Hey guys, how's it going?
Welcome to this episode of Technically Short.
And in this episode, I got to sit down with my friend Ed Newell and we talk about something
a little fun.
We talk about finances.
I get it.
Sounds boring, but guess what?
It's not.
We sat down and we talked about how it applies to your calling.
We thought and talk about the importance of budgeting and how we prioritize what to budget
for.
And then towards the end of the episode, we actually get to talk about a little bit of
a personal things as well.
So guys get your notebooks out.
This is important thing to understand and know.
And one more thing real quick.
You might want to keep your eye out.
It's not ready yet, but we're going to have merch again.
Working on setting up an online store.
So keep your eye out.
All right.
See you in there.
All right.
Wow, that was loud.
Hey guys, how's it going?
So in this episode, I got a special guest.
I mean, we say that for every single guest, but this guy, he's a great friend.
He's a mentor of mine spiritually, financially and in life.
He's the head pastor of amplify church, a husband to his wife, Katie, a father to his
great kids, Harrison and Piper and the father of technically short ed new.
How's it going?
Calling me the father of technically short is really, really weird.
I don't even know the nickname, but yes, I guess I helped to spark the podcast.
That is true.
So I just thought of that because the only reason I thought of that was because of you.
I've said this multiple times where I told people that this podcast was your idea.
I think you said it on the first, maybe the first five episodes.
I think you slipped it in.
Hey, thanks Ed, Noel for recommending me do this podcast.
I feel like it was in every episode.
But with that little intro though, for those who don't know you, who is that?
Yeah, I mean, that was a really nice little introduction you just gave.
I don't know.
I feel like I'm just a guy.
I don't mean that as like fake humility or anything.
I just feel like I'm a guy trying to follow Jesus.
I am a pastor.
That's my full-time job, so I am in ministry by vocation.
But honestly, I really think that's just what I choose to do right now and where I feel
like God has me right now.
I don't necessarily know that even that might is my forever thing.
I know my forever thing is definitely to be a husband to Katie and a father to Harrison
and Piper.
Love those two kids.
My daughter is full-time special needs.
So there's some things about that that bring a uniqueness to our life.
But I really like technology.
I really like exploring new tech things.
I'm definitely an Apple fanboy.
I'm a Tesla fanboy.
So I have those quirks about me as well.
Yeah, you walked up here into the studio and you were like, wow.
I am on site and the technically short podcast studio set up.
Whatever you want to call it.
I'm very impressed.
It is a quality production setup you got going on here.
I appreciate that.
I was like, oh, you were saying all that.
I was kind of just standing around awkwardly because this is just what I'm used to.
Other people come up, they're like, oh, wow, you have a lot of stuff.
A lot of tech and a lot of screens.
I also just appreciate your whole vibe here because I'm married now.
Obviously, I love this season of my life.
I got a house and got a wife, got two kids and I live on a cul-de-sac.
I got this little American dream thing going on.
But I look back very fondly on my season of singleness with no kids and living in an
apartment, one room, all my stuff in one room.
I look back very fondly on that season of my life because it was extremely formative
for me in a lot of ways.
Honestly walking into here is a little bit like that because it just reminds me of a
former season.
I guess even for you in this season, I'm sure you have goals for your life in every way.
But to be thankful for the season you're in because there's something about living in
this little one bedroom thing and your whole life is right here.
There's something valuable to that.
There's control over your life.
There's peace.
There's quiet.
I don't have a lot of that anymore as a dad of two.
So value the things that you got going on right now because one day you won't have that.
You'll value what you have in the future but you might miss some things about this.
I remember, this is way off topic, but I remember whenever I was, I've talked about this on
the podcast before, I think, whenever I left college, at that point I was living with a
girlfriend a few months after college.
I remember thinking, I'm never going to have a place to myself if this keeps going.
That's not why it ended.
It ended for many different reasons.
I just remember thinking that.
Now I'm like, I've lived by myself for multiple years by myself and with roommates and got
those experiences.
I am thankful for them because now I'm in a position in my life where I'm like, man,
I love having roommates now because I'm having the stay at home job.
I like having roommates or a roommate right now and who has people over and I'm inviting
people and I invite people over.
Otherwise, I don't see people too often and I talk to people every now and then through
teams but that's pretty much it.
Then also besides the Wednesday and Sunday thing, but let's get back into the actual
episode.
We mentioned earlier, we mentioned this podcast was generally your idea.
You remember that conversation, why did you bring it up?
Why did you think this was a good idea?
You obviously, for long time listeners, they know that you had a cohost for the start of
this and is also within the name of this episode of Sean, our mutual quaint, Sean Short.
You and Sean lived together for a period of time and I knew both of you very well.
I remember having discussions with you guys every week about getting updates from both
of your perspective about a conversation that happened at your home that I found very hilarious
because both of you are in very different seasons of your life.
Both of you have very different world views and just you bring different things to the
conversation and it could be the most mundane dialogue and the most mundane topic but listening
to you guys recount it was very hilarious to me.
My original ideation for the podcast was actually more of a humor based podcast.
I wanted to be a fly on the wall to your conversations and obviously you've taken it so much further
than even I did.
I think it's generous to call me the father but I really had no vision for where you've
taken it and so I think kudos to you and Sean for how you spun this to be something that's
really inspirational to a lot of people.
I appreciate that.
I think maybe a better way to be called you the planter is you're planted the seed.
Yeah, I like that.
Because there was time before I was like, I want to start a podcast.
I thought about it before he brought it up and I never thought about doing it with Sean.
I was like, huh.
I brought that up to him a few weeks later after you said it or maybe that same day.
I don't remember.
He was like, yeah, let's do it.
I was like, well, and then it took us a few months after that.
He was like, well, let me wait.
Let's get into the right spot and then eventually we were just like, let's just do it.
Because we would joke a lot about it.
We would have a 30 minute conversation one day arguing back and forth.
What was it?
It was about something so dumb.
The one that comes to mind for me that I think might have also made an appearance in episode
one was does a air mattress compare to a regular mattress?
It was just the dumbest conversation.
But maybe again, listening to you guys talk about that takes me back to this time in my
life where I sat around in my young 20s having stupid conversations with my friends.
That's what I really particularly enjoyed.
But again, where you've taken it is extremely profound and far better than I could have
ever imagined.
It would be cool at some point to have a comedy based podcast where it's just pure satire
the whole time.
Maybe not satire, I don't know.
But I like the, that's my humor though.
But with Sean, it would just be whatever it would be.
But one day, he should be possibly available at some point in the near future.
I'm not sure yet.
Come back Sean.
Yeah.
We miss you buddy.
It might already be in the title of this episode with along with your name, there's probably
something that says along with the word of finances in the title.
But you're definitely somebody that I've talked to you about financial discipline and financial
issues I've had in the past before.
And I even said in the intro that you're like a person I consider a mentor in the financial
space, at least in my life.
And there's like the, this podcast in particular is a provide people with tools to pursue their
calling.
And I was just curious what you would have to say about how your finances play into that.
Yeah.
I mean, I think, I think finances are huge and people don't like to talk about money.
We don't like to think about it a whole lot to be honest with you.
But the whole world wants to talk about money.
The whole world wants you to spend your money in various ways, buy their product, to invest
in XYZ.
And the world is not afraid to tell you how to spend your money.
And most of the time, I think people do a poor job of, I don't know, even just managing
their own finances.
And typically their bank account at the end of the month will tell them where their money
went.
Where I think every single person should have a very different approach, a complete 180
approach to be honest, you should be telling your money where it's going.
And the only way I know to do that is to know when money is coming in and where your money
is going to be going out.
And you have to be extremely diligent to manage that.
No one likes doing that.
Like I don't know that, well actually, I do kind of like budgeting.
I'm a little weird of a weird guy.
And I do think there are some people that might like the concept of budgeting.
But a lot of people don't.
And you have, even at work, turning in receipts and managing expenses, it's like, oh, that's
something I have to do at work.
It's like, no, actually you should be doing that at home too.
Because you should be managing every single dollar that is under your name.
And the truth is, you can Google this, but every time there's like a study done, it's
like money comes up as the number one stressor in people's lives all the time.
It is always the number one thing.
I think it's something over 70% of Americans believe that money is their number one stressor
in their life.
So it's extremely common that this is a major stress factor for your life.
And so if you are going to manage your life well, if you're going to pursue your calling,
if you're going to chase anything that is worthwhile in this life, why not become successful
at managing something that could easily take you out, easily disrupt everything, easily
run you off course.
Because if you don't have your finances under control, it is really going to inhibit your
ability to pursue the things that you need to pursue.
And if it is going to be the number one stress indicator for over 70% of Americans, then
I think it just, it continually proves in and of itself that, man, if you could be in
that 30% where it's not a stress indicator, like it's not a stressor in your life, I feel
like you just got a jumpstart over 70% of the population that you're interacting with
on an everyday.
Because you don't have this one thing hanging over your head.
But it's going to, man, it's going to give you the ability to chase after your goals.
It's going to give you freedom to pursue the things you want to do.
It's going to give you the ability to pursue your relationships in a healthy way because
you're not concerned about the money side of things.
Man, if it is a stressor, it's going to improve your mental health because you're not going
to be having this thing just nagging your mind all the time.
So yeah, I think it is a foundational aspect of everybody's life that needs to be managed
well.
And so it's not necessarily just your calling.
Your entire life is kind of built on your ability to manage your finances well.
And so if you have any dreams, any aspirations, this is just an aspect of it that you need
to have good control over.
Thank you for pointing that out.
It's like you pointed out, it's not just for the calling, that's not the only reason to
manage your finances.
And that was, I don't think that was the purpose of the question, but that you pointed out,
the bigger picture of managing your finances is getting your life in order.
Yeah, it is.
And once you take that step towards your calling, there are just super practical things that
you will need money for.
Like anybody can, for free, find leadership podcasts like this, read leadership books,
we'll talk about those later.
But even buying a book costs money, right?
If you want to pursue formal education for whatever your calling is, there's going to
be money required for that.
There's certain tools that are necessary to support your calling.
I know how much you believe in this podcast.
I know what you said a few episodes ago, you won a thousand subscribers.
And so investing in the microphone I'm speaking into right now is an investment you made into
this, right?
That required resource, that required money.
So there's just some practicality to it, but it's bigger than even the practicality.
It's really stabilizing this massive area of your life so that it does not consume your
mind in a negative way and really take you out before you even have the ability to chase
down something you're passionate about.
Yeah, wow.
That's a really good point because of the, I don't know, I just really enjoy.
I spend too much time sometimes on my budget as well.
And I feel like I think we both use every dollar.
And I say too much time because sometimes I'll get too nitty gritty and then I'll spend
like, I've spent like two hours just kind of like try to get the numbers right.
And every dollar being a tool, an app website that we use, yes.
And I really enjoy that app.
I mean, I'm a developer so I notice the bugs and I put them into their feedback sometimes.
But it's overall, I just enjoy having somewhere that syncs all my stuff together.
I've used other platforms before.
I used Mint before that, which is just another budgeting application.
And I think I just moved every dollar.
Whenever I was part time with the church, I got the Ramsey Plus subscription that you
got to provide to all the employees for a year and that was awesome.
And I kept it.
I read up every time.
I want to talk to you, we'll talk about credit cards a little bit later, but I don't think
I have a question for that, but I kind of want to after listening to the Brainless episode,
especially kind of want to talk about it because I've heard you talk about it multiple times
with me as well.
Just think about the Ramsey mindset.
I don't know, we'll talk about it later.
But that's like showing off.
Will you have something?
No, I will say, yeah, we'll get into credit cards.
But I will say about the budgeting tools and apps that you use and we'll get into this
maybe in a second more.
But I actually don't use every dollar for all of its full value.
I don't have a paid subscription to it.
I use the free version of it.
And I use a really adapted model of it.
The only reason I highly recommend people use an app to use a paid version of it where
it syncs all your stuff, I think that is probably the easiest thing for most people.
I have evolved to just having my own custom Excel spreadsheet that I've created over time
with multiple tabs and it's very complex.
And I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to somebody because it takes more involvement
to do it.
And I very much do geek out over it.
The only thing we use every dollar for is for my wife and I to have a shared place to
put in receipts and manage only actually a small handful of line items in our overall
budget.
Because the truth is the majority of the budgets and actually I would say for the people listening,
the majority of your budget will be relatively automated expenses.
For things that are happening fairly routinely that you can easily estimate and approximate
for your budget.
But then you have these other things that you spend money on that are hard to approximate.
How much money you spend on eating out, for example, that might fluctuate greatly.
But for us, we set a goal around that and every dollar helps us keep to that goal.
And so I get 50 bucks a month to spend on eating out.
Katie gets 50 bucks a month to spend on eating out.
That is set up in every dollar.
When she gets it, she knows when her 50 bucks is up, her 50 bucks is up.
So we kind of manage there and I pull that data into the spreadsheet as needed.
Okay.
No, that, I mean, that definitely sounds like a, I mean, I hear that I'm like, man, that's
like a hobby.
The way you do it.
I mean, I do it on the, I do it because I manage it just because I like having the budget,
like having like the structure of my, I think that's why you baseline why you do it.
But then you, you go like an extra level, which is not bad.
Nothing wrong with that.
Yeah.
Because I, you know, my overall budget document, I have a, I have a whole tab where I'm tracking
our incomes and what is our specific salary?
What, how much are we spending to retirement and taxes and health expenses?
And I'm looking, I have another tab that's all about our insurance and taxes.
I have another tab that's about our savings and the various money I'm putting in the different
savings accounts, but I'm also tracking my emergency savings there.
And then also another tab tracking my total net worth, cause I just want to know I'm tracking
all my different things that value my net worth, but this is super extreme for me.
And because this has become a hot, I think this is why I become a financial mentor to
you and why you didn't have me speaking about this is cause I am a very, I am nerd about
it.
I'm a nerd about it, but you do not have to be at this level.
I think for most people getting to where you're at, which is to have an app where it's pulling
in all of your expenditures into one place so you can see them and organize them and
track them to know where your money's going.
I think is, is a really good start.
And even if you just start like with, like if you, if you just, I want to like check
out one with the free version.
And I think like that one, I, I you pay, I have it paid because it's, it's sinks all
of my transactions.
And I find that really simple to then I'd like, I don't cause it's simple advice it
for me and I can afford to pay for it every year.
But if it's something that like, you can't, I was like, I can't afford it.
Cause I think it's $130 a year.
If you can for every, for every, or the Ramsey plus subscription without you get all the
videos and like, and all the other stuff, if you guys want to try it out for free, like
now you want to set up the line items.
They have like videos, they even have like, they even have videos online that you can
go and follow through if like you've never set up a budget before and you want to know
how to use their software, the user software.
I'm sure others, I'm sure other, um, uh, softwares have that too.
But um, when it comes to your budgeting, um, I, I, this was something I struggled with
in the beginning of my budget.
Uh, when, at least whenever I moved to every dollar and they have all the different categories,
uh, I guess mint had that too, but like, I remember this specifically when I was using
every dollar was a prioritization of what to budget for.
Um, so like, and so like, how do you guys, how do you do that?
How do you and Katie do that?
Yeah, that's, that's an interesting question.
That's not how I read when you, when you provided these questions to me, it's not actually how
I perceive that question.
How did you think about it?
I, I was perceiving it of, um, more, more, more complex and yeah, well, how you, how
you just led me makes way more sense.
But I think I would just make an extension of something I already said is like, you have
to understand that your total amount of resources in order to figure out, do, does my life,
do my goals align with my finances?
A lot of people have very big goals that don't align with their present finances.
Right.
And so they might need to adjust that.
I even think there's certain levels of risk that just comes along with everyday life and
how you spend your money and use your money that you need to be able to understand risk
management with how you're spending your money.
And even, even something like, uh, long-term sustainability, like you might be able to
go out and for a season spend more than you're making if you got some in savings, but you
might know that that can't last forever.
So there's certain strategies around prioritization that came to mind when you first asked that.
Okay.
However, the way you just kind of led me into the question, I think kind of leads it to
really how to, how to structure a budget from the very beginning.
Right.
And we, we are both men of faith.
And so I do take a certain approach to this that, you know, might not be consistent for
someone who doesn't, isn't maybe a practicing Christian.
So for me, the simplest way that I prioritize expenses and the, my, my money that's coming
in would be to give 10% away, save 10% and spend 80.
That is the, that is the simplest budget that I would recommend to someone.
And so I want to make sure I'm giving 10% of my income away.
You can say all 10% like could go to your local church, but you can also say, Hey, 8%
of that's going to my church and 2% of that is going towards, um, I don't know, a lot
other generosity endeavors that I'm pursuing.
Right.
And we also have children that we sponsor through like compassionate or national that
that comes out.
Now we put that on top of the 10% we give to the local church, but that's just from
my personal conviction.
But I would say for the, for the average person, I would, it's specifically someone that, you
know, calls them some of a Christian, I would center your life around giving away 10% of
your income in, in generous endeavors.
Conversely, then I would say save 10% and that would be constantly trying to set aside
10% and that would be in, in total.
So that might, some of that might be your emergency savings.
Some of that might be your retirement savings.
So it can fall into different saving buckets, which we can talk about more about, but a
total of my income, I want to be saving around 10%.
I'll be honest.
There have been seasons in my life where I wasn't saving 10%.
I was always giving 10%, but sometimes I was low as 5% or 6% just because whatever was
going on in that season of my life, I couldn't afford to save 10%.
I don't think I ever went below 5%, but my goal is always 10.
And then if you really get your finances under control, I challenge people to try and save
20.
And if you can be in a place where you're saving 20% consistently, man, your long-term
financial health is going to be so far surpass your peers.
It'll be absolutely wild.
But that is, that's long-term strategy.
Again, I'm not even there yet.
I'd have to do some math on to how much I'm actually saving at the moment, but yeah, I
like to try and save at least 10% and then spend 80%.
And how you prioritize where that money goes, that feels fairly easy because you have your
mandatory expenses.
You got rent, you got insurance costs, you got gas money.
There's a few things at the very top that I got to spend money on just for my life to
be sustaining.
And things that are going to be at the bottom of that list are going to be what I personally
call voluntary expenses.
Voluntary expenses tend to be things like fast food, eating out, miscellaneous expenditures,
like experiences, fun, things like that.
And those have to take a backseat to my rent or groceries.
So those feel identifying that prioritization probably would be obvious to anybody.
However, controlling your ability to actually follow your prioritization is where it gets
hard.
Because anybody could tell you that spending money on rent is more important than my clothes.
However, there's a lot of people that really struggle to not spend money on more clothes,
more shoes, more stuff.
And that's where they get in trouble when then they actually don't have the money to
pay for the things they need.
Yeah, because my issue whenever I started my budget was I realized it later that I was
budgeting for such niche topics.
For me, I like to keep things basic.
So it was like, this is for eating out and then this is for spending at stores.
And then this, like 50 bucks goes to that, 50 bucks goes to this, and then 50 bucks goes
to this other personal thing.
And then I was wondering why I wasn't putting as much money as I wanted to in my savings
as I was looking at what I was actually budgeting for.
I was like, oh, well then I'll just mush all those into one personal miscellaneous budget
item.
I think I budget like $200 a month for just all that personal miscellaneous stuff.
And then I have a baseline amount for my income right now of what I want to put in my savings.
Yeah, I think that's the way to do it.
Same thing, if you try to get too granular with it, then you'll lose your mind.
You'll never be able to keep up with it.
Now there are certain voluntary expenses I have that I do know hit every month, like getting
my hair cut.
I want to get my hair cut every month, but if I was really cut for money, I'll figure
out a way to cut my own hair.
So I actually consider my haircut a voluntary expense, but it hits every month.
So I do specifically budget for that.
But then, yeah, fast food, miscellaneous expenses, fun things, those all kind of get wrapped
in the one for me too.
Okay.
I do have one here.
I'm pretty sure I wrote this after the fact, after I sent you the questions.
I'm just kind of curious what your answer would be.
I don't even know if there is an answer.
But for the people that you already have a budget set up, they're doing it well, and
they feel like they're in a pretty decent spot in that, as in you're following it well
and what we were talking about.
Is there a next step after that that they could potentially do?
Or do you think that's... Because it feels weird just to kind of stop there and not try
to do something that could maybe help you out more.
But that was just my mindset around it.
The next step is going to be different for everybody.
And so there would probably have to be a dialogue that I would have to have with that person.
And I would want to know, do you have your savings set up?
Are you contributing to retirement through your work?
Because some people have their budgets set up, but actually they haven't started doing
retirement through the work.
It's like, all right, they're matching.
They might be matching or doing something cool for your contributions.
So get that set up.
And then how does that impact everything else as part of your budget?
And if they said to me, oh, I got that set up, and I'd say, okay, well, what about a
Roth IRA?
I know you got it through work.
That's really great.
Have you ever thought about setting up a second long-term retirement account?
People might say, well, why do you need two?
It's like, well, more is better.
I'm trying to save 10% of my money.
So however that happens, that's what I want to do.
And so I have some money's going to my 401k through work.
Some money's going to a Roth IRA.
Then I also am trying to set up my emergency savings.
A lot of people that I talk to might have their budget in line, like they're controlling
their day-to-day expenses.
But when push comes to shove, do you actually have emergency savings set aside?
If you just Google this, most financial experts will say to have three to six months of your
mandatory expenses set aside for expenses.
So then you actually have to, in order to do that, you actually have to know, what am
I spending money on in a given year?
And maybe if you sync an app, that can tell you that.
Or you could, this is kind of crazy, but you could manually track your expenses for a year
of what am I spending my money on and where is my money going?
And then you can know what that is.
For me and my family, our six month emergency budget needs to be $30,000.
And it's not there at the moment.
It's about eight.
And that's scary to me.
I feel nervous about just providing for my family because if the wrong emergency comes
up, I'm not in a great spot.
And I'm going to have to be relying on friends, family, whoever to help get me through that
situation.
But even right now, Katie and I have made a decision to shift some money in our budget.
That was my recommendation to her.
And she trusts me with our finances to get more money into that emergency savings.
And we have a goal to get to 30,000 in savings by the end of next year, so about a year and
a half away.
And we're aggressively slashing things in order to do that.
And it's just because of how passionately I feel about having that emergency savings
set up.
So I would want to know, your example was it's going well.
Someone's going well.
But it's like, okay, how well could it really be?
And I'd like to know, are you hitting all of these specific benchmarks of what it looks
like to have a healthy budget?
So emergency savings, all those different things.
Yeah, that's what I want to know.
That's good.
I guess you said you have to talk to the person.
And I would say for me, I don't know if I'm asking for advice here or not.
But I do have probably more than six months saved up at this point.
But I think a really simple thing, and I'll transition after this.
But a really simple thing in my opinion that someone can do is to open up a second savings
account and use that for gesture or DC fund.
I love having multiple savings accounts.
I also specifically encourage people to have savings accounts in different actual places.
So I have a savings account through PNC Bank, which is my regular, where my checking savings
are, comes with a savings account.
Then I have a long term savings account through American Express Personal Savings, just one
that I picked.
It's free.
They have good rates.
I picked it.
I also have a savings account with Wealthfront.com, which is another one that I highly recommend.
It's super simple to use and interface with great.
They have an awesome app.
It's great.
And I specifically put certain savings in Wealthfront.
My Wealthfront savings are savings that I absolutely, without a doubt, cannot touch,
even if I wanted to.
Because there is going to be an expense that comes up this year that I need the money that's
in my Wealthfront account for.
That's insurance, that's taxes, like that's getting placed over there.
The money I put into my American Express Personal Savings, that's my fun budget.
That's money that we're going to spend on vacation, money that we spend on Christmas
presents.
I don't know.
Maybe something comes up we got to pay for my son's T-ball and we didn't have that money
planned for.
It's going to come out of there.
So I can mess with that money a little bit.
Now I am strategizing because I'm usually saving for a vacation or I know how I want
to spend it, but push comes to shove, I can take money out of there if needed.
I cannot take money out of my Wealthfront.
That is hands off.
I'm putting that money into there and I cannot touch it because when my property taxes come
up I need that money sitting there.
I have to be able to have it.
I cannot touch it.
The savings I have in my PNC are kind of everyday savings.
I try to keep that at a certain level.
Then I can pull from that if, I don't know, our monthly expenses go a little bit over
or, again, something comes up that I didn't budget for.
If I got that money in my everyday savings I'll kind of pull it from there so that I
don't have to take it from my fund budget.
I also have a desire to have another savings account than what I just said.
This would be, this is kind of pseudo-emergency savings.
I have technically two accounts with American Express.
One is my fund budget and one is my emergency savings.
I almost want money set aside to do household upgrades.
Right now you could say that falls into emergency expenses but there are some things we'd love
to do around the house.
We just don't quite have the money set aside for it.
You could say, well, take that out of your fund budget.
You could.
Or take that out of emergency savings and supplement it.
Yeah, you could.
But for me I'm trying to really bucket these.
I want my emergency savings to be for a true emergency.
I want that there.
I really prioritize travel with our family.
It's so important to us.
I really don't want to take money out of that budget for it.
So I'm trying to build up even this other secondary savings account that could be for,
I don't want to call it day-to-day large expenses, but things that come up once every few months,
you got to replace a dishwasher.
You could take that out of emergency savings, certainly, that could qualify.
I'm trying to set up a separate account.
That's just me personally.
And I like to have them in completely different buckets.
And ideally, if I can put them in different websites, different banks, that's even better
for me.
Because out of sight, out of mind.
And then I'm not even tempted to touch that money.
It's there when I need it.
But I'm not going to be tempted to spend it.
That's really smart.
I've heard that advice before.
I don't have that yet.
I think I have two savings accounts set up with First Commonwealth.
But that's what I got right now.
When I set that up, that was something I think HR or something at my work was like, wow,
that's pretty smart.
And are those, do you know the interest rates on them?
I think it's 1%.
So right there, I would say to you, you are not letting your money make money.
A personal savings account, those rates fluctuate according to the market.
But right now, you can get 4.5%, 5% just at setting in a personal savings account.
So I'd be recommending, you said you got more than six months of your emergency spending.
You need to throw that in thewealthfront.com.
And so right now, that's an example.
I would need to talk to someone and say, oh, that's just one more step you can take that's
going to improve.
You'd rather, again, my personal savings, my emergency needs to be $30,000.
I'd rather $30,000 be earning 5% than 1%.
So I'm shifting that.
I would want that money always setting in a long term.
It's called a long term personal savings account.
OK.
Yeah.
And those are free.
Wealthfront.com is free.
American Express personal savings, also free.
You can Google long term personal savings accounts and see what are the best ones.
Because some places can give you maybe slightly better APR interest rates.
But they all follow the same markets.
We're all following the same market that's guiding it.
So some of them might give you introductory interest rates.
But yeah.
Wealthfront.com would probably be the number one that I would recommend for listeners that
are on here right now.
Awesome.
I brought that in here.
No, thank you.
That was really useful and interesting.
So since we're getting...
They're also called high yield savings accounts.
High yield savings accounts.
That's because of the high interest rate?
Yeah.
OK.
Yeah.
I wanted to dive into other things, but we're already 40 minutes in.
So I think maybe at some point...
I can go quick.
So this kind of transitioning out of...
I wanted to bring a couple of things up just personally.
Sure.
So I was transitioning out of financials for the end of this episode.
There was a couple of things that I remember that you said in a couple of your sermons
have really stuck out to me.
And they really resonated with me.
And I know just hearing other people talking about other people, they're like, yeah, the
other people have said the same thing.
I remember you talking about Piper.
And if you want this cut out, let me know.
You brought up Piper very recently after you had a seizure.
I brought this up during small groups before.
You said you wake up...
I know it's left field for what we were talking about, but you brought up how you wake up
every day believing that whatever seizure she had with her last seizure.
And I'm still in it in my personal struggle with pain and everything.
And that gave me personally kind of a new philosophy, if I'm being honest, of waking
up every morning, going to bed every night and praying every night and being expectant
to one day be healed from my condition, whether it be here or in heaven.
And I wanted to want to thank you for that, but I'm also wondering if...
We can go quick.
We can go over it.
We want to say if you could dive a little bit further into that and explain a little
bit more.
Yeah.
I was talking about kind of hopeful expectation and believing the best for her future.
And so yeah, when she has a seizure, I always want to believe that's the last one that she's
ever going to have because the alternative is to believe that she's just going to keep
having them.
And I feel like that's just a really terrible expectation I have for my daughter.
I don't want to be believing that it's going to keep happening for her.
I want to continue to believe that she's taking a step towards health, she's taking a step
towards healing, she's still on seizure medication.
And so I'm very pro medication and listening to doctors' recommendations.
And so we're doing all of that.
In the midst of that, I also believe that, again, we're men of faith, I'm a pastor, so
I believe that supernatural healing can come and I believe that she can be healed from
it.
And we meet people all the time of people saying, oh yeah, my kid or I had seizures
when I was young and then I grew out of it.
So that is a common thing.
Doctors don't say that because they don't want to over promise something.
So I'm believing that's going to happen.
And at one time, there's going to be a time when I'm right.
There will be a time when that is her last seizure.
And so I'm just going to keep believing for it.
And I was still nervous the other night, she was falling asleep and she was acting a little
erratically and I thought, man, something might happen.
But so I went in, I just said, I pray over every night.
I went in and said another prayer and believing that she was going to continue to be healthy.
And I always pray angels will guide her to sleep.
And I prayed that again.
And so yeah, I want to live with hopeful, faithful expectation for my future and for
my kid's future.
And so I think that's just a component of that.
And I really wanted to bring that up just specifically, one, because it was personal
to me and also because I think it brings up, I think it can give somebody else that maybe
hasn't heard that before some of their own hopeful expectation.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think there's something about believing the best for yourself.
So you could say it's positive thinking.
I would argue if you're a Christian, it's faith-filled thinking.
But even if you're not a Christian, I would recommend it as positive thinking.
And yeah, there's something about fixing your mind on healthy, positive things, that there's
truth to that, whether it's rooted in faith or not.
So I would say always try to lean towards the positive than the negative.
And why assume something negative over my life?
And you could apply that to anything.
You're struggling with addiction.
Maybe that's going to be the last time I smoke that cigarette.
And then I'm going to take positive steps from here on out.
There's one other thing I have written down here.
And I know that I mentioned, I kind of feel like I have to bring it up.
But the reason I want to bring up, because it's kind of like, because I guess because
there were past conversations about what you're, like you were talking about early in the
episode about how you don't know what the future upholds.
You don't know if you'll be a pastor forever.
And I remember, I'm pretty sure it was the first sermon after becoming the head pastor,
the lead pastor of Amplified Church.
You mentioned in the beginning, as kind of like the lead in to your sermon, like how
you never necessarily wanted that role.
And obviously you're doing a very good job at it.
When it comes to like, I'm curious to know like, when it comes to your calling and like
what you feel called to do personally.
And whenever you said that, I'm more curious of like how those kinds of things play into
each other because, yeah, does that make sense?
I love the local church.
I love being a pastor.
I also think Christians overemphasize the local church at times.
And I don't know, I could get canceled for this, but it's like, I think I've preached
on this before.
I don't need people to be, have their lives wrapped around the church I lead.
I want their life to be wrapped around Jesus.
And I hope as part of that, they will be part of a faith-based community, right?
But I like abstain from this idea, and this is in church culture a lot, that every single
time a church puts on an event, it's the best event, it's the greatest event.
You have to be there, tell all your friends, like, I don't know, I just don't resonate
with that.
It's like, I hope you're there.
I hope you're there because I believe you'll have a positive experience.
If you're not, I hope you're doing something else great with your life.
Like our church had a softball game this past week and we encouraged all these people to
go.
Because I was at my son's tee ball game, right?
So I'm not a bad person for not going to this church event.
I'm actually doing something probably more important with my son.
So I just want people's lives to be wrapped around Jesus.
And that does not mean that you have to sell your soul to a local organization.
I hope you serve at your local church if you're a Christian.
I hope you give there.
I hope you invest there.
I hope you have things wrapped around it.
But I even feel that way for my job.
It's like, no, I work hard at my job.
I know I do.
I'm not questioning that.
I don't think anybody else would question that.
And for my employees, I expect them to work hard at their jobs.
But there's also, I believe, like a work-life balance that I also want them to hold to.
And I don't need their lives wrapped around their job at the church.
I hope when they're there, they pour out so much into it and they give and they do it
with the best of their ability.
But they have other purposes in this life.
And it's not necessarily about working at this church.
And there will come a day where I'm not the senior pastor of the church and church is
going to keep going.
It's going to be healthy.
It's going to be strong.
Hopefully, I've left it in a better place than I found it.
But this organization is not the most important thing.
The organization, I don't even know it was what Jesus had in mind right after he died.
The church is people.
The church is actually just the gathering of people.
So yeah, the organizations as they're set up in American Christian society, that is
not the end all be all of faith.
So that's why I'm like, my calling is to be a pastor at Amplified Church.
I'll be there as long as God has me.
But if I'm not there, I'll pastor somewhere else.
And if I'm not in vocational ministry, I'm going to pastor my wife and my kids.
So yeah, I don't know.
There's just something about calling.
Some people do know very specifically, I am called to be a pastor, a vocational pastor
at this church.
I've heard people say that I heard people plant churches out of that.
And I tell you, that's great.
That's awesome for you.
I love that.
That's not necessarily me.
I know I'm called to be there right now.
And I'm going to be faithful to that today.
So no, I think that was great.
I was very, as I earlier today, I was prepping for this.
That was just like, it popped in my head.
I was like, I really kind of want to know more about that.
So thank you.
Yeah.
Okay, so some final, final questions.
So when it comes to personal growth, or when it comes to calling and what we're talking
about today, where are some resources that you would recommend to people?
I know we talked about a couple of things, but what did you say?
For personal growth, like leadership growth?
Yeah.
I don't know that I have a whole lot of fancy answers here.
Me and you have talked about this just offhand before.
But as a pastor, I have a few, there's a few really big name pastor leadership podcasts
I listen to, Craig Rochelle, Andy Stanley, Kerry Newhoff.
Those are three guys that I'm subscribed to.
I don't listen every week, but I can tune into them anytime and it's going to be good.
Kind of Christian, kind of not John Maxwell.
I mean, even in the non-Christian market, he's huge.
I'm not saying anything groundbreaking there by saying read a John Maxwell book.
Him and his podcasts are really great.
And his podcast has this thing where it's like a two episode thing a lot of times where
it'll be like all of his stuff and then they'll like his sidekick or whoever will kind of
break it down, which I think is really, really cool.
Simon Sinek, really popular author, leadership author.
Leaders Eat Last is a book I've recommended a lot in the past.
Patrick Lanzione, another really great author.
He's written a ton of books.
His book, The Advantage, I think is the one I would probably recommend off the top of
my head.
I've also found a lot of value in leadership tests like Strength Finders, Disc, Myers Briggs
is a really popular one.
I think those are really valuable, but you also can do not only those for yourself, but
typically you can do those in team based settings as well.
So I think knowing how your strengths correlate to your spouse or how your strengths correlate
to your team that you work with, I think is a really good thing.
So I would pursue those individually.
And if your workplace or even in your home, you could cultivate those tests.
I think that could really speak volumes to you personally.
You mentioned the elimination diet before.
I think it's the same thing.
Know your strengths and leadership capacities within yourself.
Know how they are with your spouse or your coworkers.
How do those mesh?
What are going to be the tensions?
Where are going to be the strengths?
I think that can be really insightful.
Awesome.
You gave me a lot of research to do.
And links to look up and put in the show notes.
And then final question, who would you like to hear on this podcast?
Dude, I have no idea.
You had sent this along and I don't even know.
I love you Thomas.
I haven't listened every episode of it.
So I'm like, I don't even know who you've had totally who you've had on, but I'll give
you a one that I don't.
I'm pretty sure you haven't had on.
I'm going to say your dad.
Cause I feel like I've heard you have a conversation.
We've talked a little bit about them and in the past, I don't know.
I feel like that could be a cool conversation for you to explore his life in a recorded
format.
Yeah.
And I'm just wondering what type of questions you would ask him.
What type of things he might say that you've never heard him say and wisdom that he's told
you over the years that maybe you take for granted, but that your listeners might hear
for the first time.
Hmm.
That's that.
That is probably the most unique answer I've ever heard.
Most people will say like somebody from the church because I guess people like, I know
that's really interesting.
Thank you.
Awesome.
Well guys, thank you for listening to this episode of technically short.
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