Intro to Catholic Money Talk

This is a brief introduction to Catholic Money Talk and why I decided to create the podcast. I talk about why we were created by God and how we can put that lens onto our financial decisions.

Transcript

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Welcome to Catholic money talk, where we talk about all things money and finance. And we try to do it through a lens of being Catholic, where our ultimate goal is to one day be in Heaven with the Lord. I am your host, Paul Scarfone. Thank you for being here today. So this is my first episode of Catholic money talk. And I thought it'd be helpful to maybe describe what brought me here to start doing this. So for the last several years, I've been involved in helping people with their money, whether it's managing businesses, managing their personal finances, making larger decisions, I was working at a bank in different capacities. And most recently, over the last little over two years, I've been helping people as a financial coach. And one of the things I knew, for myself, for sure, and it's become even more and more evident as I help people is that as a Catholic, I'm going to face so many of the same financial decisions that everyone else in the world is going to face, I have to make decisions about retirement, I have to make decisions about home purchase, make decisions about a car purchase, college for my children. And the list goes on and on and on. And, as a Catholic, I might make the same decision and come to the same conclusion that someone who is not a Catholic might come to, but I should get there in a different way. I should get there through if I'm married a discussion with my spouse. I should get there through seeking wisdom from other people, but also in prayer, and to have a prayerful discernment. When I come to making a financial decision, if I don't allow the Lord to be Lord of my finances, and seek His will, in some of those items, that I'm not really allowing Him to be Lord of all of my life. And so, when we go back to maybe when we were a little kid, I believe it was the Baltimore Catechism like why did God make us to know Him, love Him and serve Him in this world and be happy forever with Him in the next. Like, if that's why we exist, then everything we do. On here, we're going to talk about financial stuff and money, money items, but we really want to kind of have that lens of how are we using our money and finances to know him to love him to serve Him, so that we can be happy with him forever, in the next life. And so that's where I wanted to kind of create this. So we're going to talk about different topics, we're going to talk about different transactions, questions, common points of maybe tension, where it's helpful to step back for a second, put our Catholic lens on it right, with our overall priority, we're trying to get to heaven. And say, within all that, is there a way to see a clearer direction? Because everyone else right, people weren't Catholics, people weren't Christians, people just out there in the world. Where are they getting their direction from? All they're gonna get their direction from a Finance Magazine, their, you know, cousin, the watercooler buddy, a social media ad, a YouTube video, business expert. And, and that's all well and good. And some of those information, some of the information they got a lot of the information they might get, may be very good information and accurate. But it probably doesn't take into account, right, our personal goals of trying to get to heaven. So how do I do that? And not every decision, financial decision we have is going to create some factor on our eternity, right? If you go out to dinner, and you're trying to decide between a $45 steak or a$28 piece of chicken, right, there's no eternal perspective really there. The prayer and discernment came in when you created your budget for the month and said, Hey, we've got$300 to go out to eat this month or whatever the number is right? Like that was where the peripheral decision came in. The peripheral decision doesn't happen to be Lord, highlight on the menu what you want me to pick tonight. That's a little too I think trivial I'll be worrying about that. What we worried about was creating our budget and making sure that our top priorities that the Lord put on our heart, whether it be tithing, or giving and being generous, you know, paying our bills aren't our needs before our wants. And then we see Oh, and we've got some money to go out to eat. And yeah, we can spend this much on, you know, dinner out. And then you can pick your menu items. So that's a kind of a light, silly example. But the idea is, we want to make sure, as we're faced with decisions, that are, you know, fairly big, as we faced with these financial decisions, and these, you know, money topics that maybe we're not really sure which direction to go into, how can we apply our Catholic lens to that and say, a prayer to really say, Lord, my believe everything belongs to you, I want to be a good steward of everything you've given to me. What do you want me to do in this moment? Right. Just like we should be praying for, you know, if you're unsure of your vocation, we should be praying for our vocation. If we're married enough kids, we should be praying for the vocation of our kids, like, Lord, please put on their heart, what you want them to be what you've created them to be, right. And we can say the same prayer for ourselves, Lord, help me to be more aware of what you want me to do in these moments, particularly, as we're making these financial decisions, whether we're going to go start looking at houses, or whether we're trying to figure out how much money we should save towards retirement, or how much we should put towards a car, like, Lord, just give us your perspective on some of this stuff. So that we can make a decision that's going to be in line with the plan you have for us. Because I think many of us if we think back to financial decisions, that we didn't do well, or we didn't pray about, they might have shown up again, in our life, as a bit of a road blockage, right, a a obstacle to pursuing something else the Lord has called us to write, I've seen this with young people as they graduate college, they've got this mountain of student loan debt. And there's part of them that feels called to pursue a religious vocation. And they can't religious community says, Hey, we need you to clean up your student loan debt first. And these young men and women need to go out in the workforce, find a job and try to pay this these student loans off while they're still trying to live. And hopefully, that burning flame of serving the Lord in some religious vocation doesn't waver. And, again, when we we grow up, we look back at situations maybe in our own life where we go, yeah, that those decisions that I didn't pray about, really put put up a little bit of an obstacle for me doing what I feel the Lord's calling me to do. My experience was working in the bank at early age, not having really grown up with good teachings from my parents on money, we were very broke, we didn't have money. Always my dad had his own business. And we're always in a challenging financial situation. And by the time I was grown and out of college and working a job at a bank, I really bought into everything the bank was talking about, which was really about making the bank as much money as the bank can make. And there's good debt and bad debt. And I was happy to sign up for everything got a great credit score, we'll just use loans to pay for everything. And then life kind of ticks away. We're having kids and stuff. And then I look at it and I go, Holy cow, I don't have room for spending money on even just vacations I can't tie which we'll talk about that episode later in sometime in the future. But we felt very strongly the Lord was calling us to try to give him 10% of our income because 100% belongs to him. But can we give him at least 10 And we get to live off the rest. And we couldn't do that because we had made all these decisions, not prayerfully. Rather, we discerned our car decisions with the car dealer, we discerned our home purchase with the realtor and the mortgage loan officer. And we just had between non mortgage debt $1,800 a month and items we were trying to pay and things were tight. And I just remember thinking man, if that$1,800 wasn't there, we had plenty of money to tie. We had plenty of money to save, I mean 10 months, times 1800 bucks, that's $18,000 that's a lot of money. And so we realize that as we face these decisions, if we really feel the Lord's calling us a certain way, then we've got to invite his Wisdom very, very clearly into these big financial decisions, and particularly the ones that could, you know, again, show up and and really be a challenge to our life, right, like making a decision where it requires a loan, or we think it requires a loan, I shouldn't say to make the purchase, maybe what amount we are able to spend on a house, how much we're putting into retirement, right? All these types of things. If we don't prayerfully make those decisions. It's very easy that they can become an obstacle, a stumbling block a challenge, as the Lord kind of pulls us in different directions. And it's something that we need to kind of remove and get out of our way. So it's much easier to be proactive and say, Lord, I don't know what the future holds for me, you do. I want to follow your plan. And we feel your, let's say, calling us to buy a home, a home a house, which likes to live, show us the house, show us how much we should spend on a house, not what the banks tell us, we can be approved for not what homes we necessarily like. But Lord, what are you what do you want us to be able to make sure we're keeping space for. And so we come to Him in prayer, to make these financial decisions. And that's going to be different than someone who's not Catholic. Right? Someone who wants to buy a car or buy a house as some type of social status symbol, right? Or they want to be able to brag about what neighborhood they live in. Or they're, you know, trying to keep up with the Joneses, or whatever pressures they might feel, right? A YouTube channel that told them, hey, you know, buy this type of house, it's going to be the best way to grow equity, and you're going to be rich, and all this stuff, and, and that's the driving force behind them. They're not going to stop and pause and take a prayer and say, Lord, what do you have for us in these moments? So that's why I created this podcast, I started this podcast, it's something I talk about a lot with my clients, when we're coaching is how do you put your faith lends your Catholic lens on some of these decisions, so that we can really be at peace with the decisions we're making and know that we are trying our best, right we are. The Lord works all things to the good for those who love him, right? Lord, we love you, we are trying to find the good in these that you want us to have. So that the rest of the plan you have for us, Lord, we are in union with that, and we are working towards that. And I see too many people that the some of their biggest challenges in life is poor financial decisions, or poor communication with their spouse about making financial decisions. It's no wonder that, you know, finance, money, fights, money arguments are one of the biggest drivers of default divorce within our country. It's because we really don't think like, Hey, we've got to lay our finances at the foot of the cross and say, Lord, show us your way. So, hopefully, this podcast, we're gonna cover topics, and transactions and different items. Everything's pretty much fair game that we face as Catholics, and we're going to hopefully try to talk through and work through what is putting our Catholic lens on these things look like. And it's going to be different for everybody, right? We all find ourselves in a different situation. And even within then, you know, different times in life or in a new situation. So how in those different moments are we able to put our, our faith lens, right, which is, again, this big perspective of the goal is to be happy with the Lord in heaven forever. That's why He created us. So while we're here, knowing him loving him and serving him, how do we do these finances so that it still points points to him. So hopefully, you come along for the ride as we go through all these different topics. I'm honored and blessed to have you here. And hopefully the things we cover are very relevant to you and helpful to you. And if you hear something that you know resonates, and you want to learn more, I'm always going to be available to chat more, I'll have ways people can get in contact with me but if you also know of someone or have a friend or family member that you feel could benefit from this, please share it with them. I hope to help as many people as I possibly can. Thank you for listening to Catholic money talk. I hope you'll join us again next time. Please click subscribe when you're done. podcast app to get notified of new episodes God bless you and have a great day