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Everyone in My Family Has Always Been Bad with Money. How Do I Break the Cycle? · Becoming Financially Confident

• 0:37
  You grew up watching money slip right through everyone's fingers.
• 0:41
  Your parents, their parents, the same struggle every single generation.
• 0:46
  And a quiet fear whispers that you're going to be next.
• 0:51
  But listen, a family pattern is not a life sentence.
• 0:55
  So today we're going to talk about how the cycle actually breaks and how it can actually break with you.
• 1:01
  And I know it feels like destiny, but it's just habits.
• 1:06
  And habits can be unlearned.
• 1:08
  So stay with me today, and let's make you the one who changes the story forever.
• 1:23
  Hello and welcome to Financially Confident Christian.
• 1:26
  I'm Ralph Estep Jr.
• 1:27
  And I just want to thank you for carving out a little time for me today.
• 1:31
  Today we're going to talk about breaking the cycle of that financial chaos.
• 1:36
  We've got a listener question from somebody who grew up in complete chaos, and they're afraid they're going to repeat it, but they want to break free of that.
• 1:46
  Right now they feel like it's impossible.
• 1:48
  But I'm going to tell you right now it's not impossible.
• 1:51
  And I'm going to show you exactly how to do it on today's show.
• 1:55
  Now, maybe you've got a question for this show.
• 1:57
  Maybe you're going through chaos of your own and you're like, ralph, I really need someone to help me.
• 2:03
  I'd love to help you.
• 2:04
  Go to financiallyconfidentchristian.com/question Tell me what's going on in your life and I may put it right on the show again.
• 2:12
  That's financiallyconfidentchristian.com/question Now let's get right to today's listener question.
• 2:20
  Subject line on this one is, how do I break a family pattern of being bad with money?
• 2:25
  Man, That's a term I hear all the time, Ralph.
• 2:28
  I'm bad with money.
• 2:30
  But let's get into the question.
• 2:31
  Listener writes this hi, Ralph.
• 2:33
  I come from a family that has just never been good with money.
• 2:37
  My parents lived paycheck to paycheck my whole childhood.
• 2:41
  My grandparents lost everything more than once.
• 2:45
  There were always collection calls, always tension, always that feeling that we were one bed week from disaster.
• 2:52
  I'm 31 now, and I'm terrified I'm going to end up exactly the same.
• 2:57
  Honestly, I already see some of it in myself.
• 3:00
  Ralph.
• 3:01
  I avoid looking at my accounts.
• 3:02
  I get anxious about bills.
• 3:04
  I never learned any of this stuff growing up because nobody knew it to teach me.
• 3:10
  I don't want to pass this down to my own kids.
• 3:12
  Someday I want to be the one who finally does it differently.
• 3:17
  But it feels like it's in my DNA.
• 3:19
  Ralph, is it even possible to break a cycle this deep?
• 3:24
  And where would I even start?
• 3:27
  Thank you so much for sending in that question.
• 3:31
  I want to tell you, first of all, what you've learned is habits.
• 3:35
  And habits can be broken.
• 3:37
  This isn't some grand destiny.
• 3:40
  And the best part of this is you don't have to have wealth to make this work.
• 3:45
  I'm going to show you today the steps that you were never given.
• 3:49
  But let's get right into it.
• 3:50
  First thing I want you to do is I firmly believe that in order to change something, you got to name it.
• 3:57
  So write down the beliefs that have been built into you.
• 4:02
  Beliefs like, well, there's never enough.
• 4:05
  You name what you've inherited.
• 4:08
  Money always disappears.
• 4:10
  I don't even look at my stuff, friend.
• 4:14
  Those are scripts, they're not facts.
• 4:16
  That's that recording that goes off in your mind because that's what you've been trained to do for 31 years of your life.
• 4:23
  That's what you've heard.
• 4:24
  You've seen it in your parents, you've seen it in your grandparents, and it's reinforced habits that have kept you stuck.
• 4:31
  But if you name strips the power, and when you strip the power, you can be the person that breaks that cycle.
• 4:41
  Yes, you inherited their habits, but not their destiny.
• 4:46
  So you gotta break the avoidance.
• 4:48
  So one of the things you said is, I just avoid this.
• 4:50
  You gotta look at your numbers.
• 4:53
  So you named the things that bother you, but you also have to stop avoiding looking at them.
• 4:59
  You've been living in this survival reflex, but that's become a trap for you.
• 5:05
  So go and look at the actual numbers.
• 5:07
  Say, I'm not telling you to go fix anything today, but if you have that unknown and that's what you're really living in, you're living in an unknown.
• 5:14
  Unknown fuels the fear in our mind, but when you actually look at it, I got a feeling you're going to find you're doing things differently.
• 5:23
  This is the thing I've seen so many times.
• 5:25
  People who grew up in this cycle are usually hypersensitive about not repeating those mistakes.
• 5:32
  But the fear that you're living in is in the unknown.
• 5:36
  You said to me yourself, I'm not looking at my accounts.
• 5:38
  I'm not paying attention.
• 5:40
  Looking is how you take its power away.
• 5:44
  But now let's talk about learning the basics that nobody taught you.
• 5:47
  Just because you were never taught anything doesn't mean you're not capable.
• 5:51
  It drives me crazy when people say, well, Ralph, I'm not good with money because my parents weren't good with money.
• 5:57
  Their parents weren't good with money.
• 5:59
  That's fine.
• 5:59
  You were never taught, but that doesn't mean you're not capable.
• 6:04
  You got to give yourself permission today to be a beginner.
• 6:07
  It's okay to start from scratch.
• 6:12
  I've got a ton of shows about building a budget.
• 6:14
  I've got shows about emergency funds, how debt and interest work.
• 6:18
  Go and review those.
• 6:20
  Go and look at.
• 6:21
  I've got over a thousand episodes in my back catalog.
• 6:24
  Start and do one a day.
• 6:26
  Use our show.
• 6:27
  Find some books, go to class.
• 6:29
  Just pick one of those.
• 6:30
  Knowledge is the tool to breaking out of this cycle.
• 6:34
  And then what you're going to do is you're going to pass down that knowledge to your children instead of passing down the chaos.
• 6:42
  I want you to hear something loud and clear.
• 6:43
  You're not bad with money.
• 6:46
  You're not bad with money.
• 6:48
  You were just never taught how to do it correctly.
• 6:53
  So today, build one new habit at a time.
• 6:55
  Don't go for everything overnight.
• 6:57
  Listen, you're starting out as a babe.
• 6:59
  You're on the milk.
• 7:00
  You're not going to get to the solid food yet.
• 7:03
  So find one habit and make it stick.
• 7:05
  Maybe it's something as simple as automating one small account transfer to build that emergency fund.
• 7:11
  Maybe it's that 10 minute weekly check in.
• 7:14
  It's those small repeated things that rewrite the pattern.
• 7:18
  They break those habits.
• 7:19
  What do they say?
• 7:20
  A habit takes about six weeks to start.
• 7:23
  Do one thing at a time.
• 7:25
  Make this the new normal for you and next generation will benefit from that.
• 7:30
  It's all about consistency over intensity.
• 7:34
  You're not going to break this cycle in a day.
• 7:36
  But they do break one new habit at a time.
• 7:40
  And I want to encourage you.
• 7:41
  You can be the person that turns this on purpose.
• 7:47
  Decide it out loud.
• 7:48
  It might sound funny, but say this out loud.
• 7:50
  I am going to break this cycle.
• 7:52
  Talk openly with your kids.
• 7:54
  I don't know if you have kids or not, but if you have kids, talk openly about it.
• 7:58
  You don't have to be perfect, you just have to be different.
• 8:01
  You can change a direction and it's actually an answer to a prayer that they couldn't even pray because they don't even know any better.
• 8:09
  But every family that breaks a cycle has one person.
• 8:12
  And you might be this person who decided to be the turning point.
• 8:18
  That could be you today.
• 8:20
  Now, you said something in your message that it feels like it's in your DNA.
• 8:25
  And I understand why that is?
• 8:26
  Because that's what you've known.
• 8:29
  But hear me on this.
• 8:31
  You're not bound by what came before you in Christ.
• 8:35
  All of us are a new creation.
• 8:39
  And yes, that includes the way you handle money.
• 8:43
  Now, here's what faith doesn't promise us, though.
• 8:46
  It doesn't promise us that those old fears are going to vanish overnight.
• 8:49
  You know the fear.
• 8:51
  You know the feeling of, are we going to have enough food?
• 8:54
  Is the cable, Is the electric going to get shut off?
• 8:56
  Are we going to lose our home?
• 8:57
  That's not going to go away overnight.
• 9:00
  It doesn't promise that you're never going to feel the pull of those inherited habits.
• 9:05
  And it doesn't promise that the learning curve is short.
• 9:07
  You are starting at the beginning.
• 9:09
  This is going to be a challenge.
• 9:10
  But I know you can do it.
• 9:12
  Because here's what faith does promises us.
• 9:16
  It promises us that the God who redeems lives is in the business of restoring that which was lost across generations.
• 9:23
  There's a beautiful message in the Bible.
• 9:25
  We'll talk about it in a second.
• 9:27
  About locusts.
• 9:29
  And God says, I'm going to restore the years.
• 9:31
  The locusts ate that generational loss into a blessing.
• 9:38
  You're being called right now to redeem the future.
• 9:41
  You're going to break those chains and you can do it because you've got a strong God.
• 9:45
  So step forward as the new creation that you are today.
• 9:49
  End the cycle.
• 9:50
  The cycle ends here.
• 9:52
  But it's not by your strength alone.
• 9:54
  It's by the grace working with you.
• 9:59
  You're already doing the hard work.
• 10:00
  You're already answering the questions.
• 10:02
  You're asking the tough questions.
• 10:04
  And wanting to break it is proof that you actually can.
• 10:07
  You are the turning point that they've been awaiting.
• 10:10
  So here's your win for today.
• 10:13
  I want you to write down three beliefs and I want you to write a truer one beside each.
• 10:19
  In other words, what money felt like at home.
• 10:21
  Write down what it was, name the belief, counter it with truth, and it disappears.
• 10:29
  When you can give it a plan, you can fix it.
• 10:33
  You're not going to rewire everything today, but you're going to expose the scripts and you're going to replace them.
• 10:41
  Well, let's get right to the Bible verse I talked about.
• 10:43
  It actually comes to us from the Book of Joel, chapter 2, verse 25.
• 10:47
  It says, the Lord says, I will give you back what you lost to the swarming locusts.
• 10:54
  This was a Bible verse about the years that the locust ate the crops.
• 10:58
  But what does God Tell us he restores what felt lost.
• 11:03
  That past that you felt doesn't get the last word.
• 11:07
  The promise that he's making you today, the change that you're going to make is going to be lived out.
• 11:14
  How about we pray together right now?
• 11:17
  Heavenly Father, I bring before you someone carrying the weight of generations and they're afraid.
• 11:24
  They're destined to repeat a painful pattern.
• 11:27
  But Lord, they want to do it differently for themselves and for their children who will come after them.
• 11:32
  So Lord, right now, at this moment, I ask that you would strengthen them, Lord.
• 11:35
  Give them courage to look at their money without fear.
• 11:39
  Teach them what no one else could teach them, Lord.
• 11:41
  Give them new habits, just one step at a time and make them the turning point.
• 11:47
  And Lord, restore the years and bless the future generations.
• 11:51
  And we ask this in Jesus name.
• 11:54
  Amen.
• 11:56
  Friend, you came in today feeling like you're stuck on this destiny.
• 12:01
  But I've given you some habits out of this one person decides to change generational cracks and generational trains and that's you.
• 12:12
  So here's the takeaways for you.
• 12:13
  Name it.
• 12:14
  Expose the scripts.
• 12:15
  Break that avoidance.
• 12:16
  Look at your numbers for real and learn what you were never taught.
• 12:20
  Find that one habit that consistency can rewrite the story and you can be that turning point.
• 12:28
  And it stops with you today.
• 12:31
  And I just want to encourage you one more thing.
• 12:33
  If you're battling something or you've had a triumph over something, I would love to hear and share it with the show.
• 12:38
  There are a lot of people that are tuning in every day and they want to be encouraged.
• 12:42
  They want to know that someone else has broken this change and been that decisive person.
• 12:48
  If you've got a story like that, I would love to hear it.
• 12:50
  You can go to financiallyconfidentchristian.com/voicemail we'll put a link in the show notes.
• 12:56
  All you got to do is click on it and just record your voice again.
• 12:59
  That's financiallyconfidentchristian.com/voicemail I just want to thank you so much for joining me today.
• 13:06
  Thank you for your honesty.
• 13:08
  Stay financially savvy.
• 13:09
  May God bless you and you have a truly great day.
• 13:30
  We.