all right in this video we're gonna talk about my personal set of financial rules
that I follow and these are things I've picked up over the years from mentors or
from books that I've read or just other good ideas that I've tried to kind of
implement into my life and so these are 7 that I follow and there's actually
probably a whole bunch more but these were the only 7 I could come up with so
that's what we're gonna go with and first on the list for me is to have no
debt that's just a rule in our house and it's taken a while to get there because
we actually paid off all of our personal debt we had about forty six thousand
dollars worth of debt got all of that paid off and then we focused on paying
off our mortgage and then we paid off our mortgage and then we went back into
debt and got another mortgage and take it from me once you have a paid off
mortgage the amazing feeling that that provides to go back and get a mortgage
after that it's just not a good idea and so once we got our mortgage paid off
again we decided we are never going back into debt and even with the business
like I'm choosing not to take on any debt with our business and just really
focus on doing things a hundred percent debt-free if you've ever been in a lot
of debt yourself and gotten it paid off you know the feeling of how good it
feels and you also probably know what the Bible talks about about the borrower
being servant to the lender and how it really feels like that when you have a
whole bunch of debt and so if you know that feeling of how good it is you won't
want to go back to it and that's kind of where I've been and at first when you
hear this it kind of sounds absurd and I did a more thorough video going into
this whole idea and this concept that I'll link to up above if you want to
check it out but the gist is this that I want to buy things used as low price
as I possibly can and then when I'm done with them I want to sell them for the
same amount if not more I mean you might initially be thinking that this is
impossible and you can't do that but the reality is that you can I first
discovered this in college when I was buying textbooks for school so at first
I went to school and I would go buy the textbooks brand new and then at the end
of the year I would sell them off at a much lower rate but then I realized that
I could buy them used as the beginning of the year and then sell them at the
end of the year and sometimes I was actually making a profit by doing so and
so then I began asking myself how can I do this on other purchases and so one of
my proudest moments came when I bought a used car from a family member for $1,000
and then I ended up selling that car five years later for the same price that
I paid and with all the different ways to buy used
items and to sell used items these days really you can pull this off with a lot
of different things alright next on the list is that we don't have a budget
limit when it comes to giving and over the years Linda and I have just seen God
do some miraculous things and our finances and I've just come to the
conclusion that we cannot outgive God and so while we do have a pretty strict
budget that we stick to this budgeting category is one that I am always looking
to go over on and I don't mind if we do at all as long as we're not bouncing
checks I'm happy to be giving over and above what we've budgeted and next on
the list this one also involves giving and this one is to always give gifts
that are better than what I would buy for myself and this is one that I've
learned over the years from different mentors and from pastors and I really
like this approach of being as frugal as possible with my own expenditures while
being lavish in my gift giving and hopefully you've gotten to experience
something like this but it's always really fun when someone gives you
something and it's just really great you know I really like what Mary did in John 12
where she took this really expensive perfume that was worth a year's wages
and she just poured it all over Jesus feet and she could have just used
regular soap or something like that or even a cheaper kind of thing to wash his
feet but she just wanted to give him the absolute best I don't know something
about that just feels really good to me and that's something I want to do with
my gift-giving when at all possible all right the next
rule that we have in our house is to give until it hurts and I would call
this sacrificial giving or I would call this giving not just out of your surplus
but I've noticed in our lives that God has continued to stretch us in our
giving and this has been a really really fun and challenging thing and the most
recent stretch that the Lord has kind of brought us on is to give our age as a
percentage of our income and so currently I'm 38 years old and so we
have been given 38 percent of our income now I'm not at all saying everybody
should do that but this is what the Lord's led us to do and so everybody has
to make up their own mind about what they're supposed to give this is what
the Bible says and I have a blog post on this so if you want to find out more
about our whole story and how we got to this you can check that out but at the
end of the day I think this is one of our most important financial rules that
we are continually trying to stretch ourselves and our giving even when it
hurts and even when it's challenging you know and the reason here is that
Jesus said it's more blessed to give and as someone who's had the opportunity to
be able to give a lot like it's been really really fun and I can't tell you
how blessed it has been to be able to do that
additionally the Bible says that when we do that we're storing up treasures in
heaven and that's a really amazing thing to think about if you can actually take
that out of just the scripture and think about the reality of what that actually
means alright now next on our list is that when I do spend money I want to
enjoy it and not feel guilty about it because in this interconnected world
that we all live in it's really easy for us to see all the problems all over the
world and to just feel guilty about ever spending any money on ourselves and we
actually have a biblical command in 1st Timothy 6 to enjoy our money and I go
into a lot more detail on this in another video I did about 10 things
American Christians should do with their money so I'll have that linked up above
for you to check out as well and the last one is super specific but I think
really really valuable and the gist of it is that I like to buy Japanese cars
that are two to three years old and then drive them for 10 years and this is a
lesson I learned from my millionaire mentor and I did another video about
some of the things I learned from him that you can check out if you want more
but the reason behind this the logic behind this is that generally Japanese
cars so think like Toyota's think Honda's they generally hold their value
really well they generally are very reliable and they generally make for a
high value car purchase now as far as buying them two to three years old the
reason behind this is because you lose so much depreciation over those first
couple years I've seen some stats that show that you might lose thirty to forty
percent of the car value over the first three years of ownership so when I buy a
car I just view it as an opportunity to get like a twenty five to thirty five
percent discount just by buying a car that's two to three years old you know
and in many cases cars like this still have some new car smell to them so they
can feel very very new if you buy one that someone has taken care of and you
save yourself a ton of money on depreciation and the value just goes
down and down and that's why I generally shoot for a 10-year time frame with the
cars that I own and since I've been married we've done this with at least
two or three of our car purchases and it has worked out really well so far now
being completely honest with you the last purchase that I bought just last
year I bought a Jeep Wrangler that did not at all kind of fit the criteria here
but I still was trying to get a that had a lot of that depreciation
shaved off I ended up buying a Jeep Wrangler that was 15 years old so a
whole lot of that depreciation had rubbed off and back to the previous
point of always trying to buy it make a profit off of what we bought like I'm
gonna have to sell this Wrangler next year because our family is growing and
get a bigger one and I'm really hoping that I can get as close to break-even
if not profitable on this wrangler when i sell it all right so those are my
seven financial rules that we use in our house I would love to hear from you what
rules do you have well you would add to this list so leave that down in the
comments below and if you learn anything found anything interesting in here hit
the like button to let me know I'd appreciate that and if you happen to be
new to our Channel I'm Bob Lotich so nice to meet you
and what we do here is we talk about ways to put more money in your pocket
all kinds of money-saving tips and strategies but then we also talked about
the timeless biblical principles on how to manage your money wisely so if that
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we create more content and that is all for today so be blessed and be a
blessing and I'll see ya soon