Action4Canada - Pay Off Debt & Make Money

00:00:00.000 so we're going to show you here our website at action for Canada and some of the things that we

00:00:10.200 are doing you see our main website here if you go to resources I'm just going to show you this

00:00:17.100 today because it's it's it's good information oh we've got these chapter groups down here

00:00:23.880 and these are the chapter locations across the country so if there is any

00:00:32.820 political concern you've got or even homeschooling related you can contact these people as well and

00:00:41.440 find your chapter your location so the Alberta screen already opened up you can pop that screen

00:00:51.680 open and closed let's go to Manitoba New Brunswick let's go Manitoba we've got Verden or Verdan

00:01:01.620 I'm not sure that is and Winnipeg and Pembina Valley so just choose your province there and you can

00:01:09.740 contact them their email contact is there I'm also going to go back and show you our current issues

00:01:16.740 and you will see the homeschooling revolution so those are exciting pages

00:01:23.720 directory if you open that up you province that you live in and if you want to know

00:01:34.260 how to find a group support for your children or for laws and regulations you can just open up

00:01:44.400 and find each province I'll just scroll down you'll see that when you tap onto the main websites here

00:01:54.340 these are the main homeschool associations across Canada so they're a perfect starting point

00:02:01.680 and they've got piles of resources as well to help you on your journey of homeschooling

00:02:08.300 all right I'm going to bring us back here and I'm going to have Jen introduce our speaker today

00:02:14.820 I mean Lori sorry I'm just blanked out here Lori is my assistant she's a wonderful person here

00:02:22.360 go ahead hi everybody it's good to have you here we're excited to have Jason Weaning back today

00:02:29.400 we've had him before if you if you want to go back and and hear our last interview with him it was

00:02:35.460 definitely worth your while for dads so living on one income with 10 kids in a double income world

00:02:42.140 Jason Weaning author speaker podcaster and homeschooling dad realized that credit cards were

00:02:47.980 not his friend until he found good financial advice and climbed out of his financial hole

00:02:53.400 if there is too much month at the end of your paycheck Jason Weaning of heydads.ca returns today

00:03:00.520 to share some practical ideas on how to pay off debt and make money together with your family

00:03:05.600 he'll discuss some of Dave Ramsey's financial principles and show how small changes over time

00:03:11.680 can make a big difference in your finances maybe like Jason you'll be able to buy a 15 passenger van

00:03:17.080 with a briefcase full of cash welcome Jason Weaning we look forward to hearing your story

00:03:21.620 and your financial advice to help people get out of debt and move forward

00:03:25.620 Oh thanks thanks Laurie I don't know if it's it's advice from the school of hard knocks I guess

00:03:32.980 that's what it is indeed sometimes that's the best

00:03:36.620 I'll just talk a little bit I guess about how we kind of got into homeschooling and kind of our

00:03:45.980 quick little summary of that so yeah we have 10 kids ages uh zero to almost 19 uh seven girls and

00:03:55.220 three boys I think is the count uh I was homeschooled when I was a kid for a few years I went to a

00:04:02.300 like 20 student small Christian school then a bigger Christian school then public high school

00:04:07.120 and college so I kind of saw the spectrum of uh educational opportunities my parents were a little

00:04:13.380 bit uh this was like in the early 80s were like 84 85 86 that they were homeschooling and they was not

00:04:21.580 uh very popular back then so it was a bit of a struggle for them it was not as socially acceptable

00:04:28.900 as it was now so anyways when we started having kids we were looking at the public school system

00:04:34.560 or private Christian school and just really studying uh in our Bibles and seeing that God gave parents

00:04:42.680 responsibility to instruct their kids and that really is where our heart came from I don't see anywhere

00:04:48.740 in the Bible where the government is instructed to educate our children Deuteronomy 6 talks about

00:04:56.100 educating your children when you wake up when you lie down when you walk by the way all the times all

00:05:00.860 the things and Proverbs is a whole book about a dad and a mom in instructing their children and family and

00:05:07.880 and so really believe that was God's heart that moms and dads instruct their kids and raise them up

00:05:14.720 not only academically but spiritually and and in character and all that other really important

00:05:20.920 stuff uh I believe so that's awesome um Jason and um I know a lot of uh of us here in who are listening

00:05:31.900 in and those in the future who will be listening to this recording um are really trying to figure out

00:05:36.900 how to get ahead um there's always another expense just it seems like it just never ends and it's easy

00:05:44.060 just to spend and get sort of caught up into almost a permanent set of debt and so tell us your story

00:05:52.620 and and how you came out of that sure uh let's just hop right into it here I'm going to share my screen

00:06:00.480 and um we will talk about some of the mistakes that I have made in my life here we go all right talking

00:06:10.540 about finances you guys should be able to see that now this is our family here I already mentioned

00:06:19.360 them so we won't spend too much time on that but yes it takes a dollar or two to keep these mouths

00:06:25.200 fed uh I see some I actually someone from Simcoe Ontario I think I just saw in the chat there

00:06:31.060 we just moved to Saskatchewan about a year ago from Ontario finances had a had a part to play in that

00:06:38.320 for sure uh as far as property values out in Saskatchewan compared to Ontario so um that was

00:06:44.260 a decision we made a financial decision also but just to help us uh and our family you know kind of

00:06:50.240 move ahead I have a podcast it's called helping men thrive in a YouTube channel we're actually getting

00:06:55.520 ready to release some financial episodes coming up I interviewed um Lauren Robinson from Compass

00:07:01.700 Financial he was speaking at the Manitoba homeschooling conference in the spring so I interviewed him and

00:07:06.700 recorded that we'll have that coming up soon uh on our podcast and YouTube channel and I've just

00:07:12.700 written a book for kids Christmas is coming up I'm not sure when this is going to air but if it's

00:07:17.680 before Christmas parents grandparents I've written this fun adventure books wholesome adventure book

00:07:23.100 for kids uh that my kids love I'm hearing great things from moms and dads it's on Amazon it's called

00:07:28.440 Danger in the Jungle uh but there's a great Christmas gift for you uh if you're looking for something for

00:07:33.640 your kids okay enough of the propaganda here a small choice can make a big change and that statement

00:07:41.320 really made a difference for us in our finances um we had made I shouldn't say we I should say I

00:07:50.000 uh I was working in a commission job and had made was not making very much money in commission

00:07:55.680 and we had started to dig a big hole of debt um so hopefully I'll give you some ideas here and just

00:08:04.420 I'm going to share a little bit of our story and what worked for us you maybe have some other ideas

00:08:09.380 and maybe we'll get into talking about that I've got some ideas like for making extra income and things

00:08:14.280 like that but I've made some money mistakes over the years so hopefully you can learn uh from some of

00:08:20.520 my mistakes uh as we go here one of my mentors says what one man can do another man can do and I

00:08:27.520 believe that's true we worked our way out of uh you know over twenty thousand dollars worth of debt

00:08:32.700 outside of our mortgage and over a period of years and applying some of Dave Ramsey's principles we were

00:08:38.540 able to dig out of that big hole that really I thought was impossible we had seven eight kids while

00:08:43.740 this was going on and and so I'm going to tell you some of those stories hopefully to encourage you

00:08:48.440 um that one mom said to me it's nice to know there's someone out there that has made some

00:08:54.060 dumber mistakes than right so hopefully that will encourage you uh I know there's some I see some

00:09:00.820 moms and maybe some dads on this call as well so hopefully I can encourage you uh think about when

00:09:06.960 you were in school we're all homeschooling here but who was your best teacher who was your favorite

00:09:11.640 teacher in school I don't know if she was jumping up on the chair like this teacher in this picture is but

00:09:17.820 I don't know who my favorite teacher was but my most effective teacher was called experience and 1.00

00:09:25.260 learning from experience learning from uh the school of hard knocks Dave Ramsey calls it the stupid tax 0.99

00:09:32.560 and he says he said get other people to pay your stupid tax so if you can learn from other people 0.99

00:09:37.740 and apply it to your own life that is the great way to do it so let's look at some stats here in Canada 0.96

00:09:44.580 maybe some of you can relate to this but the average consumer debt 21,000 so this is debt outside

00:09:51.640 of mortgages here and whatever age you are watching this I'm in the 35 to 44 age group so families uh my

00:09:59.120 age would have on average in Canada about 25,000 worth of debt and we were we were close to that we're

00:10:05.060 going back to like 2017 when we were able to pay it all off but paying off debt is such a key point

00:10:12.640 and when we get into some of Dave Ramsey stuff here we're gonna see uh the impact that paying off

00:10:17.860 your debt can make and even the struggle that I had some people are like should I save more or should

00:10:23.060 I put my money towards paying off debt what's the best way to do that uh we'll we'll get into that and

00:10:28.620 maybe help with some of those decision making things of how to uh save money Dave Ramsey uh some of you

00:10:35.740 probably heard of Dave Ramsey one of his kind of quotes that he's known for is live like no one else so

00:10:41.180 later you can live like no one else and we made some of those small decisions like I said at the

00:10:47.020 beginning there small decisions that made a big change my wife tells the story of going shopping 0.52

00:10:54.080 with the kids going grocery shopping uh having her her debit card denied or credit card denied 0.91

00:11:00.620 at the uh at the cash register she's standing there with all her kids and her payment is denied and 0.99

00:11:07.260 and as a husband when she told me that you know I just felt so ashamed like wow I'm not making enough

00:11:13.940 to provide for my wife she's declined at the grocery store with all her kids like she took it well but

00:11:20.840 then we began to work our way out of this hole and she tells a story of wanting to go to to Tim Hortons

00:11:26.180 and just buy a tea for like a dollar fifty or this was six or seven years ago it was probably a dollar

00:11:31.400 less than a dollar fifty but that I didn't go to Tim Hortons to get my tea because we were trying to

00:11:37.300 save every nickel that we could to pay off our debt and so as we grow up you know we learn different

00:11:45.940 things from our parents this is my parents here this is actually at the a picture at the small

00:11:51.180 Christian school I went to that's me in the stylish blue sweater there my brother and my sister

00:11:57.200 this is probably like 1991 I'm gonna say something like that so we got the styles there but we learn

00:12:03.140 things about money from our parents so I want you to think about this are is there things you've learned

00:12:09.880 from your parents could be habits that you picked up it could be they could be bad habits they could

00:12:16.540 be good habits one of my sons said to me the other day dad are we running out of money do we have

00:12:22.400 enough money and I was like what what conversations is my son overhearing that he's coming to me and

00:12:28.660 asking dad are we are we running out of money do we have enough money so as parents we as homeschooling

00:12:35.640 parents you know we're already I believe very intentional about what we're teaching our kids

00:12:39.780 so what are we teaching them about money and are we talking about from a fear perspective are we

00:12:45.980 talking about generosity are we talking about giving to our churches are we talking about giving to

00:12:50.740 charities Christmas is coming up here there's going to be the Salvation Army Santa Claus is ringing

00:12:57.140 their bells in in the malls are we talking about giving and these sorts of things with our kids because

00:13:02.360 I think it's super important as parents that we are giving our kids a vision for generosity and a vision

00:13:09.360 for saving and a vision of being a blessing to others with our finances as well so just think about that as

00:13:16.300 as we go through this what are you teaching your kids um about money so early in our marriage we bought

00:13:22.920 a house in a college town and we were thinking we it was uh we would we'd be able to rent some of the

00:13:29.160 rooms to students and thinking about other ways to make income and stuff so we bought this house and we

00:13:34.140 lived in the basement apartment and we rented out the upstairs to students um we we had to borrow some

00:13:40.500 money we had to partner actually with my brother to buy it so we kind of you could say we got

00:13:45.200 started off on the wrong foot already borrowing or maybe overextending ourselves um but we were

00:13:50.360 making some rental income which was very helpful as as my employment income was not not going great

00:13:56.180 we depended on that rental income um so we had bought this house and I began to uh to work I finished

00:14:02.720 college went to work and was in a commission job and I came to this point uh where I had to make

00:14:09.740 either a change and and you might have heard this before you can either have the pain of change

00:14:13.760 or the pain of regret and I realized that I needed to make a change in my life uh because we had we

00:14:22.900 had started to accumulate a whole bunch of debt I wasn't making very much money and I was like we need

00:14:27.980 to change something uh if we are going to get out of this situation um so I got this book uh let's see

00:14:35.820 I'll just stop the share here for a second so I bought this book Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover

00:14:42.340 uh I don't know if you can see it there it has a thrift store like I was too too poor to buy the book

00:14:48.380 new so I got it for $2.99 uh at the thrift store and started uh working our way through Dave Ramsey's

00:14:55.740 plan so we had a mortgage at the time we had a visa we had a couple master cards we had an RSP

00:15:01.420 investment loan we owed the dentist money we owned my sister money I owed my brother money so over

00:15:07.140 $20,000 of debt we had uh in this situation and that was intimidating for me and I was like where

00:15:14.560 are we going to go how are we going to get out of this and basically the answer to that question was

00:15:21.020 you get out of it one step at a time and just one little step at a time see here there we go how do you

00:15:28.640 eat an elephant have you guys ever heard that anyone heard that question before you how do you eat an

00:15:34.720 elephant one step at a time and so Dave Ramsey takes that whole philosophy and says what are the

00:15:41.800 baby steps he's broken down into baby steps that we can do to start getting out of debt and here's

00:15:47.740 Dave Ramsey's step we're gonna we're not we don't have time to cover all of them today but we're going

00:15:52.080 to talk about the first three and I'll tell you a little bit how we were able to implement some of

00:15:55.780 them so baby step number one is save a thousand dollars for your emergency fund baby step number two is pay 1.00

00:16:02.860 off all the debt outside of your house using the debt snowball which we'll talk about in a minute

00:16:07.200 baby step number three save three to six months uh in a fully funded emergency account so if you were

00:16:13.180 to lose your job or something like that you would have uh you'd have a bit of a rainy day fund that you

00:16:19.000 could go back on and it would it would take you through for a while so saving a thousand dollars

00:16:23.980 for an emergency fund I thought that was kind of a silly first step but the way Dave Ramsey explains

00:16:31.000 it thousand dollars can cover a lot of unexpected expenses if you need a new washing machine if you

00:16:37.820 need to do a brake job on your car you know if your kids need to go to the dentist instead of owing

00:16:42.980 the dentist money like we did a thousand dollars creates a lot of peace of mind because you're not

00:16:47.580 going to have to pull out the visa or the master card to pay for this emergency so that was the first

00:16:53.840 thing we did we saved a thousand dollars uh for an emergency fund and that was so freeing just to

00:16:59.980 know that if something happened we would have this thousand dollars to pay for it so that was the first

00:17:05.340 thing that we did uh the second thing that he talks about doing is paying off uh all your debt

00:17:12.500 using the debt snowball now the debt snowball is a concept that basically says start paying your

00:17:19.040 smallest debt first and this is not rocket science a lot of people think oh I should start with my

00:17:24.800 higher interest stuff first or start with the biggest amount first because that's costing me

00:17:30.000 the most interest Dave Ramsey says start with the smallest amount first get that paid off so for us I

00:17:35.980 think it was a credit card that was a like a thousand dollar credit card or something like that that we

00:17:39.760 had a balance on and we paid off that so now you take the money that you've been paying to that small

00:17:45.780 debt and you roll it into your next debt and start paying that one off and once the second debt is

00:17:50.980 paid off you take that money so like a snowball that gets bigger and bigger you roll that into your next

00:17:56.100 debt and eventually uh work your way through to paying off all your debt and again the small changes

00:18:03.540 uh that the small change of having a thousand dollars in an emergency fund made a difference the small

00:18:09.780 change of knowing hey we paid off a debt like that was very uh encouraging very freeing for us we were

00:18:17.620 starting to make progress here and seeing progress was just so encouraging so save a thousand dollars for

00:18:23.220 an emergency fund uh pay off all of your debt outside of your mortgage is the next step so I'm going to tell

00:18:30.180 a little story about that because our family was also growing at this time so

00:18:39.140 go to here insanity you probably heard this quote before insanity is doing the same thing over and

00:18:46.340 over again but expecting a different result so I was in a sales job not making very much on commission

00:18:54.900 and so I needed to make a change because if you've ever had a or your husband or one of you in your

00:19:00.260 in your family has had a sales job sometimes you think that hey the next month's going to get better

00:19:04.980 you might have a bad month but hey we'll sell more next month we'll make up for it for me so many of

00:19:10.740 those months in a row started to add up and it was that's what got us into the situation that we're in

00:19:16.900 and the money wasn't getting any better so thankfully um my dad actually and my uncles we had a family

00:19:23.300 business at the time they offered me a role to start uh helping out the family business which if

00:19:28.420 any of you have been involved in a family business you know there's probably a point in my life I said

00:19:32.420 I'm never going to work uh in the family business and I ended up changing careers into the family

00:19:39.460 business and uh 10 years later uh I was I was we're still working in the family business but it was a

00:19:45.700 great it was a great change instead of doing the same thing over and over again and that really helped uh

00:19:51.060 start to move the ball forward again we were there's there's the family business there we built

00:19:56.340 uh a lot of equipment for the carrot onion potato industry a lot of steel equipment all right let's

00:20:03.380 go on here john maxwell has written a book called sometimes you win and sometimes you learn and he said

00:20:12.420 like I said before the school of hard knocks and experience is one of our best teachers and that was a that

00:20:18.900 that was a lesson that sometimes was hard to learn for us all right so here we were our family was growing

00:20:28.020 uh we were about to exceed the passenger limit for our family van so I'm going to just go back to my

00:20:37.860 screen here a second and uh actually let's just pause there for a second Doris or Lori uh any thoughts or any

00:20:46.020 questions or anything that you want to bring up while we're kind of a few minutes into this

00:20:54.100 I just love how you're how you're giving baby steps like I've heard of Dave Ramsey but I've never

00:20:58.740 actually studied his material so this is great especially for I find most homeschooling families

00:21:05.540 are single income families so or or they have people have an excuse that oh I can't homeschool because

00:21:12.580 we need two full-time incomes so I love this material that you're giving people some really

00:21:18.260 practical steps to be able to go okay everybody can do this but it does take those those intentional

00:21:24.580 decisions and maybe sacrifices as well like that tea yes a one dollar tea yeah I was thinking the same

00:21:32.580 about so um I drink coffee and I was thinking about how many people go through like even just Starbucks

00:21:39.140 their drinks are so expensive and I just did the math if you had a seven dollar drink and some of

00:21:45.220 them are eight so let's just say seven times 52 weeks that's 364 dollars right there just on a drink

00:21:53.780 like that and I've noticed myself that sometimes um you know it's a tight week and I'll just make a coffee

00:22:02.660 at home and bring it in the car with me like old school like we did before all these drive-throughs came

00:22:07.940 into our life and you know if if two people in the household were going through a drive-through

00:22:13.540 and picking up a coffee every week that's a chunk of money that could be used for something else

00:22:19.460 yeah absolutely sometimes it's just those okay we're going on a road trip let's pack a lunch

00:22:24.820 instead of getting something out right yeah

00:22:30.500 yes I see someone just commented there about the coffee things you know and no another one that comes up

00:22:36.100 today a lot is subscriptions all these you know Netflix Amazon Prime literally yesterday I said

00:22:43.060 to my wife she had signed up for Amazon Prime to get shipping on something and it just kept going

00:22:47.860 I'm like but we weren't using much like paying 20 bucks a month can we cancel that all these little

00:22:53.300 subscriptions or Spotify or you can get YouTube premium seven bucks a month nine bucks a month ten bucks

00:22:58.980 all that kind of stuff really adds up and and can make a difference in in your overall budget

00:23:07.620 all right so uh getting back let me take you to the next step of our story so we had saved a thousand

00:23:12.420 dollars in an emergency fund we're starting to pay down our debt using the debt snowball method

00:23:17.540 smallest to biggest um I don't think I mentioned this but I had started paying my mortgage with my credit

00:23:23.220 card that was uh that was something that had happened I missed that that point but that was

00:23:28.020 a I don't Dave Ramsey doesn't recommend that uh no one recommends paying your mortgage with your credit

00:23:32.740 card so we stopped doing that and we started to uh to get out of debt now while we were in the middle

00:23:39.540 of this um we were driving two vehicles at the time uh I had a little Honda Civic and it got smashed up

00:23:46.180 on the side of the road and it was a write-off and I didn't have money to buy a new car and a friend of

00:23:50.500 mine said well are you just going to go get a car loan and buy a new car I said absolutely not like

00:23:56.580 I I've drank the Dave Ramsey Kool-Aid I am never going to get in debt again if I can avoid it so uh

00:24:04.260 we started to save up to buy another vehicle so now our our family uh had one vehicle and what we had was

00:24:11.700 we had uh with seven people in our family and we had just bought a eight passenger van so we had one

00:24:18.340 extra seat in our van and I thought being the smart guy that I am I thought if we have another

00:24:23.460 baby that would be great and we'll have one extra seat in our van that the baby can go in

00:24:28.740 so my wife uh got pregnant again she's pregnant often actually uh over her life but she was pregnant

00:24:36.660 again and at this point I had stopped going to all the doctor's appointments with her because I think

00:24:41.700 this was going to be baby number six if I recall but she came back from a doctor or midwife appointment 1.00

00:24:48.420 and she had brought the DVD uh of the ultrasound that she had gone to and she said hey can you watch

00:24:54.660 this DVD uh and I was a little bit surprised I had seen the static like alien head you know ultrasound

00:25:02.580 pictures I was a little bit surprised she had brought home this DVD but I put it in our our laptop and I was

00:25:08.980 watching it and I was looking at the screen and I've got pretty good at recognizing uh static alien baby

00:25:15.620 heads and on this screen I saw not one but two static alien baby heads and said to my wife

00:25:23.860 are there two in there and then I realized why she had brought the DVD home she said yes we're having twins

00:25:30.260 and my first thought was oh no our van is obsolete because now we have two seats to fill in our van

00:25:38.900 so now we needed to buy we needed to go to like the jumbo homeschooling stereotype family van because

00:25:45.780 we now had nine people in our family and we could not fit all of us in our van I'm going to flip back to

00:25:54.020 the slides here a second

00:25:58.580 so we decided okay we are going to save up uh for a new van we are not going to borrow money for a van

00:26:05.860 now this was one of the options we considered you put everyone in the van and then we could put one

00:26:11.220 of the kids every time we go somewhere we'll just slap them on the roof and they could go around in 0.98

00:26:15.940 the van but we decided that okay that's probably not a safe idea we should save up and get a big van

00:26:21.860 so we can travel around together so we began to save for a van we still had some debt going on at

00:26:26.980 the same time and we had saved up almost twenty thousand dollars that's roughly what one of these

00:26:32.260 giant vans tossed and we had we had I think like sixteen thousand of debt or something left at the

00:26:37.620 time and I was like hon we have enough to buy the van we were able to save and we were paying off debt

00:26:42.340 we were moving forward she said I think we should just take all our van savings and put it towards

00:26:47.060 the debt and pay off all our debt I was annoyed with having to drive around two vehicles I was like

00:26:53.220 can we just get a van and anyways I don't know if you know this but if you change one letter in the

00:26:58.260 word wife it becomes wise so I listened to some more Dave Ramsey propaganda my wife continued to 0.91

00:27:04.980 persuade me and I agreed to uh what she said and we paid off all our debt but now we had to start our

00:27:11.700 van saving once again uh so what we did this time though was I wanted to get the kids involved in

00:27:17.700 saving for the van and now that we had paid off our debt the van saving got a lot faster so this is a

00:27:23.380 picture of what we created so the whole family could be the whole family could be involved in saving

00:27:28.180 we made the vanometer and so the vanometer would would go on our wall or we would take it out every

00:27:34.020 few weeks when we had started to save a little bit of money and the kids would actually color in the

00:27:38.580 van we had the picture of the great big homeschooling van and so you can see on the left hand side it goes

00:27:43.860 up like two thousand dollars a piece there up to twenty thousand dollars at the top so the kids were

00:27:49.620 involved in this which helped save because they were talking about it it created this energy like

00:27:54.900 hey we're all in this together saving up for a big van so we saved up for the vanometer uh with the

00:28:00.500 vanometer and decided that uh we were we got to our twenty thousand dollars eventually took about

00:28:05.460 another year of savings to do that and i wanted to show my kids how important it was uh not to borrow

00:28:11.380 money so we went to a car dealership and i called them and said hey will you accept twenty thousand

00:28:17.220 dollars in cash for a van like can i pay like that and the lady said you don't want to pay cash 0.58

00:28:24.180 twenty thousand dollars you can and i called back and talked and asked i asked twice because i like

00:28:29.460 i didn't want to do this and then have them reject it when i got there so uh we filled up we literally

00:28:35.860 filled up a suitcase with cash i had my three older kids with me and we brought them into the dealership

00:28:41.620 i said i walked in with the briefcase and the receptionist was like you didn't really do that did

00:28:45.940 you like oh yeah i did and i put my briefcase down and opened it up and it was full of 20s i wanted

00:28:51.940 to stuff it with fives but i learned you can't just go into your local bank and ask for twenty

00:28:56.660 thousand dollars in fives they don't exactly hold on to that kind of uh cash but we were able to get

00:29:02.580 it in 20 so so that was good enough but i wanted my kids to see you know it actually takes a lot of

00:29:09.460 real money uh to buy things so don't use debt to do it save up and pay cash for things proverbs 22

00:29:18.180 verse 7 says just as the rich rule over the poor so the borrower is servant to the lender and when

00:29:26.660 you get out of that debt and you're able to get free of the uh of the borrowing and being trapped

00:29:32.820 in that in that area it just brought so much freedom um for us so if there if you can make

00:29:38.500 sacrifices to get out of debt go for it let's talk about generosity for a minute here the average annual

00:29:45.460 gift from canadians is a 446 dollars and i know we've got a few representatives from the western

00:29:52.900 provinces here so this next slide i'm happy to say shows right at the bottom there uh alberta and

00:29:59.300 saskatchewan and british columbia are the highest generosity uh provinces here in canada so good on you

00:30:08.180 good on us western canada so i thought these uh giving stats were interesting people who attend a

00:30:14.660 religious service uh on average give a thousand dollars a year just over a thousand dollars people

00:30:21.060 who don't attend religious services on average uh just over three hundred dollars a year i thought

00:30:27.380 there's an interesting stat to see that there seems to be something about being involved in a church

00:30:33.940 community uh and involved in a church service that instills generosity or encourages us uh us to give

00:30:42.500 people who make over 120 000 a year on average only give 744 0.6 percent of their income uh and it

00:30:52.180 doesn't really get any better in in lower income brackets it's 0.5 percent of income so i think there's

00:30:58.020 room for improvement here uh for generosity for us as families and especially for transferring it on to

00:31:06.020 our kids so how can we encourage our kids to be generous here's some experiences and some things that

00:31:11.460 involve uh generosity that help motivate our kids and motivate a younger generation to give

00:31:17.860 the first one is not a shocker to any of us as homeschoolers seeing parents volunteer parents we

00:31:23.460 are the examples for our kids our kids seeing us being involved in volunteer activities our kids

00:31:29.140 seeing us being involved in giving and in charity our kids seeing us helping out in our communities or in

00:31:35.060 in our churches because they are learning from us like i mentioned deuteronomy 6 i think a little

00:31:39.860 bit earlier you know they're learning from our life when we get up when we go to sleep when we walk by

00:31:43.860 the way our kids are watching and learning from us so being involved with someone they admire that's

00:31:49.700 helping others belonging to a religious organization volunteering all these things are helpful to

00:31:55.460 motivate our kids to give and to be generous and at the end of the day i think that's what we want to

00:32:00.820 do uh as our as parents is encourage our kids to be generous so we can be a blessing to the world all

00:32:09.460 right let's talk about some ideas now like practically if you if you're in a situation where you have debt

00:32:15.380 even if you're not don't have debt but you're trying to make more money you're trying to get better

00:32:19.300 financially you have two options you can either increase expenses or you can increase income you

00:32:25.460 know those are the two ways that we can make a difference in our finances decrease our expenses

00:32:30.340 or increasing our income we can i've got some ideas i'm going to throw out here of maybe how we could cut

00:32:37.060 some expenses and i've got some ideas with the internet now and with like freelancing and doing

00:32:42.980 things on the side lots of people are having side hustles there are lots of ways that we can make extra

00:32:48.580 income when our family was going through this like push to get out of debt and to save money there's

00:32:55.540 one point where i had four jobs i believe at the time so i was working for my uncles uh in the family

00:33:00.820 business i was teaching drum lessons part-time or just out of my home i had some drum students

00:33:06.900 um i was a part-time youth pastor at a church at the time as well uh and i forget what oh i was also

00:33:14.580 doing some some sales stuff a little bit on the side some commission sales stuff as well so i was

00:33:19.380 doing all four of those things at the same time because we were really trying to dig our way out

00:33:24.660 of debt and if it meant i need to do some extra work for a little while that's what we were doing

00:33:30.900 so some ideas on how to increase income like i mentioned get a second job get a side hustle

00:33:36.020 changing careers you know that is sometimes an option and for me that was something that i did to make

00:33:40.260 more money real estate i've talked to a lot of homeschooling families uh well maybe not a lot

00:33:46.180 but i've talked to other dads that have rental properties or commercial rental properties or real

00:33:52.660 estate you know they generate some income that way a lot of people do that doing freelancing and

00:33:59.700 instagram i don't know if anyone here's an instagram uh influencer making all kinds of money from that but

00:34:04.580 you know doris that could be something you know in your future perhaps you can get on the instagram

00:34:10.500 and and go for it decreasing expenses here spending less uh cutting the cord cord spelled musical cord i

00:34:19.140 already mentioned that like spotify streaming memberships all those sort of things cutting the music

00:34:24.500 things that you're paying for eating out less shopping smarter you know couponing all all sorts of ideas

00:34:32.260 here of how uh phone upgrades there's another good one lots how many times are we buying new phones

00:34:38.180 maybe it's our kids sometimes more that are like i need the latest phone when my our kids don't have

00:34:44.980 phones when my daughter turned 18 because i'm such a generous dad i got her a flip phone that was last

00:34:51.300 year and so she when she she went away to school and promptly went on ebay and bought herself an iphone but

00:34:58.020 i said i'm not buying you a smartphone but i am happy to give you this flip phone and that didn't

00:35:03.540 last very long but you know phone upgrades that can be another way uh another way to save some money

00:35:10.980 here is a whole whack of ideas of things you can do online or freelancing you know kind of on the side

00:35:18.740 let's see i was talking to a guy the other day in town here he's got he makes wood uh wood things and

00:35:24.020 sells them on etsy uh graphic design there's there's all kinds of free programs online for

00:35:29.380 doing some of this stuff music lessons uh teaching like i said i was taught drum lessons for a little

00:35:34.660 while or my kids went to uh piano lessons from a guy a friend of mine that taught piano lessons on the

00:35:41.220 side there's a tons of things here we're not going to read every single one of these but what skills do

00:35:46.340 you have or does your husband or wife have are there skills that you have that you could offer and sell

00:35:52.900 and make some money it's kind of a side hustle thing on the side uh baking car detailing my like

00:35:59.700 my cousin is 16 he just started a car detailing business uh in high school goes and cleans people's

00:36:06.260 cars charges 100 bucks or 200 bucks a piece or something like that it's a it's a little thing so

00:36:11.220 we're not going to go through all these but there are some ideas we can maybe get those to you later or

00:36:15.700 put them somewhere uh when this recording goes up of how you could save money so kind of wrapping this

00:36:22.260 up how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time and really those small choices those small decisions

00:36:30.900 that we make can make a big difference dave ramsey broke it down into those baby steps you can find

00:36:37.060 them on his website uh ramsey solution or dave ramsey they've worked for millions of people all over the

00:36:43.300 world uh they work for me they'll work for you you know i didn't nail all of them but we're on our way

00:36:48.740 i think i've got one more slide that shows them here it does so saving an emergency fund step two

00:36:54.980 paying off debt outside of your mortgage step step three saving an emergency fund which we were able

00:37:00.900 to do kind of at the end of that process and then moving on into these other ones where you're starting

00:37:06.020 to invest for your own retirement in step four invest for your kids education if they're going to do

00:37:11.060 that in step five paying off your home and then building wealth and step seven is really where

00:37:17.380 we can make an impact and be a blessing to our world with generosity and giving um and feeling

00:37:23.860 generous in that sense i think that's all my slides oh more propaganda there i'm going to stop sharing

00:37:30.020 my screen and maybe we can just chat for a few minutes uh about any of that doris or laurie i know

00:37:36.260 i went through a bunch of stuff there what's on your mind well i was just thinking to the early

00:37:42.740 years when we had the kids were young they would have been like two four and six or something and

00:37:49.780 we were in a bit of a financial crisis and i can't remember the christian author at the time but very

00:37:55.620 similar to david ramsey um he had a book out too on how to um budget and save money because we had some

00:38:03.540 personal debt we had to get out of and i think it was about over a two-year period my poor husband i mean

00:38:09.540 he had a lot of soups i i would take you know a chicken and use reuse it make it four meals out

00:38:17.300 of it or something um but after two years you know he was really excited that um we had worked hard at

00:38:25.620 getting out of that that personal debt and a couple of things that i learned back then this was before

00:38:32.180 auto deposit so um he when he brought his paycheck home the the author suggested instead of just

00:38:39.780 depositing it put the whole thing in and then take it all back out as cash and then line it all up into

00:38:46.740 different envelopes and then create some sort of a a budget so you've got like the emergency fund you've

00:38:52.580 got tires you've got food clothing um whatever you need and all these categories and if you had a good

00:38:59.380 month and and then you save that money and if you had a bad month then you knew you had this emergency

00:39:04.980 fund you could draw from so we went on a cash system for two two years and that's how we got out of

00:39:11.780 debt um i don't know if that's still a thing um but i know a budget is a thing and uh it does did does

00:39:21.220 the book talk a little bit about actually how to break down a budget because i think a lot of us don't

00:39:26.660 live on budgets totally and and dave ramsey's envelope system that's another thing that he's

00:39:32.900 known for as well yes he definitely does that and the reason i didn't talk about it was because i'm

00:39:38.420 not very good at making a budget and i yes make budget but i can't say that i i would feel hypocritical

00:39:45.300 if i said budgeting is great and i'm a great budgeter because that is not true but yes dave ramsey

00:39:51.700 says give every dollar a name or something like that or tell every dollar where to go and instead

00:39:56.500 of reacting to the money that you have take action and intentional action in advance and

00:40:03.700 the envelope for saving tires i think was one thing that you said doris like insurance and things that

00:40:10.100 come up maybe not monthly but once a year you know new snow tires you're going to need every

00:40:14.980 four years or something putting money aside for vehicle maintenance that's another one of his

00:40:18.740 his his envelopes i guess so yeah dave ramsey's got actually in that total money makeover there's

00:40:24.260 probably an online version now but it's got all kinds of spreadsheets and lists and i think there's

00:40:30.100 like excel links and stuff too you can get as complex as you want or as simple as you want but

00:40:35.860 yes budgeting matters and budgeting is important yeah and i i also believe that not everybody

00:40:42.260 is like either wired or disciplined to be so you know um diligent on this budget but you know it only

00:40:51.140 needs one person either in the marriage or in the family to say hey this is what we're going to do

00:40:57.700 and uh hopefully everybody complies and you do the best you can right i mean there's some great comments

00:41:05.060 in the chat about how others have either stopped um eating out i know that's a big deal yeah i saw that

00:41:13.460 good one amanda yeah even fast food like that could get quite expensive um i see a question in there uh

00:41:22.740 laurie just put in a question asking about a book of money that's written for young teenagers

00:41:26.980 dave ramsey has like i think he has a game he has like saving money for kids they have a bunch of

00:41:34.740 resources specifically for kids another one that uh we have used in the past and it's more about

00:41:41.780 investing and stuff rich dad poor dad is a book by robert kiyosaki and he has a game called cash flow i

00:41:48.900 believe is the name of the game and it's about generating passive income with rental properties and

00:41:54.340 businesses and things like that so my kids love playing that game and we played it when i was a

00:41:59.140 kid but dave ramsey does have some uh if you go on i think it's probably ramsey solutions.com they have

00:42:05.700 a bunch of kids resources even a young teenagers like budgeting and entrepreneurship package one of my

00:42:11.940 daughters has that and so yeah laurie go on ramsey's website and he's got a bunch of stuff there

00:42:18.580 yeah that's great i i even read that rich dad poor dad with my daughter in her last year homeschooling

00:42:27.300 as well just to be able to talk about these things yeah you want to normalize budgeting and saving as

00:42:33.460 well as investing and helping kids to think differently about money one thing that just as

00:42:38.980 you were speaking jason i was thinking about the biblical principle of contentment and versus greed and how

00:42:47.140 this really plays into it being able to deny ourselves you know that maybe the pleasures that

00:42:52.660 we'd like and and being able to crunch money or numbers and be able to go okay do we need that is

00:42:58.260 that something like delayed gratification is not something that we're familiar with in our culture

00:43:03.220 but i think it's so important um how would you how would you um what would you say to somebody

00:43:09.700 who's maybe spouse is not on board with this where can they go or how can they you know begin the

00:43:15.700 conversation of being able to to uh talk about these things and get on the same page i think my brother

00:43:23.620 in law says i've heard somebody say like there are two kinds of people in marriages there are people 0.99

00:43:28.820 that like to spend money and there's another person who doesn't like to have any fun so uh so that is

00:43:37.860 sometimes the case in a marriage we have a saver and a spender and so you know if your spouse is not on

00:43:44.740 board that is not an easy situation for sure and you touched on some of the things there laurie like

00:43:50.100 delayed gratification uh dave ramsey mentions this too i think but we drive through neighborhoods and

00:43:56.340 you see people with the new truck or the new boat or the new camper and we all think you know if you

00:44:01.940 think they're paying cash for all that stuff you are incorrect because they probably aren't and when we

00:44:08.340 compare ourselves to the jones is wanting the the new quad or the new snowmobile or the new dirt bike

00:44:14.180 or go on a shopping spree before christmas so everyone has nice new christmas clothes you know

00:44:19.860 most people as we saw in those statistics are paying for that with their visas and master cards

00:44:26.260 and debts so i guess i didn't i haven't answered your question and i'm thinking about it but i think you know

00:44:34.260 having conversations about it is is the first step and not trying to avoid the issue and it can create

00:44:40.580 tense situations in a in a marriage for sure we had some conversations this week about money at my house

00:44:47.300 my wife and i and it created some tension and so no denying that that can be difficult and that can be

00:44:52.980 hard but i would encourage you to to bring it up i would encourage you to try and support your spouse

00:44:59.220 from a husband's perspective i will say that you know when my wife nags me i'm not saying that she

00:45:06.420 does or anything but you know that is a less motivating than when she does it in an encouraging

00:45:14.500 way like hey i think this would help our family i think this would be better for you and this would

00:45:18.660 be better for all of us if we changed xyz so i think having those conversations not in a naggy way but 0.57

00:45:25.460 in a supportive and like big picture and this is better for all of us uh i don't know if that's

00:45:32.340 helpful or not what do you think what do you think you got any ideas on how to support a spouse

00:45:38.260 i think just even being able to set an example um you know by ourselves not maybe getting everything

00:45:45.060 that we want and and being able to um you know when you sell something or when you um have maybe a an

00:45:53.380 inheritance or influx of money being able to talk ahead of time about okay what are our goals here

00:45:58.660 what can we you know how can we plan for the future um and and one other question i had for you how do

00:46:06.260 you do this with your kids so like um like i loved how you involved them in the whole buying the van

00:46:13.380 thing but like as they grow up as they mature when do you start having them maybe pay for items or

00:46:20.820 or or being able to teach them okay this is real money this is maybe um like we had a system that

00:46:27.620 we would buy their necessities at a certain age but then if they wanted anything they would have to go

00:46:33.220 into their savings and so um yeah like what were some of the things that you teach your kids in that way

00:46:40.180 yeah that's a great question um so like you said buying them the necessities and stuff uh yes we do that

00:46:47.620 but as they begin to earn money and make money we talk about giving for sure that is a conversation

00:46:53.380 that i would say uh we definitely bring it up and i see them you know putting money in the offering and

00:47:00.660 putting their giving in the envelope on a sunday and bringing it in and they have cash they're doing

00:47:05.940 it with cash so we talk about generosity for sure and we encourage them to give 10 of their money

00:47:11.780 and sometimes the younger ones need some help figuring out what is 10 but they're not dealing

00:47:16.980 with big amounts so that's okay um i believe in also encouraging our kids in their gifts so i'm

00:47:24.420 going to say three weeks ago uh and i paid for my daughter plays guitar acoustic guitar she wanted a 0.99

00:47:30.180 new guitar uh and so i said i'll pay half of that half of a guitar if you want to buy a guitar because i

00:47:35.460 think this is an investment in you this is an investment in your gifts so she saved up for the other

00:47:40.580 half and bought like a thousand dollar or twelve hundred dollar guitar um which i thought was a

00:47:45.620 little bit much for a guitar but i'm like okay it's your money you're you're spending and you'd saved up

00:47:49.860 for it so we talk about that another rule uh that we have implemented is uh saving you need to save

00:48:00.340 half of your money so for example she wants to spend i'm going to pay five hundred dollars for the guitar 1.00

00:48:05.460 and she's going to pay five hundred dollars for the guitar she needs to have another five hundred dollars 1.00

00:48:10.020 saved so she can't spend all of her money on the guitar you can only spend 50 of your money on on

00:48:17.460 something and so my 10 year old he likes to buy drones and break drones and buy new drones so he he always

00:48:24.660 knows that hey if i want to buy a two hundred dollar drone uh i think the last one was a hundred

00:48:29.540 dollar drone that he bought he needs to have two hundred dollars saved so that he can have a hundred

00:48:34.820 dollars to spend on a drone so so that was something that we did um my daughters did a they had their own

00:48:42.020 little businesses they walked dogs when we lived in town they had a little dog walking business for two

00:48:46.500 or three people and they would earn money that way we sold bought and sold chickens one spring like

00:48:52.660 laying hens so the kids all so the drone son justice he started by buying one one hand for 25 or for 12

00:49:01.380 and we would sell them for 25 so then as soon as he sold his first one he bought two more hens for me

00:49:06.580 for 12 he made 800 that spring because every time he sold a sold a hand he would double his money and he

00:49:13.540 would buy two more hens for me or four more or eight more or whatever that's why he can buy drones now

00:49:18.260 i guess but but we involve them you know kind of in making money uh on their own uh and doing things

00:49:24.660 like that i think that kind of answers some of the things you talked about there we we aren't we

00:49:30.260 aren't making them pay for their own stuff at this point trying to think because my older daughter oh

00:49:35.060 yeah so she likes crocheting uh that's all the teens these days isn't that what the teens like these days

00:49:40.180 is crocheting so she will buy she buys her own crochet supplies and stuff like that and she loves doing

00:49:45.380 that and i think that's great but um actually it's funny in this uh upcoming podcast that we're

00:49:51.220 going to have with lorne robinson he talks about taxing your kids to pay for the necessities so if

00:49:56.260 your kid has an allowance or you're paying them to do jobs around he's like if you're going to give

00:49:59.860 your kids ten dollars give them nine dollars and they're gonna be like where's the other dollar

00:50:04.100 dad he's like that's the tax that's the tax and that dollar is going to help me pay for your hot

00:50:08.900 dogs it's going to help me pay for your socks and it's going to help me pay for the power in this 0.56

00:50:13.060 house that you live in i've never heard that concept before but i thought it was great tax

00:50:17.460 your kids a little bit when you're paying them to do stuff and gonna come off their paycheck someday

00:50:21.860 when they get a real job anyway so teach your kids a little bit about tax i thought that was

00:50:25.700 an interesting point from lorne that sounds like a really good interview when is that happening for you

00:50:32.180 that's a great question and i don't have an answer but in the next few months i'll start releasing

00:50:36.740 some shorts shortly so helping men thrive is the youtube channel and the podcast uh like and

00:50:42.420 subscribe as they say awesome yeah and if anybody here is really enjoying jason he is a speaker he

00:50:50.340 you can go on his website and inquire if your church or a group would like him to come in or

00:50:56.260 maybe even a small home school conference or even a big one he's going to be speaking at the

00:51:00.180 she be conference here in saskatchewan so if you have any questions for him or if you want to get in

00:51:06.100 contact with him check out his website check out his podcast he's got some great content we're just

00:51:11.540 kind of skimming the surface of what he can talk about and remember his book for kids christmas is

00:51:16.820 coming and that's a i'm always looking for like especially when my girls were young i was always

00:51:22.660 looking for good reading material so and i think that's what inspired jason to read to write that was

00:51:29.620 was the lack of of good reading material for his kids so yeah check him out there on his website

00:51:39.140 thank you laurie and thank you jason i also have a copy of the book here it is i got two copies yeah

00:51:45.460 yeah and i am telling people about it so it's i think having a christmas gift is a great idea

00:51:51.620 thank you jason weaning for your um just you're easy to talk with and you you present so well and

00:52:02.740 we just really enjoy your creative ideas and um even at my age i've noticed i need to start budgeting

00:52:11.060 a little bit again so i've taken a few pointers here and i'll be reflecting and digging into some of that

00:52:16.900 stuff again so um did you have a closing remark you'd like to just share with us

00:52:24.980 oh i just want to encourage you you know i said at the beginning what one man could do another man

00:52:29.060 can do i saw some comments in the chats of people having their own business with various income

00:52:34.100 structures uh chris i saw you called your credit card company to reduce your interest rate good for you

00:52:40.340 you know you can do it if you feel i felt hopeless for a while you know like we are in this big

00:52:45.620 hole how are we ever going to get out of it i'm not saying it's going to be easy and i'm not saying

00:52:50.260 it's not going to take hard work but you can do it you know if you put your mind to it and Dave Ramsey

00:52:56.820 says gazelle like focus when a gazelle is being chased by a lion he is not focused on anything else but

00:53:03.620 getting away from that lion and if you will work with gazelle like focus and intentionality you know

00:53:10.740 you're going to be able to to get ahead and do it and um yeah just be encouraged the future is good

00:53:17.220 it's not hopeless and you've got what it takes thanks for homeschooling your kids and thank you

00:53:21.780 guys for at action for canada for letting me uh share a little bit today thank you

Action4Canada - November 15, 2024

Pay Off Debt & Make Money

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