Episode 84 - Stewardship Means Investing Just As Much As Giving with Ron Blue
Subscribe to the Podcast:
Convinced that Christians would better handle their personal finances if they were counseled objectively with the highest technical expertise and from a Biblical perspective, Ron Blue founded a financial planning firm in 1979. Today that firm manages $13.5 billion in assets for more than 10,000 clients nationwide. Ron joins us to discuss why he thinks stewardship is just as much about investing as it is giving.
Episode Transcript
Some listeners have found it helpful to have a transcription of the podcast. Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it. The FDI movement is a volunteer-led movement, and if you’d like to contribute by editing future transcripts, please email us.
Ron Blue: All of a sudden in five years, I had a national clientele, a rich, wealthy Christians who wanted to give, and that's how the whole thing got started. And today, there's ten thousand clients at that firm Serve's that are giving away one hundred and fifty million a year. They're managing about 12 billion in assets. And I look back and I realize how God prepared me to do what I did. I can take zero credit for it.
Henry Kaestner: Welcome to a special edition of the Faith Driven Investor podcast, From time to time, we'll get involved in a broader definition of investing. And this is one of those times when we think about storing the wealth that guys entrust us with. Much of that is going to take place with investing in mutual funds and in stocks and bonds and venture capital, private equity, all the different topics that we have rolled out over the course of the last year and a half or so, over 75 or 80 podcasts with speakers like Frank Chen from Andreessen Horowitz, Andrew Stevens. And gosh, we've had just about every asset class. But lest we think that it's just about investing that God cares about, which is different, of course, in a way, a lot of people think about it, the reverse of that as people just care about giving. But since we and you is listening to this podcast, subscribe to more of this one pocket mentality, that is we stored these assets. We have an opportunity to participate in the work that God is doing. We need to, from time to time, start focusing a bit on the giving side as well, and in some cases were called to go ahead and make that investment into the private equity fund or into the mutual fund. And in some cases, we're called to be faithful to the giving opportunity that's right in our midst. And so every once in a while, maybe every 10 episodes or so, we'll get into that a little bit more deeply. And whenever we do that and do that with one of my best friends in the world, Darrell Heald, you probably know enough about my story by now to note, at age 28, I came to faith. At age 38, I had what I call my born again again moment when I met Darryl. And Darryl asked me the simple question, Henry, why do you give? And that sent me into God's word. And it just changed my life. So whenever we have an opportunity to talk about this, I'd like to bring Darryl back on board. We've been partners in ministry and invested in so many things since that time 13 years ago, which I'm super grateful for today. We've got an incredible guest in Baila. So before I go any further, Darryl, welcome. Welcome to the program.
Darryl Heald: Thanks. And good to be on the program. And I'm super excited. You could have just skipped over any of my intro. Let's go straight to our guests.
Henry Kaestner: Well, before we do that, we're going to go almost straight to our guest from Blue. And Ron, by the way, welcome to the program. It's awesome. Have with us back again
Ron Blue: a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. I'd love talking to you guys.
Henry Kaestner: You've always been such a great encouragement to me talking about this, these formative experiences that God has put in my life in these really important relationships. Ten years ago, we started Sovereign's Capital and it was Darryl that introduced us to you, and you went ahead and got it right away and said, I'll do anything I can do to help you. And we asked if you'd be on our board of advisors and if we could get this guy who's probably the biggest name in Christian investing and the generosity with which you said, yeah, absolutely. You know, if any way I can help you and you put my face on your website and just tell other people that you've talked to me and that blew me away. It blew me away. I'll never forget. I've told you before, but I'm going to tell you and our listeners that again, as we're getting ready, though, I was taking certain liberties with our relationship and I showed up this podcast nine minutes late. And what our listening audience may not know is that we on occasion will have several of these podcast recordings we do in sequence. And we just got off the podcast interview with Dallas Jenkins, who is the guy behind the chosen, and we're talking about him. And he had a message. He also has known Ron, interestingly, and this is something Ron, I don't think you knew, is that Ron hired Dallas well before he was famous to direct a video that Ron did, which I think is super cool. But one of the things that came up in the interview we had with Dallas was that somebody had come to him early on in his career and said Dallas. And I was on a Facebook post on a video he'd done, and he wasn't sure that the film they had done had been received as well as he had hoped. And somebody from Romania four o'clock in the morning said, Dallas, your job is not to feed the 5000, it's just to supply the five loaves and two fish. Now, they're just beginning with what you have. And then, Ron, as I was explaining interest, apologizing for being late, you shared an anecdote that was very similar to that. And whenever I hear those repeated themes, it makes an impact in my life. It makes me feel like God is trying to tell me something and maybe as well. And you were talking about a time when you thought you showed up to an event and it wasn't as well received. Or maybe there weren't as many people there as you would have wanted in your bride. Told you what
Ron Blue: she said, Ron. She said God said feed the sheep, don't count them. And it changed my whole perspective. You know, it just it took away the whole idea of how big the audience don't make any difference. It may be an audience of one because you don't know who God is going to put it in the audience and you don't know what he's going to say to them. So my job just to be faithful to deliver his message and he takes it from there however he wants to. So don't count them. Just feed them. And appreciate. Henry, you're feeding. Flock here of people that are really becoming serious, you know, when you get serious about your money, you're serious about your faith, and when you put those two together, that's a big deal. That's why Jesus spoke so much about money, because it's the greatest barrier to my relationship to the Lord. The God of Mammon steals that every single day. And we live in a culture that I think is the most difficult to live in because there's so many temptations. And I don't mean that in a condemning way, but I say, you know, I didn't even know what I needed till I went to the mall and that and there's billions of dollars being spent every day trying to make me discontent. And a lot of it gets through.
Henry Kaestner: So I'm still with you.
Ron Blue: It's hard to live in this culture and have the proper perspective on money. So I'm delighted that you're doing what you're doing.
Henry Kaestner: Well, thank you. And to your point, we're trying not to count our listeners in, but they know all three of them know that I love them. And Mr. Tony
Ron Blue: Abbott, your wife doesn't count
Darryl Heald: two of them. Love I love.
Ron Blue: I'll tell if
Henry Kaestner: you are one of those two people, though. You'll know that we've had Ron on before. We featured Ron and one of our conferences, and he weren't our first ever lifetime achievement award. And so some number of the folks listening to this are going to understand some of who you are in your background. But before we get into that, I really want Daryl to guide our conversation today because it's something that's so near and caught to who he is and and the ministry that guys got him on. But give us a flyover. Who is Ron Blue? What have you done? What is God done through you in your career? Bringing us up to speed real quickly and then going to go real deep on generosity?
Ron Blue: Well, can it real quickly. I turned 79 this year just a few months ago, and I was fine with that until I realized that I was living in my 80th year. Then I began to feel really bad
Henry Kaestner: right now that if we could all look as good as you do in our 80th year, then nobody would ever have to fear being 80, that's for sure. But you're now to be clear, you're seventy nine.
Ron Blue: Right? And the good news is that before long I'm going to be able to shoot my age in golf. If I can live long enough,
Henry Kaestner: I'm not going to live that
Darryl Heald: long.
Ron Blue: Well, that quick story, I was raised in a Christian home, but I totally rejected the faith. And I went to college. I went to college to have a good time. I did got kicked out twice, got back and got married. That changed everything. Got my MBA from Indiana University in nineteen sixty seven and went to work on Wall Street with at that time Pete Margaret Mitchell and was with Pete Murray for three years, starting my own firm. I didn't want to stay with the big firm, so I started a firm in Indianapolis which today is still going by the way and
Henry Kaestner: name on the door to
Ron Blue: the same name on the door. They don't know who I am. Anyway, I spent seven years doing that and during that seven years my wife came to Christ in nineteen seventy two, asked me what I thought about that, and I threatened her with divorce because I was on the success track. Then I was an entrepreneur and I wanted to become wealthy and I was getting it. So she didn't say anything for two years but she lived out first beta three and there was a godly woman that I there was something different. And so I prayed to receive Christ on my way to play golf. In nineteen seventy four, I had the four spiritual laws. I was by myself read through those and I said to the Lord, I don't want to change anything, but I'm willing to be changed. And that day I shot a thirty six on the front side and I said, man, if I had known this how to become a Christian in a long time ago, if I got back on my game on the backside. But that led to joining Campus Crusade two years later and working in Africa for two years. I traveling to Africa. I made ten trips. But during that time I was also teaching leadership seminars and decision making seminars in the United States. I was gone 70 percent of the time and my wife, we were in a strange city when we moved to Atlanta. My income had gone from one hundred and fifty thousand to twenty five thousand and we had five kids below the age of 12 and she had a husband gone 70 percent of the time. And she called me at the office one day and she said, How do you get on Christian? And I said, What do you mean? She said that this is the abundant life I've had, all the abundance I can take. And what that led then was I was with Dr. Howard Hendricks, who was a friend and mentor, and he had been asking for financial advice from me. And I had been out of the financial world for a couple of years. But he said, would you take a look at my finances? Which I did, and I was able to sit down with him and Gene and say, you know what, Howie, you're doing just fine. And it was like a load came off of his shoulders. This was in nineteen seventy nine. And now when I look back over those 40 some years, I realized that the question he was asking is really the question almost everybody wants the answer to, and that is how am I doing? They want to know the answer to that question, every one of us wants to know, and of course, it changes over time. So I felt like having traveled to Africa, that there was a lot of money in the United States. So I determined through a series of things that I wanted to help Christians plan to manage their money so they have more to give away. And that was not called financial planning at the time. Financial planning didn't exist. There was no such thing as a CFP, and it was product sales or investment sales and insurance sales and so forth. But the first client that I had, he wanted to give a million dollars to Campus Crusade. I did not know him. He was a physician. And I said, well, what's your income? He said, eighty two thousand a year. I said, What's your net worth? He said, I don't know, three or four hundred thousand. And so I'm thinking, there's no way he can give a million dollars away. But God in his providence had done something. And that was the last couple of years as a CPA. I had done a lot of bank projection work and all it was was projecting cash flows over five years and working them out to a final net worth statement. So that's what I did for this doctor. And it turned out he could give away a million dollars. He gave he had more property than he realized. He gave away his property, lowered his taxes, increase his cash flow, increases giving with Florida's taxes were to increase his cash flow. And you worked all that out. And in five years, he could give away a million dollars and still have basically what he started with. And I thought there's a lot more people like that. And I thought recently, what if he'd only wanted to give one hundred thousand? That would have been my bar. But it was a million, and so my bar became a million, and because he gave it to Campus Crusade, Dr. Bright asked me to speak at all of their donor events. And I would say, look, if you want to give away a million dollars or more, I can help you do that. And not only that, you can pay me to help you. And so I knew how to build a time based business, so I didn't have to sell any product. And I knew how to do financial planning. And all of a sudden in five years, I had a national clientele, a rich, wealthy Christians who wanted to give. And that's how the whole thing got started. And today, there's ten thousand clients that the firm serves that are giving away one hundred and fifty million a year. They're managing about 12 billion in assets. And I look back and I realize how God prepared me to do what I did. I can take zero credit for it. And it's such a joy now to I can look back and say, wow, isn't this great? And I'll finish with this. What I found was the people that gave away those huge sums of money were the most joyful people I knew and the most contented. They were accomplishing something with the resources God had entrusted to them and they were experiencing the joy of giving. So they were good investors. They were good entrepreneurs, but they were better givers. And I don't mean that on a comparative basis, but so I've had a great life. Henry, helping people give away money
Darryl Heald: your life, indeed. Thank you for sharing the history. What a legacy it's got. I mean, it takes a while to tell a story when you start to your seventy ninth year.
Ron Blue: Yeah, but
Darryl Heald: I love you. So Henry and I know each other thirteen years, but Rodney and I've known each other over 30 years. Yeah. So I was the young real estate broker and the company I was working for actually owned the building where you all were Ozzfest. And so I was two floors below Rodell Balloon Company and I was going to church with a couple of the young financial planners that were working for Ron. And they started give me these books that he wrote, Money Matters and Money Matters for Your Kids. And I was very much influenced by Iran. And Judy, Kathy and I both have been. And one of the reasons why we did what we did, a lot of ways that we raised our kids around these money issues, giving and things like that were influenced by you. And I'm thankful. So we're really grateful for that. And it's kind of fun that our families are friends. We've served on a number of boards together as well. But Rodney, thanks for joining us today. One of the things that I know that I've heard you talk about a number of times is what are the impediments to giving? You have this triangle like why aren't more people giving? Because you just gave this great example of this guys says, hey, I want to give a million and so on. But where is that kind of a state of giving? And in one sense, there's a lot of resources out there. Occasionally we see a person like this doctor being generous. But what's holding a lot of other people back?
Ron Blue: Well, I think if I were to boil it all down, Darryl, I think there's three things that have to happen in giver's life. No. One, there has to be transformation. You'll never see maximum giving apart from transformation. So it begins with a heart attitude, a belief in what the Bible says about eternity and about my life here. But secondly, there needs to be intentionality. A lot of people give, but they really give out of their surplus. So they give large sums of money maybe, but they don't necessarily maximize their giving unless they have intentionality. And I used to say there's two questions. No one who owns it, you got to answer that question. But the second big question is, how much is enough? You know, how much is enough to accumulate, how much is enough on a lifestyle? And there's not a right answer on that. There's only a faith answer on it in the faith answer says, OK, God, what would you have me? And I would ask this way, how much do you want me to keep? And the rest I'll give away. I love what Bob Buford, my friend, said to me one time, he had heard me ask that question, how much is enough? He said Ronnie said, I figured out how much is enough. I doubled it and gave the rest away.
Darryl Heald: I said,
Ron Blue: But that's OK. He said, a finish line. And if you have a finish line, then the question becomes if you're accumulating. Why am I accumulating more? And I believe so. There needs to be intentionality. But I think there's a third thing that is very helpful in maximizing giving, and that is accountability. And I was in that business of providing accountability and I required all of my financial planners to have a financial planner, myself included. I have a financial planner. You know, I've written 20 books on finances, but actually read one book 20 times. But I have a financial planner because I can't hold myself accountable. And Judy and I think differently a lot on the giving. She's far more generous than I am. I mean, she'd give it all away. When we sold the business, I felt pretty good. She said, you know, God gave you all that. I said, you're right. She said, you better give it all away so that when my retirement. But when she said that, then we told the financial planner what we were going to do. And so we've been held accountable to not accumulating them. And I would continue to accumulate if I didn't have a financial planner holding me accountable to a decision that I felt like I had made at a particular point in time. Anyway, there are lots of stories about that. But I think transformation, intentionality and accountability are really three things that when they take place, you see maximized giving. And I will say this to that. I know that the only thing that breaks the power of money is giving. You ain't got to open your hands or you'll never experience the freedom of a relationship with Christ because you'll always be there be two things to be going on. No one will be fair. And fear mentioned a lot in the Bible. And when you if you haven't done that, there's a fear of loss. And you obsessed with it, and that's the biggest, you know, I talk and you've heard me say this, the paradox of prosperity and the paradox of prosperity is that the more you have, the more choices you have. Therefore, the more confusing it becomes. I mean, anybody that's owned a boat knows what I'm talking about. When I sell the boat, they say it's the second happiest day of their life, or if you own two homes or whatever it may be. And we've had two homes and I've had a boat and was happy with all of it was gone. But the more you had, the more choices you have and therefore the more fear of loss and the more confusing life becomes contrary to the American dream. And I'm not talking against people living well at all. That's not the issue. God places people such as you guys, and I think probably such as the audience in positions of great influence because of the success they've had either invested in rebuilding their businesses. And that's a good thing. And it's OK to enjoy that. It says God gives me Rusty all things to enjoy. But he doesn't say that joy should be my objective. He said also says right along with that, you've been given much in order to give much. So generosity, investment, entrepreneurship, they all tied together because they represent success in many ways, but then conquering the success by living generously.
Darryl Heald: That's great. Thanks, Ron. I love those three things there. And so what is the so I mean, there is a significant financial services industry out there, right. That is looking to serve, you know, everyone listening to this podcast. So then what's the disconnect with the current level of service and what you're talking about? And if I'm kind of leaning in to what you're saying right now as an investor and wanting to be more intentional, have that accountability, what does that look like?
Ron Blue: Well, the problem in the financial services world is that there's a conflict of interest inherent in it. So, you know, when I tell people that my metric of success in the financial planning firm was how much our clients are giving away. Not how much we were accumulating, and today, if you would talk to around the blue adviser, they would talk about how much their clients give. And, you know, as a consequence of that, we almost never lost a client one. And number two, we almost never lost the client generationally. So now I've lived long enough to see people and I knew through it Kathee years and years ago. And he's now in there for generations of the cafes. And they're all working with advisors that are faith based, an advisor that is faith based and a client that is faith based, share the same language and the same value system. So if I'm an investor or an entrepreneur, I'm looking for an advisor. I want to know what that adviser believes. I want to know what motivates you. I want to know what he thinks about giving, because theoretically, if a client gives to a million dollars, I've lost the fees on a million dollars. What I found is when a client gave away a million dollars, got replaced with somebody who had two million. So I think there's a scarcity mentality. And to me that is almost it just can't be because the scarcity mentality says I serve a God who can't create and I serve a God who's not sovereign. I was once talking to a group of advisers and there were six Merrill Lynch advisors sitting next to one another. And I said, Are you guys in competition? And they kind of squirmed and I said, if you are you do not believe in a sovereign God, God can raise up those clients and he will. But, you know, faith, I see the evidence of faith in retrospect. I never see it in prospect. So I've got to make that decision, do that thing. That's right. And then God honors that and blesses it.
Henry Kaestner: By that you mean you can see patterns in your life where God was faithful and blessed you in times when you didn't see that happening. But it's so much more difficult for us to anticipate how that pattern will continue in our lives. We've seen it time and time again about how God is provided right when we needed. And yet it's so hard to just kind of project that forward as if God was sovereign and love me up until May. Twenty six, twenty twenty one. And then after that I was on my own.
Ron Blue: Yeah, well that's true. And the life of faith never stops. You know, I struggle like everybody day to day. Now I do say this. I had good mentors and I do have a quiet time almost every day. And today I was meditating on abiding in Christ. What does that mean? You know, and it means total surrender. But I knew that, but I needed to know it again today. Yeah, and now it's near the end of the day and I need to know it again. So the life of faith doesn't end, but it is a life of fruitfulness and joy. Also, when you look back and, you know, I got the privilege now of looking back and not seeing what I did, but seeing what how God used even me. He used Balan's as he could use me. And my wife taught me that
Darryl Heald: we love dearly. We love to feel. But what are the things that we actually just had a discussion on today? So we've seen this out of covid, this incredible rising market, so many asset prices going up so often. So one of the conundrums, it seems like with when we think about what we're stupid in asset is like, if I think it's going to continue to go higher, why give now? What would be your advice on that?
Ron Blue: That's a great question. Yeah, I love that question. I used to get that a lot when I used to get it. When I was speaking to donor groups, they said, you know, if I'd give me a million dollars, I could make two million and I have more to give. So I said, well, let me let me give you an illustration. Most people know the magic of compounding. If I took ten thousand dollars and compounded it at twenty five percent over 40 years, it would grow to seventy three million dollars without adding another penny to it. If, on the other hand, it only compounded out at twenty four percent, same time period, it would be 52 million. So it's the twenty one million dollar difference on one percentage point. Now the reason I say that is because what is God's interest rate. Thirty fold. Sixty fold. One hundred and thirty fold is thirty thousand percent and sixty four to six thousand percent. Nine hundred dollars. Ten thousand percent. So how much is ten thousand dollars given to the kingdom. At ten thousand percent for all eternity. That's the difference, so I want to do my given while I'm living, so I'm knowing where it's going and I want it I want it invested in the kingdom because the return in the kingdom is far more than what the stock market's going to return. So I use that illustration because people can grasp that and to say, well, I'm going to give when now you need to give right now and say something else. I think you need to give some cash to nondeductible cash. And I got this from a pastor who he did this and I picked up the example. So it was not mine, but I carry cash in my pocket and I look for people that are unnoticed. The most unnoticed are those who clean the bathrooms in airports, and so when I go out and I do a lot of flying, so when I go in the bathroom, I look for that cleaner and they're always standing in the corner head down, sometimes not saying anything. And you walk over and you give them 20 dollars or forty dollars or one hundred dollars, whatever it may be. And the joy that you see on their face, that's far more fun, if you will, than writing a big check to a ministry that had a guy followed me out one time and he said, I saw what you did. Why did you do that? And I said, listen, I am so blessed. I want to share that blessing with somebody else I love.
Darryl Heald: Rod, one of my favorite stories you have, why don't you tell our audience is the Chick fil A's story, the lady that.
Ron Blue: Yeah, I'll make it short. I used to take my son many years ago to breakfast every Friday, one of my sons to and there was this lady named Rex and she worked at Chick fil A. We'd always meet at the Chick fil A and she was always the most pleasant, smiling and so forth. If she got saucy when I opened the door, she would have our meal ready for us because we're always ordered the same thing. So I was walking out one day and I thought, I wonder if you can keep a fast food waitress. And I've never done that. So the Lord convinced me to tip her, give her something. So I reached in my pocket and I pulled out of twenty and the Lord said, You cheapskate, you got a lot of toys. And I said, Oh, no. So I took five hundred dollars and I followed him up. I went back in and I said, Can you take a tip? Is it OK? She said, yes. So I gave her one hundred dollars. She didn't know how much it was and walked out. And the next week I was back in the chick Ticketfly and I was before my son had come and she came over to the table and she said, I was so happy. When you gave me the money last week, I needed a new set of tires, she said. But when I got home, my daughter, who was in high school, came home and there was a girl in her class who had had a fire in their apartment and they lost everything. She said they needed the money worse than I did. And so I had the ability to give that hundred dollars to that family. And I thought, man, I gave out of my abundance and she gave out of her property at that impacted me, I mean, and convicted me for sure. So I encourage people who you can give a lot of money away, but I encourage people to give some cash away to give it away. We've got a family that has ten kids that, you know, here in Atlanta. They had two of their own and they adopted three from Africa and then a family. The parents died and they adopted all five of them. So they have ten. So at the end of the year, Judy said we need to give them some money. We go to Costco every now and then fill up some cards and take it over there to them. But she wanted us to write them a check. And I thought, well, if I write that the helping hands, it'll be deductible, but they'll also take their percent. So I wrote the check and we drove over there and we gave it. And that type of giving is is just blessed giving. I really enjoy that. And I don't want I don't want to talk about me in the sense of I'm so good because I am not naturally generous by any means. I'm naturally pretty selfish. And, you know, I like nice things. I like to fly first class. I like to drive a Lexus, but I God won't let me drive a brand new Lexus anymore. I have to buy. I used to run ride.
Darryl Heald: I mean, we could love to hear more stories than all, but why don't we do this? I mean, because you have helped people do all this planning. So you talk about this blessed giving. What is your allocation look like? Kind of know we think about asset allocation all the time. And and so I'll go from a giving standpoint, what is your advice on what are the dimensions and all in a giving allocation?
Ron Blue: Well, no one there's nobody including Bill Gates or Warren Buffett that has enough money to solve all the needs. So you can't solve every need with money. And so I generally counsel people. Where's your heart? You know, what's your passion? One of the things that you think are important, you can give broadly, but have again, I'll come back to this intentionality. What is it that you really want to give to that you're committed to? And I think husbands and wives need to be talking about this together because they probably have different interest. And that's OK, that's the way we grow. So I think giving it's not an allocation. Well, I do believe in tithing to the church, but that's the beginning point. I don't really consider that the giving. I mean, it is. Yes, but the real giving takes place after that. I'm giving out of obedience. I want to give out of obedience, but I also want to give out of desire. So what is it that motivates me and that can change over time? So I can for people, it's not necessarily an allocation. The Bible talks about giving to widows, giving the orphans, giving to the poor for sure, and giving to the church. But there's a lot of ministries and I want to attach my money to my heart when it comes to giving. So I have things that I like and things that Judy likes. You know, it is funny because every time we get a letter from John Erickson, I know it's going to cost me money because Judy loves Johnny. She loves the minister. We've known John for 40 some years and that's a passion. So any time Johnny goes, she gets money because it's a passion. So I said, give her your passion is tell your heart to your money in terms of your giving. So, yeah, I'm sorry, Daryn, when you're asking me questions, you're asking me questions in my sweet spot.
Darryl Heald: Why does the government. So what is that? Let's say your blessed peace is like how much percentage of your giving and what do you all look like it? What about global? What about, you know, nationally? How do you kind of break that down and think about some of the different buckets that you're giving to?
Ron Blue: We made a decision early that we like to give to people, so we give a lot to missionaries. We made a decision along that line that people that are working in Third World countries have more difficulty in raising money than they do in America. So we have a tendency to get more internationally when we're giving to missionaries and missions than we do in this country. We like to give it comes down to people. What's the impact on people? So the sex trafficking, the poor, that's where we like to put our money and that's our passion. I heard today we have high school curriculum on personal finance and we charge the school twenty five dollars a student to give them the curriculum. The guy that heads up our high school ministry and our institute read a testimony today of a high school junior who how, having gone through the class, it had changed the direction of his life to wanting to be in ministry. And that's where he was going. And he said, twenty five dollars bought a changed life. That type of thing means a lot when you're giving and I think we'd like to give to where we see the results. Also, it's hard to give some place that you're not tied to, literally tied to. So we pray about it a lot. We don't give to everything that comes to our door by any means. And I don't feel guilty and not giving because God has given us the ability to give. He's given us the places to give and I can't give every place. And in some cases it may be if I give, somebody else doesn't have to give. So I don't feel guilty at all about turning down requests for money.
Darryl Heald: Thanks, Ron. Another thing to where I'm just curious with I'm sure a lot of the listeners probably have children, grandchildren and all how you, Judy, have written on this before, but could you give us some ideas on how we can help our kids or grandkids understand that it's more blessed to give our safe?
Ron Blue: Well, there's two things about training children that can really sum it up. And I had a father asked me one time, how do you train your kids to manage money? And I said two things. No one more is caught than taught. So they're going to do what you do. That's the biggest factor in how kids handle money and think about money, and I said, the second thing is you learn to manage money by managing money. And that's the really hard thing today. And a credit card society of having your kids manage money. But there needs to be a way and there are ways that they can do that. And that same father said to me later, he said, I realized when you said that, that because I do online giving my kids had never seen me tithe. And we didn't talk about it because we had made that decision. We did our online giving so they'd never seen me tithe. So just think about it. What am I doing to communicate the values of giving one? And number two, how can I train my children to manage money? And here's the mistake that parents make. They don't let their kids make mistakes, especially the wealthy. I see they can afford to bail them out. And I don't mean out of jail, but they can afford to do a lot of things. So what would that look like?
Darryl Heald: What how would you set that? What would be a couple of suggestions that you would say, hey, you know, you should try these couple of things?
Ron Blue: Well, no one intends on the age. OK, so we started training our kids. By the time the youngest was eight, we kind of had the system figure it out. And so we gave them a budget to buy their clothes and we knew that they would have spending money needs, that they would have needs to make gifts to Christmas and so forth. And we wanted them to say, but we wanted them to tithe. So we gave them money and we did it on a monthly basis so that they had to manage the money. So when you give them one twelfth of their clothes, money. In February, they don't have to buy their school clothes until August, so they had to learn to say, but they also had to learn that when the envelope was empty, they were done and we allowed them in some cases to trade from one envelope to another, with the exception of tith in savings. But there had to be their ability to make the financial decisions. So somehow you probably need to help him set a budget and then figure out the management side of it, especially with the credit cards today, because cash, you just don't deal with cash much anymore.