Hope for your financial life and beyond

My Story

This website is Dave Ramsey’s fault. Well, and God’s too. (Is that too weird to list Dave before God?) You see, both have been instrumental in reshaping my views about money, finance and wealth. Here’s my story.

I was in the middle of leading Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace course at our church in the summer of 2010. In the grand scheme of his career, I was a Dave newbie, having just begun listening to his program a year earlier. In the course of that year, God laid a spiritual conviction on my heart that I was not handling my money the way I should.

So I decided to go for it. I drank the Kool-aid. Get out of debt. Build your emergency fund. Save for kids college, retirement, etc., etc.

If you have attended FPU you know Dave’s lessons are wildly entertaining and packed with tons of useful information. But in the middle of one of the sessions, Dave made a comment, kind of an off-hand remark that he didn’t elaborate on. He said if you wanted to, you could get a degree in personal finance just by reading the book of Proverbs. “It’s in there, really,” he said, and then went on with his lesson. But I couldn’t shake that comment. I was curious.

So I started reading – a chapter a day for a month. I was stunned. Does this one book really have this many passages that specifically address life’s money issues? And that doesn’t even count topics that are somewhat related to money like proper work ethic and wisdom.

So I kept going and read Solomon’s next book, Ecclesiastes. Then I wondered what Solomon’s dad King David had to say about it, so I read the Psalms. Then I read the Gospels…then the rest of the New Testament…then the rest of the Bible.

Every page there seemed to be something. How could there be this much in the Bible about money and I had missed it?

The interesting thing is that I started to see themes emerge from the pages of text and topics that begin to link to one another, forming a spider web of relate-ability. These verses about money do not just stand alone, isolated from one another. They relate to one another in such an interesting way, you know God just had to have done this on purpose. And they cover big themes that can help anyone with life’s issues and, in of our area of interest, help us develop sound money management practices.

My goal for this site is to share with you what I have learned in my own personal life and in my Bible reading about money, wealth and personal finance. In order to get started in the right direction, it’s best to review the eight core concepts you must come to grips with intellectually and emotionally if you are going to have success in money management. I believe these serve as foundational financial principles for anyone, religious or not.

Enjoy your reading. I look forward to interacting with you on this site.