Identify and protect your assets so you can invest in your goals and protect yourself from society’s seductive attempts to part you from your money and pull you into narrow definitions of manhood that can limit you and keep you from fulfilling your dreams.
AFTER NINE DAYS in the Amazon with the fellas, the time had come to attempt to live on our own. The rubber was hitting the road.
“Tomorrow morning, we’re going to put what you’ve learned to the test and see what you know,” Craddock said.
I was excited and felt like I was up to the challenge, but I wouldn’t be fully honest if I didn’t admit that my heart started racing.
“Everything you’ve learned during the past nine days you will need to apply in a thirty-six-hour experience,” he said. “We will drop you off at eight in the morning and you will need to survive until eleven the following morning.”
Rather than being dropped off individually, we decided to partner up. Vernell and I ended up together. We had to find water, build our hut, identify food, and start our fire. In order to do this we had to manage our time. Time was of the essence because it would eventually get dark. We also had to create a plan, identify and manage our resources, and work our plan. At this point in our excursion, a mistake could cause one of us to get hurt; a big mistake could even be deadly.
Step one was to figure out where we would build our hut and where to find the wood. This was important not only because we needed a place to stay, but also because when the sun goes down the one thing you do not want to have happen is for your fire to go out. A fire not only keeps you warm, it also helps to keep the animals away, so finding our wood was of the utmost importance.
We knew from our dress rehearsals that finding the right trees, gathering and chopping wood, and building the hut would take about four hours. We needed to find four smallish trees with Y-shaped branches above our heads that could serve as the corners of our hut’s roof as well as four Y-shaped branches down low that could form the corners of our beds. The trees also needed to be in a rectangular relationship to each other and not in the middle of any animal’s stuff. In addition to that, we had to find two long pieces of wood that could form two sides of our roof and four long pieces of wood that would form the sides of our beds. We planned to do these tasks, leaving some margin just in case something didn’t go as planned or took longer than we’d expected.
So we paid attention and applied what we’d learned, asking questions like: “Are we in an animal’s front yard?” and “Are we messing with something’s food source?” We studied the ground looking for signs of animal life and steered clear of them. We spent the entire morning chopping enough wood to build our hut and burn. I joke that we probably chopped down half of the Amazon—we did not want that fire to go out at night! But we were also very aware of the importance of this natural resource.
We then located a big “papa crit” tree, whose bark can be used as rope, and began to shave its bark off. We tied each rope off at the ends to secure our hut’s framework. We then identified a different tree with very big leaves. We used those leaves to create our roof; some other leaves formed the back wall. We secured much of our structure with capidula vine. Once that was done, we identified the trees we could use as medicine and the trees that would provide the cotton we’d ignite to start our fire.
After that, we located the Amazon River, which would be the source of our water. Standing along the riverside left me awestruck by its size and power. Looking up and down the river at all of the trees from ground level—and being able to see how massive they are—gave me a deeper appreciation for why the Amazon rain forest is called the Lungs of the Planet. Amazonia produces more than twenty percent of the world’s oxygen. It was awesome to stand virtually alone in the midst of it.
Then we turned to food. We’d already been taught to identify what bugs we could and could not eat. We located a tree that grew a particular nut that contained a larva, a little worm, inside it. We could eat the larva because it contained a lot of protein, but that same grub was also good for catching piranha and other fish. As we gathered these nuts, we had to make a decision: How many were we going to eat right away and how many were we going to use to catch a piranha? Because while one grub might stave off our hunger in this particular moment, a piranha would be much more satisfying and would nourish us for a longer period of time. Should we eat the larva now or use it as bait to catch something bigger later? We’d been practicing this trade-off all week. Now the time had come to decide on our own. Since we only had to make it through thirty hours, we chose to conserve our energy by eating the nuts and living on vegetation rather than hunting or even fishing.
When we weren’t chopping down wood, searching for materials and food, or building our hut, we stayed pretty still, trying not to expend energy. We were nervous and wanted to keep our knife sharp, so we spent a lot of time sharpening our machete. We were forced to conserve stuff, save and take care of what we had far better than we ever did at home. The entire time we kept our eyes on the clock.
A couple of hours before nightfall, we turned our attention toward making our fire. We separated the wood that burned fast to start the fire from the wood that burned slow to maintain it overnight. Then we took the flint and the cotton and started our fire. Once night fell, things got a little scary. Vernell and I just sat there and whistled and talked. We figured that if we whistled the animals would know we were there and leave us alone. It was one thing to be in the Amazon with people who knew what they were doing; it was an entirely different thing to be in Amazonia by ourselves. Our eyes still hadn’t adjusted enough for us to see beyond our hands in front of our faces. Vernell and I talked about everything that night. Eventually we felt safe enough to sleep in twenty-minute shifts. One would nap while the other stayed awake.
In the Amazon, understanding your resources and managing them well can be the difference between life and death. Once we got back home, the experience had helped us understand that conserving resources can mean the difference between an inspiring life where you live into your destiny and one filled with disappointment, regret, and unfulfilled wishes.
The Amazon contains everything you need to survive, but you have to know what’s in the environment and how to use it. You have to keep your eye on your most important resource—time—as well as how you’re going to apportion your day. While the clock ticked, we had to do things like start our fire, distinguish between the bark that makes strong ropes and the bark we could cook for medicine, figure out which nuts contained edible larva, and whether we should eat it or use it as bait. We had to decide when and whether to exchange the short-term pleasure of eating bugs now for the promise of something better and longer lasting, such as catching a piranha—or whether you even want to waste your limited time and energy fishing at all.
Similarly, a righteous warrior must protect his assets and be aware of how he allocates them—his time and his money, in particular. In other words, a righteous warrior must be resourceful. The world is full of distractions designed to pull him off course, so a man needs a long-term vision for what he wants to accomplish, a passion that pulls him into that future, and a strategy for managing his resources if he wants to fulfill his destiny. He has to consider things like what quarter of his life he is playing in, where he’s positioned on life’s field, and what game plan he needs to execute in order to advance toward his goals. He has to decide how much of every dollar he’s going to spend on himself or his family today versus how much he’s going to save and invest in things like his children’s future or seeding his own dreams. He also needs to set some money aside to protect himself and his loved ones from financial disruptions, which occur as part of the natural economic cycles of life—whether a parent passes away and he has to pay for the family’s flights back home, or his wife’s health scare requires her to take time off from work, or his career path goes poof when he turns fifty-five. Along his journey, a righteous warrior considers the risks and rewards and the trade-offs and costs inherent in his choices.
But thinking about responsibilities like conserving our time and resources, taking care of our possessions, and saving and investing for the future runs counter to popular culture, which promotes consumption and the short term over the permanent and enduring. From coffee pods, to plastic grocery bags, to disposable plastic water bottles, our society is so addicted to throwaway items that they threaten our rivers, clog the oceans, and endanger the planet. Even expensive goods like cars and electronics are designed to become obsolete. This mentality pervades our lives so deeply that many of us even spend time judging potential life partners as “hot” or “not,” swiping through people’s pictures as though the human heart is expendable. Some people even plan to have starter marriages, assuming that the first one is just for practice rather than for permanence.
By definition, a consumer society conditions us to acquire and consume goods and services in ever-increasing amounts—and entices us to come back for more. Indeed, I have watched many a man get himself in trouble trying to be a “baller,” “shot caller,” or otherwise trying to fit into someone else’s image of manhood, which often involves living beyond his means. I often watch young men try to “live large” before they have laid down a solid foundation consisting of the education, training, and personal development they need in order to build their life on rock rather than sand.
In a society set up to separate a man from his money even before he has the chance to plant his feet in adulthood, every guy has to learn to distinguish what he wants from what he needs, what society wants him to want from what’s best for his future and that of his family. Because while it isn’t bad for you to have things, it is essential to ensure that things don’t “have” you.
Many men believe that they have dominion over others. The concept of dominion comes from the Bible, which states that man has dominion over the other creatures of the earth. I interpret the use of the word “man” to mean human beings, though some people interpret it literally to mean only men. Whether or not you’re Christian or even spiritual at all, dominion is an important concept to understand. Our nation’s Founding Fathers were Christian and many powerful men in American society were raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Consequently, the idea is prevalent throughout American culture, though often invisibly; it’s rarely explicitly discussed except in church. But even within religious circles there is more than one definition of “dominion.” So it’s important that we ask ourselves: What does “dominion” actually mean—and what ways and under what circumstances should a man exercise it?
One definition of “dominion” denotes “taking over.” In other words, human beings—and men in particular—were created to be in charge of everyone and everything. Consistent with this, throughout most of American history, men have exercised either the right or their ability to dominate women and children; the most powerful dominate those who are less powerful, and human beings use people and creatures for their own purposes, in general. Men who live according to this definition of “dominion” tend to believe to one level or another that they have the right to be in charge of, take advantage of, exploit, or otherwise do whatever they want to other people, animals, and things. At its most extreme, it plays out as a zero-sum, winner-take-all, survival-of-the-fittest, dog-eat-dog approach to life. We see it when guys attempt to control and even dominate women, make business decisions that exploit natural resources yet destroy the environment, and in the tremendous pay gaps between CEOs and workers as the gap between the haves and the have-nots grows wider.
A different definition of “dominion” carries the idea of “taking care of.” It acknowledges that everyone and everything has a life and Purpose of its own as well as a Place within life’s ecosystem. Men who live according to this definition do not seek to dominate others but to help to create and contribute to an environment in which everyone can fulfill their Purpose. We witnessed this idea of interconnectivity in the Amazon, as all kinds of wildlife—from river otters, to jaguars and cougars, to bats, to tarantulas—coexisted with one another. Consistent with what occurs in the natural world, a man’s Purpose, then, is to find his Place, inhabit it fully, and participate in the connection that exists between all living creatures.
A righteous man lives according to this second definition of “dominion.”
A man can deepen this commitment by practicing good stewardship. When I use the word “stewardship,” I mean planning, managing, and caretaking of your resources. A man who practices good stewardship empowers himself to shift the focus of his life away from how much he makes and what he owns. Instead he develops a deeper understanding of the resources he has and focuses on what he does with them no matter how much (or how little) that is, because a man’s resources are not limited to money. Even though for much of his life his financial resources have been tight, Vernell takes great care of his word and his reputation.
“One of my grandfather’s biggest rules was that you need to be on time, do what you say you’re going to do, and do what you need to do as a man—what is required of you,” says Vernell. “If I say I’m gonna do something, I’m gonna do it. That kind of consistency becomes a point of pride. I have people counting on me. Who am I to let them down?”
In fact, a man who understands good stewardship can break free from his dependence upon money. People see that he’s extremely disciplined, trustworthy, and reliable; as a result, he gets offered wonderful opportunities.
Because a righteous warrior knows that uncovering his Purpose, becoming excellent at it, and making good use of whatever resources he has, financial or otherwise, is priceless. Indeed, wealth is about more than having a big paycheck or how much cold hard cash you can hoard or sock away. While it’s definitely important to use your money wisely, far too many men miss out on the riches that result from things like training and educating themselves, taking good care of their health, sharing their gifts and talents with others, caring for their children and creating a rewarding family life, educating and developing themselves to their fullest, exploring their dreams, and so on. These and other nonfinancial assets can be put to good use. And as someone who has sat at the bedside of many men who have lost their health or are dying, they’re not thinking about their car or their bank account. It’s much more common for men to regret that they missed their children’s childhood or to be tormented about lost time. Said another way, though there’s nothing wrong with aspiring to do well financially, that should not be the goal; that’s the “gravy.” A man who practices good stewardship not only gets the most mileage out of his money, he also experiences the riches of having a fulfilling life.
Even a man with a tremendous amount of money can be taken down by poor stewardship. We see a very dramatic example of this when athletes, entertainers, and people who win the lottery lose their fortunes. I don’t bring this up to shame or blame them. Most haven’t been educated about what it means to have that much money, or how to handle it. So between taxes, agents, managers, their own consumption, caring for family and hangers-on, most of them end up broke within five years. Because they lack the support they need to be good stewards of their riches, many end up no better off than the man who earned a modest income but who managed his money well. The man who understands that his resources mean more than money and that he has the power over what he does with them can have a surprising amount of Power.
The concept of conserving your resources is also essential in the martial arts. Every fighter knows that he has to hold on to his energy.
During a workout or fight, energy conservation actually has to do with the fighter’s breathing. In fact, learning how to breathe is one of the keys to staying fresh and maintaining access to his power. A fighter will tire if, as a result of getting tense, he starts holding his breath, as most people do under those conditions. Not breathing zaps all your energy. So a fighter must take in enough breath, then exhale the tension and stress. You have probably heard a fighter manage his breathing in the loud shh-shh you hear each time he throws a punch. This oxygenates his limbs and keeps his energy in his body. And not only does a fighter need to keep breathing, he also needs to steady his breathing. He breathes in through the nose and out through the mouth. (In and out through the mouth tends to dry out the mouth and throat.) This circular pattern also helps to create a steady rhythm. If he disrupts this rhythm or stops breathing evenly, he will tense up and his energy will plummet. Being conscious of the breathing also helps a fighter focus.
It’s also important that fighters keep moving. Indeed, fighting is like a dance; everything is in motion. Just like athletes in other sports want to play their own game, every fighter wants to move to the beat of his own drum, not to the beat of his opponent. Every fight or style of fighting should have its own cadence. One way a fighter can find his own rhythm is by listening to music. Master Robinson hears James Brown in his head. He sets up and moves into his positions to Brown’s tunes. If you let him, he’ll even draw you into his rhythm. When he successfully does that, he has you dancing his dance. In other words, you’re moving to the rhythm of his resources. He breaks that rhythm whenever he wants to hit you.
A good fighter sticks to the style and skill set he knows well. In that way fighting is very simple. Your opponent has a right arm and left arm, a right leg and left leg, a head and a neck. In Naphtali, we have defensive moves to deal with each appendage. If he grabs at you with his right hand, you’ve trained so you know what to do with that. If he puts his head forward, you’ve trained so you know what to do with that. If he picks up his leg, you know what to do with that. In fact, the well-prepared fighter just waits for his opponent to do one of those things. When I’m fighting, I want you to put your left hand straight out. Because when you do that, I have prepared a series of moves and disciplines that will make me win. It’s about preparing, keeping your breath, moving to your own rhythm, knowing what to do when an opportunity presents itself—then doing it.
That said, you don’t have to get into every fight or exploit every opportunity. A smart fighter doesn’t engage in a fight unless he is very sure he will be successful. He needs to ensure that the fight will be worth it. Even then, he wants to avoid engaging in any unnecessary tussles. A disciplined fighter picks his spots and avoids superfluous confrontations. Sometimes his opponent is playing the same game. He’ll stick his foot out because he wants you to grab it, so he can then pull you into his rhythm. It’s like a game of chess or cat and mouse: I know you want to grab it, so I’m not going to stick it out. So every fighter goes into his bout with a plan. He wants to get it over with quickly, but since he never knows when he’ll have to go the distance, he prepares for that possibility. In the meantime, he has to manage his energy throughout the entire fight.
In addition to understanding the source of his Power, a righteous warrior also seeks to identify his Place. Because when he fully explores and inhabits the unique life he’s been given and understands his resources, those resources begin to flow to him. In fact, many were already there; he was just unable to access them. In other words, when you occupy your Place, you don’t always have to go out to chase money, you leverage the many forms of abundance you have, including money, and life comes to you. Just as the Amazon contains everything a man needs to survive, so does the path to his destiny.
In order to experience your most fulfilling life, it’s important to remain open to the many ways that abundance can show up, whether in the form of opportunities, contacts, networks, gifts, opportunities for training and education, people’s goodness and grace, coincidences, divine timing, and so on. For instance, when you’ve found your Place in life’s ecosystem, the right people tend to show up when you need them and the things you’ve been searching for will often drop into your lap. When you free yourself from the belief that a man’s wealth consists only of his money and possessions, you open yourself up to experience life more abundantly.
One of the powerful things about finding your Place is that it comes with the means to accomplish your Purpose. In other words, both the instructions to the game of life and the batteries for living it are included when you inhabit your lane. But you have to stay in your lane, as the Penn Relays taught us. That means you have to draw a boundary line between where you end and other folks begin—between your lane in life and another’s. This is an area where many men struggle. It’s easy to think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Sometimes what looks like green grass is actually AstroTurf. Or, your neighbor’s lawn might be greener but your lawn can get green, too, if you water it. Uncover your own gifts, then work hard to develop them. Share them in the Place that exists only for you. Do this to the best of your ability and watch your blessings multiply.
Lots of guys get involved in things because someone told them to do it or because they see someone else doing it and they want their life, their possessions, or their results. In other words, we wander out of our lane, which doesn’t usually get us the results we want. If there’s anything I wish I could take back from my thirties, it would be the time I spent wishing I had some of my peers’ gifts. I’m almost ashamed to admit that I envied one friend’s oratory skills and another’s ability to integrate hip-hop into his sermons. While I was coveting their gifts, I was overlooking my own very unique abilities. Enamored by my friends’ skillfulness, I found myself on the cusp of being jealous. My envy got in the way of what could have been much richer friendships. You can’t be your best in a relationship if you’re jealous or keeping count of another person’s abilities. As I matured and confronted the covetous mind-set I had toward their gifts, I realized I couldn’t become my best self until I asked for their forgiveness.
Imitating another man’s life won’t re-create their results because we don’t have their destiny and we don’t have their needs. But even more painfully, placing our feet in other man’s footsteps deprives us of the masculine journey that comes with forging our own journey.
But while our Place comes with batteries included, that doesn’t mean that our life will be easy. A righteous man knows that he will always have to work hard, even when he knows the source of his Power is following his Purpose and his Place along his spiritual path. That said, when you are new in your journey and just developing your muscles you will likely experience a season where you will live above your pay grade, so to speak. This season will take place to encourage you. As you mature, you will graduate into seasons where you must use your resources thoughtfully and demonstrate increasing levels of stewardship. It will also be important that you contribute your part to the ecosystem of life by paying it forward, by becoming a blessing to others.
Even those of us who have found our path must remember that our society encourages us both to take more than we need and to accumulate things. Digital algorithms, big data, public relations, marketing, and commercials work on our psyches and spirits, making it difficult for us to distinguish between what we want and what we need. Lots of guys pray for what they want. Sometimes I count myself among them. However, the path to our destiny only comes with what we need. It’s essential that we differentiate between the two. A need will be satisfied as soon as it is met. If you are thirsty, for instance, the solution is water. Once you drink enough water, you will no longer thirst. But the solution that appears to solve a want may not satisfy or resolve it. If you still hunger after the initial fix, it is a want you’re dealing with.
Knowing your Place also helps protect you from the onslaught of marketing by helping you clarify your own vision and dreams. Your Place and Parameters complement each other, forming invisible boundaries that help protect your priorities and identify what falls outside of your Place. When you understand your Place, it’s easier to protect your resources so you can direct them toward the goals and dreams that matter to you—whether a new “bun in the oven,” a child’s ballet or basketball camp, roof repairs, or stacking your loot for the business you plan to launch.
Discovering your Place doesn’t mean that life will be easy or that you will (or won’t) be wealthy according to the world’s standards. To get there you will have to demonstrate faith. Indeed, the more faith and commitment you have, the more of your destiny you will achieve.
Though we are all spiritual beings having a human experience, life as spirituals beings includes material things. Therefore, all human beings require a medium of exchange. One hundred years ago, people often bartered with each other. Stores back then didn’t always require money so banks existed but so did trading posts. My grandfather, a sharecropper in Rappahannock, Virginia, didn’t use money as much as he bartered eggs and flour. He would send my father to the store with three eggs and the instructions “Go get three eggs worth of” whatever he wanted.
Today, some people mistakenly believe that money is evil—often because they’ve been taught that by a religious Christian or at church. This is a misunderstanding of scripture. The Bible actually teaches that the love of money—in other words, lusting for money—not money itself, is the root of all evil. Indeed, craving money often lands us in trouble, as Rich discovered. His hunger for money, cars, diamonds, and women combined with the shortsightedness, risk-taking, and hardheadedness common to teenage males as well as older men made him a prime target of those who were eager to exploit him. As the only boy in a family of girls, he also longed for male friendship and companionship. But it was his lust for the symbols of material success that brought him down and caused him to be locked up for so many years. Of course, Rich is just an extreme example of what happens when you crave material things. More often this looks like an overextended credit card or buying things at Christmas that you can’t really afford.
Indeed, commerce is central to human life, so money itself is merely a tool of the trade. Once you understand that your wealth is not limited to financial riches and your blessings are not restricted to material things, you increase your capacity to leverage all of your assets—whether your ideas, your networks, your training, or your physical strength. Money does not determine the quality of your life, but what you do with your money and other resources helps you create your life. Don’t wait until all your loot is in place to start. Even before you have a knot in your wallet, begin to work your other assets. In fact, you can tell a lot about a person’s spiritual life by looking at how they handle their money. Our faith plays itself out in our financial life. Do you have the faith to create the life of your dreams? Do you have the faith to step further and further into your destiny?
Most Americans are materialistic. We have way more than we need but feel we can’t do without what we have. Life is easier when you don’t own too much stuff. Spending consumes financial resources and having too much stuff can tie you down and undermine your ability to thrive. Plus, the world of money will periodically break down, as happens when the stock market melts down, when economic bubbles burst, and during economic slowdowns, recessions, depressions, and so forth. So, as you think about and interact with it, engage money in such a way that when it fails, not if it fails—that is, when you don’t get the raise or bonus you’d hoped for, when interest rates climb, when the economy slows, when financial things don’t go the way you want them to—you will still be all right. Because bumps occur in the economy and even the best-laid financial plan will occasionally go awry. One of your children will break their arm and you’ll have an unexpected medical bill; you may need to travel to a funeral; you may need to return to school to retool. From time to time most of us will live with a sense of uncertainty about how we’re going to make it.
Responsible financial stewardship opens up other ways to prosper. It also provides protection when the economy fails and opportunities to invest in yourself or others grow. You will have the peace of mind that comes when you’re taking care of business. But to relate to money with a warrior mind-set, you may need to adjust some beliefs.
In the Amazon, it’s easy to see that a Power exists that is much greater than ourselves. It was also easy for our elders to see the evidence of that force. For example, my grandfather sowed his seeds and then looked up to God and prayed for rain. The rains came, the crops came up, my father cultivated and sold them, then he gave thanks. Because God provided the sun and the rain, my grandfather could feed his family. If you go back 100 to 150 years, this is how most of our ancestors lived. The connection between what God gave them and what they had was clear. They were in tune with the sunrise and sunset, the stages of the moon, when to plant and when to harvest, the changing of seasons—the circle of life.
Between our grandparents’ era and today, we’ve moved from a primarily agricultural society to one filled with cities with neighborhood stores that people could walk to, to one of suburbs with malls and big box stores, with big businesses and international organizations located everywhere. Today, you’re more likely to work in a call center than plant your own seeds. The treasurer of your company likely signs your paycheck. But just as the sun and rain watered my grandfather’s crops, the origins of your direct deposit began with God and passed through your employer’s hands on its way to you.
Understanding and believing that God is your Source can give you the confidence both to provide for yourself and to be generous. Because when you believe that what you have came from God, not yourself, there’s no need to be afraid to release what you have. It’s hard not to be stingy when you believe that your survival is all on you, or that you have to replace anything you give away, or when things run out there won’t be more. But when you understand that you’re part of the larger pattern of circulation, you can feel interacting with the world more generously and unencumbered.
Whether it’s a tree that breathes in carbon dioxide and exhales oxygen, or rain that falls and waters plants, or human adults who bear and raise children, in nature nothing exists just for itself. Since everything’s Purpose lies outside of itself, you can place yourself in the flow of life’s resources by giving.
No wonder every major religion believes we should share our blessings with others. An African proverb sums this up well: “To whom much is given, much is required.” You may also be familiar with this idea from the Bible. Spiritually, giving multiplies what you have, so the more you give away the more will come to you. A righteous man seeks to be a conduit of money rather than a reservoir. What I mean by that is a righteous man understands that money comes in and money goes out. The language “cash flow” and “currency” reflect that idea. He seeks to create a financial current. One of the best ways to create movement in your financial life is to share your time, your talent, and your treasure with others. Indeed, things come to you so you can pass them along to somebody else. If you need more, start giving more of yourself. Give without looking for a return and watch your needs get met.
You must have heard the saying “actions speak louder than words.” A man becomes known by what he does, not by what’s in his heart or what he says. When I talk about a man’s heart, I’m not talking about his ticker; I mean how his mind, his will, and his emotions come together to be a force. A lot of guys talk a good game, but when the going gets tough, they can’t walk that talk. They have no heart. We see athletes lose heart—or show tremendous heart—all the time. A man’s actions in the world reflect his heart. We may hear what a man’s saying but we see what he does.
Whether you achieve your destiny or buy a house, it doesn’t happen with magic wands and fairy dust. To accomplish anything meaningful, you are going to have to work. Working is part of what makes us human. Not only does it provide a way to create inner meaning for yourself, it also gives you a context in which you can grow and develop. Don’t try to keep up with the Joneses or be someone you’re not. Take time to set your own vision, work your own program, and enjoy your spiritual journey.
A righteous warrior works hard; he isn’t lazy. He has no problem jumping into a situation, rolling up his sleeves and leveraging his gifts and talents to help, whether by going the extra mile on the job or cutting the grass on the football field. But he doesn’t jeopardize himself or his family by spending an inordinate amount of time away from home. Nor does he run himself and his health into the ground. It’s important to rest and take care of yourself. In our entertainment-oriented society, we are socialized to believe that a life of leisure is the height of accomplishment. Though the American societal norm is to work for five days and take two days off for R&R, I suggest working six days and taking one day off. You don’t have to work at your job on the sixth day, but I believe you ought to be productive somewhere. Fix the faucet, mow your lawn, get the oil changed, volunteer at the youth center, teach your son how to throw a curveball, help your daughter or son with their homework, volunteer for the local political candidate. Also be sure to set aside time to work on your dream! Be productive on day six and take the seventh day entirely off. Eat a healthy breakfast, go to service as a family, go on a hike together, hold your wife’s hand, watch the game with your daughter, take a nap, cook dinner, get ready for next week. Not only is this a smart restorative practice, it reminds you that God takes care of you rather than your job.
To step into your destiny, you’ll need to live by some financial standards.
I suggest that you follow management guru Stephen Covey’s strategy and begin with the end in mind. Ask questions like: What are my dreams? Where do I want to be five years from now? What do I want to be doing when I’m fifty? What practical steps can I take to live that commitment? What will it take to get there financially? How much should I set aside to seed my dreams? Make your spending serve your dreams rather than keeping up with the Kardashians, so to speak.
I am not a financial adviser, but I do know that it’s important to create a financial plan that reflects your vision and lines up with your destiny. I offer the following rubric for thinking about your financial life. You may need to tweak the numbers to fit your situation and lifestyle.
First, start by creating a budget. I suggest you begin with the 10:10:80 rule. When you get paid, I strongly believe that you should give ten percent off the top to the source of your spiritual development, such as your church, synagogue, mosque, or spiritual center. If you’re not religious, give to charitable causes or things that inspire you. Try to save the next ten percent and live on the remaining eighty percent. In general, you should allocate your money according to the following guidelines. If you’re not there yet, make adjustments over time until you come in line with them.
ten percent tithing or charitable giving
ten percent savings
nine percent investments
thirty-six percent housing
twelve percent transportation
nine percent food
six percent clothing
five percent debt reduction
three percent entertainment
If you live in a place where housing costs are high, consider a roommate or spending a little longer at home. Living at home needs to be a family conversation, where you lay out your second quarter goals for your family and live into them. Since only nine percent of your budget should cover food and three percent entertainment, you will have a very hard time making ends meet if you don’t know how to cook or go to the club every Friday. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with eating out or clubbing, but if you do it too much you’ll find yourself in trouble.
The average American consumer is carrying more than $8,000 in credit card debt.I When you subtract from that the people who don’t have debt, the average amount of credit card debt totals almost $17,000.II The average person with a car loan is almost $30,000 in debt. And the average person with a student loan is roughly $50,000 in debt. To clear your debt, you have to make very hard choices to avoid what our economy is designed to make you do: spend more money than you have and create debt. This is another reason why your vision, not society’s vision for you, needs to drive your spending. If you’re paying back your student loans or other debts, adjust your budget so you can realistically achieve it and recalibrate over time.
Once you settle on a budget, it becomes part of the Parameters that guide what you will and will not spend your money on and why.
As we did in the Amazon, it’s important to ask: “How much do I spend now and how much do I use to get something bigger and more fulfilling later?”
Wealthy people develop a plan to get them where they want to be in one, two, five, ten, and twenty years. You should, too. Every human being also has seasonal needs we need to plan for. For instance, we need to be honest with ourselves. One day we each will reach an age where we have more sense than strength. So if you are in your thirties, forties, or fifties, you can’t consume everything you earn. In America, the average millionaire lives in a $300,000 house. Yet people who have far less wealth live in $500,000 homes when they could have been saving the difference.
The righteous warrior protects his credit and avoids getting in debt. Though he lives in a world that sends him credit cards and advertises payday loans, he understands that debt will handcuff him.
As a general principle, avoid debt of all kinds. Of course, few people can purchase a home, or pay for college, or even buy a car without it. But we should strive not to take debt on as a rule of thumb. Debt is designed to be part of our economic system, so carrying consumer debt is a societal norm. It also undermines many families. The number-one reason for divorce is money, not infidelity. Be content with what you have so you don’t live beyond your means.
But in a society that teaches us that we “deserve to have it all”—and to have it all now—we need to learn the difference between good and bad debt. Many of us need to learn to delay gratification. Delaying gratification does not mean that we can’t have a thing, but it may mean sacrificing now so you can get it later. Everything is not for everyone, nor can anyone have everything all at once. Spiritually, life provides for us seasonally as our vision unfolds over the course of our lifetime.
Once a man borrows money, he’s responsible for paying it back according to the terms he agreed to. But if you owe someone, you also need a strategy to get out of debt. You also need a strategy so you don’t incur new debt to replace the old debt.
For most of his life, Vernell didn’t have specific financial outcomes in mind for himself.
“When you don’t have a goal or a plan, or you don’t foresee more for yourself, then you don’t expect more for yourself. When you don’t expect any more for yourself, it doesn’t matter what your credit score is,” he says. He wrongly believed he was destined to live a life below the level he imagined for himself.
“My credit was crappy; I was making crappy money. My credit score was a 453,” he says.
But once he began to envision a purposeful future, Vernell started to set some big-picture five-year goals. To be the man he imagined, he would need to improve his credit. He had $22,000 worth of debt, about $16,000 of which was for a car that had been written off in an accident. At first, he ignored the payment letters. But eventually he faced the fact that he had to pay up.
“At first, I set up a monthly payment of $85 a month,” he says. “Later, I learned that if I did that I would be paying for ten years. When you don’t understand the rules, you end up blindly paying for stuff.”
So Vernell started doing credit repair. “I called the company and asked if they would settle the $16,000. They settled at $2,100, so I paid that off,” he says. “Now when I get my income tax refund, I pick a bill and pay it off. It took two years to deal with my old debt. I had to sacrifice. A lot. If my minimum was $25, I paid $100. If my minimum was $75, I paid $150 so I was paying toward the principal instead of just interest. Taking on extra jobs has helped. I began to see how being consistent opened up a door to allow me to do more.”
As Vernell began to learn more sophisticated money-management practices, he freed himself to live a more abundant life.
“Being consistent opened up a door to allow me to do more stuff,” he says. In time, someone noticed his hard work and diligence and recommended him for a more prestigious job that came with health and vacation benefits he’d never had before.
“Now, I direct-deposit my check and automatically pay my bills. Already, I’m seeing the benefit of my discipline and sacrifice,” he says. “Just a couple of years ago, I got declined for a line of credit trying to buy my son some sneakers. Two weeks ago, I bought a MacBook Pro for college within seconds. Now my credit score is over 700 and I’m still working on improving it.”
That said, many people feel poor when they actually are not. What I mean is that a spirit of lack can make you feel that, no matter how much you have, it is never enough. A person can have a poverty spirit without being financially poor. As a matter of fact, many wealthy people have a poverty spirit, which is among the reasons why some rich people are greedy. So, strange as it seems, it is possible to be poor even if you have wealth. Greedy people often self-destruct because they will do anything for the next dollar.
Debt can also be relational. It’s possible to become too indebted to others’ help. All of us need people to help us, and sometimes we need help more than at other times—I’m not saying don’t accept help. But as a matter of foundational principle, be careful not to allow your relationships to get out of balance. The giver will stop respecting you if you’re always on the receiving end of the relationship. Even in personal relationships, the debtor is always “slave” to the lender. That is to say, if you always owe people—whether money, a favor, or whatever—the relationship will become uncomfortable because it’s too far out of balance. In other words, they will “own” you.
“There was a time when I owed fifteen, twenty G’s to the cocaine dealer,” Rich says.
During his days of addiction and drugs, Rich was owned.
“Today, my bills are paid, my mortgage is paid, my finances are finally straightened out,” Rich says. “I’m actually on top.”
A righteous warrior lives with a sense of sufficiency for the season that he is currently in. He isn’t materialistic or attached to physical things. He becomes increasingly content with having food, clothing, and shelter and stops letting himself become seduced by materialism and consumerism.
Not being caught up in things frees him to make choices that men who are burdened with debt or material possessions cannot make. His conservative approach to money protects him as seasons change, including financially. Most of us are in an uphill fight against a system that takes money from low-income and middle-class people and redirects it to the very affluent. It’s important to acknowledge that this system exists. The best way to fight it is to implement these principles—and it is, indeed, a fight. Having nice things isn’t a problem, but we must ask ourselves if we can live more simply.
A medical doctor named Richard Swenson wrote a wonderful book called Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives about the fact that most of us don’t give ourselves enough breathing room. We know that we live twenty minutes from work so we leave twenty minutes before work starts. We’re all right as long as nobody drives too slow, but if we get stuck behind someone who obeys the speed limit, a school bus, or a garbage truck, we lean on the horn and have road rage. Leaving thirty-five minutes early is living with margin.
The same is true emotionally. Many of us are frustrated because we have no emotional margin. We have enough emotional energy for life to go well but lose it when something goes wrong. In financial terms, “margin” is another word for savings. A good financial steward lives his life with some margin. He has room in his life for somebody to make a mistake. He has financial room to cover an emergency. He has room for someone who needs to lean on him.
Sometimes you experience blessings so you can pass them on to others. You’re not supposed to hoard everything you have.
During ancient times, many landowners practiced a principle that allowed poor people to have dignity. For every hundred acres a landowner had, he farmed only ninety. He left the other ten acres for people who didn’t own anything to glean. Gleaning gave people who didn’t own land an opportunity to work for a living. The owner took responsibility for not consuming everything he owned. He created an economy for somebody else.
Every human with a little spare change can create an economy for someone else out of their economy. In other words, they can hire a housekeeper to help them keep their house clean, someone to cut their grass, a young person to shovel their snow and rake their leaves. You can create ways for other people to earn money. It is a sin to use everything you earn on yourself. Remember, sin doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to hell; all it means is that you’re off the mark. Those who have money left over should use their economy to pay someone else.
No matter where he started, a righteous warrior takes control of his financial life. He takes stock of where he is and compares that to where he wants to be. He then conserves his resources and seeks out the information he’s missing, so he can achieve his goals.
A righteous warrior understands that he has to keep his knife sharp. Not only does he have to conserve his resources, he has to get better at who he is and what he does and what he knows. That is part of what he must do during the earning season of life. He knows he cannot waste evening after evening and weekend after weekend in his man-cave watching other men pursue their dreams.
I Kathleen Elkins, “Here’s How Much the Average US Family Has in Credit Card Debt,” CNBC Make It, May 17, 2017. Accessed at https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/17/how-much-the-average-us-family-has-in-credit-card-debt.html.
II Erin El Issa, “2017 American Household Credit Card Debt Study,” Nerdwallet. Accessed at https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/average-credit-card-debt-household/.