Episode 61 - Detachment

There is freedom, joy, and peace when we are detached from our money and possessions. 

Transcript

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Paul, 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. Welcome back to Catholic money talk. Today, I want to talk about detachment, but before we do that, let's say a prayer in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen, Heavenly Father. We thank you for this day. We thank you for all the ways that you love and bless us. Lord, you have an awesome plan for us. Allow us to yield to yield to your Holy Spirit and to trust you. No matter what situation we might find ourselves. Lord, allow us to trust you. We surrender it all to you. Bless us this day everything that's in front of us. Lord, give us confidence to know that you've equipped us, allow us to yield to your Holy Spirit. Come Holy Spirit, we ask this all in Jesus name, amen, in the name of the Father and of the Son the Holy Spirit. Amen. So today I want to talk about detachment, and what do I mean by detachment? Well, I'll give you a few examples. Today's going to have a couple stories here. So my wife and I, Taryn and I, we've been talking about replacing a car. We've been talking about buying a small camper, like a travel trailer. And there's some home projects that we're thinking we should probably do. We talk about these items, we might even get excited, but then we start looking at the costs and the money that we have to part with to make the purchase or to pay the expense, and we decide maybe we don't really want to do that. So recently, Taryn and I were discussing this and praying about it, and we wondered, what's wrong with us? Do we just like seeing the money in the bank account. You know, after having saved it up, are we unwilling to part with it? So we've been wrestling with this a little bit. I've mentioned several times in this podcast that one of our highest priorities is paying off our mortgage. In fact, last month, I was calculating, if we took all the money we've got saved for various different things, including some savings for future known expenses like braces for kids and stuff. We could bring the balance of our mortgage down into what I would call striking distance. So for me, striking distance, this is a number that's low enough that we could go scorched earth on our monthly expenses for a short period of time to throw everything at the mortgage, to get rid of it in a few months. That's what I call striking distance. And we aren't there yet. But I was running the numbers. I like numbers, and in doing this, I was once again thinking, I don't know if I could even really, I don't know if I would even really want to do that, to drain all the savings that doesn't include our emergency fund and retirement, but to throw everything else at the mortgage. I don't want to do that, nor should we do it at this moment, but I don't want to. And then I began thinking about those purchases that were hesitant, that were hesitant to make we can make them. We've saved up for them, but we haven't made them. Why not? And I'm thinking, Are we just too attached to the money in the bank account? Is that our problem? And then it hit me, that's not the problem. We readily give money away. Just within the last two months, we've given away what I would consider a lot of money. We wrote checks supporting two college campus missionaries for this new school year. We paid for another family's child to attend a Catholic school. We committed to supporting our children's school with a donation to their annual fundraising gala. This is all above our monthly tithe to the Lord. And this isn't to brag. My hope is that this encourages anyone listening to push yourselves to give more. This is only to kind of state how my brain was thinking. And this again, reminds me, this is why Taryn and I decided to get our financial act together in the first place, to put ourselves in a position to give to and to support those around us. This is why we are reluctant to pull the trigger on some of these purchases, because it will limit our ability to give and be generous to those who Lord inspires us to be generous to. Again, I want to reiterate. I'm not bragging here. I'm inviting you to grasp this perspective. There's no better feeling than to be generous to others. The Lord loves a cheerful giver and. And giving makes you cheerful. And again, this is the reason Tara and I got our act together. I I think I've told the story before, but years ago, I think it was about 2010 or 2012 the school where my children attend, they needed money, and they we had a family meeting, a school meeting with all the families, and the result of the meeting was, if every family could give, I think it was about $2,000 the school could stay open. And I remember going home and thinking, we don't have any money. I'm not putting $2,000 donation on a credit card. We were already trying to figure out what to do with the pile of debt we had accumulated. And we looked in our bank account, we scraped together what we had. I think we may, maybe gave. Maybe we had given six or $800 and I remember we gave the money. And, you know, a week goes by and the school updates everyone. Hey, we raised the money we need. Thank you for everyone's generosity. And I was thinking, Well, someone definitely gave more than we were able to give. I felt like we just couldn't give what we were asked to. And it frustrated me, frustrated us, that we couldn't kind of pitch in and help more than we did, and that was one of the motivating factors for figuring out our finances. We wanted to be in the spot that we could help other people who maybe couldn't close the gap. So how were we going to do that? And that's when we started getting organized with our money to figure this out. And I remember a few years later, I was actually serving on the board of the school, and Tara and I had kind of gotten our act together, and we were supporting the school a little bit more. And I remember looking through the records. I was curious to see how everything happened, like, who gave where, and I noticed there was a couple families that were able to give substantial amounts of money. And I remember thinking, like, I didn't think that those families that gave had that, you know, kind of money just sitting around, they'd be able to give. But I looked at them, they they live a simple lifestyle, and they have good order and good control of their finances. And those were the type of people. Those are the type of people I want to be when I grow up. So putting yourself in a position where you can give is awesome again. The Lord loves a cheerful giver. Giving makes you cheerful. It is the most fun that you can have with money, giving it away. So a little story here in August. So just a few weeks ago, we were away on our family vacation. What's one of our favorite places? Chincoteague, Virginia. It's an island. There's another island right Assateague, right next to it, which is a national park, which has the beach. And I love fishing. We rent a modest little home on Chicot Teague Island, right on the bay, with our own dock to fish and crab. And we love it there. It's a fraction of the price of a New Jersey beach home rental, so it's very budget friendly. We can also take a short drive to Assateague, where we can go to the beach see wild ponies, fish there, the kids swim, boogie board. It's a lot of fun. Anyway. On Chincoteague, there's a small playground on the island, and we take the kids there to run around and get their energy out. There's also a small fishing pier. So while the kids were playing, I walked over to a fella I see fishing at the pier to see if he's had any luck. After about, you know, 20 minutes of conversation, I learned that he's lived in Chincoteague his whole life. He's 29 years old. He's the assistant manager of a small retail store in town. He's got three kids under five, and his wife stays home to care for the kids, and this was his day off, and he had decided to take the day for himself and go fishing. He told me that he just started fishing, just took up fishing three years ago, and that his three year old son loves to go fishing, and had wanted to go with him that day, but he had told his son, Daddy needs some alone time today. So I asked him, has he ever gone surf fishing? Has ever taken his son surf fishing, and that is fishing from the beach? And he told me he hadn't. Being assistant manager a small shop with three little kids and a stay at home wife, he told me he couldn't afford the fishing gear that's required to fish from the beach. It's namely a large surf fishing pole, a strong reel that can hold a lot of line, and they can be hundreds of dollars having that set up. So I finished talking to him, but there was this sparked thought in my head, I have three surf rods and reels, and maybe I should give him one of mine. So later that day, I mentioned my conversation with this guy to Taryn, and she looked at me and smiled a little bit and said, Do you have an extra poll with you? And I said, yeah. So with one day left in our vacation, I decided I was going to go to the store where he works and give him one of. My fishing poles. I invited my oldest daughter to see if she'd like to come with me for a drive while I ran an errand. We get in the car, and we started driving, and I asked her what her favorite moments of vacation were, and she starts telling me, and then she asked me, Daddy, what were your favorite moments of vacation? And I'm trying to come up with some, because there were so many. And I tell her, Well, we still have 24 hours here, so maybe there'll be even more favorite moments. Who knows. So we pull up to the store where this guy works, and my daughter asks, What are we doing? She had already heard me tell the kids my conversation about with this guy, so I added that I decided that I was going to give him one of my fishing poles. So we were here so that I could drop it off to him. So to give you a visual description, this fishing pole, it's 12 feet long. It comes apart into two six foot pieces. It's got a very large fishing reel attached to it. It's a big item taller than me. So I take this pole, and I walk into the store hoping he's in and hoping that he'll accept my gift. I walk in, and he's manning the cash register alone. He's got a short line of customers waiting, so I get in line holding this huge fishing pole. I must have looked hilarious to everyone else, because the store does not sell fishing gear, right? I probably look like I was lost. Well, when it's my turn to step up to the register, he just looks at me, and a smile starts forming on his face. And I say, Hi, Daniel, do you remember me? We met the other day at the fishing pier. He says, Yeah. So I tell him, look, I've got six kids, and I know what spending time with my boys is like, it's one of my greatest joys. And when you mentioned that you didn't have fishing gear for the beach, I decided I wanted to give you one of mine. I've got three. I live further from the beach than you do, so I'd like to give you one so you can spend more time fishing with your son. He was so excited. He said, Thank you. So many times he was blown away and couldn't believe it. So I gave it to him. I told him I'd kind of get out of the way so he keeps serving as customers. I turned to lady behind me in line to apologize for the delay, and she just had the biggest smile on her face too. I said, I'm sorry. She's like, No problem, you know. I said goodbye to Daniel. Then I left the store, and as we're driving away, I told my daughter to ask me that question again. And she said, Daddy, what are some of your favorite moments from vacation? And I said just now giving my fishing pole away, and it really is something. I know the joy I receive from being generous is greater than the joy I would ever get from catching a big fish. Giving is the best. Generosity is awesome. It's the driving reason that Tara and I, we budget and we save and we live on less than we make. It's for moments like this. Psalm 23 is one of my favorites. The Lord is my shepherd. There is nothing I shall want, and it has this line I love, the line my cup overflows, right? He anoints my head with over. My cup overflows. And it does because God has blessed us, but also because we've made our cup small. And I've talked about this in several episodes. You know, our financial lifestyle, that's the size of our cup, right? I talk about lifestyle creep, right? That's when the cup just starts growing and getting bigger and bigger and bigger bigger. God is constantly blessing us, but if our cup is too big, like a swimming pool, it'll never overflow. It might never be full. If our cup's a thimble, there'll be so much overflow regardless of our blessings, regardless of our income, Taron and I have been intentional and prayerfully we discern financial decisions to constantly be in a place where we can experience that overflow, and the most fun we have with money is giving it away. And we do this because our perspective is that everything we have belongs to God, and we want to be in a position to be able to respond when he gives us direction. So as I prayerfully think about why, why we don't make these purchases that we've been saving for, the answer is this, it isn't because we're too attached to the money. It's because we don't want to use it on something and then miss out on an opportunity to give it away. So I share this as encouragement to all of you, if you want to experience this joy, if you want to experience awesome freedom, just give away what you have for the benefit of others. It starts with creating a budget. It starts with living on less than you make. It starts when you acknowledge that you own nothing. It all belongs to God. All the money and your ability to earn it belongs to God. When you make Jesus the Lord of your life, and this includes your finances, you'll experience incredible peace and incredible joy. And you get to see some awesome smiles along the way. So be detached from your money, from your possessions, and begin to experience an overwhelming amount of peace and joy. I hope this has been helpful. I hope you are encouraged. Thank you for joining me today. God bless Thank you for listening to Catholic money talk. I hope you join us again next time, please click Subscribe on your podcast app to get notified of new episodes. God bless you and have a great day. You.