Achieving Our Stewardship Goals

Are you progressing toward financial freedom and faithful stewardship? Do you have in mind what financial freedom looks like for you? If you were called to account today for the resources God has provided – finances, time, relationships, opportunities – could you?

Most of us have at least a vague idea of what financial freedom would look like. Maybe we think in terms of retirement, or being debt-free, or being able to leave an inheritance to our children. Maybe we think in terms of generosity – being able to give liberally to God’s purposes without worrying about our own needs being met. Or perhaps it’s as simple as just being able to pay the bills every month.

At the same time, many of us would be hard-pressed to answer the question of whether we’re more financially free now than we were a year ago. We might have a hard time pointing to specific disciplines or outcomes that indicate that we’ve grown in faithful stewardship. Maybe we looked at our tax return this year and wondered where all that money went.

In this article, we’ll outline some steps to better understanding whether we’re truly becoming more financially free and whether we’re achieving important stewardship goals. We’ll discuss establishing goals, creating a plan to meet those goals, and evaluating our progress. And we’ll touch on some key components of financial freedom and faithful stewardship.

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Establishing Stewardship Goals

“If you aim at nothing, you’re sure to hit it!” So goes the saying, and it certainly applies to stewardship goals. If we don’t have an idea of what financial freedom means for us or what it looks like to grow in stewardship, we’ll never be able to determine if we’re making progress. We won’t identify and make needed course corrections, because we won’t know if we’re off course. We may think we’re doing OK when in reality, we’re losing ground.

Financial freedom doesn’t happen by accident, and it doesn’t happen overnight. Moving in the direction of financial freedom requires that we first know what that direction looks like. This is where establishing financial goals comes in. If we have effective goals, we can measure progress toward them.

Others are happy to set our financial priorities for us. Marketers work to influence our spending decisions. Potential employers lure us with bigger salaries and better benefits. Financial advisors cajole us to save and invest – often with vested interests of their own. Charitable organizations encourage us to give generously (to their own causes, of course!).

Our best intentions to be faithful stewards can get swept away by these and other influences. If we haven’t prayerfully committed ourselves to pursuing real financial freedom – as God defines it – then we’re in danger of being enslaved by the priorities of others.

Why Do Financial Goals Fail?

Most of us have set financial goals in the past and, if we’re honest, most of us have probably experienced more failure than success in meeting them. If we want to meet our financial goals, it’s important to learn from the past and understand why we may have fallen short previously. Financial goals – like any goals – fail for one or more of several reasons.

In the Wrong Zone

Perhaps the most common reason we don’t reach our real financial goals is that we’ve set them too low or too high. Goals that are too easy to achieve don’t move us toward financial freedom, while goals that are too difficult discourage us when we fail to meet them.

Goals should stretch us but not set us up to fail. Michael Hyatt defines three “zones” that goals can be in:

• The comfort zone – these are goals that we’re likely to meet just by doing what we always do. They’re more projections of outcomes given our current path than they are real goals. They fail to stretch us; meeting them doesn’t signify a real accomplishment. For example, a goal to increase annual income by $2000 from the previous year – when that’s the average raise we’ve gotten over the past few years – is in the comfort zone.
• The discomfort zone – these are goals that won’t happen automatically. They stretch us and make us do things that aren’t comfortable. For example, suppose we set a goal of retiring $5,000 of credit card debt when our current monthly margin (income less expenses) is only $100. Allocating all that margin to debt retirement would only reduce our credit card debt by $1200; we’re going to have to do something different to meet the goal. Hyatt cites studies that show that, even when the goal is not completely met, a goal in the discomfort zone typically leads to greater results than a goal in the comfort zone.
• The delusional zone – these are unrealistic goals that we’re not likely to achieve under any foreseeable circumstance. The goal mentioned above of retiring $20,000 of debt in a year when we currently have no margin likely fits into this category.

Inaccurately Defined

Related, sometimes we fail to meet the goals we set partially because they’re not the real goals. Most often, this occurs when we focus on the numbers rather than the reasons behind the numbers. Suppose we set a goal of a non-working spouse getting a part-time job to earn at least $20,000 in the coming year. Such a job may or may not exist. But if the real goal is to have enough money to send the children to a private school so they get a Christian education, then there may be multiple ways to meet this goal.

Understanding the priorities and non-negotiables behind our numerical targets can help us achieve our real goals by opening us up to different paths of action.

Another way that goals can be poorly defined is that they’re too “squishy” – that is, too vague, not measurable, etc. For example, we could set a goal of “retire debt”, but if we don’t specify an amount of debt and a timeframe, we won’t be able to determine whether we actually accomplished the goal.

Michael Hyatt outlines a framework for setting what he calls SMARTER goals – goals that are specific, measurable, actionable, risky (within reason – not delusional!), time-bound, exciting, and relevant. This framework provides the underpinning for setting goals that we can actually achieve and that, once achieved, have accomplished something meaningful.

Insufficiently Supported

Sometimes, we can set good goals but fail to achieve them because we don’t put in place the practices that we’d need in order to succeed. We can program our GPS to give us directions to a certain destination, but if we don’t have the discipline to actually follow those directions, we won’t get there. We’ll talk more about this shortly.

Incompletely Tracked

Finally, many goals fail simply because we don’t track our progress against them. If we don’t track our progress, we don’t know when we might need to make a course correction. We don’t even know whether we’re headed the right direction.

Say we want to save $20,000 to replace an aging car. If we don’t track the amount we’re actually saving month by month, we won’t know when we reach the goal. We might not be saving quickly enough to purchase a car before the current one dies. If we’re tracking progress and have an idea of when we need the money by, we can tell whether our saving is sufficient or needs to be increased. But if we’re not tracking, we won’t know – and will likely miss the goal because other wants appear more urgent.

Two Types of Goals

In order to make progress and achieve our desired outcomes, we actually need two types of goals: Destinational and Directional.

Destinational goals are the type that we’re most familiar with – goals like “Save $2,000 in an Emergency Fund in the next 3 months”. Michael Hyatt refers to these as “achievement goals” because they denote a specific accomplishment.

Directional goals (Hyatt’s “habit goals”) are the practices that can get us to the destinations we’re aiming for. A directional goal might be something like, “Review spending monthly and adjust to ensure $2,000 savings in 3 months”.

We need both of these types of goals. Destinational goals without any practices to get us there become wishes instead of actual goals. They’re unlikely to ever be achieved.

But directional goals without destinational goals don’t necessarily move us toward the accomplishments we want to achieve. We can review spending every month but without a specific savings goal, that review won’t automatically help us save what we need to.

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Creating a Plan

So how do we create a financial framework of goals that we actually have a chance of achieving? To avoid the pitfalls we’ve already discussed and create financial goals that we will meet, we need to follow some version of these four steps:

1. Determine our priorities
2. Understand our position
3. Create a workable plan
4. Establish effective practices

Determine Top Priorities

As we mentioned above, one of the reasons that goals fail is that they’re not the real goals. This often happens when we start with numbers – we want to save a certain amount, or retire a certain amount of debt, etc. But we find that we can’t create a Spending Plan that gets us to those goals. And that’s often because there are underlying priorities and non-negotiables that we’re not willing to put on the table as potential trade-offs. These “untouchables” become invisible barriers to achieving the numbers we’re hoping to reach.

These priorities aren’t necessarily wrong – in fact, instead of creating obstacles to developing a realistic spending plan, they should actually be the starting point for that spending plan. For example, if we determine that a private school education is a non-negotiable for our children, that says something about the income we need to have or how much money we have to spend in other areas. On the other hand, if home-schooling is the priority, then that says something about living on one income.

In order to effectively guide the creation of a spending plan and stewardship goals, our priorities have to be well-defined and accurate. To that end, here are a few tips for determining priorities and non-negotiables.

Start with prayer

Stewardship is for God’s glory. If we’re not honoring God as the framework for our finances, then we’re not really pursuing financial stewardship. Our resources, after all, really belong to God. So the way we prioritize usage of those resources also needs to be guided by God

Involve the family

Our families need to share in the development and ownership of priorities. That doesn’t mean that we abdicate authority to the children! But it does mean that they have input into the discussion and that they understand the decisions we ultimately make. After all, they’ll be an important part of living out those decisions!

Adapt as needed

Our priorities naturally change over time. The importance of a spouse being at home to home-school the children disappears when the children are no longer at home. The priority of living in a certain school district comes into play when children approach school age. As our hearts grow in generosity, the priority on giving tends to increase over time.

Priorities and non-negotiables aren’t set in stone. At a minimum, we should re-evaluate these with each major life change (such as starting a family, taking on a new job, retiring, etc.).

Once we’ve identified what’s most important to us, it’s time to create a plan that helps us pursue those priorities. Creating such a plan involves three primary steps:

1. Understanding our current financial realities
2. Developing a Spending Plan (destinational goals)
3. Committing to key financial disciplines (directional goals)

Understand Current Position

As we said above, many plans fail because they’re not based in reality. For example, we may say that we want to set aside 5% of our income for retirement savings through a 401(k) plan, but if we’re currently struggling with a mountain of consumer debt and falling a little further behind each month, that goal may not be attainable right away.

Be sure you know the condition of your flocks,

give careful attention to your herds;

for riches do not endure forever,

and a crown is not secure for all generations.

Proverbs 27:23-24

In Old Testament times, wealth was measured largely in livestock. It was important to know the size of the flocks and herds and whether they were growing.

Similarly, we need to know where we stand financially as we begin to make plans and set goals. And this doesn’t have to be complicated! Basically, we need to understand our position and direction in three key areas:

1. Cash Flow
2. Net Worth
3. Generosity

Cash flow

Cash flow is pretty simple and it’s the measure that most people use to determine if they’re OK financially. It’s basically the difference between what we bring in (income) and what we send out (spending). In this broadest sense, spending incorporates everything we do with money, including saving, retiring debt, and giving.

If we’re spending more than we’re making, we have negative cash flow. This is an indicator that our current lifestyle is not working based on our income and it indicates that we need to make some changes. At the highest level, we’re going to need to increase income and/or decrease spending to balance out our cash flow. Knowing where we stand with cash flow is foundational to creating a workable spending plan.

Obviously, if our cash flow is neutral or positive, we’re in better shape – but again, knowing where we stand helps us get to a starting point for our spending plan. For example, if we’re cash-flow positive but aren’t where we really want to be in the area of generosity, then we know we have the room to make adjustments there.

Cash flow is best understood if we’re tracking and categorizing spending. But even if we don’t have good records, we can get a good general idea by looking at monthly balances of bank accounts and credit cards.

Net Worth

It’s possible to think we’re doing OK financially because we have neutral or positive cash flow but actually not be stewarding God’s resources faithfully and not progressing toward financial freedom. This happens if our net worth isn’t growing sufficiently.

Net worth is the difference between what we own and what we owe. So for example, if we have a house that’s worth $400,000 and we owe $300,000 on it, then the house is contributing $100,000 to our net worth. Net worth can be grown by increasing savings or by decreasing debt.

Evaluating our net worth is important in creating a spending plan because this understanding helps us to know whether we’re approaching savings and debt effectively. If we’re not growing net worth, we need to find ways to either increase savings or decrease debt, and that speaks into the amounts we allocate in our spending plan.

Generosity

Generosity is where the believer’s understanding of financial freedom differs from the world’s understanding. Any financial planner would advise clients to have a positive cash flow and to be growing net worth. But stewardship doesn’t stop there. Consider the parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:13-21), who did a great job of building net worth, but failed at generosity.

Over time, the goal should be to continually grow in generosity as God provides the resources. This is how we swim upstream against the current of the culture, which encourages us to worship money over God (see Matthew 6:19-24).

Make the Plan

Once we’ve identified our priorities and our position, it’s time to create a plan. This plan should be based on the priorities we’ve identified and on our current financial standing. There are a couple of ways to go about determining our plan, and the best approach is probably a combination of the two.

First, we can start by establishing goals or milestones. For example, if we’ve determined that an important priority is sending the children to private school and we’re a couple years away from the oldest going to school, we might set a goal for how much we want to save in anticipation of that expense. Then we create a spending plan that incorporates sufficient monthly saving to get to that number.

Alternatively, we can start by identifying how much we want to spend in each category (including saving and giving) and set our goals based on that number. The disadvantage of this approach is that it doesn’t automatically support our most important priorities.

The best approach probably begins with priorities, setting goals based on those priorities but then adjusting those goals based on the realities of our financial position. So, for example, if we set a target of saving for private school but find that we can’t fit that much saving into our spending plan, we need to make some adjustments (such as maybe additional income).

Assess the numbers

Our plan needs to account for all the things we do with money:

• Earning
• Giving
• Saving
• Lifestyle spending
• Debt

Every dollar of our gross income should be accounted for in one of these categories (including taxes as part of lifestyle spending).

A good starting guideline to shoot for is the 10-10-80 plan. In this plan, we allocate our gross income as follows:

• 10% for giving
• 10% for saving
• 80% for lifestyle spending (basically, everything that isn’t giving or saving).

This guideline isn’t a hard-and-fast rule. But it’s a good starting point or “reasonability check” on our stewardship. For example, if our lifestyle consumes 90% of our gross income, leaving only 10% for both giving and saving, then it’s likely that our lifestyle is impacting our stewardship and keeping us from pursuing financial freedom.

Account for Needs

Today, most of us don’t measure wealth in flocks and herds. But we still have things we need to account for as we think about our financial planning. When would we expect to replace our car and what would we need to have saved up by then in order to avoid going into debt for it? When will key components of our house – roof, HVAC, etc., need replacing and what will that take? How long can we reasonably expect our appliances to last?

Considerations like factor into our need for saving. Allocating sufficient money in a monthly budget for items like this might not always be practical, but setting aside some windfall income can help us prepare for these eventualities and avoid significant debt.

Establish Key Practices

As we mentioned above, a destinational goal that’s not supported by directional goals (practices) is likely to fail. Sports teams all set goals at the beginning of the season – have a winning year, or maybe win their conference or even the overall championship. But they won’t attain those goals without the practices they need.

Prayer

What distinguishes the believer’s journey toward financial freedom from the world’s understanding of money is the concept of stewardship vs. ownership. As stewards, we know that everything we have actually belongs to God. As a result, it makes sense to set a foundation of prayer for our stewardship. Here are just a few suggestions:

• Thanksgiving for all that God has provided
• Praise to God Himself as the Provider
• Confession of any bad decisions or selfish motivations
• Requests for contentment, guidance, provision, discipline, etc.

Tracking and Categorizing (weekly)

Obviously, we won’t know if we’re making progress toward our financial goals if we’re not tracking and categorizing our expenses. The more of this we can automate, the better, through tools like Quicken or others. But the important thing is to keep up with it regularly – at least weekly and more often if there are a number of transactions or if we’re using cash (which means we don’t have a built-in record of spending).

After prayer, this is the most foundational discipline and everything we do to pursue financial freedom rests on accurate and complete tracking. Without this, we don’t know where our money is going; so if we’re not meeting our goals, we don’t know where to adjust. Chances are, we can’t even tell if we’re on a path to meet our goals if we’re not tracking spending consistently.

Analyzing our spending (monthly)

The value of tracking and categorizing is that it gives us a way to analyze our spending. Without this analysis, tracking becomes a check-the-box discipline that doesn’t really help us understand how we’re doing.

A monthly analysis of actual versus planned spending can show us where we may be getting off track or where we may be ahead of schedule. We can see where we overspent or underspent (understanding that not every category will have spending every month) and make adjustments going forward. Those adjustments may come in the form of changed behavior or updates to our spending plan.

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Evaluating Progress

Tracking and analyzing our spending form the basis for a deeper-dive evaluation of how we’re doing. Monthly trends come and go, but reviewing our spending over longer periods of time gives us a chance to make the adjustments we need to make in order to pursue our goals.

For example, we may see relatively little expense in the area of clothing over the summer months and be tempted to re-allocate some of that money elsewhere. But when fall hits, with the need for back-to-school clothes shopping, we may see a spike in monthly clothing expenditures. Reviewing over longer periods of time helps smooth out the spikes and gives us a more realistic overall picture.

The Review Rhythm

Many people review their finances annually, perhaps at tax time or maybe at the beginning of the year as they establish their spending plans for the new year. Annual reviews are important, but they don’t give us opportunities to adjust mid-stream during the year if we need to. Quarterly reviews each season can be valuable tools in helping us to achieve our financial goals. Major spending patterns often tend to be seasonal (think, summer vacations or Christmas shopping), and a quarterly review gives us a chance to prepare for the coming season based on how we’ve done in the previous season.

As we consider what our quarterly reviews might look like, two components deserve mention:

1. Quantitative: This is where we review the actual numbers against the planned numbers to see how well we stuck to the plan. This is the more familiar of the reviews, but it’s not the only important one.
2. Qualitative: This is a measure of how we feel about the results we achieved during the quarter. This is an important part of the review because it takes into account factors that the quantitative review doesn’t.
    

For example, we might have fallen a bit short of our stretch goal for savings. But at the same time, we may have had our best quarter ever in terms of saving and we may see a positive trend over consecutive quarters. This is an indication that we’re on the right track, even if the numbers don’t line up exactly.

Here are a few suggestions for important questions to ask each quarter – see the Related Articles and Podcasts below for more detail.

Q1: Winter Review

The first quarter of the year is often characterized by recovering from the holidays financially and preparing for taxes. These two large events lead us to evaluate and think through a few key questions:

• Did we add to credit card debt over the holidays? If so, do we have a plan for recovering from that?
• Will we have a tax liability? How will we handle that?
• Is there windfall income, such as from a year-end bonus or tax refund? If so, what will we do with that?
• Has our income been adjusted (eg, through a raise) and have we accounted for that in this year’s plan?
• Are we on course for saving up for anticipated summer vacation plans?

If we create or adjust our spending plan at the beginning of the year, then the first quarter review is a great time to figure out whether or not we’re on track with the plan and make adjustments accordingly. This quarter often features windfall income; planning in advance for how we use that income can help us achieve important stewardship goals.

Q2: Spring Review

For many families, summer actually begins in the second quarter now, as school seasons shift toward earlier beginning and ending dates. So, late in this quarter or in Q3 will be the times when summer vacations – potentially one of the most expensive times of the year – happen.  Key questions to ask include:

• Do we know what our summer plans will cost?
• Have we saved sufficiently to cover that cost (whether from windfall income or from regular monthly saving)?
• If not, what adjustments will we make?

If our saving isn’t sufficient to cover this year’s summer vacation plans, we need to prayerfully consider some adjustments (with our family!). Some options are:

• Dial back on vacation plans. Focus on family time rather than on large events or trips. Possibly use a series of “staycations” as opportunities to spend time together and explore things closer to home.
• Agree in advance that the expense of our summer vacations will necessitate dialing back on holiday spending at the end of the year. Agree on adjusted expectations for a scaled-back holiday season in order to enjoy the planned summer vacation.
• Make trade-offs elsewhere in the spending plan to shift resources to pay for summer vacations. Dial back on entertainment (especially) and household expenses (as possible) to provide funds for vacation plans.
• Employ some combination of these responses.

Q3: Summer Review

With summer behind us and heading into fall, this is the time to review our financial situation and make adjustments heading into the final quarter of the year. If we way overspent on summer vacations, this is the time to agree (or hopefully remember!) as a family on plans for dialing back the holidays. By the end of September, back-to-school shopping has already taken place and now is the time to review where we are against our plans:

• If we overspent on vacation, how will we adjust fall/holiday spending?
• If back-to-school expenses were higher than anticipated, what adjustments do we need to make?

With three months left in the year, it may not be possible to meet our annual financial stewardship goals. But this isn’t the time to give up! Instead, prayerfully set some meaningful milestones for the fourth quarter that will support progress toward the original annual goals even if those goals can’t be fully reached.

Q4: The Annual Review

The Annual Review is especially meaningful, because this is our best opportunity to compare what we wanted to happen in the previous year with what actually happened. If we didn’t achieve our goals, it’s important to know why – because that understanding will help us in setting goals for the coming year. A few key questions to ask:

• Did we meet our financial goals for the year? If not, why not?
• Do we need to adjust our financial goals for the coming year?
• On a deeper level, have our priorities and non-negotiables shifted?
• Did we overspend on holidays? If so, how will we recover? And how will we plan differently for next year’s holiday season?

Understanding the Results

We’ve all experienced setting goals and then not meeting them. For most of us, that’s probably a more common occurrence than exceeding our goals. We’ve already looked at a number of reasons why goals might not be met. Our possible responses can be thought of in three major categories:

1. Reframe
2. Recommit
3. Recalibrate

Unrealistic Plan or Priority Shifts: Reframe

Sometimes we’ll discover that our plan wasn’t realistic to start with. Maybe we failed to account for some significant expenses or we overestimated our income. Or perhaps the plan was flawed because it didn’t reflect our real priorities, and that misalignment surfaced through our actual spending.

Other times, priorities shift mid-stream. Perhaps a move necessitated a job change that affected our income. Or maybe it was the other way around – a job change required a move that significantly impacted our housing expenses.

Whatever the cause, if some significant changes are needed, then we’ll need to reframe our plan. A good place to start – especially if a significant life change is involved – is with a review of priorities and non-negotiables, as we mentioned above. This should be followed by an exercise of trade-offs: Determining what we need to put down in order to pick up the things we’re picking up. A couple key questions to ask:

1. Are there discretionary expenses that we can reduce or eliminate because they’re less important than other things we need to spend on?
2. Are there non-discretionary expenses that we can reduce?
3. Do we need to make larger decisions, such as downsizing a house or car, in order to free up enough resources for new expenses we’re taking on?

Lack of Discipline: Recommit

Let’s face it, often our plans fail simply because we didn’t discipline ourselves to follow them. Perhaps we felt too restricted or maybe we succumbed to an entitlement mentality (“I deserve this, even if I can’t afford it”). Maybe we just didn’t put in place the habits we needed in order to successfully pursue our goals.

If the plan is solid and founded on our real goals and priorities, then this is the time to recommit. Here are a few recommended steps:

1. Pray. Confess any lack of discipline, thank God for his provision, and ask for strength to make the right decisions to manage his resources as a faithful steward.
2. Plan. Determine some important habits (directional goals) to incorporate in order to pursue faithful stewardship. Some of these might involve tracking spending, more frequent reviews, accountability and communication (especially if you’re married!).
3. Automate. Set up automatic recurring payments or transactions so that financial decisions are carried out without our intervention. Get or update a financial tracking system that allows automatic downloads to reduce the work of tracking and categorizing.

Unexpected Occurrences: Recalibrate

Sometimes our plans fail because of occurrences we didn’t anticipate. In these cases, we tend to excuse the impact on our finances because we couldn’t have predicted the events that happened. And while that’s true (and we mustn’t beat ourselves up for that), it’s also possible to be prepared for the unexpected in most cases. We may need to recalibrate our spending plan not only to pay off the unexpected expense but also to prioritize creating an Emergency Savings fund that can help us when the next event happens (and it will happen!). Most often, this is going to involve some trade-offs and we may need to make some sacrifices for a limited period of time in order to get back on our feet financially and prepare for the unexpected.

Responding Effectively to Reviews

One reason that financial reviews don’t always help us as much as they could is that we don’t respond effectively to what we find out. Some of us are prone to give ourselves plenty of slack, always having reasons why we didn’t meet the goals we set and assuming that things will be better next time. Others of us take the opposite approach, judging ourselves for things that were beyond our control and piling blame on ourselves to the point that we become discouraged. Obviously, neither of these approaches is helpful.

As we head into each of these reviews, we need to approach them with the correct mindset in order to benefit most from them. There are several elements to that mindset that can position us for success.

Be Accountable but not Judgmental

Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.

1 Corinthians 4:2

God calls us to account for what he has provided (Parable of the Talents, Matthew 25:14-30; see also Luke 12:48; Romans 14:12). If we’re prone to let ourselves off the hook for bad decisions or lack of discipline, this should be a sobering thought.

At the same time, God does not value us for how much we’ve saved or even how much we’ve given. Our value in God’s eyes is based on the inestimable price he paid for our salvation – the price of his Son. So we need to think of ourselves with sober judgment (Romans 12:3) but also with God’s grace.

Take Ownership

Going along with this, we need to take ownership of our decisions and habits. Our spending is a choice. That choice can be influenced by many factors, but it’s still a choice. If we don’t have enough to meet the monthly bills because of our house payments, that’s because we’ve chosen to purchase a house that was beyond our means.

Unexpected situations do occur and sometimes catch us unprepared. We can’t always own the situation, but we do need to own our preparedness. If the car breaks down and needs a $1,000 repair that we put on a credit card, we can’t own the breakdown. But we can – and should – own our lack of emergency savings that left us without a way to pay for the repair other than going further into debt.

An important thought to keep in mind here is that if we’re always looking externally for the problem – if it’s always “out there”, then there isn’t much chance we’ll ever solve it. There may be pieces of the problem that are truly external – but we need to always be on the look out for the pieces that are “in here”. Those are the pieces that we can solve. Thinking like this isn’t comfortable, but it empowers us to make a difference going forward.

Make Courageous Choices

Often, we continue in unhealthy financial patterns because that’s what’s comfortable for us. We stay in the house we can’t really afford because the idea of selling the house and renting scares us. And while these choices may feel more comfortable, they also keep us “stuck” and eventually produce a feeling of hopelessness. We lose our sense of agency and shirk the responsibility of making courageous choices.

Change the things that change things

Sometimes, we make changes because we know that we need to do something different, but the adjustments we make don’t actually alter our circumstances – often because they’re too small. To go back to the house example, if our cash flow is negative by several hundred dollars a month and we’re struggling with consumer debt, it’s not likely that eating out less is going to get us where we need to be. We may need to consider bigger changes, like downsizing the house, in order to make the progress we need to make.

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Pursuing Financial Freedom and Faithful Stewardship

True financial freedom and faithful stewardship go together; that’s why we use the terms interchangeably. There’s no freedom in ownership – the ownership mentality ties us down and makes us a slave to money and possessions, like the rich young ruler (Matthew 19:16-22). When we realize that all that we have really belongs to God, we’re freed from serving money.

As a result, the pursuit of real financial freedom is the same thing as the pursuit of faithful stewardship; we can’t have one without the other. It’s no surprise, then, that this pursuit involves both spiritual and material aspects. Here are a few keys – foundational principles to consider as we set, track, and adjust our financial goals.

Seek God’s Priorities

Take delight in the LORD,

and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Psalms 37:4

Trust in the LORD with all your heart

and lean not on your own understanding;

in all your ways submit to him,

and he will make your paths straight.

Proverbs 3:5-6

As we’ve seen, stewardship benefits us – it’s the only path to real financial freedom. But it’s not first and foremost about us – it’s about God. Our stewardship should focus on God’s glory. And to do that, we need to start with God’s priorities.

This is not an argument for asceticism. God does call some to a minimal lifestyle for the sake of the kingdom, but that’s not a universal call. James tells us that every good and perfect gift is from above (James 1:17) and Paul shows us that God gives us good gifts – including financial resources – for our enjoyment (1 Timothy 6:17). But Paul goes on to command us to be rich in good deeds, generous, and willing to share. God has given us resources for our enjoyment – but that’s not the only purpose or even the most important one.

A good place to start is to prayerfully submit our priorities to God’s leading. Scripture tells us to delight ourselves in the Lord (as opposed to the things of this world – see also Colossians 3:1-2). As we do that, two things happen:

1. God shapes the desires of our heart.
2. God fulfills those reshaped desires.

As we trust God and seek his leading, he directs our paths. We’re called to plan and prepare, but not to rely just on our own understanding as we do that. We trust God – not only that he will provide, but that what he does provide is what is right for us.

Serve the family

For those who are married and have families, the pursuit of faithful stewardship is a collaborative affair. The family will either be the primary support for moving toward financial freedom or the chief obstacle. The difference depends on the extent to which the family helps make the decisions.

Continuing one of the examples from above, if we’ve overspent on summer vacation and need to dial back on the end-of-year holidays as a result, this should be a conversation that involves the entire family. Everyone should understand the implications of all the fun we had on vacation and should help determine how that will impact the holidays. Maybe it will mean fewer or less expensive events. Perhaps it will be a smaller gift exchange. Involving the family in these decisions helps ensure unity going forward and also sets reasonable expectations.

Set a Lifestyle Cap

Our culture encourages us to expand our lifestyle to the limits of our income (and beyond!). But if our lifestyle always consumes all that we earn, then we keep ourselves from growing in generosity. This is one way in which we can serve money (perhaps unwittingly) – by continually chasing “more”. This is called “lifestyle creep” and it keeps us enslaved to jobs and careers we may not enjoy and that don’t bring fulfillment.

The solution is a Lifestyle Cap – a target of income and spending that constitutes “enough” for us. As we reach that cap, some choices become available to us. Maybe we continue to earn more in order to increase our giving. Or maybe we dial back on earning in order to spend time with family or serving the community. The point is that a prayerfully determined lifestyle cap can help us reach a point where we have choices – we don’t have to be “stuck” forever in the cycle of career advancement, more earnings, more hours at work, etc.

The Rich Fool in Jesus’ parable (Luke 12) fell victim to this pursuit of more. Think about the choices that likely went into his accumulation of wealth. He chose to set aside everything for himself rather than growing in generosity. He no doubt worked hard to store up provisions beyond his needs – likely neglecting family and community in the process. We face these same pressures today.

Of course, circumstances may dictate a change in lifestyle cap at some point. We need to have the freedom to make adjustments as God leads us. But the point is that we don’t have to obey the culture’s directive to continually pursue more.

Safeguard Margin

The wise store up choice food and olive oil,

but fools gulp theirs down.

Proverbs 21:20

Related, it’s important to establish margin in our finances. Rather than consuming everything, wise stewards store up some provisions for the future. From a cash flow perspective, this means that we don’t spend everything we make on our lifestyle (remember the 10-10-80 plan?). From a net worth perspective, this means that we’re growing our net worth by retiring consumer debt and establishing savings (starting with Emergency Savings).

When we have margin in the form of emergency savings, we’re not forced into debt by unexpected circumstances. We create this margin by not consuming everything we make.

A Long Obedience

Faithful stewardship is what Eugene Peterson might call “a long obedience in the same direction”. It’s not about snap decisions or short-term thinking – but it does require planning and acting in the present with the future in mind.

Setting and tracking goals on the stewardship journey can help us understand whether we’re headed in the right direction and enable us to measure our progress. Followed wisely, this process can help us detect blind spots in our stewardship and avoid financial pitfalls.

Storing treasures in heaven rather than on earth is not just a concept – it’s a principle that must be lived out. It requires both decisions and actions. These decisions and actions take intentionality and discipline – two characteristics that are both reflected and developed in the process of setting and tracking financial goals.

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