Raising Children Who Can Afford a House — Discipleship for Dads

Is it still possible to pay off a house before you’re 30? If so, how can we support our children toward this goal? The dads talk about how young men they know have achieved this – and what biblical principles laid the foundation. They discuss the connection between obedience and diligence…whether childhood is for playing…focusing on productive skills like carpentry, rather than football…and ultimately, seeing our work as participation in God’s own building.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome again to the Generations Broadcast, another segment of Discipleship for Dads, my friends. And uh today again Todd Strasser, Bill Roach, and Danny Craig in studio with me. And uh we want to get to raising children who can uh who can't afford a house. Uh how to support your children in a culture that makes launching difficult. Yeah, we're in a culture that's hard. It's very, very difficult to afford a house at twenty-six years of age or be debt-free, especially given the scenario in which everybody's living off of the Keynesian economy, including the federal government, which obviously is not a very good example to the rest of us. But I want to begin with the bigger picture quickly, and that is how do we raise our children in prudence on matters like being the consumer versus producer, saving versus spending, uh, budgeting and discipline in the spending, uh, self-denial, patience versus uh passion, et cetera. Also, diligence and hard work are pretty fundamental, uh, trust in God versus trust in money, and putting the kingdom of God first over you know, all of these other things. So, so there's these bigger picture issues. What stands out for you, Danny, on this? On the bigger picture? You're raising five children. Yeah, well, you what are you doing?

SPEAKER_03 1:21

Start with the novice here, brother. Thank you. Um you're in the middle of it. But but but but but it's interesting. Uh I think maybe because of how I was raised by my dad, who was pretty careful about helping us see the the the big picture, the long term at an early age. I'll look at my seven-year-old son, Jed, and I and maybe to a fault, I'm thinking, like, man, the it's now. The time is now for this seven-year-old to learn the fundamentals that will lead to this outcome. And the things that you know we're we're seeking to inculcate. Number one, love for God, live for God. That's that's foundational. That's huge. You are not your own, you're a bought with a price. Uh, we live for God. And out of that, then we obey God, and that starts with obeying dad and mom, and huge correlation between obedience and diligence, right? If you can't learn obedience, you're probably not gonna learn diligence.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Stewardship is a key word that comes to me. Yeah. And so being a being a good steward with the good things God has given.

SPEAKER_03 2:18

And accepting responsibility. Uh that that you know, learn, learn the feel of being in the harness of work, accept that responsibility and learn to enjoy that responsibility and the fulfillment that comes from a job well done. And then uh another big one is learning to forego immediate gratification. Huge. I'm gonna sacrifice now for huge something later. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Uh Todd. At seven years old. Seven years old. I think seriously, though, I say that because the world doesn't think that a seven-year-old should be thinking about these things. They're just supposed to go out and play.

SPEAKER_03 2:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

And we've got to have a different mindset. I appreciate what you're saying.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Well, you're saying is start early and starting all the way back when they're three, four, five, six, seven years of age is really important in this. Go ahead, Todd.

SPEAKER_02 3:03

You know, big picture, the kingdom of God is is very important because we when we get off in money and debt and savings and investments, we're it's like about our kingdom that we're building and and and thinking bigger. And I think teaching that at a young age, like God is building his kingdom. This is his kingdom, and we're a part in it, we're a steward in it, and we we we work for the Lord ultimately. Like, that's why I'm here. I'm gonna come and go, but but God is doing this bigger thing. Uh that's important. I think uh viewing work correctly, viewing work right, like not having the wrong, like not being a I gotta work. Yeah, it's a bless what an opportunity, what an amazing, and again, not for necessarily just to have wealth or to have money to do something with, but in order to s build this kingdom of God, what he's doing. And then and then we think, you know, we talk about the the rich young ruler a lot. You know, if you can get if you get too honed in on any one thing, I mean it can be very destructive, you know, and that's that's what Jesus was going to the heart. So always remember that this is a heart issue. You know, this rich young ruler had done all these great things, but it was the heart that Jesus was focused on that bore out his view of work, money, giving things up. Who was he living for?

SPEAKER_01 4:15

But Bill, take that seven-year-old child. Six days shalt thou play and do all thy play, and the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. Hang on a second, hang on a second. Um so what do we do? There's work and there's play. What how what do you do with a seven-year-old?

SPEAKER_00 4:33

Yeah, but uh you're teaching him at a seven-year-old appropriate uh way how to work. You're you're teaching money, is a is an important issue. Resources are important. Number one, you have the ditch of uh Second Timothy, it says it can be it can destroy your faith, perdition, if you have a love for money in the wrong way. Right. Yeah, so you're teaching your child not only how to earn money, because that's part of it, but you're teaching your child how to handle money. And the correlation between work, the proverbs is big, diligence and labor, you have reward. Very big.

SPEAKER_03 5:07

And I would say not all forms of play are created equal. Uh so there is a destructive form of play which is, you know, entirely self-absorbed, uh, non-creative, non-productive. And then there are productive forms and creative forms of play. Absolutely. Going out and and getting some cinder blocks uh from our left over our construction project that are left over, and him building his own little you know, fort in the forest behind our house. That's a constructive form of play that actually ties in and leads into work.

SPEAKER_02 5:39

Not your video games, which is why I always tried to buy my boys tools, not toys, growing up so they could go do something. Yes, yes, that's huge.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

In fact, I got my little grandson's uh these little gloves. This is actually a big deal. When they were about four years old, I got them these little leather gloves. I mean, nice gloves, leather gloves. And so those are their work gloves, and they they put those in a certain place, and there it turns into a very big deal for them. One of them lost their gloves, and it was a big deal. We get a replacement set for them. So, anyway, just an idea. And what I'd like to do right now, though, is I want to get back into the subject raising kids who hopefully can versus can't afford a house. How to support your children in a culture that makes launching difficult. And of course, we live in one of the worst states ever. Colorado is not easy. Right. Um, I guess Florida is getting more difficult, is what I'm hearing, uh, because people are moving into Florida. California is impossible, et cetera. Yeah. So let's just throw ideas on the table. I know, Todd, you did a whole presentation on this, but I I want all of us to throw ideas on the table. Now, I started, I'm just gonna say this. I started when my son, I wrote a book on debt-free living. Uh that was my first book I wrote in 1989. Killer in debt. Yeah. How'd you guess? I knew it. It was called A Killer Debt. Yeah, I haven't even known about this thing. The first book I wrote was on debt. I didn't know about this book. Debt free living. And and then I and then I followed through on my advice and bought a uh mobile home, put it on 14 acres, and did it all for $40,000. Um, you know, when the average house was probably running around $110,000, I I cut the the thing all the way down to $40,000. So that would that would mean if you're if you got a starter home today at $300, I would have gotten in at about a $140, about $140 on a on a pretty beat-up piece of 14 acres, and uh was able to pull it off uh at 40 grand and we were debt-free. So so I have this experience with debt-free living. I kind of passed that on to my kids even as early as 10, eight, nine, 10 years of age. I remember my son was at a a uh intro seminar for uh homeschooling up up at the old office in Cherry Creek. And um, you remember that office, and uh these these ladies come out laughing, you know, they're just laughing because my son, I think he had a little business going on, he was selling candies and food bars or something. And they come out laughing. I said, What's what's going on? She said, Um, your son said he's gonna pay off his house when he gets married. Well, it turns out that's what he did. Eventually he did that. Uh took him a few more years, but uh, but he pulled that off. And I think you know, my children are all pretty much committed to that that vision. But I my point is I do think you have to start early with the work, with the idea that you're gonna sacrifice and you're gonna have a family someday. And and um, you know, let's let's uh let's not spend money on all these frivolous things because it's really about serving Jesus and you're gonna be serving your family and you're gonna raise a family for the glory of God and you're gonna need a place to do it. So anyway, that's I just want to kind of start early with some of this. Todd, some of your ideas.

SPEAKER_02 8:50

There's lots of ide lots of ways to do it. I mean, we've already talked about one. I think starting young is big. And uh you know, you don't have to I I was kind of raised in the traditional like you know worldview. Well, you just you don't really make any money maybe until you're 18 or after college or something like that. But you know, I mean, dads, we can do so much and just give opportunity for little ones. If you have a business, maybe you can use that. But I I didn't actually have a business when my children were really young, right? But we started a little mowing business. And I I know my my 12-year-old, he has like $11,000 saved up. Now, you may think, well, that's not that much money, but but I had zero, I think when I was still like 18. So I mean, you know, you start you you can start young, and and I think you can also teach um to be wise with money, you can be thrifty, you can be wise because this world's got all kinds of attractions. Right. And that's a great thing to teach young, you know, um, because otherwise there's just that can perpetuate and into being older. Bill, your son, oh I know your son.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

We've been hanging out. Yeah. Thank you for investing in his life. In fact, he came to my house when he was 17 or 18 years of age. Yeah, and I did some internship with with him. He's been somewhat successful. Okay, in some areas in some areas of his life. Um, but uh how did he get started? I mean, what did you do with him when he was 12 years old?

SPEAKER_00 10:13

Let's say you know, I interesting enough, I remember he was actually 12 years old when we went to uh up to Esther's Park and we we just had a time aside. I met with him and I kind of laid out a plan, asked him when he wanted to get married, and uh he said, you know, somewhere probably around 23 years old. And I said, Okay, how about if we make a plan for you to have enough money by the time you're 23 to buy a house? And at the time, I think it might have been $250,000. I don't know, that's obviously not enough now. I said, let's go ahead and plan it. I said, here's what I think we can do. You're 12 years old now. For the next six years, why don't you figure out what how you're gonna earn your money? You can try different things. By the time you're 18, you you make $50,000 a year that you can put us in the bank. And by the time you're 23, if you're living at home, you'll have $250,000. Pretty simple plan. Yeah. I I it it didn't seem to be that that difficult. And you know, we we we went different ways. He tried to make money, lost money, you know, he started making money around 18, 19 years old, where you know that runway was tough. He he failed with the dog thing.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

Remember the dog thing in the credit card process?

SPEAKER_00 11:18

He said, I'm not an entrepreneur, I I lost all my money on the dogs. I think I go and need to do something else. That would have been probably a difficult path.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

He was he wanted to breed that dog, but turned out it was unbreedable. It was infertile.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

He could have gave up saying, I'm not an entrepreneur. He stayed with it. But uh here, interesting, by God's grace, I remember a week before his 23rd birthday, I said, Hey, you're turning 23. Remember when we met in S Park? You're supposed to have $250,000. He had $262,000 in his bank account. That's something. Oh, is it just something like blew me away?

SPEAKER_01 11:52

It really does substantiate that goals matter. I think so. Now, I'm not saying that we are you know predestinating. I mean, somebody's saying you set a goal, you will accomplish it because you can predestinate the end. No, God predestinates everything. I get that. But there is something about laying out goals that is effective. Right. It tends to have this effectual element to it. Todd, could you go back to your list? Because I I want to be sure we we get as much of this out as we can.

SPEAKER_02 12:24

You mentioned one good thing there, which is that your son lived with you. Uh which is which is a departure from a lot of a lot of young people just move out at 18, sort of for like no good reason.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

We balanced it. We we we we put it in the balance. That should you go to college, should you stay home? You know, there will be we looked at both both apples.

SPEAKER_02 12:41

But that's huge. I know so many young people, and they have just stayed at home, which and you gotta have good relationships to do that. They've stayed at home and wow, you you save so much money. So that's one. Um I mean, just on houses in particular, I mean, you know, you can buy a smaller house. And that that's a big thing. Yeah, like that's a lot of people. The falling in love for some reason the Americans we fell in love with drywall, which is kind of a weird thing to love gypsum, but uh whatever.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

I guess we do we we like to say, you know, since 1950, we've half the kids and twice the drywall. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:13

Since 1950, but it's really not really that helpful. I mean, anyway, it just kids are great. Drywall, not as much. It just costs more insurance and taxes and everything. That's true, too. Um I mean, what you did is actually a great way to do it. We have all these are examples of people in our church that have done these things. I mean, you've done it. We had a young man in our church buy land and put a build put a manufactured home on it. That's a I mean, that's getting creative.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

There's another young man who's who's built a 600 square foot home down a patent. He comes Sunday evenings. Yeah, build himself. That's wonderful. It's pretty amazing. That's a blessing. Got a bit of a debt on it. Yeah, but man, he's on track. That's great.

SPEAKER_02 13:46

That guy's on track. Yeah, he works hard. I mean, he works all week, and then every evening and week he's yeah. Um, you I mean, the other thing is like buy an older home. You can save a lot of money buying an I mean boulder older homes are fixer upper, baby. Way underrated. Yeah. Well, then there's that. Then there's the fixer upper. Oh, you did that. You did that. Then there's the whole thing.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

Talk to us about that for a second. What did you do?

SPEAKER_03 14:06

We were we were one year into marriage, and my wife signed us up for this realtor, you know, feed. And she's like, hey, honey, check this house out. And oh, by the way, it's listed by one of the elders in our church, Bob Fine, at that time. And uh, if we drive up to the house and I look at it, and it is just this like dump. And I don't know what I was thinking when I said this because we didn't have any kids at the time. I'm like, honey, this is not the right season for this. Anyways, we walked through the house. I looked at the house, I'm like, oh, I could actually do something with this. And by God's grace, we got it. And uh As is as is, I remember that. Uh, we didn't even do an inspection. Um, we put uh about a hundred grand into it, and six years later it sold for about 2.5 what, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

And so what what what got you ready for that project? Because that's that can't just jump into the project. So it had to be a good thing. Yeah, something led up to that. What was it?

SPEAKER_03 15:48

Well, uh, you know, I I think of all of the child training, right? You know, learning to do dishes in 30 minutes at age five, you know, learning to pick 100 weeds in 20 minutes in uh 100 and you know one degree weather in Nebraska, uh, a painting business with my dad, uh, you know, working for my uncle for seven dollars an hour, scraping his barn in hot weather. You know, you do have to sort of become accustomed to hard work. Yeah. And God gifted you to work with your hands.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

You did some things with your brothers.

SPEAKER_03 16:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

So fixing up houses, so you did that working for cousins. So so you're looking at a 14-year preparation to get to the point where you would have to go. That's how he can wobble through and see it.

SPEAKER_03 16:28

And and God's graciousness in a wife who had the same proclivity, yeah, a wife who was willing to scrape popcorn off the ceiling, you know, and have all that stuff that may or may not have had asbestos in it.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

And let me say this my wife and I together have added tremendous value to finishing homes, finishing basements, etc. Uh, she's excellent at tiling, she's amazing at flooring, she's she's much better at tape and texturing than I'm gonna do. And that's another thing. So, I mean, yeah, that's huge.

SPEAKER_02 16:59

Um, I mean, I okay, I I don't want to be negative, but I understand like learning to play football and all these sports is that's good. I'm not down on that necessarily, but we can also teach these skills that actually they can have tangible results in the future. Right.

SPEAKER_03 17:14

I want to give one illustration of that real quickly. There's a young man in our church who uh is has dedicated, I think, most of his after school time to carpentry. Oh, yeah. And and and and he builds he builds dressers for his mom. He build he he makes cutting boards for his mom. And he did this chairs. He did this until about 16. Okay, not not not a huge range of experience. My brother, David, uh bought a fixer-upper and hired this young man. And this young man was such a blessing that I hired him. And now in the last year, he's gone from making dressers for his mom to learning plumbing, painting, installing trim, doors, cabinets, and hanging ceilings for me, just FYIs. Windows, electrical, unbelievable.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

And he's just as humble as he was back out.

SPEAKER_03 18:05

And now he's 17. But my point is when you build that foundation of character and you you learn to work with your hands in one particular area or you learn a fundamental skill set, by God's grace, again, uh, he brings the opportunities where those skill sets can blossom far beyond what you might have imagined. Todd, a few more ideas, but we have a couple of points.

SPEAKER_02 18:25

Um, don't be too picky. It's good. You know, we are really fed this. You gotta have the perfect. Yeah, you gotta have all that. Um, I think you gotta be wise, you gotta be smart, you gotta get good counsel. You know, in in Colorado, we have a lot of high HOAs, we have metro districts, we have special assessment areas. You gotta be thoughtful about all that. Get a good realtor. But I just wanna say one thing that I see a lot of, and this is not for the brand new person, but I see a lot of sort of middle-aged go, oh, I'm in this suburb, and the dream is to get out of the suburb, have all this land, have chickens, have goats, and I I appreciate that. Like, and I think there is value in the freedom of there and the and the capability. But a lot of people can't do it. It's a good goal. Yeah, it's a good goal. It absolutely is. But but I would just encourage, like, you know, where God has you and what you can do. Don't don't be discouraged, don't be negative. You if you you have something, you can use that. Um, one of the things I encourage a lot of people in Colorado in to do is well, buy a house that backs up to like open space. And we had one of our brothers just do that, and it's a wonderful thing. So, yeah, he doesn't own acres and acres and acres, but he backs up to open space, which you don't pay for, you don't, you're not taxed on. Just get the full view. But you get it all. Yeah, and you can actually go run around and play in it. So, yeah, there's there's a lot of but this is how we need to be thoughtful and get creative. But I've but I've did the same thing and mapped out um for lots of young people, like there's totally a way you can buy a house that you can hold. You can totally do it. It's totally possible, and it you it just takes following the word of God.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

You know, Danny, when he got that house, and okay, I know you got something to say. I remember the church came over and helped you. Oh, yeah. Remember Rob Hart pulling out that big stump with the truck in the chain, right? And family came over and helped with different things. You did most of the work, but it was a blessing that there was family, there was church, they all kind of bought into it, and that was encouraging.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

And I have to say, my dad helped tremendously, um, as well as my father-in-law. My father in law was an electrician, and when we were finishing the basement down in Melbourne, uh, he helped me as well. So, yeah, family kicking in, and my dad passed on his inheritance early on to all six children. My dad was probably never made more than you know, ten bucks an hour or whatever it was. But but he had a little bit of a nest egg and he gave that to each of us six kids maybe twelve years ago, something like that. And that's enabled us to do the kinds of things we've done as a ministry. I mean, I don't know that I could do as much as I've done in ministry if it had not been for my dad passing on the inheritance. And uh we're doing the same thing with with our children. Oh. But uh I've I've got a list of now this comes from how the world runs and your part in it, which I wrote for 14-year-olds. Um I'd recommend it. It's really our little generation's resource for 14-year-old kids who are just getting started and you know, everything you need to know about life, about getting a first job, about being a Joseph in the workplace, about you know, getting on getting along with difficult people, applying for jobs, uh, being a good entrepreneur, what is success in the entrepreneur world, how to develop quality work, but really, you know, also how to be debt-free is a really big part, I believe, that a vision we need to pass on. So I a couple of things. When you're first starting out, you may not have much money saved up to buy a house without debt. You may have to go into some debt. That I mean, that's just the way it works. It was the way it worked with me. Kind of worked my way up when I was 23, 24 years of age, I bought my first uh duplex in Grants Pass, Oregon, made a little bit of money off of that, and then bought a beat up piece of property down in Guadalupe, Color uh California, and made a little bit of money off of that, and uh kind of worked my way up to $40,000. And so at 25 years of age, paid off the first house at $40,000 and then off into Aurora, and that was probably uh, I don't know, $80,000 piece of property in Aurora, paid that thing off uh when I was 29 years old, and so forth and so on. So here's a couple things save your money uh for six to ten years. If you begin saving your money as soon as you get your first job at 14 to 17 years of age, you can uh do very well and get on your way to buying a house. Set a goal to save about 50% of the median house price is one thing. But also if a young man starts working at 15 years of age at a sandwich shop, and I I I brought this illustration out many times, but uh he could pay off. And I'm talking 20 hours a week and saving all of that. Not talking about the other 90 hours a week, but 20 hours a week, just steady work for 10 years, investing, I think it's six to seven percent. So if you can get six to seven percent. Which is maybe a bit of a challenge, but try some decent investments. Try to get six to seven percent. Pay off the median uh price entry house, entry level house in the U.S. Again, maybe not in Colorado, but the median price across the whole America uh entry house, uh you can pay that off within uh 10 years. So at 25 to 26 years of age, just pay it off. So that's again, if somebody gets a vision at 25 years or 15 years of age, can pay the house off by 25 to 26 years of age. Don't spend a lot of money on college, uh, don't go into debt for college. Don't go into debt for an automobile. Just don't do it. Spend more time under it than in it. Uh, that's what I did. Um, that's what it's okay. You're learning how to fix a car.

SPEAKER_03 23:19

Kevin, I did not spend money on a car till after I was 30. So you're 30. That's that's the thing. You were given a car. I was given a car. That's right. Like a wedding gift. It was a wedding gift.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

That's a classic. If you're if you're still young and unmarried, consider living with your parents. Uh and by the way, even when you're young and unmarried, go for the 110 hours. Go for the 110 hours awakening. Go go to work. Work a lot. For the 110 hours. Now, granted, 10 of that is going to church or something. But and and you know, you're gonna have some relationship stuff. You're gonna have feeding time. But um, I remember one summer I worked uh I worked a 60-hour week. So I did 40 hours at Federal Electric Corporation, ITT in Santa Maria, California, and then 20 hours at Montgomery Wards in the evening. That's good. So I did five twelves for one full summer. So you can do that kind of stuff. I mean, my brother would go up to uh the the fishery, the canneries up in Alaska and work the 18-hour days for you know, uh four weeks and come back with $18,000. So you can do this kind of stuff uh when you're young and unmarried. Consider using part or all of your retirement savings for your first home purchase. And we had to bite the bullet on capital gains, we had to bite bite the bullet on um uh on our IRA. We liquidated IRAs and things like that in order to pay some things off. As Christians, we prefer brother loans, so it's forgivable loans in the seventh year. So really recommend that kind of stuff. I've done a ton of that uh over the last 30, 40 years of of my financial life. Start out with a smaller house, as you mentioned. Yeah. That's uh that's a biggie. Build your own house on a piece of property. You can save about 40% on the material cost if you build the house yourself. At current prices, you could build an 800 square foot basic home for 120 grand, does not count land, septic, water, or electrical hookups. Uh building it yourself would save you about $50,000 in labor costs, which means you could build the house for $70,000 material costs. If you uh could find a small plot for $50,000, add in the hookups for $30,000, you're into it for $150,000, which is pretty much what Joe did. Joe's about exactly what I'm describing here, and he's doing it right now in this economy. Add on to an existing home belonging to a family member. This is what they do in Hawaii all the time. It's much cheaper alternative versus building a new home on another piece of property for a thousand square foot home of living space that would save you about $80,000 on the $150,000 price tag. Regrettably, these options are not available to young families as much as before. Over-restrictive building codes have made it difficult for families to get started without debt. Personally, I think we should be able to build two, three houses on five acres if we wanted to. It's our property, but sadly, building codes step in and it's tough. Consider moving your location to a cheaper area. And here's here's one thing I like to throw out. There's a nice two-bedroom house in Burlington, Colorado for $140,000 right now, a five-bedroom in Lamar, Colorado, for $185,000. Burlington is two and a half hours from the metro, or you could pay $781,000 for a three-bedroom in Parker, which is just 10 minutes from the metro. So you go 10 minutes from the metro or two hours from the metro, uh, you're up to $785,000 if you're in Parker. You could pay off the Burlington house in six years with a fairly reasonable payment of $3,000, or pay off the Parker home at $3,000 payments. It would take you about 30 years. So um, so it would be an extra hour and one and a half hour commute time. You might have to telecommute. There's always that option. A telecommuting would save you a car plus gas plus insurance, that's about $14,000 a year, so forth and so on. So you could save $140,000 just on car expenses over 10 years. So, you know, these are the sorts of things we we've got to be creative. We got to say, what's the value here? I do believe debt-free living is a value. The Bible says the debtor is servant to the lender. And Romans 13, owe no man anything but to love one another. So there are some biblical principles that tie into this kind of thing. But again, it's not a one-size-fits-all. And I I I want to be sure I emphasize that's why we're throwing out as many ideas as we can.

SPEAKER_00 27:10

Yeah, I would recommend you take this podcast now, go back 10 minutes and slow down to 0.75 on your speed and listen to all the things that he just said.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

Or you get a copy of How the World Runs. There you go. For $29.95 on sale for the next 10 hours. So get on it. I I don't know if it is or not, but uh but I do think uh I mean it was really my heart to put together an extensive uh book on macro and really microeconomics just to equip young people uh for this. I'm I'm really impressed with your son, Todd. You know, he's really in the middle of this. I mean, he is really serious about this. Maybe just a little bit of of you know how you're discipling a son who's is he 19, 20 years? 19 years of age, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How how how are you doing this?

SPEAKER_02 28:01

What are you doing to walk with him through this during this time? Yeah, we we've I mean we've talked about most of those things. It's yeah, starting young, having the right mindset upon these things. Be rich to God. I mean to the Lord, you know. And and and see that that your work is is a is a blessing, isn't, is an honor to the Lord. We work unto God, not unto men. Uh and then we work we work diligently in that. Uh it's it's always just been something in our household that we we enjoy doing because we we enjoy you know seeing that that's and it wasn't even the job that he had because he's he changed gears and switched jobs.

SPEAKER_00 28:38

I mean, you were on a path that looked like it was going one way and decided, no, I'm gonna go this way.

SPEAKER_02 28:43

When you're young, you can do that. Yeah. But I mean, and what I always also tell my sons is, you know, yeah, being good at your job is important, being diligent, being a hard worker, but the most important thing is you're growing to be a a godly man. That's most important. That's what I care about more than anything. Is that you're you know that you're being a young man who reaches out to older men and meets them for coffee and talks to them. You're you're you're you're a leader, you're you're maturing every year. You know, mom can say, you are a little more mature. This is what the heart, this is what's important to me. And all that'll all this will take care of itself.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

I really think where we start is identity, all of us, who am I? I'm a son, first and foremost. I'm the son of the living God. That's right. He's my heavenly father, and by the way, he cares about me, and he will provide for the birds, and he'll provide for me, et cetera. Right? Number one, I'm a son. Number two, I'm a steward. I'm a steward of the things that Jesus has given to me. I am a son in my household. I am a father, I'm a husband, or will be a father, husband. Uh it's the broader perspective. And and I want to be this godly, god-fearing, god-worshiping, god-serving man. And and and if if we get the identity downright, I think all these other pieces will come into play.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

You serve a God who wants you to be fruitful. Sure. Yeah. He wants you to be fruitful, he wants the things to expand. That's right. Expect that expansion. Right. Absolutely. Danny, last words.

SPEAKER_03 30:08

Uh, the the two scriptures that were coming to mind were by humility and the fear of the Lord are riches, honor, and life. And also it is the blessing of the Lord that makes one rich.

SPEAKER_01 30:19

Amen. Let's end it right there on this edition of Generation. Encourage you to how the world runs and your part in it. Um, and I I just recommend that for the whole family, not just for the 14-year-old boy, but really for all of us. We really in that book really get to this identity, we get to the bigger picture of the kingdom of God. And and it's extraordinary to me how many verses, not just in the book of Proverbs, but also throughout the parables of Jesus, he he ties in all this economic stuff. Like Jesus cares about this stuff. Right, right. And uh and we ought to as well, and we should know the will of God when it comes to these finances. Uh, how the world runs and your part in it, available at generations.org. But really appreciate the wisdom, guys. This has been a great time, great discussion. I'm sure we're gonna have a more extended discussion on this. If you have any questions, anything to add, any other questions to throw on the table here, mail at generations.org. And this is Kevin Swanson, Todd Strasser, Bill Roach, and Danny Craig 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.