How can I start the New Year on the best financial path?

Ralph Estep
00:00:00

Are you feeling overwhelmed by your finances as we start this new year? Does looking at your bank account make you anxious? Maybe you're wondering if this year will be any different from the last?

Well, stay with me today as I share powerful strategies that will help you start your financial journey strong in this new year. A listener asked me, how can I start the new year on the best financial path? I'm going to give you those answers today.

And let's set a course for success in 2025.

Podcast Announcer
00:00:29

In a world where crushing debt keeps you trapped, where living paycheck to paycheck has become your new normal, and where the dream of retirement seems impossibly out of reach, there's hope. Join financial evangelist Ralph Estep Jr. A man who's walked through the fire of financial failure and emerged stronger on the other side.

Welcome to Ask Ralph, the show where real world experience meets biblical truth. To break the bondage of financial despair.

Get ready to take control of your money, break free from the financial stress and align your resources with God's purpose for your life. This is Ask Ralph with Ralph Estep Jr.

Ralph Estep
00:01:05

Well, Happy new Year to everybody. Thank you for joining me today.

I am truly blessed to have you here as we explore another important topic about mastering your finances from a Christian perspective. And my goal right now is to help you get started in 2025 on the right foot.

I hope you're liking our new intro music and intro videos if you're watching this on YouTube or Rumble because we're trying to really focus on building that mastering of finances from that Christian perspective. Now, if you missed yesterday's show, I talked about the seven top reasons why you might not want to open a CD as an investment.

Like I said in the show, I'm not about, I'm not against CDs, but we covered some eye opening truths about CDs that could save you from making costly mistakes with your money. So if you miss it, I'm going to encourage you to check it out. Well, today's listener question comes to us from Harper.

Harper comes to us from Michigan and this is what Harper writes. She writes this Ralph, I'm ready with tears in my eyes.

Last night I sat at my kitchen table looking at a mountain of bills and felt completely hopeless. I've been a faithful Christian for 15 years, but I feel like I'm failing God with my finances.

Every year I promise myself and God that I'll do better, but I keep falling into the same patterns. My credit cards are maxed out. I'm behind on my Tithe. And I'm too embarrassed to tell anyone at my church.

My husband doesn't even know how bad things have gotten. I pray every night for guidance, but I feel so lost.

How can I start this new year differently and finally break free from this cycle of financial chaos? Harper, let me start by thanking you for your touching question. I can feel the hopelessness you're feeling. And Harper, you're not alone in this.

Many of us feel the same way. And sometimes I feel like the start of a new year just brings all those things back. But it's also a great time to start anew.

It's a great time to start off fresh. And today I'm going to share some solid ideas that will help you do just that.

Now, if you got a question like Harper, you can go to justaskralph.com and share your question for the show. As we build our show for this year, I love answering your questions. So I'm going to encourage you to go to justaskralph.com and send in your question.

And yours will be on the show very soon. Harper, you're in what I call a heart wrenching situation.

And I thought about I gotta find the perfect Bible verse to help you have some hope, because this show is all about hope and I want to offer you some hope and I want to give you some direction for our financial journey. So I got this Bible verse from the book of Philippians, chapter 4, verses 6 and 7. It says this.

Don't be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Harper, I don't know about you, but I think that's a great place to start. It's the perfect verse and it's great for our discussion today.

Well, I thought as we started this new year, we talk about these difficulties that people have and how to get off on the right foot. I want to share you a story about a lady I used to go to church with. Her name is. We'll call her Betty. I don't want to use her real name.

And she was a member of the church's finance committee. She was also a Sunday school teacher. She was a volunteer at the local food bank. And here's the kicker.

When I get a little bit deeper into the story, you'll understand why this is such an interesting thing. Betty even counseled people on creating budgets. So if you're looking at Betty from the outside, everything Looked perfect.

She was financially helping others. She was a member of the finance committee. She was a Sunday school teacher. She was a volunteer at the food bank.

But let me just tell you, behind closed doors, her own financial life was falling apart. So today I'm going to talk to you about what Betty found and what we can learn from it.

So first thing, Betty had these hidden financial struggles, and think about what that means.

So even respected church leaders, the people you see in church on Sunday, on Wednesday, at however your particular church works, they may be facing private financial difficulties that you have no concept about. For Betty, she had $86,000 in credit card debt. And here's the other portion that was so terrible.

When I learned about this, she'd actually gone and gotten a second mortgage, and her husband didn't even know about it. I'm not sure exactly how she did it, but she got a second mortgage that she was keeping secret from her husband.

And she told me later, she said, ralph, I gotta tell you, I'm living a lie. She felt like she was drowning. So think about that for a second.

Think about that contrast between that public image of Betty as the Sunday school teacher, member of the finance committee, counts on other people, volunteered to food bank, and her private reality. It was so deep, devastating to hear what she was going through. But then came the breaking point.

She had written a check for her daughter's tuition, and it bounced. And the school called, and guess who answered the phone? Her husband answered the phone, and he said to the people, are you serious?

We did what? We bounced a check. He was shocked to hear about a check being. He didn't understand how that could happen.

Betty handled all the finances at home, and he assumed all was good. Then all of a sudden, he started looking into everything that was going on, started looking at things more deeply.

And he discovered hundreds of dollars in bills that had not been paid. And this is what I call financial infidelity. And I don't think Betty had any intention to do that, but that was truly what it was.

It was financial infidelity. And it destroys relationship. It causes so many issues.

I just did a show last week about this very topic, about how to get on the same financial page as your partner. This is the leading cause of divorce. It causes so much strife. And think about Betty. She had this internal conflict between teaching, stewardship.

Everybody was relying on her. She was helping people write budget. She was helping the church move forward financially. But in her personal life, it was a train wreck.

So fast forward a little bit. She reached out to me for help because she said, ralph, I'm ashamed of what's going on. And that's when I got involved.

About two years ago, I sat down with Betty after she called me. We met here in my office, and we started talking through the situation.

And I said to her, betty, I said, before we go any further, here's the Ralph's deal. The next meeting is going to be with you and your spouse together. So you need to go have this conversation with your husband.

It's never going to work if you guys aren't on the same page. So I guess it was about two weeks later, her and her husband came in and we sat down, just like I always do.

We did an assessment of where they were right at that moment. So we combined some practical action and we prayed about it. We started to create that realistic budget.

And one of the things that we came up with for Betty is she needed to have more income. And Betty was a real crafty person. She had great skills in this. She was creative and talented.

So she started selling craft supplies online to help bring in some of that secondary income. If you listen to the show, I know, you know, I talk about this all the time. Sometimes it's a revenue side equation.

It's not necessarily the expense side. It's the income side. So I said to her and her husband, I said, one of the big problems that you guys are facing is you need to have more income.

So she did that. She started selling craft supplies on Etsy or one of those online sites, or many of them, I don't remember exactly.

And she also looked for ways to increase her income through doing tutoring. She did some teaching. She was a naturalist. She was a Sunday school teacher. She was great at it. Tell me, tell you about the transformation.

And it didn't happen overnight. It wasn't like after that magic meeting with her nine, her husband, everything popped into place. It just doesn't work that way.

If that's your expectation coming into the first day of the new year, you're going to be sorely mistaken about this. This is a gradual process that you will get through by taking intentional steps.

And I help them on the financial side, but one of the things I encourage them to do is to go to some counseling together. So they met with me several times.

We did what I call financial counseling, but they also did some spiritual counseling, some couples counseling, because I could see from the outside that there was more to this than the financial side. And I'm happy to say, from what I understand, their marriage has strengthened and now they have honest communication. There's no more deceitfulness.

There's no more second mortgages without letting my husband know. There's no more hiding those bills.

There's no more putting this under a table and hoping nobody sees it, you know, putting those bills away so they can't be seen. And it took 18 months to really get back to a place where they were in congruence with each other, where they were on the same page financially.

And it wasn't easy. But it was through those intentional steps that they got to a point of fixing their financial problem problems and their relationship problems.

So what are the key lessons to this? Well, the first thing I think you've got to take into consideration is the importance of admitting you need help.

Betty didn't want to admit that she was the go to person at her church. She was the finance committee person. She was the person to help elderly people, even young people, with their budget.

She was the person that taught Sunday school. She was the volunteer at the food bank. But she had to come to a place where she finally admitted she needed help.

The second key takeaway is the value of combining faith with practical financial steps. First thing I said to them is I said, the two of you need to get on your knees and get to a point of asking God to fix this.

You're not going to do this on your own. Betty needed not only help from financial people, but she needed to look to the Lord to give her spiritual guidance.

It also brings about the importance of the transparency in a marriage.

When her husband learned about checks being bounced, when he learned about this second mortgage that he hadn't signed for it, when he learned about all these bills that were unpaid. It's what I call financial or marital financial infidelity. And that is so devastating to relationships. I see it in my own practice.

I see couples that come into me and they are on completely opposite financial pages. And men, it's. It's like a constant two steps forward, three steps back while they're trying to battle this out.

So that was a key part of this as well. And also they both learned, both Betty and her husband, the role of community support in recovery.

They had to go back to their church and ask them to pray for them, ask them to help them. But here's some great news. I'm going to give you a current status of where Betty and her husband are. It's a beautiful story.

She reached out for help, she got help, she made the changes she needed to make, and now she's debt free. They even paid off that second mortgage. And Betty said, you know what?

The best way I can stay is rate myself is to create a church financial ministry. And she did that. And she now uses her experience because she's got street credibility. She can say to that person, I've been through the fire.

I've been where you are. And she uses that experience to help others. And what does that do?

It gives others hope because other people are feeling that same thing, just like you, Harper. Just like this message you sent me today, you're feeling overwhelmed. You're feeling alone.

And what Betty did was she transformed that because now she could speak truth to the people who were listening, because she could show them that with that gradual hard work, it didn't happen overnight. Like I said, I'm stressing that again. But it provides hope for others. In that situation.

She might be asking, Ralph, what do we learn from your work with Betty and her husband? Well, this is the whole point of today's show. I want to give you some great ways to start off 2025.

And I just felt like that story was all about the things that would make you have a better 2025. And I don't care where you are financially. I don't care whether you're in good shape, bad shape, hopeless shape.

The things I'm going to talk about next are all relevant to no matter where you are on that spectrum. So here's the things I want to encourage you to do. Number one, before you do anything else, start with prayer and reflection.

This is true of anything you do in life. Before making any financial decisions. And a lot of people battle with me, like Ralph. Are you serious?

You want me to pray about buying a new car or you want me to pray about buying a new bedroom set or a sofa? Yes, I do. Before making any financial decisions, I want you to seek God's wisdom. Take time to reflect on your past financial choices.

Think about Betty for a second. Moving forward, she thinks about those decisions she make would let her down to that despair and a place of despair she felt.

And then once you reflect on those financial decisions, most financial choices set smart goals and make those smart goals align with the word of God. I've done many shows about those smart goals. I'm encourage you to check them out. But that's where we start.

Number one, start with prayer and reflection. Number two, thing. Yes, Ralph's going to talk about budgets again, but create a practical budget.

Create that, that practical intentional spending plan, and I'm going to give you a framework. I'm going to call the 10-45-2520 framework. You might not remember this, but it'll be in the show notes. But here's what I want you to do.

10% from the jump for tithing, the Bible asks us to do that commands us to do so. Set aside 10% for tithing. I think you should do more than that. But for today's discussion, let's start there. 10% for tithing.

The next 45% is going to be for those needs, like housing, food, shelter, all those things. 45% for needs. The next 25% is for those wants, those things that you don't necessarily quote need, but the things that you want.

And then the last 20% is for savings and debt repayment. So again, 10% for tithing, 45% for needs. That's those housing, food, clothing, shelter, all those type of things.

25% for once, and then 20% for savings, every debt payment and debt repayment. So number two thing, create a practical budget, what you want to call it a budget or intentional spending plan.

And then number three thing, this is the perfect time to start this. Build your safety net. Establish an emergency fund covering three to six months of living expenses.

And I know you're saying, ralph, how in the world am I going to get to the point of three to six months of living expenses? I don't expect you to do this overnight. You're going to grow into this. Maybe it starts off simple.

Put $100 a week into it, whatever you can afford to do. But you start that habit, you start that momentum. It's like that snowball that starts at the top of a mountain. It starts rolling downhill.

And as it's going, it's picking up more size. It gets to the bottom. It's this massive thing. But each inch of that just added a little bit to it.

You can do the same thing with your emergency funding plan. And think about it's not just about financial security. That's part of it. But the bigger thing, Harper, I hear you asking about is that peace of mind.

And that's what Betty was looking for, too. She was looking for that peace of mind.

And it helps you be prepared for God's opportunities because he will put things in front of you that are opportunities. But you've got to have that plan in place to make it work. So number three, build that safety net. Number four, this is a time to invest wisely.

Maybe you've tried to do it on your own. So this is a time to consider working with a financial advisor who understands Both your financial principles and your Christian values.

Because like I've said many times on this show, so a lot of people that can show you ways to become a very wealthy scoundrel. You don't want to be a wealthy scoundrel.

You want to build that financial momentum with those strong financial principles, but you also want to bring alongside of you those Christian values. So reach out and find a financial advisor, if you don't have one, who has those two things in mind.

And when you find that person, then start talking about what I call tax efficient investment strategies, like tax advantage accounts. Those are your IRAs, your 4:1 case, your Health Savings Accounts, 529 plans.

Meet with this person, start talking about a strategic asset allocation and look at the long term investment approaches. Again, it doesn't happen overnight. It needs to have that long term, that long term plan approach. So that's number four. Invest wisely, Number five.

And this is something we all need to focus on. I don't care where you are in the process of your finances.

Whether you're just starting out, whether you've been doing it for 80 years, doesn't really matter. You got to learn to manage cash flow.

It's a great time to start doing that because the first of the year, you can put this into place, track your income and expenses every single day and carefully identify patterns and areas for improvement. It's not about judgment at this point.

Just put those things into practice because understanding these patterns helps you make better financial decisions and it can help you avoid going into unnecessary debt. So that's number five and that's manage cash flow.

Well, now I'm going to share some action steps with you that will help you get started on the right foot. In just a few minutes, I'm going to give you some specific things.

But first, if you're ready to reach out for help, I want to encourage you to do something because I want to help you. Let's talk about how you can break free from financial stress.

You know, Harper, one of the things I heard in your letter today is, Ralph, I'm feeling stressed about this. You know, let me ask you a question. Are you feeling overwhelmed by financial challenges?

You know, whether you're buying a home, these are stressful things running a small business, or maybe you feel like you're living paycheck to paycheck and you just feel like graph, I'm taking two steps forward, I'm getting shoved three steps back. Well, here's a truth and some hope. You don't have to walk this journey Alone.

Like many other people, you might be feeling like you're watching your dream slip away. You're struggling with mounting debt. You're feeling stuck and frustrated.

You're trying to balance your business and personal finances, or maybe you don't have a business, just trying to balance your personal finances, those needs and wants and those desires and the kids and all those things. And you're, you're trying to manage this all on your own. And it can be so overwhelming. But there is hope.

Together we can create a path to your financial freedom while honoring your Christian values. You might say, Ralph, that sounds great, but how do we get there? Well, here's what I do for every person I work with.

We're going to start by assessing your current situation. Going to talk about real facts. This isn't emotional, this isn't judgmental. Where are you today? What is, what does it look like right now?

And once we do that, then we'll talk about your God given dreams. Those what I call big, hairy, audacious goals.

We'll put those on paper, we're going to lay them out and then we're going to try to align those goals with your faith because that's the most important part of the process. And once we do that, I'm going to help you build a personalized financial roadmap.

Listen, if you want to get to a destination, you got to start by knowing where you are and then you got to have a plan of how to get there. And that's that financial roadmap. As part of the process, we'll establish accountability so you'll be accountable for what you're doing.

And then we'll work together to track your success because you will be successful if you work hard with this and work with somebody that can help you. Because listen, there's no cookie cutter solutions. There's toke, one size fits all.

There's no watch this YouTube or watch this TikTok and wow, you listen to this person, he's got all the answers. It doesn't work like that. But what I do offer is a practical faith based approach tailored to your unique situation.

Because everybody's situation is different. Are you ready to break free from debt? Are you able to finally find that financial stability and achieve long term success?

And do you want to grow spiritually while building wealth? Listen, don't let another day pass feeling stuck or overwhelmed. Book your consultation with me. Now go to askralph.com.

you'll see a button at the top of the page that says book a call with Ralph. It's really that simple. And let's plan your path to financial freedom and spiritual growth together again.

Askralph.com click on Book A call with Ralph. Now let's get to those action steps because as I always say, and I'm going to start off the year saying it again, intentions are great, but useless.

It's actions that matter. So here's those action steps. I want you to write these down.

Now, number one thing, today, before you do anything else, write down all of your income sources and expenses. Get started on the right foot. Number one, today, write them all down. Income sources and expensive. That's what I want you to do for today.

Now, sometime this week, I want you to take that information and I want you to create that budget using that 1045, 2520 framework. 10% for tithing, 45% for needs, 25% for once, and in 20% for savings and debt elimination. Create that budget this week.

Now, this month, I'm going to give you some more homework. Number three, I want you to set up automatic transfers for your emergency fund. We talked about this. Start building that momentum.

Build that emergency fund. Set a goal for yourself. Take a look at your monthly income and say, okay, my goal is six times my monthly income.

So let's say your monthly income is $3,000 a month. So you're saying, Ralph, you're telling me that I need to have an emergency fund of $18,000? I'm going to say yes.

And you're going to say, ralph, that is overwhelming and there's no hope of me getting there. Okay, that's fine. But take that 18,000 and divide by 60 months.

Come up with a number that works for you and start doing those automatic transfers to get it. I don't expect you to do it overnight, but maybe you can accomplish that in 18 months.

So if you're looking for 18,000, maybe you need to set a thousand dollars a month aside. Maybe you say, rob, that's too much. Okay, set a hundred dollars a month aside, whatever it is, start that momentum.

And then sometime in this first quarter, I want you to schedule a meeting with me or schedule a meeting with a Christian financial advisor that you trust. And let's take stock of where you are so that you stay on the right foot for 20, 25.

Now, tomorrow I'm going to be exploring 12 sources of non taxable income which can help you maximize your earnings while staying compliant within tax laws. That's one you don't want to miss. So I'm going to share with you some income sources that aren't even taxable. And remember this.

My passion is to help you achieve financial success. I want to see you live out your dreams on this first day of 2025. I want to see you find that hope.

I want to see you find that passion to move forward and grow in your faith while improving your finances. And I know working together we can master your finances from that Christian perspective. So again, I wish you a Happy New Year.

I ask you all the blessing that Christ can bestow on your lives. I ask you to start a process of getting your financial house in order. This is the best time to start it.

It's not about New Year's resolutions, it's about New Year's actions. Because resolutions are pie in the sky ideas. Like I said, their intentions are useless. Let's talk about New Year's actions.

So as I always end this show, stay financially savvy out there and may God bless you.

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00:25:52

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