the military budget. Cutting only non-protected federal programs to balance the 2036 budget would require slashing them by 117%. That's a figure that exceeds their entire value. Now, don't take me wrong here. We love Republicans, sort of. We like MAGA pretty much. And we're pretty excited about what's going on in Washington and all that. And Wall Street's doing great. Well, actually, forget the truth here. That's just depressing. Nolan, let's just pretend everything's going great. Can we do that? I'm done with it. It doesn't help my listenership anyway, and that's for sure. But shall we mention that the Welshire 5,000 per GDP is running at 236%, about four times the historical average back in the day when investing was less insane than it is today. So a 75% correction is in order for the stock market. Now, all right, Americans are pretty much numb to all of this. Head in the sand is pretty much the best way to cope with all of this. Okay. So get your head in the sand now. But but I I I wanted to play this out just for fun. Suppose the stock market returned to the historical valuation average of 75% on the buffet ratio. What would happen on a 75% correction? Are you ready for this? Well, are you ready for this? All right, first. Immediate financial panic. The first issue at hand is not so much stock prices dropping, it would be forced to selling. Investors uh use margin and they would receive margin calls all over the place. Hedge funds and other leveraged institutions would be forced to liquidate stocks, bonds, and other assets simultaneously. Mutual funds and exchange traded funds could face heavy redemptions. Buyers might disappear temporarily, causing prices to gap even further downward. The Federal Reserve identifies this combination: high leverage, rapid withdrawals, forced asset sales, and fire sale prices as a principal way a market shock can spread through the financial system. The Fed has also recently noted elevated hedge fund leverage, high equity valuations, and significant leverage at life insurers, although it regards the banking system itself as substantially better capitalized than before 2008. Trading would probably be halted on the stock market through market circuit breakers, and the Federal Reserve would likely provide emergency liquidity while the Treasury and Congress would face intense pressure to guarantee parts of the financial system. Now, we're looking at enormous destruction of household wealth here. American households and nonprofit organizations have recently held roughly $56 trillion in stocks and equity fund holdings. A literal 75% loss across that entire pool would imply approximately $42 trillion of paper wealth disappearing overnight, although the precise figure would depend upon which market index fell and how other assets behaved. Wealthy households would lose the largest dollar amounts. Middle class families would be hit mainly through 401ks, IRAs, pension plans, and college funds. Lower income households own fewer stocks directly but would suffer through layoffs, lost hours, reduced government revenues, and tighter credit. Consumer spending would fall immediately and fall sharply. People whose retirement investment accounts collapse would postpone spending on cars, home improvements, restaurant spending, major appliances, home purchases, and relocations. All of that would be delayed. The greatest challenge for retirees would be sequence of returns risk. A market crash is especially dangerous for someone who has just retired, withdrawing money. Suppose a retiree begins with $1 million, withdraws $40,000 annually, a 4% withdrawal rate. Well, after a 75% decline, the portfolio would drop from a million to $250,000. The same $40,000 withdrawal would actually equal 16%, not 4%, but 16% of the portfolio. And of course, the portfolio would pretty much be gone in about six or seven years. A worker aged 35 might be able to wait 20 or 30 years for that to recover, but a 70-year-old retiree cannot wait indefinitely and may simultaneously face rising medical or long-term care expenses. The hardest-hit retirees would be those who are retired within a few years before the crash, hold nearly all their savings in stocks, and lack pensions or substantial Social Security income, which, by the way, by the year 2030, there's not going to be a whole lot left of Social Security anyway. Housing might not collapse immediately, but homeowners with fixed-rate mortgages could remain in place as long as they kept their jobs. After several months, increased layoffs would result in forced home sales. Banks would have to deal with corporate defaults, commercial property losses, falling collateral values for your average home mortgage, and runs on uninsured deposits as well as losses on loans to hedge funds and private credit firms. The government, okay, what's the government going to do? Probably enact some combination of emergency unemployment benefits, loans guarantees, tax relief, direct payments, pension assistance, and financial market support. A pre-crash annual deficit now running $2 trillion, as I just mentioned, net would be upwards of $4 to $5 trillion in such an occurrence. First, deflation would occur on the economy, asset prices would collapse, spending falls, wages and employment weaken. But then government steps in with all of its spending and quantitative easing from the Fed, et cetera, et cetera, bringing about spiraling inflation one more time. Currency weakens, international relations also very much affected, especially if this entire mess snowballs into every other economy in the world, which it will. And if there have been any ongoing trade squabbles going on thus far, which there have, that would be an additional stress on international relations. The five greatest economic challenges will be maintaining any semblance of employment as demand for products and services drop. Once spending declines, layoffs can feed further spending reductions. Also, preventing a credit system seizure is going to be a big part of this. A market crash becomes a depression when banks and other lenders stop extending credit to otherwise viable businesses. And then finally, protecting retirees from forced liquidation will be essential and keeping pensions and state governments solvent. Investment losses and falling tax revenues were occur simultaneously. And of course, managing an already overspent government response without triggering a sovereign debt or inflation crisis, which by the way, we've already done. Rescue spending would uh come on top of already large federal deficits, as we've already mentioned. So a 75% correction on the stock market would not be merely a bad stock market year. It would almost certainly produce a major recession, if not a depression, if the fall triggered widespread defaults and a breakdown in credit. Well, friends, let me apply this to us. Okay, so where are we right now? We complain about the macro economy, but at the end of the day, we have found the enemy and it is us. That's right. The solutions are not in the macro, they're in the micro on an everyday basis. Friends, it makes no sense to complain about the government courting a debt to GDP ratio of 130% when the average household has a debt to annual income ratio of $350,000 to $100,000 per year. What is that, a 350%? 350% on a micro level, and we're complaining about 135% on the federal debt? I don't think so. That's just hypocrisy. We are living way, way, way beyond our means. And if we're going to revert to a biblical lifestyle, purge ourselves this living beyond our means, this greed of trying to get rich quick by leveraged investments in mortgages or these outrageous investments in the stock market that just don't mean anything whatsoever. All this greed and all this materialism and this life of slavery to big banks and governments, we're going to have to play by God's rules here. One way or another, we need to bring God's principles back into play for a family and church economy. And I would start with something as simple as the debtor is servant to the lender. Or Romans 13, owe no man anything but to love one another. The Jesus life calls for restoring relationships, family relationships, family discipleship, family economy. The Jesus life calls for sacrifice. The Jesus life calls for, hey, we can't be conforming our lives to this world. That's Romans 12, 1 and 2. But we are a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is our reasonable service. So don't conform to the world's system that's imposed upon us by the macroeconomy. Do not, do not, do not conform. And at the same time, our lives are going to have to be a living sacrifice, one way or to other. The only question is, what are you going to sacrifice? What are you going to put on the altar? There's no other way to rebuild the walls of family, church, economy in the age of profligacy, drunken sailor economics, money worship, dependence on the socialist state. We're going to have to repent of something. We're going to have to do something different. We're going to have to find some kind of a radical change of mind concerning life's priorities, our family relationships, which God we're going to serve here, and how we're going to disciple our children for Jesus, and how we're going to live this life in a profligate age. How are we going to do this? This isn't a one-size-fits-all approach to the Christian life either. God sets us out a different path for all of us here, but one thing for sure, we're all signed up for this. A life of a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable to God, which is our reasonable service. So today, we're talking about readjustments when recovering the biblical family, family economy in a family disintegrating age. How are we going to do this? Rory Groves joins me on this one. And it's so good to have Rory Groves joining me one more time at gatheringgrow.us. The ministry is booming for a lot of reasons. Welcome, Rory. It's good to have you back on the program.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

It's great to be here. We were sitting across the conference table in Colorado last time.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

Yes, we were. Yes, we were. And this time, I you know, things are getting worse. And again, I think the average person is thinking we need a plan B. Something's not working. And again, this is not just the 0.01% that are out here on the eastern plains of Colorado, a safe distance from the demise of Western civilization, and you know, interacting with the Kevin Swanson Generations program. This is the 59% of the population of the United States today. And it's not just the Democrats upset with the Trump economy, it's the Republicans as well. On the Gallup poll, uh 55% of Americans say things are getting worse. It's the most pessimistic poll taken by Gallup, and by the way, they've been chronicling this since the early 2000s. This is the worst in history. Uh this is the most pessimistic numbers we have seen since 2002 at the beginning of the Gallup poll. 55% of Americans say things are getting worse. The Fox News poll that came out just last week said it's up to 59% now. And uh there's never been more euphoria on Wall Street. We've never seen so many lemmings out there spending their money and you know investing in SpaceX and all the rest, uh, like it's going out of style. Never been so much euphoria on Wall Street, and so much depression on Main Street. There is a massive disconnect here. And I do think in the back of the mind of the 59% of Americans, there's something wrong. Something's wrong. Something's really wrong. Something's happening and it's not good. What are we doing in this handbasket and where are we going? I I tell you what, I think 59% of Americans right now are saying we are in a handbasket and we are going somewhere. Um they've concluded that there's a problem. Houston, we got a problem. It's massive, and we we have got to respond somehow. And so, Rory, I think there's a percentage of people that are still tuning into our program willing to get their head out of the sand and saying, yeah, there is a problem. And we need to go back to biblical solutions for this.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

Amen. Totally agree. And I think that, you know, we've been talking about this problem that has been brewing for a long time. Uh the you go back to you know, the pain that we're experiencing today, a lot of us are seeing things like jobs being eliminated. We're seeing uh inflation going crazy. I mean, I I knew I've been warning about this for a long time, and to go through it and to live through it, and to see all of our um, you know, uh our basic necessities skyrocketing in in price is is really an awful circumstance to be in. And I just think, you know, you go back to the the 2020s, 2021, and all the STIMI checks and all the stuff the government's stepping in to do what? Well, they're trying to stop uh recession from happening. So they're blowing more money down the tubes, you know, dropping it from helicopters. And if you go back before that, you have things like the you know, the Great Recession, where what did they do to that? Well, they ran up the deficits again, dumping more money on the problem, and they never really fixed the systemic problem, which is deficits and spending and living beyond our means, it's a profligacy like you talked about. And so we're basically getting to the end of that road, and we're all feeling it. That's what the 60% of us are feeling right now is this is not getting better despite all the promises. And no matter who we put in public office, they're not fixing the problem. And so we're going to have to make the decision as families, as churches, we're going to have to live a different way. We're going to have to fix our own problems. We're going to have to be responsible for what's going to come from this.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

And Rory, uh, when it really comes down to it, uh, we can't be sitting here and cursing the darkness and yelling at the Federal Reserve and and complaining about the federal government and its deficit spending when we've got our own 350% debt-to-income ratios going on. What you know, while twice as bad or three times as bad as whatever the federal government's doing right now, uh, we have got to repent ourselves. Uh we we need to do something different. Does this make sense? Do you think to the average Christian family listening to the program right now, do you think they would say maybe Kevin and Rory have a point here. Maybe we do need to go back to God's Word and begin to realign our lives to the priorities and to the standards and principles laid out in the Word of God. Do you think increasing number of Christians are thinking this way? I know you are.

SPEAKER_00 16:52

Absolutely they are. I'm I'm talking to them every day. We're having them come out to our farm and I'm meeting them at events. Uh when we start to share about the family economy as a practical option, right? A practical reality, not a bygone, you know, uh uh uh idea of an ancient time that doesn't have any relevance today, but an actual practical option to take things back into our own hands, it is resonating. And I think a lot of people have been shaken awake to this. And I think a lot of people are looking for answers right now because they're recognizing things are not going to be able to go on as they have been, just indefinitely.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

So tell us a little bit of your story. My point here is in order to repent in the midst of a profligate age, we're all going to have to come back to Romans 12, 1 and 2. We are going to have to sacrifice something in this life. And it's not just the family that decides, or the single, you know, young woman that decides that she's going to uh give up her life of of wonderful wealth and and prosperity here in the United States and head off to an orphanage in northern India, in which she's going to minister for four or five years until a Hindu mob comes in, burns it down, and throws her back into the pyre to uh uh to you know send her off to Jesus. I mean, that's one way to be a a living sacrifice. That that's one way to do it. But she's not the only person called to this. We're all called to this in one way or to other. And uh so you know, give us a little bit of a sense for what families need to do, what Christian families need to do. Um now, again, it's not a one-size-fits-all approach, but I I I want to just put some meat on these bones for just a moment.

SPEAKER_00 19:27

Yeah, I I appreciate that. I think that um, you know, one of the things that it's easy to get lulled to sleep in a society like ours is just very affluent and there's so much infrastructure, and there's generally speaking, you know, Americans, uh, no matter where you are on the uh social stratus, you're uh you're doing well comparative to most people for most of human history. And so I think it's very easy to um lull yourself to sleep in the sense of, well, things get I've I've heard this before too, you know, things get bad and then they get better and then they get bad and they get better. So we're just gonna kind of write it out. Like things are just gonna go on. But I think there at some point there has to be a wake-up call and say, you know, I don't know that, like you said, I don't know where this handbasket is going. And I don't think I want to wait and find out. And so there is a reckoning, and I think a personal reckoning that you have to start with some kind of conviction. And for me, I came to that point with uh my career, which was at the time, uh I was in uh I was a software engineer and had been my whole entire career. We moved to the farm. Um now it'll be this summer it'll be uh 14 years ago. So we raised our family basically on the farm. Now I was still a software engineer almost the entire time we lived here. I was working an off-farm job, but the farm was kind of a a uh platform or a uh a context for me to disciple my children, to live more a more simple life, to to learn how to do things that like I had no idea, like to raise enough food to live off. Uh these are things that were completely foreign to me starting from my life and my training in in high tech. But at some point along the way, Kevin, I really felt a burden that this is going to become more important, and the way I see things moving in the tech scene, I don't think I want to be in that industry. And I began to look for uh alternatives. What what kind of careers could I be involved in that would be uh that wouldn't go obsolete so quickly that that I could involve my family in, that that would be stable, you know, for the long haul. And I at the time I essentially it meant I walked away from a very highly lucrative career. That was, I mean, looking back on it at the time, I didn't know what I was just trying to be obedient to things I felt, and now I know it was the Lord steering me in another direction. Uh we're now in a full-time uh ministry capacity, and our entire family is involved in uh uh encouraging other families towards unity and discipleship and and finding uh um ways to work together to rebuild the family economy because I really feel like this will be um a shelter for what's coming.

SPEAKER_01 22:17

For me, Rory, it was a debt-free life. That was the first thing I had to do. I I I I I was debt-free. I'm not an entrepreneur. So it's not for me to just become this amazing entrepreneur that works a family economy out of the house. That wasn't it. I had to be debt free initially and save a little bit of an estate on the side. And then I'm gonna say in 1999, which would have been 2017. Years ago, my oldest son would have been seven or eight years of age. And I knew that I needed to I needed to be with him. I would bring him into the workplace on a Saturday afternoon, you know, where I'd be working overtime. Was a quality manager as a mechanical engineer in quality management for uh high-volume manufacturing uh industry that provided auto parts. And I I just realized that, you know what, my son needs me every day. And so I took the flying leap off the corporate ladder, and our income went from roughly a hundred thousand to thirty thousand a year-ish. Okay, so I mean that's a pretty big dive, but but I started working for a ministry, Christian Home Educators of Colorado, and by the way, the parent ministry for generations. And uh, you know, here I am. I was this, you know, second in command or reporting directly to the CEO of a $200 million company. And now I I I I I walk into this ministry, I check out the QuickBooks, you know, that was there, that was uh the the accounting package for the Christian Home Education as a Colorado ministry, and I look at what's in the balance, and the balance is like sixteen hundred dollars. I call up the president of the organization, I said, Well, where is my paycheck come from? He said, get busy. That's what he told me. I'm like, oh, so I've got to do something here. So I had to build the Czech ministry. I did everything I could to build the Czech ministry and uh and did it with my son. My son did a lot of work with me to get generations going, and we would, you know, travel the state, travel the country, bring, you know, books like Upgrade the Ten Secrets to the Best Education for Your Child, similar to what you're doing. I mean, I I had my first two or three books. I sold it at every conference I could. I at points I gave him 10% of the income for which he was very happy. Uh I remember the first time I took him into Dallas, he was probably 10 years of age at the time. I told him, I'll give you 10% of anything you get. I didn't see him for two days. And uh he was sitting behind, standing behind a bunch of these Texans and selling off this material. And and uh he comes to me at the airport and we we made something like $1,500. I peeled off $150, gave it to him, he looked up at me and said, Dad, I love to sell. You know, at that point. He's not a salesman today, but he certainly is a people person, and he's involved in uh some some tech industry right now. But the point is that uh we we did have to make a pretty serious sacrifice up front to get out of the corporate world to enable more flexibility in order that I might have uh time with my son and time with the rest of my children and incorporate them more into the family economy and the family ministry, and that's what we've done over the last 27 years of our family life. So, so now to me, that's my journey. I'm not telling other guys to do what I did. I'm just simply saying, what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? Right? I mean, is that a fair question, Robert?

SPEAKER_00 25:54

I I absolutely that everyone has to do something. We can't just keep going along and expecting uh uh some you know a rosier future if we're not taking it into our own hands. And and uh if I could just chime in here, it's it's very interesting to hear the the um the provocation for you to go in this direction because it was very much my own as well. Is I want a career, I want a vocation that I can do with my family. I was so tired of being separated from my family, and that that's why this idea of the family economy resonated so strong. Um and I don't know if you know Curtis Bauer's story, but he has a very similar story. He was out here last year, and he shared his story about he was a very successful restaurateur, I believe it was in Colorado, if I'm not mistaken. And um he just felt this this uh urgency to be at home with his family in these years. And he found a way to do it, and he became very successful in it. But God just that's because God blessed it. And I really think that looking towards our own children, right? It says that in the last days that the uh the he will come in the spirit and power of Elijah, he will turn the hearts of the fathers of the children. Isn't this interesting? You are talking about turning your heart to your children, I'm talking about turning my heart to my children, Curtis, and I believe this storyline is playing out all over, but if we're able to follow that out, God has actually created a refuge within our own families that is just a matter of uh yoking up and and and binding together uh for a common mission, which is all that a family economy is.

SPEAKER_01 27:35

Rory, give us a sense of the sorts of adjustments that people need to think about. Okay? Minimalization, you know, the simple life, um, maybe not being quite spending beyond your means, the debt-free life, going for the 600 square foot cottage versus the 3,400 square foot house where you know you've got four-car garage, but you never see your kids. You know, what what are the kind of adjustments that people need to think about? Because I know this is a big part of your ministry.

SPEAKER_00 28:07

Well, I would say, yeah. So number one, you have to have a conviction. I mean, you that this isn't a hobby. Like, you know, you're not taking a um 70% pay cut uh because it's uh it's fun, right? You have a conviction that there's some per there's a greater purpose and there's a greater payoff down the road if you'll stick to this. So the first of all, you really have to be honest with yourself and praying about it and asking God to give you that that conviction that's going to carry you through the sacrificial times. Um beyond that, one of the things I would say, of course, debt is huge, but even before we get to that, there is a pattern of thought, uh a mentality you need to embrace that you are a proprietor. You're not an employee, you're not a wage earner, you are a proprietor. In this country, uh only a hundred years ago, about 80% of the population were proprietors, and only 20% worked for other people. And today it's probably 90-10 the other direction. There's very few people that manage their own businesses anymore. And this is something that needs to change as you start to move into family economy and begin to take more responsibility for your vocation and for your source of provision. You need to think like a proprietor, which means entrepreneurial. You need to seize opportunities, you need you have to know how to uh rally your family or your employees, you need to know how to manage money well, which includes staying out of debt. Uh and all of these things need to you know really dovetail together, but that happens automatically if you're running a business.

SPEAKER_01 29:40

What about producing versus consuming? Because I I think this is a biggie for not just to teach our kids, but we we need to get to to realize we're not just consumers here, we're producers.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

Absolutely, of course. And you know, that's another key thing. When we used to live on the farm, when I would say we, but the population used to be more grounded in agriculture, everything that they produced came right from their own land. I mean, almost it it it it's pretty much like a foregone conclusion. They could make their own boots and in the kitchen, and I mean they had they had everything. And so we've moved much from a mentality of being producers, producing at home, or doing without, if we don't, if it's frivolous, to a society where you pretty much don't produce anything. Everything is purchased. Things that, you know, like even your meals are aren't made at home anymore for so many families. And these are things that we can uh uh reintegrate or recapture in the home. Uh we want to look for ways that we can bring some of these product productive activities home to stop being so dependent on consumption. And you'll find a lot more self-sufficiency and a lot more uh you're you're stretching your the the money that you do have a lot further.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

Where are the areas in which families need to simplify?

SPEAKER_00 31:03

Well, I mean, it it would be dependent, I think, on the different families. Um you know, I can I can see there's a lot of money that that goes out the window to things like cell phones and keeping up with the latest technology and gadgets and things like that. Um you know, personal hobbies, vacations, things like this. It's very easy to blow through that kind of a thing. Um but again, I I would have to I'd have to uh throw that back because I think every situation is very different.

SPEAKER_01 31:31

Well, I certainly think that uh home education helps in the sense that uh you know the average, well, the average public school spends uh upwards of uh $30,000 per student, and uh the average homeschool's spending somewhere around $250 a student if you're purchasing generations curriculum, for example. Uh private schools are are certainly running upwards of ten to twenty-five thousand dollars per student per year. Uh so also I would suggest Christian medical sharing is some of the absolutely best ways of handling some of the bigger expenses. Um capital improvements, you know, as in the sense of do we really need two cars versus one car? Could we get away with a single automobile for the family? Um things like this, um, the two-income family, you know, obviously the two-income family is is tough because you're eating out all the time, you're um you're you know paying for others to take care of your children for you, so that's it's gonna be you know eighty to a hundred and forty thousand dollars uh of money put into that if you have a large family. Um so also hand-me-downs, I think, can be helpful in terms of clothing. Um the other thing I think people need to think about is we can get by with a lot of used materials. And um, these are the sorts of things I think people need to think about. Now, you know, obviously it might take a degree of humbling ourselves to realize, you know what, we're not as rich as we think we are, and we we need to stop living beyond our means. What is it, Rory, that brings people to the point where they feel like they need to drive a $60,000 car and live in a $640,000 house, even though they're only making you know $80,000 a year, or send mom off to work and maybe we'll get that to $130,000 a year. What is it that gets people to the point that they have to live beyond their means? Is it merely keeping up with the Joneses?

SPEAKER_00 33:31

I think it that's about most of it. Yeah, I was just gonna say. Keeping up with the Joneses, and it's it's what your uh the social pressures are around you. It's incredibly influential. It's very difficult. One of the things you're gonna run into if you go down the path of homeschooling, if you go down the path of family economy, you're gonna realize that you're gonna have to opt out of things that popular society takes for granted. And that is a very difficult thing to do. And this is where that conviction comes in again. We are going to do this, even if other people don't approve of it, or even if it um, you know, uh uh gets in the way or or is is uh ruffles the feathers of other people, be just by being different, uh, it's gonna bother people. And that is a very real obstacle to change. Whether that's uh curbing, you know, uh some of your spending habits, that means you're gonna be missing out on this. And so um so so these are the things where it, you know, this has to be a walk of faith. You're not doing it because it's a hobby, because it's you're doing it because you're being obedient. You think back to Noah, you think back to all of these, uh Abraham who left his homeland. All of these people were not um, you know, held in high esteem in their day for what they did, but they were embarking on a project that they knew was a future for their families. And if they hadn't have done it when they did it, uh we would never have heard their stories.

SPEAKER_01 34:59

Well, friends, I I encourage also the debt-free life. And I put a fair amount of this into my book, How the World Runs and Your Part in It. I highly recommend the research. I wrote it for 14-year-olds, but really for 40-year-olds and uh and 80-year-olds and all the others. Uh, how the world runs and your part in it. And granted, we have a lot that really mitigates against us to be able to pay off a house, mortgage-free, really tough. Inflation is killing us. It's absolutely killing the market right now. Now's not a good time to buy. We all know that. We've got this second bubble that just absolutely needs to burst. And it's happening right now. It's what's that sound? That's the bubble bursting, okay. Um, regulations, zoning and regulations, and more regulations just kill us. They persecute the poor families and the upwardly mobile lower middle class. May God rid us of these zoning departments. Absolutely. Uh, one of the most frightening signs I ever saw when we moved into Elbert County, which is out in the boonies here in the state of Colorado, was uh the sign that was right there as we came into Elbert County. Elbert County zoned and regulated. Exactly the thing that is destroying America, that destroys freedom, especially at the local level, at the county level. May God completely rid us of all this zoning and regulation. It's horrible. It's absolutely unbiblical. Uh and you can read about biblical law and what the biblical standards of righteousness are in my book, How the World Runs and Your Part in It. Disallowing more than two dwellings on a five-acre lot. That's ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. Why not build a second house and a third house for your children? Why not? Water rights should come with the purchase of the land. And of course, first come, first serve, we get that. We should be able to use our property the way we see fit. We should be able to plant what we want to plant and build what we want to build without, of course, somehow sending toxic waste over to our neighbor's property. We get that. But if we fail to build a certain building code issued by an engineering standard, that should be written into the deed of the property. But we don't want to squeeze the poor out of the picture, and that's exactly what happens again and again. Most starter homes should be 400 to 600 square feet. But zoning regulations don't allow for that. That's ridiculous, utterly ridiculous. The requirements for septics have gotten out of control. The cheapest septics now run $12,000. Whatever happened to the Owlhouse, whatever happened to the outhouse, Owlhouse, $80, couple plywood sheets from Home Depot, whatever. You've got to get a copy of my book, How the World Runs. And I I have a lot of tips as to how you could make it. How you could make it. Tons of tips on how you can make it, debt-free, yeah, in 2026. When you're starting out, you may not have much money saved up to buy a home without debt. So you may have to go into a bit of debt, but save your money for six to ten years. I have a recipe where a 15-year-old working part-time job at a sandwich shop could pay off the median priced entry home in America by the time he's 25 years of age. Median priced entry home. Now it may not be in downtown Los Angeles, but I'm saying the median priced entry home could be paid off within 10 years working a part-time job if a 15-year-old kid got a vision for life. And thank God my son did when he was 12 years old. But don't spend a lot of money on college. Don't go to debt for college. It's ridiculous. Don't go to debt for an automobile. It's ridiculous. Don't do that. Ride a moped. Ride a bike. Start out with a bike and a moped and a motorcycle. I did. My first motorcycle was like 450 bucks. I think I bought it off my brother, and my first car was like 900 bucks, and so on. So on you go. Spend more time under it than in it. I get it. But that's what you do when you're a kid. If you're still young and unmarried, consider living in your parents' home for a few extra years while you save your money. Consider using part or all of your retirement savings for your first home purchase. Yeah, we had to bite the bullet on capital gains. We had to bite the bullet on interest. We had to bite the bullet on a lot of stuff in order to pay off our first house. As Christians, we'd prefer brother loans. Absolutely. A fellow Christian or a relative loans the sum needed at hopefully an interest rate, which is effectively an inflation rate. Just do it that way. An inflation rate interest rate from a brother or a sister in the church and pay it off in six years. Absolutely. Or the loan is forgiven. Start out with a smaller home with only one or two bedrooms. Cut your costs significantly. Build your own house on a piece of property. Young man has been attending our church on occasion. He comes down here and I love Joe. Joe's out there building his own house. I said, How many square feet you got? He has 600. Praise God. The guy's going to pay it off within five years. Unbelievable. He's building it himself. What is he, 26 years of age? That's the kind of guy I'm talking about. You can save 40% of the material cost if you build the house yourself at current prices. You could build a 800 square foot basic home for 120 grand. That doesn't count land or water septic or electrical hookups, but hey, building it yourself would save you about $50,000 in labor costs, which means you could build the house for $70,000 in material costs. You could find a small plot for $50,000, add in the hookups for $30,000. You could be into the house for $150,000. That'd be 39% of the current median house price in the U.S. Start that way. Why not? Add onto an existing house belonging to a family member. That's one more thing. I know they do that in Hawaii all the time. It's a much cheaper alternative versus building a new home or another piece of property for a thousand square feet of living space, as considered above, you would save $80,000 on the $150,000 price tag if you build it yourself. Assuming you did most of the work yourself and attached that 1,000 square foot house complete with kitchen, living area, two bedrooms, and one bathroom for only $70,000. Consider also moving your location to a cheaper area. Hey, there's a really nice two-bedroom house in Burlington, Colorado for $140,000. There's a five-bedroom house in Lamar, Colorado for $185,000. But man, you get into Parker, you're paying $781,000 for a three-bedroom home. That's 10 minutes from the metro. And okay, you're two and a half hours from the metro in Burlington, but you're only paying $140,000 for a two-bedroom house. Why not a little telecommuting? Why not a little family economy? Why not? What about a little Rory Groves vision? How about a little bit of that? Pay off that house with a reasonable payment in about four years, six years versus paying off the Parker house. Take you about 30 years to pay off the Parker house. Pay off the little house in Burlington in four, five, six years. Unbelievable! Telecommuting could save you one car plus gas plus insurance. Average cost of owning a car, 14 grand per year. Save 140 grand over 10 years. Hey, the debtor is servant to the lender. You could live as a free man in Burlington, two hours from the metro, or live as a slave in Parker for the next 30 years. What do you want to do? And by the way, are the blue cities going to survive? You know, here's the bottom line. Where there's a will, there's a way. If you want to be free, you can use it rather. And by the by the way, also as as Rory said, we the just shall live by faith. We walk by faith, we we take the the step out of the boat and walk on water by faith. This is the kind of thing we need to call our listeners to. Rory, without a vision, the people perish, and I just don't think there's enough vision out there.

SPEAKER_00 42:16

Let me jump onto something that you said that is absolutely key to this, because if you are feeling this, and I know, like I said, I've been talking to people all the time who are feeling this pulp, it's so essential to find a community, to find a church, to find a people who get this, who are trying to walk this out. And they're out there. They're not going to be every church on every street corner, and they're not going to be in every um, you know, uh neighborhood. But part of the reason that we exist is as an organization, as a ministry, gather and grow, gather. It's to gather people who see things happening and they want to make changes for the better. And we try to get people together around this common idea of family integration, family integrated work, and family economy. But wherever you are, there are people out there. And it's essential to find them, and it's going to be more essential going forward because we are going to be losing all of the supports that we're used to having. It's going to be more critical for the churches to function as the hub that they used to be. And so when it comes to economy, when it becomes to discipleship, when it comes to just saving money and living a simpler life, whether you're uh in the country or whether you're in the suburbs, you need to find people who are thinking and being being called along the same direction that you are. It's going to make those uh sacrifices much easier to make when you're surrounded by people who are cheering you on.

SPEAKER_01 43:43

Friends, it's Roy Groves at gatherandgrow.us. It's gatherandgrow.us. I recommend the rips. I was just up there. He's got a lot of great resources up there and some new stuff as well. Gatherandgrow.us. And I want to encourage you to support the generations broadcast, my friends. For the first time in 22 years, we're running an entire month encouraging others to come alongside us and uh help us to keep this uh this ministry going. We really are at a critical juncture at which I think we can grow. Uh, but we need your help. And so we're asking that you come behind us. Hey, we're rebuilding, we're re we're salvaging, we're renewing, we're bringing a vision for the family, for the future economy, for passing on the faith from one generation to the next. We've been doing this for 22 years, for such a time as this. I don't think there's ever been a more critical time at which to bring a biblical vision to family, to economy, to how we educate our children, to how we pass on the faith in a secular age. If your heart resonates with this ministry and the kinds of things that we've been doing for 22 years, right now we're asking that somebody come alongside us and help us with this. So this is a fundraising month. We're unabashedly asking for your prayers and for your financial support this month. So if you can help us, if you can come alongside us, do you believe in what we're doing? We think it's uh important for for what what uh will happen in this country in the near future, as well as for other countries. We service so many other countries as well. If you really resonate to this vision, please uh go to generations.org slash give and uh provide a little help for us uh to keep us going over the next year. Again, it's generations.org slash give. And this is Kevin Swanson and Rory Groves with me, inviting you back again next time as we continue to lay down a vision for the next generation. This has been a production of the Generations Media Network. For more information, go to generations.org slash media.