In Matthew chapter 26, there’s a story told about a lady where Christ is on his way Two days essentially before he’s going to be crucified before the Passover and he goes to Simon the leper’s house in Bethany and he swings by there, there’s this lady, this woman who takes a alabaster box, a very precious ointment and basically pours it on his head and this woman gets, kind of criticized for what she’s doing.
The disciples led by Judas basically kind of start getting on her and says, why are you doing this? You could have taken that and sold it and given that to the poor. And Christ says this, he says, why trouble you the woman? She’s done a good work upon me. He says, the poor you’ve had always but me, you won’t have always, which is an interesting side note here quick.
He says, you always have the poor with you. And the reason why he said that is because there will always be poor people in the world, because poor is like temperature. Poor and rich are like hot and cold. You ever walk into a room where two people walk in and one’s hot and one’s cold, but the temperature is the same hot and cold is a relative term.
Poor and rich are also relative. Neither one’s good, neither one’s bad, but it’s a relative term. The only way to get rid of poor people or poverty would be that everybody in the world has the exact same amount of wealth. Wealth equality essentially so no one would have any more than anyone else because if one person had one dollar more That person would be richer than the other people and therefore, they would be poor, so getting rid of poverty is never going to happen because it’s a term of comparison.
But back to my point here Basically, they’re jumping on her about taking this alabaster box and putting on Christ and Christ says, she did this to anoint my body for my burial.
Do This As A Memorial
See, nobody really knew that Christ was going to die. He knew it, but not everybody else really was aware of it. And in verse 13, it says this, Verily I say unto you, wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her.
Well, I want to tell you about a story of a lady named Jeannie today. Jeannie I first met in Omaha many, many years ago. She was the mother of a client of mine. We’ll call him John. So, I’ve been working with john for a, for a handful of times and some coaching and some planning stuff. And he was really starting to turn his money situation around, get control, get peace with it, get some goals.
He was really working on things and he’s really doing well. And one day he said, I’d like you to meet with my mom. I don’t know if you can help her or not, but would you be open to the idea of having a meeting with her? I said, sure, no problem. So, we arranged a time a little bit later and Jeannie, came into the office and we started kind of talking through some situations and I knew a little bit about them because of working with John.
He had moved in to try to help them take care of his dad who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and was really, really progressing along and negatively and really needed more help than they could even provide.
When Jeannie got to my office, we met for about two hours, and she about cried the entire time. At this point, her husband now of almost 50 years needed a lot of care. And she no could take care of them, even with John moving in., he obviously had to work, and it was trying to help balance out things, but it was becoming too much for them.
Jeannie’s Background
They obviously needed to… take the next step and move them into some sort of assisted living or nursing home, something along those lines. And she was trying to figure out how to go about doing that. Jeannie told me about their story. She was a teacher for many, many years in Northern Nebraska.
Her husband. was an agricultural insurance rep. They had raised, four children. They were all adults. John was the youngest. And her, her husband, again, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and it was progressively relatively negatively fast, and they needed to move them into a home. And we kind of started unpacking a little bit about their assets and their income and what they had.
In general, when you go to a nursing home or you need to go to an assisted care facility or something like that, it’s a service that’s provided for you. And like all other services, you must pay for it, you must pay for electricity. The electricity company provides you a service, but you must pay for it.
When you go to the dentist, they provide a service to you, but you must pay for it. Well, nursing home. Is the exact same thing. It’s a service provided to you, but you must pay for it. A lot of people don’t understand this. They think that they’ve paid into Medicare, but Medicare. Is compulsory senior health insurance.
Medicare vs. Medicaid
It’s for medical, it’s medical insurance. It’s not nursing home insurance. Now there is a thing such as Medicaid, but Medicaid, which does provide for nursing home assistance, things like that. But it’s essentially welfare for nursing home. So, if you think about it, think about Medicaid as like food stamps for medical care.
That’s essentially what it is. The government will not allow you to have a lot of a lot of money and then them pay for this service on your behalf. It doesn’t work that way. Each state’s a little bit different, but you can only keep certain things like, in various states, you can normally keep a house.
If you have a spouse that’s living in there, you can keep one vehicle, but not to you can keep so much money and assets but not a lot. You can keep so much of income, but not a lot. They basically will take the other resources. to pay for what you can for, for this nursing home. And then Medicaid will pick in the difference, but it potentially leaves that second spouse in a very, very dire position.
They only have so much income. They have their house in most cases, but they have one car, and so it really puts them in a tough, tough situation. We were kind of trying to unpack what they had, what they didn’t have, what their income would be, what they could keep, what would have to go and various things like that.
We talked about their career and, and what they did for their lives and various things. And again, they raised a great family. But when I asked her, do you have any other retirement accounts out there? IRAs, 401ks, 403bs, anything like that.
“We Never Got Around To It”
She looked at me in the eyes and she said, what, Mike, we never got around to it. They always had intentions of doing it. They knew the value of insurance. He was an insurance rep, so they had insurance to protect themselves, which was great, but they never made. Saving for their future a priority and so now 10 years later, Jeannie is probably passed away and I don’t really know how the story ended up.
We ended up moving to Florida and, I lost touch with John. We stopped working together and I don’t really know how Jeannie worked out, but I do know. That, before we left that she was basically going to sell the house. They, she was going to move in with John, they’re going to put dad in, in the nursing home, and it just makes me sad for her, because now here she is in the golden years of her life.
78 years old, had worked hard all her life, had provided for her family, raised four wonderful kids. But they never got around to saving for their future.
What I want to do here, remind you today that your future self is very, very dependent upon your current self, the decisions you make in your twenties.
And in your thirties and in your forties and in your fifties and beyond are going to pay a large impact as to what that 78-year-old self is going to realize they can realize a great future one that you’ve laid up for them or they can realize a not-so-great future that you also have laid up for them.
Let’s Get Moving…
The decisions that you are making today are going to impact your future self. So, my suggestion to you, my commendation to you, my admonishment to you is Make good decisions with your money, with your family, with your health. If you’ve been pushing it off, stop pushing it off. Stop pushing off planning.
Stop pushing off preparing. Stop pushing off savings. Stop pushing off taking care of your financial…
Because if you spend all your money throughout your twenties, and out your thirties, and out your forties, and out your fifties, that is where you’re going to end up. And you’re not going to be very happy with yourself. This lady, Jeannie, sat there for two hours in my office and basically cried. And she said this.
Mike, you tell them, you tell them that they need to save. You tell them that they need to invest. You tell them that they need to make good decisions. So, they don’t end up where I am. So that’s what this episode is about. This is a memorial to Jeannie. My guess is, again, that she’s probably passed away on at this point.
And much like Christ told the disciples, wherever you go in the Gospels preached, to talk about this woman who anointed Christ for his burial. I wanted to make this episode.
Stop screwing your 78-year-old self. It’s time to get it in gear.
Find Resources
If you need help, there are resources out there. There’s plenty of free books. There’s stuff on YouTube, but the thing is, it’s not the information that’s going to help you. You must do this stuff in the world of finance. There’s all this theory of I want to do this and if you do that and interest rates and points on credit cards and all these gyrations that take place, but it’s all theory until you do it.
I admonish you today so that you don’t end up like Jeannie. Start planning. Start preparing for your future. Start saving. Start getting your money under control. Start having the right insurance. Start formulating that estate plan. Start enhancing your retirement. Start dreaming about what you want your retirement to be.
And if you do that and you start chipping away at it, you will make progress.
make too much money to be this broke. Most of you are going to make millions of dollars in your working lifetime and yet you’ll have nothing to show for it. So, I admonish you, start to do something.
Micro Action
Here’s your micro action for the week. Identify one thing. What’s the one thing? And you inherently know what it is.
What’s the one thing that you can do to put yourself on a better track in the future? Maybe it’s doing a budget. Maybe it’s working on a plan to get out of debt. Maybe it’s upping your retirement contributions. I don’t know but identify the one thing that you can do to help your financial future. Your 78-year-old self be better.
So, I hope you found this helpful on your financial journey.
If you have any questions or comments, you can leave them below. Additionally, you can send them to Mike@truewealth.show, until next time, I hope you have a great day.
