This Could Save you Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars

Hey everybody, welcome to 2026. Wow. I don’t know if you’re old enough, but I’m old enough. I remember when we were coming into the 2000s and everybody was talking about generators, systems going crazy, planes falling out of the sky. Now we’re a quarter of a century beyond that.

When I think back on United States history, those who lived in the 1920s called it the Roaring Twenties. Everything was moving fast and furious, and then all of a sudden the Great Depression came in.

Now here I am, one of those people living in the early to mid-20s of this century, and it’s 2026. That’s an amazing thing to me. So I want to welcome you to 2026, and I want you to have a plan and a purpose for this year. I truly encourage you to do that.

I want to read a Bible verse to you, because this is a faith-based podcast. Yes, we talk about business and money, but we approach the financial side of life through Christianity. We’re a financial podcast from a faith perspective.

So I want to read from the Old Testament, Habakkuk 2:2. It says: “Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.” The Bible gives us very practical wisdom here: write your plan down.

Here in the United States—and I imagine it’s the same around the world—businesses write business plans. This is what we’re going to do. This is how we’re going to move forward.

I personally have a file in a safe at my house called “If I Die.” People think that sounds morbid, but the reality is, everybody is going to die one day. Within my marriage, my wife isn’t very interested in the details of money—how we make it, where it’s invested, or how everything is structured. She hears me talk about it, but it’s more like, “Oh, okay, that’s cool.”

So in this file labeled “If I Die,” there is a step-by-step guide of what to do. I’ve made it as plain as possible. I have life insurance on me—call this person to get it processed. We own properties: the house we live in and rental properties. I explain the options—maybe you want to sell this, but here are the tax implications; maybe you want to do it another way. Talk to this person for more information. It lays out where our money is, where our assets are, and what to do.

If someone has to run with this plan, they can. And this kind of thinking applies to our businesses as well. In every area of life, we should have a plan. We should have a “what if” scenario written down.

I once heard a true story about a man who made a lot of money in sales and built a very expensive home. The title was in both his name and his wife’s name, which meant neither of them could do anything with the house without the other. There were no additional documents—no power of attorney, nothing like that.

He was in a car accident. He didn’t die, but he ended up in a coma. He couldn’t function, but he was still alive. The wife decided she needed to sell the house, take the equity, and move closer to the hospital so she could be there with him. But she couldn’t sell the house. There was no plan. Nothing was written out saying, “If this happens, do this.”

The sad part is that she lost the house to foreclosure. He was the income earner; she was a stay-at-home mom. When the income stopped and there was no plan, they lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity simply because there were no instructions in place.

As we enter 2026, I want to encourage you to get a plan. Don’t allow your life to drift off track. Write it down so that if something happens, someone else knows what to do, where to go, and how to get the information.

Let’s make 2026 one of the best years of our lives. This is short and sweet today because it is a holiday, but I want to welcome you into 2026. I wish you a happy New Year, and I encourage you to sit down and plan your year—and your life—with clear instructions that others can follow if something happens to you.

I call you blessed, and I look forward to seeing you next week.