How can I survive the holidays without going broke?

Transcript
00:00:00

Have you ever found yourself staring at a growing pile of Christmas bills, feeling that knot in your stomach knowing you'll be paying for the holidays well into next summer? Well, today I'm going to share a special conversation that will help you celebrate the season without breaking the bank.

You won't want to miss my recent interview with Mark Lawley on the Practical Prepping podcast where we discuss real strategies for surviving the holidays without going broke.

Podcast Announcer
00:00:27

Welcome to the Ask Ralph podcast where listening to an experienced financial professional with over 30 years of experience can help you make sense of confusing questions, current headlines and industry trends about taxes, small business, financial decision making, investment strategies, and even the art of proper budgeting. Ask Ralph makes the complex simple by sharing his real world knowledge from a Christian perspective with all things financial.

Now here's your Host, Ralph Estep Jr.

Transcript
00:00:56

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Thank you for joining me today. I've got a great show to share with you today. It's a practical discussion I have with my friend, Mark Lawley. He's got a great podcast. It's called Practical Prepping. You can get to it by going to practicalprepping.info and I'll put a link in the show notes and it is a fantastic show.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Truth is he and his wife, Krista share some practical steps that can make a huge difference if you find yourself the victim of a natural disaster. Stuff like hurricanes, tornadoes and other events. So I'm going to encourage you to check out his podcast. Now yesterday we talked about five common RMD mistakes that you'll want to avoid if you could do that, you're going to save yourself thousands of dollars. So I'm going to encourage you, I don't say this often. Share that episode with everyone you know and help them to avoid making those RMD mistakes.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Well, let me start today's show by sharing a heartfelt message I received from Melody. Now Melody comes to us from Oregon. This is what Melody wrote. She said, "Dear Ralph, I'm writing with tears in my eyes. My husband lost his job three months ago and while he's found new employment, we're making significantly less than before. Our three children ages 7, 9, and 12 are already talking about their Christmas wishes, and it breaks my heart that we can barely afford our basic bills, let alone create that magical Christmas morning they're dreaming about. The pressure to provide gifts, decorations, and special meals feels overwhelming. I'm worried about disappointing them, but I'm more worried about falling into debt. How can we maintain the spirit of Christmas without spending money we don't have?"

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Listen Melody, that is a truly heartfelt question, and I can hear the emotion in your voice. I remember as a young guy, my mom and dad had split up and I was sort of the man of the house. I guess I was about nine or 10 years old. And I remember my mom used to struggle with the same thing every holiday. She didn't have a bunch of money and my sister and I lived in this crazy world between going between her house and my dad's house, who my dad was very wealthy.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: And you know, we were kids, we would look at the catalogs and oh, I'd really like to get this for Christmas, and I really like to get this for Christmas. And at the time, you know, we were young guys, like I said, I was nine, my sister's maybe six or five, we have no idea, but the stress we were putting on my mom, I can look back at it now and see that and Melody,

Ralph Estep, Jr.: I hear you feeling that same thing. So on this show today, I'm going to share some practical tips for you. And yes, it's all about the spirit of Christmas. That's the whole point. Now, normally I'd ask you to submit your questions, but today I want to ask you some questions. We've built a listener survey, and I want your honest opinion about the show.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Listen, it's only going to take about five minutes and here's the best part. I am putting together a $250 Amazon gift card drawing for anybody who takes part in the survey. Now you can find that survey at askralphpodcast.com/survey. And listen, your answers will have an impact because they're going to shape how we move forward with the show.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Here's the deal. I need your survey completed by December 10th at midnight, because I'm going to make that drawing on December 11th. And I would love to hear from you. Again, that's at askralphpodcast.com/survey.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Now Melody, I always like to ground ourselves in scripture and your question reminds me of the truth from scripture and it really gets us to that true meaning of Christmas.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: And it's so easy to get caught up in the rigmarole and all the other bluster and stuff. We just lose sight of the true message. And that's why I'm saying today's show, I think this has got to be part of it. Part of our decision point. And this comes from the book of Luke chapter 12, verse 15.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: "Then he said to them, 'Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.'" And I'll tell you what, I think that verse speaks for itself. Think about that for a second. Life does not consist of an abundance of possessions. Listen, we got a lot of stuff.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: We are very fortunate people. And let me tell you, this particular Bible verse is exactly the conversation I had with Mark. So let's get to those practical ways to embrace the joy of the season without emptying your bank account.

Mark Lawley: What do you have for us today?

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Well, Mark, I want to thank you for having me on the podcast. You know, today I want to talk about how not to go broke during the holidays. It's tough, you know? Yeah. We've got this stress of, you know, and it affects everybody. It affects many preppers. It affects everybody. And listen.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: I figured this out at a young age because a lot of people don't know this about me. But when I was eight, my mom and dad split up. Last thing my dad said is he's walking out the door. Son, you're man of the house now. So at eight, I'm man of the house. So mom comes to me and says, you know, how do we make this work?

Ralph Estep, Jr.: How do we do all this? And, you know, at eight years old, I'm trying to figure out how to put Heating oil into that at 12 years old. I'm with my mom at the car dealership, helping her negotiate a car deal. But all of this came down to this financial discussion and it's never too early to start this.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: So I put together some ideas to help people to get through the holidays. To have that holiday that means something but doesn't leave you paying off debts till March or April the next year. That's kind of the whole key to this whole thing, Mark.

Mark Lawley: Very important. We preach this on the podcast, as you've heard before, financial preparedness. And what we're talking about today is preparing for Christmas.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Absolutely. And you know, and the thing that I call it, I'll start off with saying, you know, you have to be strategic about this. Just like we have, if you should have, I should say, you got to have a budget for those routine customer expenses, I think you've got to look at the holidays in that same format.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: You got to have this comprehensive budget. Because if you don't plan, you will fail. I mean, that's just a fact of the matter. You've got to go into this with your eyes wide open, set the expectations, but the best way to do that is start with that budget. And I'll throw a couple of little things into there.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: First thing I'm going to say, build an emergency buffer that you might put together a budget and say, well, we're going to spend this much on the holiday. You probably won't. You're probably going to spend more than that. So I always tell when I'm talking to people on my show, or when I'm meeting with clients, add about 10 to 15%

Ralph Estep, Jr.: in addition to whatever you are going to budget. That way, you've got that long lost aunt that comes in from out of town, or you want to help a needy family out at the last minute. You've got that built into your budget. You've got that little buffer I call it. Another thing I'm going to tell you a great way to really focus on this is have that 24-hour purchase rule.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: And you might be asking Mark, what in the world is Ralph talking about? But look, and this isn't just for the holidays. This is all, all year long. And if you're like me, Mark, you know, that there are times when you see something at the store you're, like, I really should get that. That's something I really need.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: But then if you don't buy it, you go back 24 hours later, you go, you know what, I really didn't need that.

Mark Lawley: Right. Done it many times.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Yeah. So that's one of those things where I think you build that into that same thought process. You put that, that intentional spending plan in place and a lot of people don't like the word budget because budget sounds like it's this huge restriction.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: So lately I've been using this word intentional spending plan. So maybe that's a better way to say it but have that intentional spending plan in place. But here's the catch. A lot of people will do that part, but you've got to track your expenses at the same time, and you've got to do that real time. And what I mean by that is

Ralph Estep, Jr.: I don't care how you do it. Maybe you have a little note in your pocket because it's really easy when you're at the Walmart or at the Target or one of these stores, Oh yeah, I got to get this. Oh yeah. I need wrapping paper. Oh, I need this. But then if you don't keep track of that, then all of a sudden, yeah, you've got a beautiful, you know what we call intentional spending plan or budget, but all of a sudden, you're over that budget.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: You didn't realize it until, I don't know, a week later when you go look at your credit card statement. That's a tough time. The next thing I'm going to talk about is some practical cost cutting strategies. You know, you have a Practical Prepping podcast, so let's talk about some practical cost cutting strategies.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Here's a big, it's a no brainer. It's the big Ralph Duh moment, right? Comparison shop. So everybody doesn't think about this. Just comparison shop. Look at what's-

Mark Lawley: That's just very good of that.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Well, yeah. And you've got to be good at it because see, I think we've fallen in as a culture into this amazon.com thing. Right.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: And we go on the Amazon, we're like, okay, well, this is what it costs, but how many times do you look at well, what's it on Walmart? What's it on this? What's it on that? So this is a great time of year to really do that because a lot of times like black Friday, a lot of times they'll have some sales where you might take advantage of those things.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Now I'm not saying to get sucked into that because I think it's really easy to get sucked into that incentive spending because well, it's black Friday. I got to run to the Walmart and buy a 90 inch TV because I got to have that. But it's a time when you can do some comparison shopping and I really feel like you can save some money.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Another thing I'm going to say, preppers will love this. Look at, look those do it yourself type of gifts. You know, put some ideas, maybe it's a gift exchange. Gift exchanges are great. Because I was, I was funny. I was, I had a conference call earlier with a guy and we were talking about how in his family everybody gives everybody a gift card.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: And I said, what's like a Ponzi scheme. The only person making money on the gift cards is distorted cells because they're making three bucks per gift card. But Mark, if I send you a gift card for 50 bucks and you send me a gift card for 50 bucks, It's a Ponzi scheme. We haven't gotten anywhere.

Mark Lawley: Yeah.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: It's the truth.

Mark Lawley: We had a Christmas one year. We're in, we've about quit, the adults really don't exchange gifts anymore. We sometimes, we'll play dirty Santa or something, put a 20 buck limit on it. You know, fun stuff. But one year we made the rule. You had to make it. You had to make it. So there were baked goods.

Mark Lawley: There were some, one daughter, well, two daughters actually do a lot of this monogramming and stuff. So I got a set of towels with my initials and an Alabama elephant on it, but you had to make it.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: And see, this is a great time for the practical preppers out there. Maybe you make somebody a prep that they could use, you know, use your skills that you're building up in your organization or with your prepping and say, look, you know, we just got through this hurricane.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: One of the things we learned is we needed this or we needed that. We'll make that your Christmas gifts. I think that's a great idea and use those preparedness skills to create value. Because the truth is, we'll talk about this in a few minutes, but you know as well as I do. If I ask you what you got for Christmas four years ago, you'd have no idea.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: But what you do remember are the, the people that you met along the way, and you remember those connections that you made. Well, if somebody gives you some preparedness thing, or they give you a skill or share a skill with you, I think you're more likely to benefit from that in the long run.

Mark Lawley: And I think you'll remember it longer.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I couldn't tell you what my grandparents gave me for Christmas when they were alive, but I could sure tell you what that turkey tasted like that my grandmother started cooking the night before. And I could tell you about how we'd all sit at the kitchen table or the dinner table that night.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: I mean, those are the things that matter. And guess what? They don't cost much. They don't cost much. You'll have a slew of presents under the tree, but nobody remember any of that, but they'll remember those connections. You know, that Aunt Sally that you only saw at Christmas. My grandmother used to, I'll tell you a funny ones, Mark.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: So my grandmother is one of these, she's a Southern lady, right? She was from Bluefield, West Virginia. And she, you know, she, every Christmas it would be, you know, one of these days I'm not going to be here. Grandma have those wood nickels in my eyes. And as a young kid, I'm thinking, what are you talking about?

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Right. She goes, no. And she used to call me Raphy. I was Raphy. And Raphy well, you know, that's what they do for the old people. Cause he, they did this thing. And you might know about this in the South, sitting up with the dead, right. So my grandfather's telling this story. Now this is Christmas. You'll get a kick out of this one.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Right? So Christmas, my grandfather's telling a story, the whole family sitting there. He goes, you know, I remember when my brother Charlie died. He says, you know, we did that sitting up with the dead. He says about two o'clock in the morning, I guess the gas is released in the old Charlie's body. And he stood right up in the bed, sat up right up.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: And he said, people were going right through the doors. But that's some old something. But so my grandmother would break into the sitting up with the dead and we, I mean, we're totally on a tangent here, aren't we? But the wood nickels in my eyes, but so those are the things you remember though. It was those experiences.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: It wasn't the stuff that you got. But let me talk about some of the common financial pitfalls, because this thing, a lot of people find themselves in these traps. And this goes along with that budget at the front end, because there's always some hidden holiday costs that people forget about. So here's one thing I'm going to tell you to do. When you're planning your budget for the holidays, that intentional spending plan, go look at your credit card statements and your bank statements from last year. Starting like, you know, October and look through January.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: And you might remember, Oh, that's right. I forgot. I have to do this or I have to do that. A lot of things people don't think about. Let's say you're an entertainer. You got a lot of people over. Well your electric bill might be more. So you've got to kind of factor that into your thing as well. If you've got some people from out of town coming in to stay with you, you know, there's going to be more lights on, more toilets being flushed.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: I mean, you name it, right? So you've got to factor that into your, to your plan as well. And also those last-minute emergency purposes or purchases. Like I said, your aunt from, you don't really see her, but then all of a sudden, she pops up and you don't want her to go away with not having anything. But you got to learn to budget for those, plan for those, and avoid those debt traps.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Because what I see in my own practice is so many people want to have that experience for their family. They want their kids to have, you know, a million presents under the tree. And then what happens is come January and February, they're, they got a snow shovel on their credit cards trying to figure out how am I going to dig out from this.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: And the sad part of it is like we've talked about, it just, it's a trap and then it becomes a cycle and then you get trapped January, February, March, and April. And then what happens. Then summertime comes around, you want to do some traveling with your family and then you get in that budget trap again. And it's just a cycle that keeps on going over and over.

Mark Lawley: Oh yeah, and Krista's one that would much prefer, wrap up a certificate of something we're going to do and give that to her, let her open that. I say this because he, he doesn't listen to the podcast. He's a teenager, but one of my grandsons is getting a day of flying lessons for Christmas.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: That's very cool. That's something he'll remember the rest of his life.

Mark Lawley: Oh yeah. Someone took him flying and he loved it. And so this guy is going to take him and they'll start with doing a little bit of maintenance. This guy does maintenance on airplanes, so he's going to let him do some of that. And then they'll move to pre-flighting, he'll preflight the airplane, and then they'll go from there and, he'll let, he won't let him land it, that's a little trickier, but a monkey can pretty much take off in an airplane, get up to a certain speed, start pulling back, give it a little bit of right pedal, and you're good to go. But that's what he's getting. He's getting an experience, and Krista and I have done that with the boys before, is give them a certificate for an experience.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: That's a great thing. And you just segued into the next thing I want to talk about Mark. And that's when these things you talk about children or grandchildren, this is a great time to teach kids that financial responsibility. Here's one thing I'm going to tell you. Here's one of the things I learned, I did some research, and it's called the what, need, wear, read gift strategy.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: And basically it works like this. It's got to be something you want, something you need, something you wear and something you read and then you can say to the kid or the grandkid, look, okay, give me an idea of something you want. All right, that works. Give me an idea of something you need. Fantastic. Give me something you wear and then give me something you read because we have these little skulls full of mush, right?

Ralph Estep, Jr.: And they spend so much time on these electronics. Well give them a book. Give them something they can learn from. Give them a copy of the Bible and say, Hey, here's a reading plan or devotional or something like that. But I think if you get kids involved and I even say, hey, listen, get kids involved in the budget planning.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Now you can't do that with toddlers. You can't do that with little youngins, but as they get older, you can start to say, listen, as a family, we're going to set aside this much money for Christmas. What's everybody want to do? Do we want to give gifts? Do we want to take a road trip? Do we want to go give to a needy family?

Ralph Estep, Jr.: What do we want to do? And what that does is it helps the child get to that point of balancing the expectations and the reality of the holiday, because they're going to come to a point one day and you and I went through this, you know what I'm talking about. You get to a certain age, and you don't, might not even get a Christmas gift.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: And it's okay. It's okay. But that's not what it's about anyway, because the greatest gift of all was Jesus Christ in the first place. And once we accept that, I don't care what you give me because I've already got the greatest gift of all. That's just a fact.

Mark Lawley: And one of my daughters said it one day, she said, and this was after they had children and she came to understand that when daddy says, don't spend money on me.

Mark Lawley: He's not kidding. Don't spend your money on me. Let me spend time with you and your family. Let's bring all of our family together and just spend that time. Give me something good to eat and I'm good for the day.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Because those are the things that you will never be able to replace. You know, those, it's just the truth.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: And another thing you could do is maybe this is a good time to teach your kids some preparedness type stuff during Christmas, you know, make a family plan or do something like that. I think it's a great idea for our practical prepping listeners to say, hey, this is a great time to teach some skills.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: You know, you don't need stuff like, what are you going to do with stuff? You know,

Mark Lawley: I taught them one day we were down there, and I taught them to build a fire without matches or a lighter. There you go. So, you know, we're getting, we're going to have them. We're teaching them.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Yep. And you know, and I think the biggest thing that we are alluding to sort of out saying it is there's the social expectations, Mark. I call it the social media highlight film.


Ralph Estep, Jr.: Because when you look at Facebook and YouTube and all this kind of all you see is the highlight films. It's like watching a sporting event, right? When you go, when you watch the news after a sporting event, they show you the highlights. Well, what do you think social media is doing? They're showing you the highlights.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: They're not showing you that credit card bill that comes in January. I'm just saying they're not. And you know, and it's sad because we have these, our kids have these unrealistic expectations. They have this, they don't understand the family dynamics that go into this. And it's, and social media is a huge influencer on that.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: We can lie about it, but it's the truth. And this is a great time to set those healthy boundaries and say to your kids, look, yeah, I see the Jones is down the street. Oh, they've got more Christmas lights and than us mom. And they've got three Christmas trees, and they got this. And then that's the time when you pull your kid aside and go, well, let me tell you how much those things cost.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: And the kid looked at you like you're crazy. It costs that much. Yeah. Did you want us to spend that on you? Or do you want us to spend it on those decorations? Well, I'll take it on me. You know, I'm just saying, but like you can take advantage of that because kids, the thing is, and we're all get caught in that, right?

Ralph Estep, Jr.: We get caught in that highlight film mentality and we have a society that pushes that because they don't want to push the real message of Christmas. I'm not trying to get dark, Mark, but they don't want to. They don't want to talk about the true gifts of Christmas. It's much easier to avoid that by showing all these beautiful things you can get. But it's just a pagan, it's a pagan response to a Christian holiday, which leads me to really the main part of what I want to say today.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: The thing we've got to do is we've got to have this faith-based perspective. We got to keep Christ central to Christmas. That's the whole point of Christmas. Christmas was never intended to be a gift exchange. It wasn't intended to be this Ponzi scheme. It's a time for us to look at biblical principles like stewardship, like you talked about.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: It's creating those meaningful traditions. It's those times that you will never take back. You know, like I said, as a kid, I remember those times more than anything that anybody ever got me. It was, you know, the times of grandmom and grand popper. To be honest with you, I kind of grew up in a crazy family where my dad had two older brothers, they were twins and my dad was the younger, 15 years younger. Well, he didn't really talk to his brothers too much. There was some weird family dynamics, but at Christmas, everybody was getting along. It was this magic of Christmas, you know, everybody's all together and you forgot about the petty little nonsense, but it's those traditions that really matter. That's the real key to it. It really is.

Mark Lawley: I absolutely agree with you and that's why it's important to us to be with our family, not to necessarily give them something. That's

Ralph Estep, Jr.: what it's about. It's the truth, Mark, because you think about it, I go back to that Ponzi scheme thing. If you spend a hundred dollars on gifts and then your brother spends a hundred dollars on gifts, and your sister spends a hundred dollars on gifts, everybody spends a hundred dollars on gifts.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: And at the end of the day, you got a bunch of stuff you don't want. I mean, let's just be honest. I'm not saying that people don't have nice intentions. There are people, my stepmother, my dad's second wife is a great gift giver. She thinks these things through. She starts ordering in March and April and May for that Christmas gift.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: And she's great with it. And it's wonderful that she does that. But the truth of the matter is, you know, we could have a dinner together and get the same level of value from that. And the problem is

Mark Lawley: Well,

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Yeah, absolutely. And the problem is he, the holidays become this ability for people to unwind their finances.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: I mean, it's like, it's almost like they're get out of jail free pass. They think well, you know in January I'll come, I'll get that tax refund in March or April. That'll pay off this Christmas debt and they lose sight of the importance of this is a great time to think about building that long term financial stability. You know, there are so many lessons and we do a terrible job in this country of teaching our kids good financial stewardship.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: We just do. We tell them they can have everything they want, they can be everything they want to be. And guess what? The reality is that's just not true. But this is an opportunity to pull your kids or your grandkids aside or some nephews and nieces and say, look, here's the reality of Christmas. There's a finite amount of resources and we can decide how we're going to do those.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: And look, one of the greatest gifts you can give your family is build financial security. You know, maybe you say, look, going to budget $3,000 for Christmas, but guess what? If we decide as a family to only spend a thousand, we could put 2000 in that vacation fund for next summer.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: And then maybe we take a trip to Disney World or wherever your heart leads you, you know. Go to the Adirondacks or the Ozarks or pick a place. I don't really care, but you understand what I'm saying? Oh, yes. And that is so much more valuable than the junk we're going to throw out, you know, the Pez dispensers and all the other crap.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Did you, I remember as a kid, we used to get those books of they're not lollipops, lifesavers. Remember the old books are lifesavers. Yes. I didn't, I was a fat kid. I didn't need all that candy. You know, now I'm a type two diabetic cause I ate all that candy. I blame the, I blame Christmas for that. Way thing, Mark.

Mark Lawley: Well, I'm type two as well, but I don't think it was the lifesavers that got me later on. I haven't thought about that 10 rolls inside that book.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: You remember that thing? Oh, I remember. I remember. I never really liked butterscotch, but I remember there's always one roll of butterscotch. Like, I liked the multicolored ones.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Those were cool. But then butterscotch ones, I was like, yeah, you know what? Just keep that one. I'm good without that one.

Mark Lawley: Well, I did like the, and do like butterscotch, but as a kid, give me five boxes of BBs, you know, five rolls of BBs that cost a quarter. Oh, absolutely. Or four, spend a dollar on me, give me four and that's hours of fun.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Oh, absolutely. That's just the truth. So I got a special gift for all the listeners too. Like, I'm not going to, I got a Christmas gift for all your listeners.

Mark Lawley: Well, great. Tell us about it.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Yeah, I've created this document called surviving the holidays without going broke. And it's something you can go and get right from my website.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Just go to askralphpodcast.com/practical. Again, that's askralphpodcast.com/practical. See if I say it three times, Mark, it'll be right to third time. But anyway, you go there.

Mark Lawley: We're going to put that in the episode notes so they can go to the, to the show notes and they can just click on it and go straight to you.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: And I know people like to be prepared. So this is the way to prepare to not go broke during the holidays. It just breaks down more of what you and I talked about today, Mark, and gives you that roadmap of how to get ahead. Now I'm going to encourage people to listen to my show because every day on my show, I talk about ways to improve your finances, but the cool thing about my show is I balance that with faith.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: It's not just, well, go do this because look, here's the truth, Mark. I can make you a scoundrel and make you really wealthy. That's just the truth. Like I got tools that can make you do that. But see at someday you're going to stand before Christ. He's going to say, what did you do with your sorry self?

Ralph Estep, Jr.: So my goal in my podcast, my mission field is to help people be able to say, here's what I did with what you gave me. You know, the great, like I said, I'll leave you with this Mark as part of one things I want to talk about. Think about people say to me all the time, what does it mean to be a Christian?

Ralph Estep, Jr.: I got this little scenario. I'm going to walk you through Mark. Cause this old Baptist preacher said this to me one time, he says, here's how simple Christianity is. And it's apropos for what we're talking about today. He says, picture Christmas morning. You got a two story house. You and your sister get up.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: It's early. And your parents said, look, you're not allowed to run down to that Christmas tree until we're up. So you're waiting there with patience. You see the Christmas tree down at the bottom of the steps and the lights are up and all this kind of stuff. There's presents all around it. And finally your parents get out of bed at the crack of four in the morning, probably right because they're up early because they know you're up.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: But Christianity is this simple. It's the, the presents are under the tree, do you open them or not? Christianity is really that simple. People make it complicated. But this is a great time to reinforce that with your children and your grandchildren. The greatest gift is do you open what Christ has already given you?

Ralph Estep, Jr.: And I just think that's a great analogy to use at Christmas because there's an opportunity to teach the true value of the greatest gift you can ever get was given to you. You didn't earn it. You didn't do anything to deserve it. It was just put under the tree and the only thing you've got to do is open it.

Mark Lawley: Open it. Awesome. Awesome, Ralph. Tell folks how they can get in touch with you. A lot of our listeners may not know. Although you've probably heard us mention Ralph at times in our podcast, Ralph is an accountant. He is a financial guru. I think he's been an accountant for 112 years. No, I mean literally what 30?

Ralph Estep, Jr.: No, literally I started doing accounting work when I was eight and a lot of people don't believe that. My dad's an accountant too. So I grew up now, you got to understand, I had a warped childhood, my friend. So dinner table talk at my house was talking about 1040s and tax returns.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: And can you believe this client did this? And by the time I graduated to be a nine years old, I was copying tax returns. Then at 12, I think I was the secretary because my dad's secretary was out for the summer. So I'm the secretary, but no, I've been doing this forever. And the thing is like, this is my mission field for me. This is what I do. It's what, God has given me a gift. And that gives

Mark Lawley: All right. If somebody sets up a consult with you and we'll put the link to that on the show notes as well. What can you do for them? I know you meet across Zoom. You've got clients all over the world. Absolutely. What can you do for one of our listeners who is maybe struggling with their finances? What can you do?

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Yeah, maybe you're living paycheck to paycheck. You feel like you're taking three steps forward only to get shoved four steps back. Listen, I've been there. I know what that feels like. What I do is you book a call with Ralph. You go to askralph.com. Just go right to there. You'll see at the top of the thing, click a book a call with Ralph.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: The first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to talk to you about where you are right now, because it all starts with that initial assessment. Where are you? There's facts. It's not emotion. You know, for example, Mark, if you and I were meeting, I'd say, okay, Mark. What do you have? Okay. Ralph, here are the things that I own.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Okay. Mark, what do you owe? Okay. Here are my liabilities. Okay. What are your income sources? Okay. What are your expense sources? We sit down and we, like I said, we do it through zoom. It's fantastic. But we have that encounter where we talk about the realities of where we are. No judgment. It's just reality of where we are.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: And then the second step was we start to talk about, okay, what are your goals? I call them your big hairy, audacious goals. What are those things you want to get to? You know, because here's a simple truth. If you study Maslow, it's the hierarchy of needs, it's very simple process. And basically what it says is if you can't get past the lower-level needs, Lower level needs, food, clothing, and shelter.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Real simple example. If you're struggling to get to figure out how to pay for food, clothing, and shelter, you are never going to get past that. You're never going to get to that point of why am I here? What is my purpose? And those are your goals. So we, so what I do is I work with you and we build this intentional spending plan about how we can take you to where you want to be.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: And everybody's different. There's no cookie cutter approach to this. There is no one size fits all. Mark, your goals and Krista's goals may be very congruent because you're married, but the person that lives next door, the prepper, who's watching this right now, their goals might be totally different.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: You know, their goal might be, look, I want to die penniless, but I want to sure have a good time till I get there. Or they, maybe they've got grandkids. They want to prepare for them. Maybe they want to set up a college funding plan. So I sit down with you. I talk about what are those goals? We create a financial roadmap.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: It's kind of like if I said to you, Mark, look, you live in Alabama and you want to drive to New York city. Well, guess what you're going to do. You're going to start off with the starting point and an end point. You're going to put it in the GPS or you're going to go get a map, right? So that's what I'm talking about.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: You create that financial roadmap, because if you don't have a roadmap, you're never going to end up in New York city. And if you don't have that roadmap, you're never going to get to those, those big hairy audacious goals that you want. So we create that intentional planning plan. And then the big part, a lot of people miss out on this.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: I create accountability because look, you can have the best plan in the world. You know, they say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I can give you all kinds of great ideas, but if you don't implement them, guess what? They're useless. Yeah. So I come alongside you, I put my arm around you and I say, brother, here's what we're going to do.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: We're going to work on this together. It's going to be an accountability program. And then we assess where you are because look. Things happen in life. Unexpected things happen. I was just talking to a lady the other day. She called me to set up a meeting. She goes, Ralph, I just found out my car engine blew up.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: It's going to cost me $3000. And I said to her, that's terrible. She goes, but Ralph, I've been listening to you for almost a year. And guess what? It's not scaring me because I have that emergency fund. I've got that go to plan. So that's what I help you do is create those go to plans, create that what if scenarios, you know, like you guys talk about stuff happens.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: That's true. But if you have a plan and you can get through those stuff. So that's what I do, Mark, look. Every single person is different, but I'm going to tell you this. There is hope. You're never too far gone. You can start small. Look, even if you, let's just talk for a second about building that emergency fund.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Right? A lot of people say, Ralph, I'm never able to put away money. I said, can you put away a dollar a day? Can you put away 10 bucks a week because that's where it starts and then you build that habit and that's what it all comes down to. It's building that habit. So Mark, to answer your simple question with a big answer, I help people realize their dreams.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: I help people find that peace, that financial peace, because we live in a crazy world and there's only so many things we can control. We can't control the government for the most part. We can go vote and I encourage people to do that. We can do all those types of things, but one thing we can do is we can manage our financials in our own home.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: That's something that if you're a prepper, you understand what I'm saying, because you can't control when the tornado is going to hit. You can't control when a hurricane or the flood, but what you can control is how you're prepared for that. And that's what I do. I help people get prepared to build that plan of what they want to do with their life.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: And the thing is, a lot of people are hesitant because I do charge for that. This is what I do. I give you my podcast for free.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Listen, I'm going to say one more thing to your listeners. Every Tuesday night I do what's called the Ask Ralph Show Live. And what I do is every Tuesday night at 7 P.M. Eastern standard time, I go live and you can go get to that by going to askralphpodcast.com/live. And it's a great place to get your question answered. It's a great place to be a part of our community, but here's the even better thing. Just this week, every week now I'm going to give a hundred dollar Amazon gift card to a lucky listener that joins the ask Ralph live show. So maybe you need a couple extra bucks for the holidays.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Well it's a great way to get to it. So join our show. I'll give you a code during the show. Tell you exactly how to get in that drawing, but every week I'm going to give away a hundred dollars as an Amazon gift card, because look, this is my mission field. I want to help people. I want to answer your questions.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: So I figured, Hey, why not? Let's do this. It's the time of year where we can be a blessing to one another. So I encourage you. Again, that's at askralphpodcast.com/live. And even if you don't win the gift card, I'm there to answer your questions free of charge. You can hit me with your best questions.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: I call them the zingers. My buddy, Craig gave me a good zinger a couple of weeks ago on the first live show night. So, I've been doing this for a while. I'm a little, what they call that long in the tooth as they say, right? So I've been doing this a time or two. So here's the best part. My grandfather taught me this.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: He said, if you don't know the answer, it's okay to say, I don't know. And guess what, Mark? Sometimes I don't know, but here's the thing Ralph is going to tell you, talking in the third person, cause I've lost my mind at this point. But what I'm going to tell you is I will find the answer. And a lot of times with the live show, one of the real reasons I'm doing it is to grow the show and to also answer questions more in depth later on.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: So again, I encourage you listeners, download my free gift. That's at askralphpodcast.com/practical, and then also join our live show. Every Tuesday night at 7 PM Eastern time. And it's simple. It looks like, it's like joining the TV show. It's real simple. You do it on YouTube. We do it on Rumble. We do it on Facebook insider and we do it on,

Ralph Estep, Jr.: I'm trying to think, Oh, LinkedIn is another one. But if you go to that site, I gave you the askralphpodcast.com/live, it'll take you right to it. And I'd love to see you.

Mark Lawley: Well, Ralph, you'll see me tomorrow night if Lord willing, the creek doesn't rise and all of that good stuff, but yeah, I missed last week.

Mark Lawley: I was having some medical testing, so I was there on the initial one and I missed last week. I'm looking forward to this week. And it's not the hundred dollars that's bringing me. I got you. When I. It's the information. I appreciate that,

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Mark, you know, and like I said, this is my mission field.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: This is what my passion is and God's given me gifts and I'm able to use those gifts to help others. That's my whole plan in life at this point.

Mark Lawley: Well, again, we appreciate you being with us and we will see you tomorrow night.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Thank you, Mark.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: What a great time Mark and I had. I hope you enjoyed it as well. Let me ask you. Are you losing sleep of wondering how you'll afford everything on your holiday list this year? Tired of starting every new year buried under a mountain of holiday debt? Want to create that magical Christmas memories without the financial stress that usually comes with them?

Ralph Estep, Jr.: Discover peace of mind with my free surviving the holidays without going broke guide. It's the same I got to talk about it in my interview with Mark. I'm going to give you a proven budget system that actually works. I'm going to share with you some smart shopping strategies to slash your costs. I'm going to show you ways to create magical memories without maxing out your credit cards. I'm also going to share some tips for teaching kids gratitude in this crazy gimme world.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: And the central part of the whole thing is how to keep faith and family at the center of your celebration. As I said, with the Mark, don't let January's credit card bill steal your holiday joy. Download your free guide now at askralphpodcast.com/christmas. And make this the most meaningful and dare I say, affordable holiday season yet. Your stress-free holiday season starts here. Again,

Ralph Estep, Jr.: that's askralphpodcast.com/christmas. Now tomorrow we're going to tackle another important topic. And that's using your 401k to purchase a home. You don't want to miss this crucial discussion about the pros and cons of this significant financial decision. And as I close today, remember. My passion is to help you achieve financial success.

Ralph Estep, Jr.: I want to see you live out your dreams, and I want to see you grow in your faith. And I know working together, we can master your finances from a Christian perspective. So as I always say, stay financially savvy out there and God bless you.

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