The Financial Health Crisis Nobody’s Talking About (And What You Can Actually Do About It)
There’s a battle happening in grocery stores across America. Not over shortages or sales, but over something far more revealing: a can of green beans.
That’s where Dave Rodriguez and his wife Penny found themselves 45 years ago, red-faced and arguing over a 20-cent price difference between name brand and generic. It wasn’t about the beans. It was about values colliding underwater, invisible forces that shape how we handle money without us even realizing it.
Today, 73% of Americans report being financially stressed. Only 30% have a personal budget. Just 39% could cover a $1,000 emergency without going into debt. The average credit card balance sits above $6,000. These aren’t just statistics. They’re symptoms of a deeper problem: we’ve never learned to diagnose what’s actually broken in our financial lives.
In this episode of The Vitality Journey Podcast, financial pioneer Ron Blue (the man who mentored Dave Ramsey and founded multiple financial organizations) breaks down what real financial health looks like and provides a shockingly simple framework for getting there. This isn’t about getting rich. It’s about learning to breathe again.
Why Most People Never Escape Financial Stress
Ron Blue has spent 45 years helping people manage money from a biblical perspective. When asked what financial health actually means, his answer cuts through all the noise: “Almost everybody would like the answer to the question, how am I doing?”
But here’s the problem. Most of us are asking the wrong questions. We’re looking at our bank account balance or comparing ourselves to friends or scrolling through highlight reels on social media. Meanwhile, the real indicators of financial health remain hidden below the surface.
Ron identifies seven key markers of true financial health:
Do you believe God owns it all? This foundational belief transforms you from owner to steward. It’s the difference between clutching what you have and managing what’s been entrusted to you.
Are you generous? Generosity isn’t just good ethics. It’s the only way to break the power money holds over your life. Ron puts it bluntly: “The sign of a healthy financial situation is generosity.”
Are you living within your means? The most crucial indicator is simple: Do you have an emergency fund? Can you access cash without panic when something breaks, when someone gets sick, when life happens?
What’s your attitude toward possessions? There’s no prescribed Christian lifestyle, but there is a biblical attitude: simplicity. The more things you accumulate, the more complicated life becomes and the harder contentment gets.
How do you feel about taxes? This one surprises people. But Ron argues that taxes are “symptomatic of income.” If you’re paying taxes, you have income to be grateful for. It’s an attitude of gratitude test.
How well do you communicate about money? For couples, this is critical. It’s not his responsibility or her responsibility. It’s their responsibility. And since spouses never think alike about money (as Dave’s green bean story proves), communication makes or breaks financial health.
These markers aren’t about how much you make. They’re about how safe and supported you feel with what you have.
The Only Five Things You Can Do With Money
Ron is an accountant who believes God invented Excel. So when he breaks down financial decisions, he makes them ruthlessly simple.
There are only five things you can ever do with money: pay taxes, pay debt, give, save for the future, and fund your lifestyle. That’s it. Everything you earn gets allocated to one of these five categories.
Most people look at financial decisions in isolation. Should I buy this? Can I afford that? But Ron taught Dave to create a pie chart with these five slices, and it revolutionized how he saw his finances.
Here’s why the pie chart matters: the outer edge of the pie is your limit. It might be $30,000 a year or $300,000 a year, but that’s your boundary. And here’s the crucial principle most people miss: every financial decision affects every other aspect of your financial life.
If you increase your giving, something else has to shrink. If you take on more debt, your lifestyle has to adjust. If you want to save more, you have to reduce spending somewhere else. There’s no magic. There’s just math.
When Ron showed his wife Judy their finances in a pie chart after 35 years of marriage, she looked at it for a few minutes and said, “We’re doing okay, aren’t we?” He’d been telling her that for decades using spreadsheets, but she’d never gotten it. The pie chart showed their priorities at a glance: their giving equaled their living, their debt was zero, and they had margin.
The visual clarity changed everything.
The Five Habits That Build Financial Health
Knowing the five uses of money is one thing. Managing them well requires five core financial habits:
- Spend less than you earn. This is the foundation. You cannot take step two until you’ve taken this step. The reason 73% of Americans are financially stressed is that credit cards have made overspending invisible. You swipe, you don’t feel it until the bill arrives, and by then anxiety is already settling in.
- Avoid debt. Consumer debt is the thief of financial peace. Ron once counseled a man making $400,000 a year who couldn’t get by. Why? Twenty-seven percent of his income was going to service consumer debt: the motorcycle, the boat, the RV, the credit card-funded vacations. The solution was brutal: sell the toys. The man protested he wouldn’t get his money back. Ron’s response: “You didn’t get your money back when you drove them off the lot.”
- Plan for financial margin. An emergency fund isn’t optional. It’s the difference between crisis and inconvenience when life happens.
- Give generously. This habit breaks the power of money over your life. It reorients your heart from scarcity to abundance.
- Set long-term goals. Without direction, you’ll drift. Goals create intentionality in your financial decisions.
But here’s the hard truth Ron shares: these habits require discipline. And discipline requires something deeper.
What’s Really Below the Waterline
The iceberg analogy Dave introduced at the beginning of the episode is Ron’s framework. Everything you do with money (the visible part above the waterline) is shaped by your values (the invisible part below).
That’s why Penny and Dave could fight over green beans. They had different value systems operating below consciousness. Missionary kid frugality versus foodie quality. Neither was wrong, but they were incompatible until acknowledged and negotiated.
Ron argues that stewardship and generosity aren’t behaviors you can simply choose. They’re symptoms of something deeper: transformation. “When you become transformed by our Lord,” Ron explains, “stewardship is automatic and generosity is automatic. If I’ve got a transformed heart, generosity is just part of who I am.”
This is why willpower alone won’t solve financial problems. You can white-knuckle a budget for a month, but if your heart hasn’t changed, you’ll revert. True financial health flows from transformed values.
Where to Start When You’re Stuck
If you’re one of the 73% feeling financial stress, where do you begin?
Ron’s advice is simple: make the commitment and get a coach.
You don’t need a financial expert. You need someone who understands fundamental principles and can keep you accountable. Look around your life for someone who’s financially healthy (not necessarily rich, but healthy) and ask them to coffee. Pick their brain. Most people won’t say no.
The pathway looks like this:
Assessment: Get brutally honest about where you are. Create that pie chart. Track every penny for a month. It will scare you, but fear is data. Fear tells you what needs to change.
Dream: Don’t dream about being rich. Dream about being healthy. What does financial peace feel like? What does it look like to go to bed without anxiety? That’s your north star.
Goals: Set measurable, meaningful, time-bound goals for the next 90 days. Not your whole life, just three months. Maybe it’s ending the month with $50 in savings. Maybe it’s going out to eat twice instead of three times. Maybe it’s selling one toy to reduce debt by $1,000.
Habits: Identify the daily decisions that will move you toward your goals. Track every expense. Follow your budget. Say no to impulse purchases. Choose the generic green beans.
It’s not magic. It’s discipline applied consistently over time.
And here’s Ron’s final encouragement: it takes longer to get out of financial trouble than it did to get in. So you need patience. You need grace for yourself. And you need to remember that God knows you, loves you, and is providing for you.
The Freedom on the Other Side
Dave shares from personal experience that tracking every penny was “probably the single most important habit that changed the direction of our financial health.” It was revelatory. Suddenly he could see where money was actually going, not where he thought it was going.
The process isn’t comfortable. Self-introspection rarely is. But the alternative is worse: continuing to suck wind financially, waking up anxious, going to bed worried, feeling trapped by decisions you made months or years ago.
Financial health isn’t about your income level. Ron makes this clear. You can steward $25,000 a year and be healthy. You can make $400,000 and be drowning. It’s not about how much comes in. It’s about your values, your habits, your priorities.
The goal isn’t wealth. The goal is to breathe again.
Take the Next Step
If you’re ready to move toward financial health:
- Watch the full segment above where Ron breaks down his complete framework
- Create your own financial pie chart this week
- Find one financially healthy person to ask for coffee
- Set one measurable 90-day goal
- Identify one daily habit that supports that goal
And remember Dave’s closing blessing: “May your finances grow steadier, your choices feel clearer, and your future feel less heavy. May you have what you need to take the next step and the kindness to yourself to begin.”
You don’t have to stay stuck. You just have to start.
Want to go deeper into the Vitality Journey? Destiny Works offers personal coaching to help you move from assessment to dreams to goals to habits across all dimensions of health. Visit destiny-works.com to learn more.
Full Transcript
Someone has said that financial health is not about how much you make, but how safe and supported you feel in your life. Well, that would help explain why the topic of money can be so full of anxiety. It’s foundational to our sense of well-being. On this episode, we’re going to explore very simple, practical ways to develop both core values and real-world habits that can transform our financial health.
Welcome back to the Vitality Journey.
Dave: So Penny and I have been married a really long time, 47 years right now, but one of the most intense arguments we ever had was very early on, like year one or two of being married, and that was over a can of green beans. Oh man. And even today, I can remember the emotions I felt standing in the aisle of the grocery store, and I’m holding it back. Back in the day, there was, you could buy canned things that had name brands. And then there was also generic and it was like a white label with black letters. And we had to buy green beans and I was standing, it was like a 20 cent difference. And I wanted to buy the name brand because I grew up in a family of foodies and you would never use generic, right. And she grew up as a missionary kid and we stood there battling and it became intense. I mean, really heated over a can of green beans.
Dimitri: It wasn’t about the beans.
Dave: No, it was not about the beans. It was about, first of all, when I look back on it, I realize now money and financial issues are extremely volatile subjects. And I was surprised at the level of volatility between us over 20 cents. But the other thing that hit me was that the reason why we stood there is because we had two different value systems. You know, the guest we’re gonna have on in a few minutes, Ron Blue talks about it, it’s like an iceberg. You have all the things you’re doing is like the top of the iceberg, you can see, but all the values that form how you spend and what you do with your money, that’s underneath, that’s the bigger part. And Penny and I were battling over values. As a missionary kid, you wouldn’t spend an extra 20 cents. And as a foodie, of course you would spend an extra 20 cents. That’s our value system.
And the last thing of course is I realized how much then and I know now, how much financial health and how we feel about our finances, how critical it is to our overall vitality. It’s absolutely crucial.
Dimitri: Are you guys good with beans now?
Dave: Yeah, we’re good with beans. There are plenty of other things. You’ve mastered the beans, right? Yeah. But you know what? I’m glad you said that because to a certain extent, even today, that underwater value still plays into how we spend things. So fascinating. So anyway.
Dimitri: This is probably for another episode, right? But even going back to you using the analogy of an iceberg, but how do you even pull that forward? When you’re in the freshman side of your relationship, how do you talk? You don’t even know it’s important until you’re talking, until we have to go buy something. We’re like, oh, we don’t even agree on this.
Dave: Well, what it did is it forced us to go below the waterline and figure out what’s going on here. Why am I red in the face? Why are we yelling at each other over green beans? So we had to deal with the value and even 47 years later, those values still work in our lives in one way or another. So anyway, everyone, welcome back to the Vitality Journey. We’re glad you’re with us. And the bottom line, what we’re trying to do through this podcast is help you get better at life, move the needle towards something that looks like vitality. And so we talk about emotional health, physical health, relational health, behavioral health, vocational health and today’s subject is financial health.
Dimitri: Financial health. Yeah, so with that in mind real quickly, the financial health of our country is alarming, man. All right. Yes, you ready for something. Here we go. Tell me just recently CNBC survey said that 73 percent of Americans are financially stressed. 73 percent. Yeah, think about what that means, 73%, 30 % of Americans have no personal budget. 30%, only 30 % of Americans have a long-term financial plan. I could go on. 24 % of millennials, only 24 % of millennials demonstrate any basic financial literacy. 39%, you’ve probably heard this, only 39 % of Americans have enough cash to cover a thousand dollar emergency. While at the same time, the average credit card debt in America right now is over $6,000. So this is a thing. This is a huge thing.
You know, this brings me to a term that you actually put me onto, ALICE, right? Asset Limited Income Constrained and Employed. This idea that you can still be working two jobs and still be impoverished. That’s insane. The idea of just if you just worked hard enough, it would be better is no longer true.
Dave: It is, it is. This is an issue and I would say people are more willing to talk about things like anxiety and depression and emotional issues. They’re not unwilling to talk about these things. Nobody wants to talk about financial health, right? It’s somewhat embarrassing.
Dimitri: Anyway, it reveals your behaviors. Oh, yeah. Your behaviors are directly correlated to how your money is.
Dave: Exactly. Has and I think it impacts almost every other health area.
Dimitri: Agreed.
Dave: So we’re bringing, we’re gonna have a guest with us today who’s gonna solve all of this for us. He’s gonna figure it all out for us. Let me just introduce him to you. His name is Ron Blue. Ron is a top authority on personal finance from a biblical perspective. And he’s been doing this for a long time. And I would call him a father of this topic. The people like Dave Ramsey and others really came after Ron and follow his lead.
Ron was the founder of Blue & Company, one of the 50 largest CPA firms in the United States. He started Blue Trust, which is a financial advisory firm, 15,000 clients nationwide. He started Kingdom Advisors, which is a ministry that takes financial professionals and trains them in how to integrate biblical wisdom into their client advice. And he helped start the National Christian Foundation, a ministry that empowers Christians to be more faithful.
Lately he’s been, well he started the Ron Blue Institute and given oversight to the Ron Blue Institute and this is how he and I connected. I was working with him and RBI to provide financial training for university students, high school students, churches and financial professionals. And if he didn’t have other things, all these things to do, he was also writing books. Ron has written more than 20 books on personal finance.
So Ron and his wife, Judy, have been married 60 years, five adult children, 13 grandchildren, five great grandchildren, and they live in Bloomington, Indiana. Go Hoosiers. Let’s go. Welcome. Welcome to the Vitality Journey. I’m sorry, Ron, what’d you say?
Ron: I just said that there’s nothing going on here except a buzz about that ballgame. And this is actually going to come out after the game, but there’s the big national championship that’s about to hit us and we’re all excited about that.
Dave: All right. So Ron, thanks for joining us on the Vitality Journey. But the question is why, why have you spent a career helping other people get guidance and financial wisdom? What compelled you to spend so much of your time investing in financial wisdom for others?
Ron: Well, quite frankly, we don’t have time for the story, okay? It’s a long story. But I began as a CPA and I spent two years with Cru on basically the mission field, traveling to Africa. And through that first 10 or 12 years of my professional life, I came to the conclusion that there were a lot of people with a lot of money, but they didn’t know how to use it. And I had committed my life to Christ and had said I was willing to go or do or be whatever. And the short part of the story is that I was challenged by Dr. Howard Hendricks, a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary and a friend, to help Christians plan and manage their finances.
And the first client I had, I helped to design a plan for him to give away a million dollars over five years. So my mission became, and this is really the genesis of or the answer to the question, was my mission became helping Christians plan and manage their finances so they’d have more to give away and help in the fulfillment of the Great Commission. I was convinced there was plenty of money in the hands of Christians. They just needed some help. And so I started with that mission statement. And quite frankly, all of those organizations have some way been a part of that mission statement. And even today, I’m still on that mission. And now I have the joy of seeing what God has done over the last 45 years or so because he has really generated a Christian or biblically based financial subset of the wealth management world. And now anybody could find somebody that’s a believer to help them with their finances. And that was the original goal.
So God has been so faithful and I would close it this way. It says in Colossians 2 verses 2 and 3 that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. And so what I have found is that God’s Word speaks with wisdom to every financial decision that anybody would want to make. So when you put wisdom and knowledge together, it is in the being of Christ. And that’s how you manage your money, putting those two things together.
Dave: That’s awesome. Awesome. Beautiful. So, well, let me ask a really, really basic question. How would you define financial health?
Ron: That’s a really good question, Dave. And I think really almost everybody would like the answer to the question, how am I doing? And so I think that there’s an answer to that question. And if I were gonna sit down with a couple, let’s say, and they ask me that question, I would ask them a few questions. And what I would be looking for are these answers, if you will. Do they believe that God owns it all? Because that is the first step to good money management is consider yourself a steward of God’s resources.
Secondly, I would probe a little bit on their giving. Because the sign of a healthy financial situation is generosity. And the reason that generosity is so important is because that’s the only way you break the power of money. And so I would look at that. I would look also, are they living within their means? In other words, do they have some margin in their life? Do they have any emergency fund, for example? That’s the greatest indicator of financial well-being and security is to have some funds there that you could tap at any time under any emergency.
I would look also at their lifestyle and what I would be looking for would be, there’s not a Christian lifestyle, but there is an attitude about possessions and that is simplicity. Because the more you have and the more things you have, the more complicated life becomes and the more difficult it is to be content.
And here’s another one that you probably you’ve never heard, but I would look at their attitude toward taxes because taxes in America are symptomatic of income. So I should be very thankful that I have to pay taxes. You know, I just paid a tax estimate yesterday and I prayed and thanked the Lord that I had the resources to pay one and that I had to pay because he had provided so much in the way of resources. So it’s an attitude of gratitude if you will and it’s really evidenced in taxes.
And the last thing that I would be looking for is if it’s a couple how well do they communicate? Because it’s not her responsibility or his responsibility, it’s their responsibility. And like you illustrated in your opening, good communication between a husband and wife is important and they never think alike. My mentor used to say, God did not give you a spouse to frustrate you, but to complete you.
Dave: So that’s a whole mouthful there. Touch on a couple of things. The idea of contentment and simplicity seems to be one of the hardest. Is contentment a decision you can make or what, if a family said we need to learn to be content, what do they do? How do they do that?
Ron: Well, first of all, it’s a choice. It says in Hebrews 13, verse five, be content with what you have. So it starts with am I content with what I have right now and that’s a good question for us to ask ourselves frequently. What is it that I need that I don’t have or I think I need that I don’t have? So it’s a choice to begin with but it’s an attitude as Paul said, I’ve learned to be content. So it’s not just a fact. It’s something that you learn as you experience contentment.
Dimitri: It would seem that the whole, what you said about taxes too, is a matter of gratitude. I’m thankful for what I have so that I can.
Ron: You get to.
Dimitri: I get to.
Ron: Get to. Yeah. Yeah, it really is. It’s one of the greatest tests. Yeah. Because you don’t get any cultural help with that one.
Dimitri: Question for you, Ron, as you kind of touched on this, right, there’s no real Christian lifestyle per se. But as you kind of express the values around stewardship, faith and contentment, what does that look like practically? And you kind of touched on this right day to day, you know, some people feel like, oh, well, I can steward if I had more money, right? If I made $120,000, of course I could steward. I could be more gracious with it. But if I am making $25,000 a year, what does stewardship look like in that context? And is there a space to do so if I’m financially strained?
Ron: Well, there is no Christian lifestyle or biblical lifestyle that you could find in scripture. But what you can find is the attitude of contentment in scripture that that’s possible. And stewardship is really symptomatic of transformation. And by that I mean that as I become transformed by my relationship with the Lord, that works itself out in stewardship and generosity. And I think one of the problems in the church today is that generosity and stewardship are preached and taught, but they’re the symptom and not the cause. They’re symptomatic of a transformed life. And when you become transformed by our Lord, stewardship is automatic and generosity is automatic. If I’ve got a transformed heart, generosity is just, that’s a part of who I am. And I think you learn as you have a transformed life, you learn what stewardship and generosity are. But they’re not the end. They’re not the beginning, they’re the end.
Dave: What you’re referring to again is that below the waterline, these values that form what you do with money, it starts below the waterline with values, heart. Let’s flip above the waterline for a second. One of the things I’ve appreciated about what you’ve taught and what you’ve written is that, and this really is so simple, but it really got my attention. You say that there’s only five things you can do with money. And could you explain those five things and why that’s important in considering how you, financial health?
Ron: Yeah. If you think about it, the only five things you can do with money is, I’ll start first of all with you can pay taxes. Okay, that’s one thing you’re gonna do with money. Secondly, you can pay your debt. You for sure are gonna do those two things. Three, you can give, which is a third one. And four, you can save for the future through retirement plans or savings accounts. So now if you think about that, I’ve mentioned four things. Well, what’s left? And what’s left is your lifestyle. Everything else goes into the lifestyle pot, if you will.
Most people look at their financial decisions in a binary way instead of in a way that encompasses everything. What I have learned is that if you look at your tax return, you know what your income is, you know what your taxes are, you know what your charitable giving is. Most people know what they’re saving and they know what they’re paying in debt. So if I have my income, subtract those four, what’s left is my lifestyle. And when you put that in a pie chart, what happens is you see your priorities.
And you see the expenses. I’m an accountant and I think God invented Excel for us accountants. I went through this process with my wife a number of years ago and I put our finances in a pie chart. And all I did was show her that pie chart with those five elements to it. And she looked at it for just a few minutes and she says, we’re doing okay, aren’t we? And I said, yeah, and I’ve been telling you that for 35 years. And she said, yeah, but it was always on an Excel spreadsheet. She said, I don’t get Excel, but here’s what she saw. When she looked at that pie chart, she saw that our giving was equal to our living. She saw that the debt piece was zero. So we really only had four pieces of the pie. I’ve since added a fifth and that’s kids and grandkids. Yeah.
Dimitri: Happy fifth slice.
Ron: Right. Yeah, that’s right. She could have cared less about the taxes. But the taxes were 15, 20%, something like that. But she saw that pie chart and it showed our priorities, if you will. Yeah. Yeah.
Dave: And I love that again. It’s such a simple way to gauge how you’re doing in your financial health. And I also love the simple thing that you say, this caught my attention. If you change any of the slices of the pie for any reason, all the other slices have to adjust, right?
Ron: That is correct. And that is such a fundamental principle that nobody understands. Yeah.
Dave: So help us explain that.
Ron: Well, the pie, the outer edge of the pie is your limits. It could be a billion dollars or could be a million dollars or it could be $10,000. But that’s the limit. And so every financial decision affects every other aspect of your financial life, unless you have unlimited resources and I have yet to meet that person. So that is a really good point. And I love that. It just brought clarity so that I was able to look at when I did our finances that way, it just made sense. If I adjust this, you know, for example, if we decide we want to save a little bit more, well, that’s going to have an impact on something.
Dave: Right, right. Something’s got to give.
Ron: Something’s got to give.
Dave: Have you ever wondered what you’re truly meant to do? At Destiny Works, we help you discover your calling and bring it to life. Through personal coaching, group experiences, and our Vitality Journey, you’ll gain clarity, energy and impact in your life and your work. No matter where you are in your journey, Destiny Works walks alongside you. Visit destiny-works.com today and start living with purpose. Now let’s get back to the conversation.
Here’s another question. One of the things I also appreciate, Ron, and you break this down so simply, there are, to manage those five uses of money, you suggest that there are five core financial habits that a person who wants to be financially healthy need to commit to. So I’m going to tick them off, and then you can explain however you want. Here’s what you say. The five core financial habits. Number one, spend less than you earn. That’s at the center. Spend less than you earn. Number two, avoid debt. Number three, plan for financial margin. Number four, give generously and five set long-term goals. I love those. They’re simple, they’re a little overwhelming when you start thinking about it, but could you touch on some of those or the ones that you think are like spend less than you earn? That’s at the core of the financial habits, correct?
Ron: Yeah, you can’t take step number two until you’ve taken that step. And what has happened, however, and why people are feeling the 73 % that you mentioned that are unsettled with their finances is that credit and credit card debt has become so easy that I can overspend and not even realize it that I’m overspending, yet that credit card statement comes every month. So it’s a reminder of where I am and it’s one of those things that causes anxiety in people. You just kind of think about it. If I never ever got a credit card bill, how would I feel? Yeah.
Dimitri: That would feel like freedom.
Ron: Can I ask a question just kind of adjacent to that? You know, as we think about spend less, spend less than you earn. Yeah, spend less than you earn. Man, how to do that when I don’t even make enough because everything’s so expensive, right? It’s almost like everything already exceeds, the cost of living exceeds my income already, mathematically speaking. There’s no space, there’s no Delta for even me to trim that down. What to do? Or is there another ways to phrase or look at that statement if I’m in that particular situation, which may mirror part of that 73%?
Ron: Well, there’s only one thing that can happen and that is that you have to adjust the element because or what has happened over time, what I’ve seen happen is, when I was growing up, women didn’t work in the sense of work in the workplace. In fact, when I was hiring accountants for one of the large accounting firms out of New York, we had a limit on the number of women we could hire. And the reason was because they were going to get married and have babies and not be available very long. Well, now two income households is just normal.
Dimitri: Almost mandatory.
Ron: Yeah, it feels like it’s mandatory these days.
Dimitri: Well, yeah, we hear it on the news. This whole issue of childcare is a big deal.
Ron: It’s massive. Right. You’re working. It is.
Dave: So what you’re saying, Ron, is obviously, to spend less than you earn, you either adjust your spending or you increase your income. And to increase your income, either you got to get a better paying job or you got to get more sources of income.
Dimitri: Side hustle.
Dave: That’s good. Or two people. Yeah. And those are not little decisions.
Ron: No, not at all. They’re decisions that require discipline. And that, of course, is one of those things that’s hard for all of us is to remain disciplined.
Dave: Well, at the bottom line, isn’t that it? It’s discipline. I mean, but it starts, you’ve got to go below the waterline first and say, we want to be financially healthy. Right. Right. And so that means, this is ridiculously simplified, but if I want to increase my stamina, I’m going to go work out. Yeah, I’ve got to do, I got to go and lift weights or do it or ride a bike or whatever it is. Same thing with financial health. There’s things I have to do but that lifestyle and I think this is the rub you’re highlighting right is like well I want to be financially literate and healthy. Yeah, but that requires a lifestyle change and man. I just don’t want to really let go of that. Yeah, right.
Dimitri: And by the way, I’m already financially stressed. Life is hard. I need the $1 lottery ticket. Yeah, right. I want the $7 pint of ice cream once a week.
Dave: Yeah, do that times 52 weeks, man, that adds up.
Dimitri: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, you can get stuck in that real quick.
Ron: Yeah. You know, what is reminds me of an illustration at the church that we used to go to. The pastor did, he interviewed me and had some things so people knew that I knew something about money. So I had somebody come and they said, we need some help. Turns out they were making, he was making $400,000 a year. And he said, we just can’t get by. He said, we’re always behind. So I put their pie chart together and I think it was 27 % of their income was going to consumer debt. So I said, where did that come from? And he said, well, it’s the motorcycle, it’s the boat, it’s the RV, it’s the vacations that were funded by credit card debt for the most part, which they were paying interest on. And so my counsel was, you know what you have to do is sell your toys.
Dave: There you go.
Ron: And you said this at the top, Ron, you said like some complexity, like more things make it more complex. And when I told him to sell the toys, his comment was, well, I couldn’t get my money back. I said, you couldn’t get your money back when you drove them off the lot. So their only words was somebody will pay for them, get rid of them and get rid of that debt. And his wife later told my wife that she broke down in tears. She’s been saying, this is not right. This is not comfortable.
Dimitri: So can I ask you a quick question? How much of this Ron would you say, man, as you counsel people and move through their financial journey, how much of this gets stalled by their unwillingness to change their lifestyle? When you just had to be like, you know what, you guys won’t, you won’t stop buying the widgets. You won’t stop buying the toys. We just can’t move forward. Do you ever have those types of situations or?
Ron: For sure. Maybe those are the biggies. And that’s what causes the most conflict in marriage. You know, why does God put a spender and a saver together? But changing your lifestyle is a significant decision. Yeah. I mean, really significant because you’re giving up in those cases most of the time things that you dreamed about. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And so it’s really hard to do that. And that’s again, why I come back to a transformed life. You know, I don’t think you can do it apart from the power of God. You have to have a source of motivation and encouragement outside of yourself. Right. And he said he’ll provide for us. He said, I’ll never leave you nor forsake you. Yeah. So that comes back to, do I believe that? And he’s going to test all of us along those lines, I think.
Dave: Ron, one last question. Let’s put this into context that somebody’s watching us right now. They just want to get financially healthy. They have not managed their money well. They’re maybe struggling. You’ve probably already said this in our conversation, but if they have not managed their money well, where do they start? If I want to start, what’s the first step they need to do and what’s the second step they need to do on the road to financial health?
Ron: That’s a terrific question because I think the numbers would say that about 60 % of people that are sitting in the pews are struggling. Yeah. And consequently they don’t give either. So what I would say first of all is you have to make that commitment and it would really help if you had a coach or an accountability partner to keep you on track because it’s really hard to stay on track. And they probably got into trouble because they didn’t know kind of some of the fundamental principles. So they need somebody, we suggest they need somebody who understands the fundamental principles that can, that’s like a resource. Right. And you don’t have to be a financial expert to be a coach.
Dimitri: No, you could be Destiny Words coach.
Ron: What’s that?
Dimitri: You could be Destiny Works coach.
Ron: Yeah, well, Destiny’s coach. I think we know the people in our lives who are financially healthy. You can find them in your life. And there’s nothing wrong with saying, can I buy you a cup of coffee? And let me pick your brain on how you got to where you are. I think that’s important. So what…
Dave: And God has made it really simple, I think. We’ve used that word. If I get my heart right, if I get my habits right, if I get my priorities right, and I’m living within my income, and it’ll take, it’s easier to get in trouble than it is to get out of trouble. And it takes a lot longer to get out of trouble than it did to get into trouble. So that’s why you need accountability and coaching.
Dimitri: And what I’m hearing you say is you’ve got to exercise a little patience too. You’re not going to get over this, you’re not going to get out of this overnight.
Ron: No, no, it’s going to be, but again, now we come back to our relationship with the Lord. And that’s what will keep me on track. Yeah.
Dave: So there’s not a magic button to push at all. It’s a commitment.
Ron: It is a belief that God knows me, loves me, and is providing for me and will continue to provide for me forever.
Dave: Awesome. Awesome. Ron, very helpful. Very good to get us thinking. This is, I’m thinking again, this has been so helpful for me to think below the waterline again. Yeah.
Dimitri: What, where are my core values and beliefs when it comes to this aspect of my life? Absolutely. And I think what stood out for me in this conversation was just how much of our lifestyle, our behaviors is correlated to again, our financial spending habits. It’s like, man, I want to have money. Okay, well you got to stop buying all the things, right? You got to sell the toys. And if you’re unwilling to do that, well then the pie will only give you what you can have. And that’s not a good financial high.
Dave: Ron, thank you. Thanks for your friendship and thanks for your input and thanks for leading the way in financial wisdom, especially from a biblical perspective.
Ron: Well, I’ve enjoyed this and appreciate the questions and appreciate your approaching this particular issue in life because money runs through every relationship that I have. So thank you so much for inviting me. I appreciate it.
Dave: Thanks, Ron.
Dimitri: Thank you.
Dave: All right. Man. We got to unpack that one, Dave. There’s a lot there. So man, he mentioned like a bunch of tools, about five tools, four to five tools.
Dimitri: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he was talking about the five decisions you can spend less than you earn, avoid debt, plan for financial margin, give generously, and set long-term goals. Right. And then how does that correlate then to the Destiny Works system, right? The Vitality Journey with the assessed dreams, goals, and habits.
Dave: Yeah. So let’s talk about that because ultimately, ultimately we need to talk about habits because that’s really the decision, the everyday decisions. So with the whole Vitality Journey, you start with assessment and that is an honest appraisal. Where are we financially? You know, on those five uses of money, you know, how are we doing? So it has to be an honest assessment, but you also, and that is probably going to leave you feeling depressed or struggling. But then you have to go to hope or the dream, I should say the dream. In other words, what do I want it to be? What’s the picture of financial vitality in our life? Then when you have those two, then you can step back and say, okay, let’s not change our entire, let’s change the next three months. What is one goal or two goals that we can establish like reduce debt by X number of dollars or take the next, maybe one simple goal is next month, we are not going to spend more than we earn.
Dimitri: Right. Right. Or we’ll skip out eating out this week.
Dave: Yeah. Or we’ll, that’s more habitual.
Dimitri: OK.
Dave: That’s more the habit. The goal is how do I want our lifestyle to change? Right. It has to be measurable though. The goal has to be measurable.
Dimitri: So once you do the assessment, once you dream about what you want it to be, and you set a couple of goals for the next three months, now we’ve got to get down with where this is the day to day, what habitually needs to change in our life to move towards the goal, say, let’s just say the goal for next month is not spend more than we earn. Okay. So let’s talk about what are some habits that we can start to practice that will help us get to that goal of next month, not spending more than we earn. And I’m going to start with this. I want you to react to this. You have to, I believe the habit that has to be every day is I will track every penny.
Dave: Yeah. Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about that. That requires, I mean, this is the thing, self-introspection can feel so uncomfortable because it requires you to analyze yourself. Yeah. And quite frankly, to measure yourself with the same stick you look at everyone else at. Man, when you look at your own score and you look at your own life, you’re like, this is not, this isn’t sexy.
Dimitri: No. Right? Yeah, and is tracking every penny, how does that feel to you? You know, it feels laborious. It feels like it’s another thing that I am going to fail at doing, right? But I would actually even, for those that struggle with that, I would also swap tracking with planning because if you plan those pennies, right, then you won’t have to track because we’ve already…
Dave: Budget.
Dimitri: Okay, right, right. So and that might be part of my fiscal immaturity, right? Or illiteracy, I don’t know. But that’s one way I would kind of think about it. But yeah, I mean, the idea, oh, I bought, you know, I bought french fries at Chick-fil-A for the kids. And I gotta go back and log into a spreadsheet and write down $12.50. Yeah. It seems laborious, but man, the labor, I mean, it goes back to choose your heart, right? Yeah. You gotta choose. It’s hard being broke. It’s hard being disciplined and having financial literacy and health, right? Pick one.
Dave: Yeah. I think the average person doesn’t want, it’s just too darn hard. And it was a decision I made years ago that I would track every penny. Right. And it is, it has, it was probably the single most important habit that changed the direction of our financial health.
Dimitri: What was revealed for you when you did that?
Dave: Well, it scared me. We spent what? On what? All the name brand beans. That’s what it was. Just on the general things, you know. It also revealed like, you’re for example, if you buy fertilizer for the yard, you don’t think about that cost until you see it added up. I realized, why is it that in the summer, all of our costs for what we spend on the yard goes, well, these are there. It’s revelatory. Right. It just, do we have to back to the prioritization? Like, do we have to buy this kind of mulch this year? Can we get it cheaper? Exactly. It just leads you to better decisions. So I think habitual. I think the two sides of the coin, number one, track every penny. That’s the hard side. Also budgeting. And that is setting the direction that we’re going to go in. But then, of course, setting a budget, you got to stick with it.
Dimitri: Yeah, right. Which, again, I think I mentioned this when I was talking to Ron, it’s like, man, when you don’t have it and you can buy an $8 bottle of wine, and that becomes your thing. Maybe it’s only twice a week. Oh, yeah. It’s still $16 a month. It’s still $20 a month that adds up. How do you balance? I think I get it. I mean, at the end of the day, it’s straight no chaser. You just gotta bite the bullet and get it done, right? You gotta be uncomfortable. But man, this might be part of the problem is like, we try to negotiate the rigidity of discipline with, man, life is just so hard. I just wish I could have the ice cream. And that’s why it has to start with assessment, which basically leads you to say, I’m sick of being sick financially. I’m sick of being sick financially. And then the dream says, here’s what I wanna be.
Dave: So when I look at those two things, vitality starts with this is how bad it is, this is how good it can be. When you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Dimitri: Sick and tired of being sick and tired and I really want to be at this place. Financially, for example, that health factor. Then, okay, what are a few goals that we can set and what are the habits we’re going to establish? So let me ask you, back to the dreaming part, and again, straight no chaser. This, if you aren’t sick and tired of being sick and tired, and you’re unwilling to change your life in these other ways, this is probably not gonna be for you. This won’t work. The bottom line is no.
Dave: What did I see this quote? Nobody wants to weigh themselves, let’s talk about physical health, but the fact is it gives you good data to work with. Right, right. You need good data to work with, even if the data you see just scares the daylights out of you. Health begins with healthy assessment. Most people aren’t willing to, and even I would say, I did a workshop yesterday with the Vitality Journey, and what I heard from the participants was when they think in general about, am I financially healthy? And on a scale of one to 10, how would I rate myself? They usually rate themselves fairly high until they get below the, they start looking at the more details, and then they go, wait a minute, there are changes that need to come.
So it starts with assessment, starts with dreaming, leads to goals, but then it has to end up with habits. On the dreaming side, you know, and we’ve probably heard this right, poor is a mentality. Yeah, right. It’s a state of financial being, but it’s also a mentality more so, quite frankly. Man, where would you start? Yeah. If I just think, well, it was me and I’ll never make this or I’m just like, what would you recommend?
Dimitri: Yeah, I would. First of all, I would say, let’s make our dream not to be rich. OK. So it’s not like I…
Dave: To get a million dollars.
Dimitri: Not to be rich, I want to be healthy. Okay. And to be healthy, it just means I don’t wake up with anxiety or I don’t go to bed with anxiety. Now here’s the caveat for it. I just need to throw this in. We need to do this from time to time, honestly. The caveat is stuff happens. Right. Let’s be clear. Like we can have a knock-dead plan with great habits and great goals, but the fact of the matter is you lose your job or the economy takes a dip and you’re right on the edge, stuff happens. So the caveat is this is not magic. But I think a disciplined approach where you’re working on the value system below the waterline and you’re working on some habitual things above the waterline can lead to a level of financial health that will actually, you can feel vital for the first time. You can feel some energy.
Dave: Now, and you mentioned earlier, and Ron did too, right? Finding a coach, right?
Dimitri: Yes.
Dave: Be accountable and walk with you through this. Man, how embarrassing is to go to you and be like, you know what? I’m broke. I don’t have any money. I know you got money. Can you help me, man, to have to grapple before that person? Right. And not everyone’s approachable in that manner. Some people, you kind of forget where you came from. You got your money now. How do you again? How do you approach that?
Dimitri: Well, you have to, you have to want to do it right and feel the need to do it. So necessity is the mother of invention, right? So I want to have somebody, so if you’re feeling badly enough about it and you don’t know where to start, just look around and see if there’s a friend in your life and just pick their brain. I guarantee they will not say, are you kidding me? I don’t want to talk to you about that.
Dave: We need honest people in our lives to direct us. I think most people couldn’t afford a financial advisor, but I would say, I mean, shoot, go to your church or go to and say, help me out here. Can you hand me off to somebody? Somebody got some money that can help me.
Dimitri: Or we don’t even need money. People with money. We need people who are financially healthy.
Dave: Right. Right. To you don’t have to make a lot of money to be a good financial advisor and mentor. I appreciate you saying that, because again, you often feel like, man, I just don’t have enough and I can’t be responsible if I only make thirty thousand dollars a year. Like, how can you be?
Dimitri: So it’s good to know from you and Ron that, hey, there is a way that you can still be absolutely healthy and viable in the limitations of your income and with things happening and with the economy doing A, B and C. Yes, that’s good to know. That’s a good to know.
Dave: All right, financial health. Financial health. All right, so for our guests, the first thing is like take an honest assessment, what I hear you saying is take an honest assessment, right? And this is where it’s like and let me just play this in front of you. I’m gonna do this pie chart and I know for example, I love Legos. I am a Lego freak and so I don’t have a problem at all spending $400 on a few pounds of Legos. So what I’m hearing you’re saying is like assess that. How many times do you buy Legos and add that up over some span of time and get honest with yourself.
Dimitri: My wife, she has in-app purchases, the games, right? Oh, 99 cents for a couple more credits.
Dave: So that adds up. So take an assessment, look at all these things and maybe as Ron said, prioritize them. If I look at all the things I’m spending money on, if it’s a game or Legos, that’s probably pretty low, but yet the biggest expenditure are one that we can flex out. Second thing you’d say, dream?
Dimitri: Yeah. What do you want it to be? What do you want your financial reality to look like? And it’s not rich.
Dave: Right, not rich, because rich isn’t a dream. And goals have to be more pragmatic and tenable. They have to be measurable. But dreams can be a little…
Dimitri: They shouldn’t be measurable.
Dave: Oh, right. OK. OK. They shouldn’t be measurable.
Dimitri: But bigger than just I’m…
Dave: They should be mystical and that should make your heart race. OK. That’s what a dream does. It makes your heart race. Your goals need to be measurable and meaningful and time bound. OK. OK? Right. Time bound. What we’re suggesting is three months. Only have three month goals. 90 days. Beyond that, you’re not going to do them. Right. They have to be measurable in that when it’s completed, I know it’s completed. Right. And they have to be meaningful in that they will move the needle. They will move me in the direction of the dream.
Dave: Got it. So that’s what goals have to be. So goal could be, for example, we want to end this month with $50 in savings.
Dimitri: There you go.
Dave: Or again, we want to, instead of going out three days, this month we’ll go out twice.
Dimitri: Absolutely. OK. Yeah. But I would even say going out two times instead of three, that’s a habit you can start…
Dave: Oh, you did mention this. Right. Right. That’s something you can actually do. The goal is to usually affect the bottom line. Right. In some way. And bear with me because and you know this, right? All these health factors, ladies and gentlemen, and you guys will see this, they are intertwined. Yes. So behavioral health is like right next to the financial health one.
Dimitri: Overlaps. Right. They’re like right on top of each other.
Dave: Yeah. Man, where would you say to start with behavioral health? Like, man, OK, so I got the rowing column. I got the spreadsheet. I got the pie wheel. We’ve dreamed. Yeah. Yo, every morning when I wake up, I need my $17 latte. Right. Yeah. Where to start with some of that, right? Discipline. OK.
Dimitri: Where do you get some?
Dave: Well, it’s a disease. You got to say, I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. So I’m going to make these. I’m going to start making these decisions, including at the end of the day, writing down everything I spent today.
Dimitri: That’s right.
Dave: So listen, there’s no, there’s no easy way around this. None. It didn’t take long for you to get here. It’s going to take you longer to get out. But I’ll tell you this. It is hard to approach it. But the freedom and the joy you feel when you start to breathe financially again is immeasurable.
Dimitri: To breathe financially.
Dave: Because most people are sucking wind. They’re having a hard time. That’s the goal.
Dimitri: Yeah, I love this. I love this. And something that just popped in my mind was like, man, I know we’ve all done it. I mean, this episode is, we’re trying to do this evergreen, but it recorded around the first of the year. And it’s like, man, how many gym memberships were signed up for that won’t be executed. That’s like $30 a month. And walking’s free. You can walk at home. Yeah. Right? Absolutely. These are decisions you can make.
Dave: Yeah. Anyway. Hey, one comment to our people who are watching. Thanks for watching this podcast. Please like and subscribe. We would appreciate that. And if you want to go deeper into the Vitality Journey and you want to get some personal coaching, our Destiny Works coaches will help you with that. Destiny-works.com and let us help you move down the road of vitality.
Dimitri: That’s right. And as Dave said, subscribe, like and in this below this video and on the website, you’ll be able to find resources linking to this episode. Yeah. So Ron Blue’s programmatic stuff, his website, his books, all that stuff will be available to you guys. We leverage this system internally. It’s one of our tools that we give you guys to help all of us be financially healthy. So please click it, grab it, get it.
Dave: Yeah. So let me leave you with this blessing about finances and money. You ready for this?
Dimitri: Please do.
Dave: May your finances grow steadier, your choices feel clearer, and your future feel less heavy. May you have what you need to take the next step and the kindness to yourself to begin right. See you next time on The Vitality Journey.