Modern Day Missionaries

S07E21 | 5 Mistakes Missionaries Make in Their Finances With Keith Webb

• Stephanie Leigh Gutierrez | Modern Day Missions • Season 7 • Episode 21

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Feel like your finances are always playing catch-up? Wondering how to plan for the future when you're just trying to make it through the month?

In this financial masterclass for missionaries, Dr. Keith Webb brings both wisdom and lived experience to the table. After two decades on the field and years training missionary coaches, Keith shares the top financial mistakes missionaries make—and what to do instead.

From emergency funds to long-term planning, he offers a better way to think about support, sustainability, and staying on the field for the long haul. If money stress is wearing you down, this episode is your next step toward freedom.


đź“Ś In This Episode, You'll Learn:

  • Why trimming your support budget too low can actually cut your ministry short
  • What a healthy missionary budget really looks like—including future expenses most people forget
  • How to build a margin mindset instead of living donation to donation
  • Why emergency funds are essential—and how to start one
  • What it takes to prepare for the future without sacrificing present ministry


đź’­ Questions to Ponder as You Listen:

  • Am I building my finances based on vision—or just survival?
  • What beliefs about money might be shaping how I raise and use support?
  • Do I have a plan for unexpected expenses—or am I just hoping nothing breaks?
  • How would I approach money differently if I saw it as a tool for ministry, not a burden?
  • What small change could I make this month to move toward financial sustainability?

Thanks for listening! Email us your questions at care@modernday.org

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Stephanie Gutierrez:

Welcome to this episode of The Modern Day Missionaries podcast. Today is a financial masterclass for missionaries. I love this. We've talked a lot about finances and fundraising here on the podcast.  Today we're really nailing it in a general overview of missionaries and their finances, and we're talking with Keith Webb, who is someone I respect enormously.

He lived on the field with his family for two decades, so he has tons of experience as a missionary and is a president of Creative Results Management, which is an organization that trains coaches. He also has a course called Money Matters, in which he goes even more into depth from what we talk about today, really looking at finances from a missionary perspective, which is so helpful because he gets the nuances of what it is to manage money as a missionary.

So today we're gonna be talking about the mistakes that missionaries most often make in their finances. I think it's gonna hit home and really generate lots of questions, thoughts, ideas of what you might do next. So get ready to take some notes and learn from Keith Webb as we dive into today's episode.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Hi Keith, thanks so much for joining us today on the podcast.

Keith Webb: I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Stephanie Gutierrez: It is a joy to have you! We are talking today about finances, but hitting it from a bit of a different angle. You know, one of the verses I was noticing that you love and I love is Luke 14:28, which says, “Which of you is wanting to build a tower? Don't you sit down and calculate the cost.” And I think that's such a powerful picture for missionaries because a lot of us counted the cost when we started, we went on the field, but oh my gosh, so many new costs show up later on in the journey.

There's kids, housing, healthcare, and retirement. If we think of it down the road, the weight of those things can really creep in until we get to the point where we feel overwhelmed. So just kind of kicking this off before we jump into some of the mistakes that you've seen, how can we learn to live financially sustainable on the mission field? 

Keith Webb: That's the whole thing. That's what you described about counting the costs and then recounting them again. I counted the costs when I was in my twenties and it was quite inexpensive to go be a missionary. I didn't have a kid, my wife and I were newly married. We had no mortgage, we had no big impending bills coming and so on. And then I recounted the cost when I was 40. Suddenly everything was costing a lot more. And yet my mindset regarding money hadn't really shifted. I still had the mindset of, how little can I live on? How little can I get by with RA fundraising for and just focusing on the ministry field. 

You know, forget money. Money's not needed. Well, suddenly the pressure starts coming up and I start noticing that people who are my age and a bit older, they start leaving the field. And of course everybody leaves the field because they're called, right? But it's often called that because of conflict or financial pressures or things like this. And I just realized that the financial pressures are going to send us back from Asia where we were, earlier than God was calling us to be because of financial pressures. And so I do something about it and we started doing things about it and now it's quite a few years later and I'm on the other end of, you know, doing those things.

And I want to help people make those same shifts so that they can stay out as long as God has them called to stay out and be in full-time ministry.

Stephanie Gutierrez: You are speaking our language over here. That's what we're all about, keeping people on the field as long as God wants them there and helping them to thrive. So Keith, having been a missionary, like you've lived this life, you know what this is, and now having served missionaries for so many years, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you've seen missionaries make in their finances?

Keith Webb: Well, there's a number of them. Usually I don't frame things around. You know, I gave you this topic about this but I'm much more positive. The first one is trimming the fundraising budget to the lowest possible level. And what happens is people don't like raising support. It's not people's favorite things. It’s the necessary hard thing to do in order to do your mission work and so on. And so people, you know, they don't get into ministry, so excited to fundraise. So what happens is people trim their budget down to the lowest sustainable level. 

And so for example, we lived 10 years in Japan, and then we moved to Indonesia, which was a much less expensive country. And what happens is, for example, in Indonesia, people will trim their fundraising budget their mission may allow them to raise. X amount of money up here, but what it costs to live in that cheaper country is this. So they just let their support drop to this level here because they're meeting their current needs. And there's a couple of faults with that. So one fault is your current income is not only for your current expenses, your current income is for your current expenses and your future expenses, a 70/30 split. So your current income is only about 70% for your current expenses, and it's 30% for your future expenses and that is not in most missionaries' minds. They are trimming their support and they're trimming their income, their salary, down to a hundred percent of the lowest level they can possibly live at, so they don't have to raise more money.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Say more about that split, so that 30%, then what is that money being used for until you need it?

Keith Webb: So we're living in Indonesia. If we had trimmed our budget down to current expenses only, two things would happen. So, this is what happened. I was feeling the pressure going into my forties and seeing our kids just propelling through life and gonna be high schoolers and off to college. Like, oh my gosh, they were in grade school, but I was just seeing it was just around the corner. And that financial pressure was causing me to think about doing something different and so where's the 30%? So the 30% is putting it away for those expenses. We have kids, so kid expenses and kid expenses get way more expensive as they get into high school.

Stephanie Gutierrez: And that's no matter where you live, like sometimes you think with living overseas it's less. Now granted you might not have school sports or some of the classic things, like if you're living in the US or Canada. They're gonna look different, but still there are expenses for sure. Like what did you see some of those expenses like for high schoolers?

Keith Webb: How about private school? Private school for grade schoolers is way cheaper than private school for high schoolers. Or maybe they're going to a local school through grade school, but now they have to go to a private school for English, for middle school and high school. Now all of a sudden they have to raise a lot more money and that can put people off. 

The other is, if you realize you don't have a property back wherever you're from. So you don't have any equity. You're thinking, I'm never gonna have a house, which is what I thought. And so then there's a pressure there. How, how about retirement? You realize you're 45 and you have a hundred thousand dollars put away for retirement. Through all of your whatevers over the years, and even given the great stock you know, a few years, you've got that much. And it's like, wait a minute, you go on and do one of those, what do I need to do to retire tests? And you realize it's just crazy. 

You should be living off of 70% of your income, the other 30%, you are banking and investing in some way. So it's kind of future expenses. But here's the other one, because we're talking about trimming your fundraising to its lowest possible level, right? We were for our calling, shifted us or wanted to shift us from inexpensive Indonesia to expensive Singapore, and Singapore was a better location for living out our ministry calling. Most missionaries would not be able to make that shift because they didn't have enough fundraising coming in because it's going to be a huge bump to move over toSingapore. It's maybe it was a third more, so you would have to have a third more already in your fundraising. We did. We made that shift. 

So in the middle of our Indonesia years we made these shifts raising more money thinking that we may need to move back to the US and wanted to stay in full-time ministry or move over to Singapore in full-time ministry. And we had these other expenses coming up. So we raised more money, took it as salary, which we could do and invested. So we're taking care of that need and we have more money so we could actually move over. And we did that. And so instead of returning from the field during Indonesian years when we were feeling that pressure, we stayed out eight more years in full-time ministry. When we were back in the Seattle area it was making those mindset shifts in raising the money and keeping our fundraising up.

Stephanie Gutierrez: That's so wise because you do, you never know what's gonna happen and we think, well, I don't want to make mistake number three. Keith, what is the next mistake?

Keith Webb: So, yeah, and it's similar, it flows out of living paycheck, by paycheck. And so it's very stressful to live on razorsharp razor thin margins. And it's stressful in your relationships, your marriage, you know? Why is the number one thing that people fight about in marriage money? It's because money makes people make so many different choices, and we have value choices around money and spending. And then it also has to do with our security. It also has to feel like whether we have choices or whether we're trapped. Then you also have to live on superthin, razor, thin margins, you have to use time to not spend money. That and it's uncomfortable and so all of those things create stress. It creates marriage stress and things like that. 

And so the strategy is finding out what's the comfortable living level that allows, that both you and your spouse, if you're married, can reasonably live on while putting some money away. For the future that eliminates that future unknown stress and what is that a reasonable amount. And then making sure that you're taking that amount of salary because usually missionaries, their mission budgeted them to be able to take this much, but they're only taking this much. I mean, people literally take less salary and it's often because, number one, they don't wanna raise this much. They have a misunderstanding of how that money's supposed to be used.

Stephanie Gutierrez: I know missionaries who are living donation to donation, praying that the next donation comes in and it creates within them an air of desperation. And I know something that you talk about is communication with supporters. And when you are living in a place of constant desperation, because you haven't fundraised enough, you don't know how to manage your money correctly. I wanna be very graceful too. Sometimes we just find ourselves in those positions. So this is not to condemn anybody who's in that spot. In fact, if you are in that spot, yay that you're listening to this today. We believe God wants to bring you to a better place of more financial freedom.

But when we are living from donation to donation, our supporters feel that, and we begin to ask from a place of need rather than a place of vision. And people run from that kind of desperation, and then they're gonna find somebody who they feel is managing their finances better. Again, not to condemn. Anybody who finds himself in that place. I think many of us have been there at one place in time, but God has something better. So this is a really significant point. 

Keith Webb: What does it mean to live by faith? Living by faith to me does not mean you never think about money. You never plan ahead. You never make budgets and discipline and stick to it. That's not stifling the Holy Spirit to do those things. By how about rather than living by faith, where we're gonna just live off of nothing and then when the crisis hits, we're all gonna pray together. And then wait for the knock at the door for someone to come by and bring the check in the mail for the exact amount. You know, there's those kinds of faith stories that I hear in certain organizations. They love those about the last minute praying and all this.

Well, how about the faith it takes to pay the electricity bill on time? To make plans and put the time into raising money. So, can't the Holy Spirit work upfront, or does the Holy Spirit always have to the last minute? 

Stephanie Gutierrez: They're gonna happen. Like those moments are gonna happen anyways. There's no way to not have them. And I think, to your point, Keith, I don't think the goal is to not live by faith. We're gonna find ourselves in situations where we desperately need God. And I hope that even when I am financially stable, I still feel that. I want to feel that absolute dependence on God at all moments and all times, but not because my finances are a hot mess 24/7. Is it gonna happen? Sometimes? Yeah, because crises happen in life. But if it's every single month, all the time, we're looking for patterns here and lifestyles, not momentary things. That's, I think that's the difference kind of in what you're saying there.

Keith Webb: And I think that that same attitude flows into ministry a lot of people and I hear about their ministry and I'm seeing the same patterns. In other words, how their efforts are the same. Lack of planning, not having discipline, not about it ahead of time because of enthusiasm and let's pivot in the moment and this type of thing. But it's just pivot, pivot, pivot, pivot, and we do need to change up what we do in our ministry sometimes and our ministry approach. But if it means that you've got a new logo and a new brochure every six months because you got the new big visionary thing somewhere in there, we gotta stick to what we're up to because it actually might take more than a few months to achieve it.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so we just mentioned a second ago, the crises, the unexpected. I'm gonna set you up for that next mistake.

Keith Webb: So the next mistake is the financial one. So for example, last fall we had a plumbing issue in one of our bathrooms, and it turned into a multi-thousand dollar plumbing issue. Well, that's stressful. It's stressful to be in the bathroom. It's stressful to have that plumbing issue. It had to be taken care of because of this damage and then stressful to pay the bill. What made it less stressful was we actually had money set aside in what we call an emergency fund. We had several thousand dollars set aside in the fund so we could pay it.

So paying it didn't add to our stress. It also didn't put us into debt. There's a study that the average American, 55% of Americans cannot pay a thousand dollars in unexpected expense without credit card debt and so what you get is that you have unexpected expenses that happen and these unexpected expenses then come in and they don't come in at $350. They come in at $1,350. They come in at $2,500 like this, these unexpected expenses. 

Then if we're not prepared for them, they derail us because they suddenly put us into debt or add us into more debt like this. And it's super stressful so it distracts from our ministry. And the way around this is to develop an emergency fund. Because, since last fall I have needed a crown and that was $1,400. So there's another one. And so the thing is, unexpected expenses are so common that they shouldn't be unexpected to them, and that's where this emergency fund comes in. So the emergency fund is people's biggest strategy to avoid debt. That's the big thing.

Stephanie Gutierrez: That's so good. I'm sitting here thinking about what you said. The unexpected that's so applicable when it comes to finances, because like you said, it's what takes you out at the knees. Like, oh my gosh, I was doing so good. And all it takes is one crisis to suddenly put you back again. But what if we planned for those? 

Another thought that is coming to mind. I think this keeps a lot of missionaries from doing this, is the crisis of people around us and so there's this feeling like, well, I can prepare for a possible unexpected crisis in my life, or I can meet someone's very real crisis now, and that's a hard determination to make.

Keith Webb: Yeah. The old metaphor of on the airplane, we all fly. Missionaries fly a lot. You know, put your own mask on first, then your child's, if you don't, if you aren't financially sustainable, you won't be there with somebody else's thing. And so we've gotta find the right balance of what is gonna make us financially sustainable. 

And so it is a mindset issue that missionaries have. For example, I need to live poorer than my poorest donor, or I need to live at the level of the people that are around me. Now, I'm not saying flaunt your wealth around the people there, but it doesn't mean that you haven't saved, you have expenses that they don't have. So you're having to fly back to the US. For a family that could be $5,000 plane tickets. You might have to do something medical back in the US. I remember we had a round of strep throat in my house with my little kids when we were back one time. Well, guess what? A thousand dollars for us to get tested for strep throat, just like that. And then we had another one, two weeks later, a thousand dollars. You know, boom, boom. Well, your local people aren't gonna have that. They don't have that kind of expenses we have, as missionaries, we have different expenses than the people around us. So even though we don't need to show off the fact that we make 10 times more than they make it doesn't mean that you haven't put away over here where they're not seeing something. And that's not disingenuous to do.

Stephanie Gutierrez: And you know, an emergency fund. I mean, there might be those moments where the Holy Spirit does move on you to do something dramatic in the lives of somebody else. And what a gift then that you would have that opportunity. So I know for us when we lived overseas, we did exactly what you're saying and it saved us so many times and also it allowed us to be generous. So there were times where we had built up that emergency fund. You know, we were in a good place or maybe even not fully, and the Holy Spirit spoke very clearly to us to do something with some of those finances, and thank God we had it available to do it.

So it allows you to be generous as well, and that's where it's important to be able to distinguish between raw emotions and the Holy Spirit. Jesus was moved by compassion. So it's not that we can't be moved by emotions, but it's important to identify: am I a person who's always moved by emotions? And so I'm always giving because I'm just wired to give. I have the gift of generosity and we can give ourselves into the ground sometimes. So realizing the Lord would like us to also take care of ourselves and our own families. So, but being sensitive to the Holy Spirit and going, okay, Holy Spirit, is this you, are you calling me to do something with this? And boy, is it fun to be able to be generous when you have saved like that. So it just opens up so many opportunities that I think we wouldn't have available to us, other than that or otherwise. So thanks for bringing that up.

Keith Webb: I agree with you on the generosity. And so during that period that I was describing when we started aggressively saving and investing for the future, we did help people. We helped our neighbor across the street get a surgery. We helped somebody else we knew their son bought him glasses. We did, we helped with many different physical needs that were able to do that, and we were able to do that, partially because, as you're saying, we didn't have the crazy pressure on ourselves that we aren't looking after our own needs.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Yes. We're looking after both of them. So, okay, number four with the mission, the mistakes missionaries make and this is an interesting one. I wanna ask you about it as well, it's using debt for an unsustainable lifestyle. In other words, if you find people who find themselves in debt. So you have credit card debt. I'm not like Dave Ramsey that says, never ever use a credit card. That's not me at all. So the problem is if you cannot pay the full balance of the credit card paying any interest, any fees, that's not good. And so there's needs to change, right? Credit card debt is the problem. 

Keith Webb: The average American has $6,297 in debt they’re carrying. And, the average Stephanie, what do you think the average well, you've seen the notes, but what do you think the average credit card interest is? What's a wild guess?

Stephanie Gutierrez: 13%.

Keith Webb: 20%. It means if a thousand dollars, you're gonna pay $200 for a year of floating that can be half again, and then the next year you're paying 20% on the $1,250. You're paying 20% of that. And so thing, so it's just what you're getting if you're getting a spiral down. And the problem is, you're paying interest rather than making interest. You're not improving your finances. And so if you're finding yourself in a cycle because some folks will, it's like they go into credit card debt at the holidays, for example, or when there's something that happened or crisis or an unexpected expense, they go into debt.

But then, oh, but we always pay it off within four or five months or something like this. All that says to me is that your lifestyle's unsustainable. You have a pattern of going into credit card debt. And even if you do pay it off, most people do not pay it off. On the average it is more than six months to pay off. So even if you're doing that, if you can look back and say, yeah, we did it last three years, what it means is that's not the way you should be doing it. It's the other way around. You gotta get ahead of that, you get ahead of that by developing an emergency fund, and being able to do that. So developing an emergency fund and then paying off the debt you've got and then making sure that you're only spending about 70, 80% of your income on current because you've got 20% going to other things, savings, emergency funds like that?

Stephanie Gutierrez: So I'm hearing underlying and what you're saying is know thyself, as the saying goes. You are someone who's able to use a credit card, one of the few. Because I would agree with you. I mean, stats agree with you. I agree with the stats. The stats show us facts. 

I mean, I feel really grateful. My mom taught me how to use a credit card when I got my first job when I was 15. Because she taught me how to use it, and to never ever carry over a balance. It's actually been a huge blessing to me. We've gotten thousands and thousands of dollars in airline tickets. You know, we lived by a Delta hub, so I've flown to so many places for free because we were able to learn to use it responsibly and we did the same with our daughter. She's even more proactive than me. Every time she makes a purchase, she instantly goes in and pays it off. She doesn't even do it by month. She does it with every transaction. And I love that.

I have to know I have the money in there. And when you do that, it can be a huge blessing to you. But you gotta know, I mean, it's kind of like one of my favorite analogies is a sharp knife and if you pick up a sharp knife and you take the time to learn how to use that well and wield it well, it is a gift to you in the kitchen, but if you do not, you'll be cutting yourself and people left and right. It's a weapon. It's dangerous, and I would even say it's more dangerous than a knife because most people are not cutting themselves all day every day. 

What's something that's even more risky than that? Like, do not use a credit card unless you know yourself and know I will be able to pay this off every month and I will not buy something unless I have the money in my account. If you don't have that unbelievable, strict self-discipline, don't go near it because like you said, otherwise you end up with an unsustainable lifestyle and you're paying hundreds or thousands of dollars in interest. Oh man, that one, that one's hitting home for people.

Keith Webb: It's why you have these financial gurus like David Ramsey and all. His thing is 90% don't spend money you don't have, don't use credit cards and get outta debt. And it is because it's a huge, huge problem. And because a spiral and because you've got a less downward meaning, less finances, less like that. So it's a downward spiral. And so because you're doing that, you're not doing an upward spiral in your finances.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Yes, and we could add to this borrowing money from people. That's another one. People do a lot. Maybe you're like, I don't use credit cards, but you're always asking a friend to spot you money or maybe a donor to give you something or people to advance you money. I mean, the Bible even talks about that. Do not do that unless you absolutely have to and you feel a peace from the Lord on it or your life's gonna fall apart if you don't because otherwise, it can mess up relationships. It can get you in trouble. 

I mean, let me pause in all of this because I'm sensing there could be somebody who's listening, who's thinking that's really easy for you to say, because you've always been ahead in life. What if I am so behind right now that that's the only thing I can do to keep my head above water? What would you say to that, Keith?

Keith Webb: Yeah, well, I was gonna say the same thing. I wanna say it's hard, it can take a lot of work and it can take a lot of discipline and time to move out of that, but you have to decide what you're going to do. Then from there you can start to make small moves to make a difference. You have big debt issues, my recommendation is to go to someone like the Dave Ramsey group and get into reading their stuff and take a look at it. They've got very practical things. That's not my specialty.

I find that most missionaries are not in tons of debt. I don't have a big study on this, but just anecdotally, missionaries as a whole have less debt than the average American public does out there. So it's a little bit better at the same time, this idea of, well, I don't have money for an emergency fund and we don't have extra money to put it ahead. So part of it is you have to decide that. 

I think it's taking a spiritual perspective on it. I have to decide that for me to be able to continue doing the ministry God's called us to do we need to have different finances. We need more coming in. We need to be able to save more. We need to have this emergency fund because I'm so up in finances and saving every penny. I mean, people who think about money the most, you know, got the thing of, if you don't focus on money like this. And they think that rich people are focused on money all the time. I find it's the person who's got no money that thinks about money all the time.

Stephanie Gutierrez: You are so right on that. I would totally agree. I remember when we were strapped for cash in the beginning of our marriage. I mean because people are looking at us now and we're talking and we've got things financially in order. But this doesn't mean we've always had it this way, Keith.

I mean, we've been working for years to get to where we're at, to become financially stable. But I remember when our girls were little. I mean, I was on the WIC, the women, infants and children, in line and had the coupons and went and the government insurance and all of that. When I stayed home with our daughters, because we had two daughters, boom, boom, went one right after the other and the first one had special needs, so there was no other option.

So like I know what it's like and I know thinking back to parts of your story, like we know what it's like to not always be in a place where everything's financially where we would want it to be. And I did, I thought about money all the time. I was one of those crazy coupon clippers going to six different stores to find the cheapest thing. And it's what I thought about all the time. 

And you're right,  I believe the Lord wants to bring us to a place where things are not just in a good place so we can be thriving financially and be a blessing to those around us, but so that we have the mental space to be thinking about other things too. He has more for us. 

Keith Webb: We'll get it. So when I coach people, they might come to me about ministry strategy. You know, they're talking about their ministry strategy, and as I start, as we talk and we start to go in depth. Often what I find is there's an underlying thing about the ministry strategy. The underlying thing is if there's often a financial thing, there's financial worries. 

They've got so many worries in their life, they're actually not able to give their ministry efforts the time and attention that it needs to to thrive like that, or trying to do. Then, as we talk about the ministry thing they're trying to do, we talk about what comes out is they're trying to do it without any money. You know, they wanna change the world without any money, it's really a lot easier to make world changes if you've got some money. The world runs off of money and if you've got some money to be able to, to have a certain software piece of software or to be able to go to this conference and meet up with these people or to have an administrative assistant that. That costs something you know. 

The point is that money is often a barrier to people achieving more. And so it's one of the things I bump into is trying to do everything with no money and whether it's personally producing financial stresses or in there they're just overlooking all these things here as options because there's money attached to it. And I'm not talking about huge amounts of money. I'm just talking about some money. They're trying to bootstrap and do it without any money at all. And well let's not pull money out of the equation. What would be the best way to go about this? And now what does it cost? So I'll always want to talk about money as a tool. Money is a tool to do ministry. Money is a tool to live life. God's calling us to live. It's not the goal, but it is required in our world to have money to be able to do anything here. And so that's what I wanna look at.

I wanna look at first, what's your calling, Stephanie? And then how, what's the best way to go about it? Then let's look at the cost, then let's look at where to get the money. That's how I wanna look at things. Whereas I see a lot of missionaries, they go immediately to the cost and then eliminate it as an option and then try to do all this.

Stephanie Gutierrez: You are so right. So let's then, now look at that last mistake where we're touching on the future, which is another expensive time in life.

Keith Webb: Yeah, so you need to invest for future needs. I gave examples of future needs in the sense that we kept our fundraising up so that we were able to move to Singapore, and we were able to move back to Washington State to continue our ministry. We had enough support raised so that we were not just living or raising money for our current needs, but raising money for the future level of needs we would have.

The other is your own investments. One of the things that people don't fully grasp is that you have about 40 years to work in order to earn money. Let's just use 65 as a magical number; many people are going beyond that, but say 70. At some point, you are not going to earn money anymore. Then, for the rest of your life, you have to live off of whatever you've saved.

Social Security, even if it stays at current levels with inflation adjustments, is not enough. And it was never meant to be enough. In fact, what we see is Social Security provides about a third of what people need when they're no longer earning. So you need two-thirds from elsewhere, and people live longer.

The average lifespan in the U.S., I can't remember exactly what it is, it's like 73 or 74 for women and 72 for men or something like that. That's from birth. By the time you're your age, or by the time you're my age, if you look at how long I'm going to live, I'm projected to live to 89. I've already lived however many years I've lived, so for all the people who make it this far, from now on, I'm going to live to 89. So I have 29 or 28 more years to live on.

Stephanie Gutierrez: That's a lot of years. Yeah.

Keith Webb: And I have to fund that somehow. So what you've gotta do is you have to start putting money away. That's going to make money. Remember the spiral down about making money, interest. And so, for example, this week, particularly Stephanie, the stock market's been doing rollercoasters but the O on an average. Over the past 20 years, up, up through last month, say the average stock market returned for an S and P index fund, which is an index.

You can look it up, I mean, they can look it up if they need to know, but an S and P index fund is very easy to invest in, and you can put in, you know, a hundred dollars a month or whatever you can do that. The average return has been 9.75%. Over 20 years average. And there's been down years, and there's been big up years.

Last year was a 203% return. The year before that was a 24% return. Right? And so a down 20% return. You know, it's crazy. But is the average the average ups and the downs? It's been an average of. 9.75% over 20 years. That's what we need to start investing in, is to invest in that kind of thing that has this long-term growth. Long-term growth because you have a long-term horizon ahead of you. When I was 45, I started putting into these kinds of things. Well, I now have, I don't have 20 years yet, but I have 20 years worth of that return.

And the return on those investments is almost more than what I've put in myself. It's almost doubled in that. And so this is actually in some and so this is what we're looking at is preparing for your future needs. You have to invest in that. And so for if someone could put away $500 a month, if they could put away $500 a month for 10 years, at the end of the 10 years at this rate of growth, they'd have a hundred thousand dollars, $40,000 of it would be returned. So they would've made $40,000 in 10 years.

Stephanie Gutierrez: That's huge.

Keith Webb: The $60 that they put away in that. That's how we get out of our debt takes us to spiral down where the poor get poorer the investing is spiraling up. Where in the colloquial sense, the rich get richer things are why you see such a big divide in society is because you have people paying interest. So it's a spiral downward, and then you have people making interest in return. So it's a spiral upward, and we need to hit the spiral upward with our personal finances.

And in that way we'll be ready when our kids get to college. I mean, we couldn't fund everything, but ready when they needed a car in high school, and we bought them that $6,000 car type of thing. And we're on track for being ready to retire. You know, and not earn money in the future. You see, this is where we need to start thinking about the future. So again, that breakdown was about, and it doesn't have to be 70, 70% would be aggressive, but 20% of your income needs to be going into some sort of long-term. 

Stephanie Gutierrez: Keith, this was so good. You touched on really comprehensively, so many different financial topics and you gave people actionable steps that they can lean into. I'm guessing there's one or two things that's probably grabbing everyone's attention from what they're listening to and what's wonderful about having you on is this isn't the end.

So if they wanna learn more, you created a Mon Money Matters course that I've gone through. That's absolutely excellent. That digs into this. Could you share about that quickly so people know what their next step can be to begin setting themselves up financially while on the field?

Keith Webb: Sure. What I found is that no single thing regarding any of this financial stuff is that difficult to understand. However, there's a whole bunch of things that you need to understand and work on step by step to be able to make it work as a whole package. And that's, that's where the complexity is. It's because there's so many aspects to it, so you just gotta go through it. 

So I've made a course called Money Matters for Mission Workers. It's specifically for missionaries. It's a very easy to do self-study course, so you can do it from anywhere in the world. We have monthly group calls. I just did one this morning and we have monthly group calls to talk about it. There's a forum to be able to discuss in there and so. People can join that course. I'd love to have 'em come in and they can begin to look at it. Because to solve one problem, you know, one immediate issue often is like, yes, we can take a look at that issue, but there's these, there's these five things before it.

You also have to do that, that, that, that contributes to this, that we also need to take a look at. And that's where the course comes in and is helpful. So I've got a link that we'll put in the show notes for this special. So it's a special discounted price for everybody to discount. So it's not a huge fee anyway but you know what, I'd love to have people join.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Thank you for that, Keith. Thank you for creating that. And again, like there's a lot of fundraising courses out there, but I haven't seen what's comprehensively about money specifically for missionaries, so it is fantastic. I hope everybody checks it out. As Keith said, we will have it in the show notes.

We will have that link for you so you can get your special discount code. And Keith, I just wanna say thank you. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for creating this. Thank you for the passion with which you shared today. It was infectious and I feel like I wanna go tweak things now and do some edit space in what we talked about. So just appreciate you and all that you do. Investing in missionaries in this way. Thank you for coming on today.

Keith Webb: Well, thank you Stephanie, and thank you for continually bringing in, I listed your podcast. You have so many interesting topics that are so practical and helpful, and I appreciate being able to join in with those folks.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Well, we just get the best guests and you were one of them, so thank you, Keith.

Keith Webb: Thank you.

 

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Stephanie Leigh Gutierrez

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Luke Eubank

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