Why this class, why 17 modules

Here is what we are doing for the next 18 Sunday nights.

We are working through a book I wrote called The Graduate Millionaire. It is a novel. Eight college students, one finance professor, and a janitor named Clyde who has been quietly listening to finance lectures while he empties the trash cans. And Clyde turns out to be worth about seven million dollars. On a janitor's salary.

I am not going to quiz you on it. Every single Sunday I am going to tell you the story before we do anything else, so if you never buy a copy you will not be behind and you will not be lost.

And here is the more important thing. The book is not the authority in this room. The book tells you what to do with a dollar. Scripture tells you who the dollar belongs to and who you are supposed to become while you handle it. When those two ever seem to disagree, Scripture wins, every time, and it will not be close.

Retell it. Do not read it.

First Monday of the semester. Hot. August, in a building where the air conditioning gave up around 1987.

First one through the door is Noah, running, soaked through, holding a crumpled schedule. Drops into a back row seat and says: this better not be some get rich quick seminar, I have seen enough of those destroy families. That is a young man who has watched something go wrong up close.

Next in is Madison. Front row. Color coded pens laid out like battle preparations. Says all the right confident things. Then stumbles for half a second, and you hear there is more going on at her house than she is letting on.

Then in comes Berkeley Perkins III, faded community college jersey, business plan covered in coffee stains and notes in four colors of ink. He has been at the bank. Forty seven thousand dollars for a sweet tea business. Family recipes going back four generations.

Room goes quiet. Everybody heard that number.

Then Berkeley, because he is honest, tells them about the last time. Two in the morning, an ad for miniature cows. Breeding pairs, five thousand apiece. He borrows twelve hundred out of his mama's emergency savings, drives two hours, buys two little cows.

They were not miniature. Regular calves. Six weeks in they are getting bigger every day. Month three, they are eating fifty dollars of hay a week and going through fences. Vet comes out and says, son, you have got two fine young bulls here.

Both males. Could not breed them. Could not milk them. Just two rapidly growing bulls eating everything in sight.

Lost about two thousand dollars. His mama made him work six months of odd jobs to pay back every penny, and told him: you spent my safety net on a Facebook fantasy.

Now while all this is going on, there is a man in the corner emptying trash cans. Nobody paying him a bit of attention. But he has a Wall Street Journal sticking out of his cart, and he has positioned himself, on purpose, where he can hear every word. And when Berkeley says that loan number out loud, that man's hand stops on his cleaning rag.

That is Clyde. Hold onto him. We will not learn what he is worth for a long while yet.

The fear cards

"Before you go," I said, "I want each of you to do something that might feel uncomfortable."

I handed out index cards. "Write down your biggest fear about money. Don't put your name on it. We'll discuss them anonymously in our next class."

As they wrote, I watched their faces. Some students scribbled quickly, others stared at their cards for long moments before writing anything. The weight of real consequences was evident in their concentration.

Madison finished first but didn't hand her card in immediately. Instead, she glanced at Noah, who was still writing. There was something in her expression, empathy mixed with understanding.

Berkeley was the last to finish writing. His card was filled with small, careful handwriting, as if he had more fears than would fit in the space provided.

Berkeley had more fears than would fit on the card. I expect there are a few of us in here tonight like that.

We are going to do that exercise. Not yet. Hold on.

Matthew 6:19-21

Open with me to Matthew chapter 6. Middle of the Sermon on the Mount.

Now look at verse 21 with me. Do not read it fast. It is one of those verses we have heard so many times that we quit hearing it.

Moth, rust, and the dug wall

When Jesus says moth and rust destroy, he is not being poetic. He is being literal, and everybody in that crowd knew it. PROBABLE

If you had means in that world, a real share of your wealth was cloth. Woven fabric, dyed goods. Storable value. And moths ate it. PROBABLE

Another share was metal and grain. Both corrode and spoil. TEXT

Then he says thieves break in and steal. The word carries the sense of digging through. Houses were commonly mud brick. A thief did not pick your lock. He dug through your wall. PROBABLE

So picture it. Your life savings is a bolt of cloth, a jar of grain, and some coin buried in a dirt floor. And the threats are bugs, weather, and a man with a shovel and a free evening.

The direction of the sentence

Most of us, asked to say verse 21 from memory, would get it backwards. We would say: where your heart is, that is where your money will go.

That sounds right. That sounds like something Jesus would say.

That is not what it says.

He says where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Your heart is not steering. Your heart is being led around by where you already put your money. You do not fund what you love. You end up loving what you fund.

Which explains something a lot of us have lived and never had words for.

You have tried to care about the right things. You have prayed about your priorities. Then you look at what actually left your account the last ninety days, and it tells a different story than the one you have been telling yourself. And you feel like a hypocrite.

You are not necessarily a hypocrite. You may just be somebody whose money got out ahead of his heart, and now his heart is dutifully following along behind it, right where Jesus said it would go.

Now here is where the book shakes hands with the Scripture. In Chapter 1 the professor tells them money is emotional, not purely rational. Family background and fear drive decisions before you ever run a number.

Think about Berkeley at two in the morning buying cows off the internet. That was not a math error. Berkeley can do math. That was something else operating.

Somebody grew up where money was tight and never discussed, and now you cannot make yourself open the envelope. Somebody grew up where there was plenty and no plan, and you learned it just works out, and lately it has not. Somebody watched a parent get wiped out and has not trusted an investment since.

Nobody sat you down and taught you those. You absorbed them. They were installed before you were old enough to agree to them.

You are not the owner

The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it. That is not religious language. That is a property claim.

What is required of a steward is that he be found faithful.

A steward, in the world of that text, is a manager. He runs the household. Handles real money, makes real decisions, has real authority. And he owns none of it. TEXT

Every dollar that has ever come through your hands came through your hands. It did not start there and it did not stay there.

As an owner, the question is: how do I get more, how do I keep it, is it enough. That question is exhausting. It has no floor and no ceiling. You will never once answer it.

That question you can actually answer. Tonight. With whatever you have got. And we will ask it every week for 17 modules, whether we are talking about a budget or a car note or a will.

The fear card

You have a card at your table. Nobody puts a name on it.

Not the polite version. The real one. The thing that wakes you up. It might be one word. It might fill the card, the way Berkeley's did.

You will hand it in face down and I will not know whose is whose. Next Sunday we start by reading some of them out loud, anonymously, and I promise you the thing you thought only you were carrying is written on two or three other cards in that stack.

Take your time. There is no hurry on this.

One question

Backup questions are in the manuscript appendix. Only if discussion dies early. Do not work through them as a list.

Your mantra and this week's step

In the book, the professor has the students write a personal financial mantra. A few words about what you want money to do in your life. Not a number. A direction.

Peace in my house. Free of this debt by the time she graduates. Generous like my grandmother was.

Write yours on the action sheet tonight or finish it in the car. Put it where you will see it. Mirror, truck, inside a cabinet door.

1. Write your mantra and put it where you will see it.
2. Ask one person in your family: what was money like in your house when you were a kid? Then be quiet and listen. Not a budget meeting.
3. If you have the book, read Chapter 2. If you do not, come anyway and I will catch you up.

Close and prayer

Next Sunday we open those cards. Then we go to the hardest chapter in the book, the one about bankruptcy. Chapter 2. We are not easing into this.

Let's pray.