The Freedom of Money

October 11, 2021

The Freedom of Money

Written by

Jeff Huston

In this blog, we discuss the Freedom of Money by answering the question, "What should the goal of building more assets be?” Did you know that you have more assets in your life than just your financial assets? We'll cover the four categories of assets in your life and address this question from a deeper perspective.

Jeff Huston, the Founder/Owner of 3D Money, has a podcast called the Jeff Huston Show — a nonprofit platform dedicated to coaching and inspiring you on your journey towards freedom!

On The Jeff Huston Show, we talk about ways you can increase your freedom of time, money, relationships and purpose. In today’s blog, we’re going to talk about money; which is a topic that has numerous potential land mines awaiting because we all have different experiences with money — we were raised differently and have different paradigms. Money can be a very stressful thing in our lives and can produce potential conflict in our relationships.

We received a question from John in Florida, who asked, “I know we all need money, and I’ve seen it do some good things. But I’ve also seen some destructive sides to it. What should the goal of building more assets be?”

This is an insightful question and caught my attention because on the surface I think it can seem very basic. When on a deeper level, there’s a lot more to unpack. I don’t know John’s faith background, but many of our readers (or listeners of our podcast) are God followers, as I am, and if his question is coming from that standpoint, I can really see where there can be a struggle with this.

In Psalm 62:10 it says, “...though your riches increase, do not set your heart on them.” So the danger is in setting our heart on riches and material things. We’re also warned in 1 John 5:21, at the very end of the chapter, “Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.” But I never really thought that applied much to me. I don’t have graven images or carvings of physical idols in my household. I don’t have anything like that to worship or admire. But when I read that verse in the New Living Translation, it came alive to me. It reads, “Dear children, keep away from anything that might take God’s place in your hearts.”

See, idols are not just about graven images. An idol is anything that takes God’s place in our hearts. So I think the danger of money, if I’m reading into the question that John asked is: What should the goal of accumulating assets in light of Psalms telling us not to set our heart on those things? How do we filter all of that as God followers in light of accumulating wealth?

To start, I’d like us to think a little differently about assets. A number of years ago I was introduced to this idea by Lee Brower with Empowered Wealth. If I were to ask you to list all your assets, you might think, “My investments are worth this much, and I have this much money in these bank accounts, I have some real estate with some equity, and I have a business that has value, etc.” More than likely, you’re going to list out all your financial assets. And I would agree, those are assets.

But I would also like to propose that we have other assets that we don’t often think about. We don’t take time to recognize most of these other assets though. What I would like to suggest is that we think of our assets in four different categories, or quadrants.

The first category is what I’m going to call our Core Assets: our relationships, health, values, integrity, worldview, faith, belief system, etc. Those are all at the core of who we are, and those are in fact assets.

The second category is our Educational and Experiential Assets. So if you went to college and have a college degree, that would be an asset. You’ve also had experiences in your life, good experiences and bad experiences — personally, I’ve learned more from the bad experiences than the good experiences. I like this quote from Hellen Keller, “A bend in the road is not the end of the road unless you fail to make the turn.” How do we make the turn? We make the turn when we adapt to the mistakes or the curve balls life has sent our way. There’s a question I love to ask people, “When did you complete your education?” Well, of course the right answer to that is “I never have and I never will!” We should strive to be life-long learners. Living wisely is really the goal. Our life education and our life experiences help us to live wisely.

The third category is Charitable or Community Assets. These are things that we contribute to that are outside of us, they’re bigger than us: things that we participate in or volunteer our time for. How do you live out your faith? In the Bible, the writer of James says we have to take action in what we believe. These actions in regards to our community are also assets.

And then we have Financial Assets, which include the things discussed earlier: bank accounts, investments, real estate, business interests, etc.

So here’s my question for you, if you wrote down a list of all of the things that you value in each of those categories or quadrants, what would they be? Now, those are your assets, that’s really your net worth. Your net worth isn’t just financial assets minus liabilities. It’s a sum total of all those things in each of those quadrants that are important to you.

Let’s say that I waved a magic wand and everything in those quadrants disappeared. You’re bankrupt in the true sense of the word. You don’t have your health, you’ve lost all your relationships, you don’t have your faith, finances, or any of your other assets. It’s ALL gone.

Now, let’s say out of the goodness of my heart, I wave my wand and let you pick one of the four quadrants to have back. Which quadrant would you choose to get back first? My guess is if you’re like most people, you’re going to choose your Core Assets. That makes sense. Let’s go one step further.

I’m going to wave my magic wand again and give you one more quadrant back, but only one! Which one would you choose? Well from my experience, when I’ve done this with people, most people choose their Educational and Experiential Assets in life. Why is that? Because if you have your Core Assets and my Educational and Experiential Assets, you can rebuild your Financial and Charitable/Community Assets.

We started out this blog talking about money and accumulating assets. John’s original question was, “What should the goal of building more assets be?” Well, if we view our assets as just piling up more money, then we’re missing what (I think) life should be about. Isn’t it interesting that we started talking about financial assets and yet financial assets didn’t even make the top two categories of assets if everything is stripped away.

Finances, as we all intuitively know, isn’t the most important thing in life, but it is important. If I go back to John’s question, if I think more globally about assets, the goal of accumulating more assets is to live wisely and to live better.

Click below to listen to the entire Jeff Huston Podcast about the Freedom of Money.

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The Global Economic Shift

By Jeff Huston • July 25, 2023

The Global Economic Shift

Will There Be A Banking Crisis?

By Jeff Huston • June 12, 2023

Fall of 2020, the Covid Pandemic was raging, the economy was shut down, inflation was 2%, interest rates were near zero, and the Federal Reserve was printing massive amounts of money. While the Central Bank printing presses were running full steam, I heard two economists make statements that seemed impossible to believe at the time, because the world was at a standstill. Chetan Ahya, Managing Director and Chief Asia Economist at Morgan Stanley said: “The driving forces of inflation are already aligned, and a regime shift is underway.” Paul Tutor Jones, Hedge Fund Manager said: “We are witnessing the great monetary inflation…an unprecedented expansion of every form of money unlike anything the developed world has ever seen.” As we now know, our current economic reality is quite different from what it was just 2 ½ years ago. Interest rates have risen significantly, inflation remains stubbornly high, and banks are tightening credit and hording deposits because they have massive unrealized losses in their bond portfolios. There are now legitimate concerns about the stability of the banking system. About the only thing that remains constant is the ridiculous childish gridlock that continues in Washington. I wish they would stop playing politics and start doing their job of governing. But I digress… I was recently piloting my plane from Dallas back to Minnesota. As I began my decent, I flew into the smoke that had migrated down from the Canadian wildfires. My visibility went to near zero. It reminded me of today’s investment environment and outlook. Visibility is currently quite low. Therefore, it is more important than ever before to have a sound, long-term strategy with a clear focus. Risk management needs to be a key priority. This is a good time for investors to do a fundamental review of how they are positioned, and determine what needs to change now to optimize investment results in coming years. Making sound investments has always been based on anticipating how the world might evolve. While no one has a crystal ball on making bullet proof long-term predictions, I believe many of today’s key trends and themes can be utilized to make smart investment decisions. So, while there are a lot of uncertainties in the short-term, I believe investors should remain almost fully invested with high allocations in real assets. This is your downside protection against inflation, a falling dollar, and an unstable financial system. The most important advice we can give you at this point is to set your priorities right. That means, first and foremost, having a very safe and secure place to store your wealth. This is relevant because we have been receiving increased questions concerning our current 6% rate. I recently had an investor ask me if I thought our rate should be higher since there are short term CD’s floating around offering rates that seem too good to be true. My response was that you must ask the question, “Why would a bank be willing to pay…say…5% for deposits whe n they are making loans at 7%?” That spread is not enough for their business model to work. So, why would they do that? The only answer I can think of is that they need more deposits to shore up their depleted capital. All this reminds me of Mark Twain’s quote when he said, “The return of my money is more important than the return on my money.” What to own, has really become one of the most critical questions in wealth and risk management. The recent banking crisis shows that investors simply can’t assume banks are safe anymore. There are great benefits and opportunities to be found when investing in cash flowing real assets. This doesn’t just offer more diversification, but it greatly enhances wealth protection as well. Additionally, we find that our clients use the monthly cash flow for all kinds of wonderful things, enhancing their lives and the lives of those they care about. If you’d like to speak with someone about securing your investments, we would love to connect with you! Gratefully, Jeff Huston and the 3D Money Team invest@3dmoney.com 320-905-3306

Chasing The Wind

By Jeff Huston • May 25, 2023

I’m mad at myself! I let myself get sucked into the endless news cycle again. I’ve never considered myself a news junky, but there have been times when I’ve been more “connected” than others. A few years ago, I made the decision to cancel all my news subscriptions except one. Since then, I have only been reading the Wall Street Journal. No nightly news, no magazines or other newspapers, no talk shows, no social media. I did that, because all the other news sources caused me to do what King Solomon referred to as “chasing of the wind” in the book of Ecclesiastes. It consumed my thinking and wasted way too much of my time. “Generations come and generations go, but the earth never changes. The sun rises and the sun sets, then hurries around to rise again. The wind blows south, and then turns north. Around and around it goes, blowing in circles. Rivers run into the sea, but the sea is never full. Then the water returns again to the rivers and flows out again to the sea. Everything is w earisome beyond description. No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied. No matter how much we hear, we are not content.” Ecclesiastes 1:4-8 NLT Reread that last verse, the one in bold print. Isn’t that an amazing summary of the 24-hour news cycle? No matter how much we hear, we are not content! For the past several years, I’ve been true to my self-imposed limits and guardrails in this area. However, a couple months ago, I cracked the door open. I’d go on YouTube periodically to catch up on the latest happenings in the news cycle. As I did that, I got caught in their spiderweb. They kept me clicking for more and more content…wasting more and more of my time. Thankfully, I recognized the error of my ways and quickly put a hard stop to it. It can be such a trap for me! Maybe it is for you too? In the book titled “Your Attention Your Property,” the author addresses “thinking about your thinking.” He says that we can step back and not only see what our attention is focused on, but we can experience how we are fully conscious and present with the particular experience we are having. We can do this at any given time , we just need to make a habit of actually doing it. We must learn to focus our attention, so that we can gain the ability to think about things. For me, the endless news cycle causes an emotional reaction to physical things, to other people, and to other people’s thoughts. When I’m in “the cycle,” I’m not thinking clearly about my own thoughts. I’m 100% focused on someone else’s thinking. When that happens, I end up thinking negatively. However, when I take back control of my thinking, I’m able to align my ways with God’s ways. My thoughts become aligned with God’s thoughts. It’s a beautiful thing. Proverbs 4:23 says, “Above all else, guard your heart because it determines the direction of your life.” So, how do we guard our hearts? There are multiple ways I guard my heart, but one of them comes down to always making my contribution bigger than my reward. I want to spend my life being a value creator, not a value extractor. It’s why I love capitalism. The way I see it, there are two kinds of people in the world. Those that embrace, promote, and believe in Capitalism and those that hate it! For me, Capitalism has been the growth process that has multiplied my uniqueness as a businessperson and as a God follower. The people that want to lead us toward socialism don’t know what they are talking about! Capitalism is about Value Creation. Socialism is about Value Extraction. In 1800, the French economist Jean-Baptiste Say coined the word “entrepreneur.” He said, “The entrepreneur shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield.” I love that. It perfectly summarizes our value proposition at 3D Money. Since 2010, we have been doing jus t that. Looking for opportunities to shift resources (people and assets) from a lower level of productivity to a higher and greater yield. Our investment focus on opportunities creating housing, jobs, and food, positions us for an ever-expanding future of value creation for our investors, our team members, and our customers. Once again, we want to thank you for your continued trust and confidence. Sincerely, Jeff Huston and the 3D Mo ney Team invest@3dmoney.com 320-905-3306 P.S. About a year ago, we offered you a PDF copy of the book “Your Attention Your Property.” If you didn’t get one but would like a copy, please send a request to info@3dmoney.com We are happy to email you one (as a thank you gift from us).