How to Balance Generosity and Investing 25%

Next up, we have Matthew's question. I think he said this was one of his first live streams, so welcome Matthew. He said, "Do the guys have any thoughts on investing 20 to 25% while being generous? In his case, it's making a tithe to his local church. Sometimes it feels like the 25% could be more difficult to reach when also the 10% goes out first. And now, you know, generosity is not listed on the financial order of operations because we consider it a ground rule. So no matter how you want to deploy those dollars, how do you guys think about it?" Yep, I'm going to share my opinion on this. This is my opinion, and I want to be very clear about that. I'm not trying to impose my biases upon you. However, I think that when it comes to being generous, I don't think that's a wait-for-25% thing. I think that's a starting-at-the-beginning thing. With my kids, one of the things that we work on, and I literally had this conversation this morning over a bowl of oatmeal, because my kids got some money over this weekend, and I said, "All right, hey, what's the first thing we do, right? We got some money. Where'd it come from? Okay, what's the answer?" "Okay, you know where it came from." "All right, so what do we do?" "All right, we're generous with it. We give it back." So the very first thing they do with their money is they know that they give first, and then they save, and then they spend. So my opinion, when you ask about my thoughts on giving as a way to invest and save 25% for the future, I don't think it's something you wait on. I think it's something that you can do in tandem, and it starts at the very beginning. And what I have found, again, this is my personal journey, is that starting early and making that the base made it kind of easy to just keep doing it through time. It wasn't like something had to drastically change about my financial life, because when I had peanuts, I was being generous with peanuts. And I think there's nothing wrong with doing that, and it's a fantastic muscle to be able to flex and use. Yeah, I've actually learned a ton from Bo on this. I wasn't always as noble with my generosity, but I've seen Bo since I, I mean, right out of college, he was doing the 10%. And I've kind of seen how that's worked for him. And then also, there's a reason when I was crafting up the financial order of operations when we were doing the course and then when I wrote the book, I talked about it's really a step zero or a ground rule because I think you do need to be generous. I think it's one of those things where what I have found is if you can be generous with a little, and then when you come into a lot, there's something about that that keeps you humble. It keeps you just better. I mean, you're more grounded in, if you can have a generous heart, a giving heart, it makes you better at navigating when you're without as well as when you're in abundance. And I think it is also very important. Brian, I'd love to hear you speak to this a little bit because this is, again, something that you sort of imparted on me. Generosity is not always just financial. It's not about, "Oh, am I giving away 10% or whatever your number is?" It can be how you're spending your time, how you're using the resources that you have available to you, how you're using your skill set. So, generosity as part of your financial plan might not just be a dollar-and-cents thing. And again, I think that's a wonderful skill to utilize. The whole point of you starting this show wasn't an act of generosity. It was never, it was like you didn't have this vision of, "One day, we're going to record live every Tuesday at 10 A.M." That was just very nerdy, and you thought, "Man, I have all this. I want to be a schoolteacher." It was, and you said, "I have all this knowledge in my head, but man, there's so many people out there that don't have this. Gosh, I wish I could get it out to them. I wish I could just give it to them." And you're like, "Oh, you know what? This whole podcast thing, that's pretty neat. Maybe I can get, even though I can't work with every single person in the country, maybe I can just create something where instead of me working one-to-one with a hundred people, maybe a thousand people listen to this and they'll learn something. They'll be able to get some value from it." What I find, and this does have a correlation with money, I found the more generous I am, and not only with giving my knowledge and time and even starting this podcast, I always seem to be rewarded more. Now, I want to make sure it doesn't tie to Prosperity Gospel or some other thing like that, but I do find that it is better. When I'm very generous, there's lots of benefits that seem to come my way. And I think that's so unique. It's better to, and plus, I get tremendous enjoyment from watching you guys be successful, from watching The firm grow. It really is better to give than to receive. For more information, check out our free resources.