SeedTime with Bob and Linda Lotich

Mike Tyson made $400 million and ended up $23 million in debt. A janitor named Ronald Reed made minimum wage his whole career and left $8 million to charity. The difference had nothing to do with income — and everything to do with one rule. That's where this conversation starts.
Linda and I were guests at a church for their "Money Talks" series and the questions were so good we wanted to bring this to the podcast. We walk through the John Wesley framework we based our whole book on (make all you can, save all you can, give all you can — and enjoy it), the one number that tells you whether you're moving forward or backward financially, why net worth is actually the wrong thing to track as a Christian, the "Never 100 Rule" that changed everything for us, the one-category budget that works when every other budget fails, and what happened when we started giving in a way that felt irresponsible but resulted in our mortgage being paid off in three years.
If you enjoyed this, we'd love to send you a free copy of our book — you just cover shipping. It has over 1,000 5-star reviews on Amazon. Grab it at seedtime.com/free.
 
WHAT WE COVER IN THIS EPISODE
Here's a little of what we cover in this episode:
Why "net worth" is actually the wrong metric for Christians — and what to track instead
The one number that tells you whether you're moving forward or backward financially right now
The Never 100 Rule: the single rule that makes all the difference between building wealth and staying stuck
Why Mike Tyson went broke (and what it has to do with your budget)
The one-category budget — why it gets 80% of the results of full budgeting with 20% of the effort
Why willpower-based budgeting always fails — and what to do instead
The giving account that made generosity actually fun (instead of a guilt trip)
What Bob and Linda would tell their 19-year-old selves about money
How to handle money differently when you and your spouse are total opposites
 
BIBLE VERSES MENTIONED
2 Corinthians 9:6-7
2 Corinthians 8-9
Proverbs (referenced as a daily reading practice — one chapter per day)
 
RESOURCES MENTIONED
Simple Money, Rich Life (the book)
Assets Under Management free resource
 
DISCLAIMER
Obligatory legal disclaimer: I'm a financial educator, not your financial advisor, investment advisor, tax pro, or lawyer. This channel is for general education, not personalized advice, and nothing here should be taken as a recommendation to buy, sell, or use any specific investment, account, or financial product. I'm just sharing what I'm doing, what I'm learning, and what I find interesting.
Markets can be humbling. Investing involves risk, including the risk of losing money, and my results are personal, may not be typical, and are not guaranteed. Do your own research, use wisdom, and talk with a qualified professional before making financial decisions.
Some links are to our resources and some are affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. That helps keep the lights on around here, so thanks for the support.

Matt Chandler has been in the room with actual billionaires on multiple occasions — and the way he describes what happens to people who have everything almost everyone else is chasing isn't what most of us would expect. He told us he won't even let some of them bless him. And after 23 years pastoring one of the most affluent suburbs in America, he's seen exactly what the chase actually does to families.
In this conversation, we get into a question Matt says nobody has asked him: what he's actually watched wealth do to people up close. We talk about the upgrade cycle most Christian families never name (and the bigger house Matt and Lauren refused to buy because of it), why the finish line always moves no matter how much you make, the diagnostic he gives for whether money is serving you or you're serving it, and what bad stewardship really does to the peace in your home.
And for more rich teaching on how to become more like Jesus check out his new book Becoming Like Jesus -
 
WHAT WE COVER IN THIS EPISODE
Here's a little of what we cover in this episode:
What Matt has watched wealth do to families over 23 years in Dallas
The room full of billionaires moment most pastors never talk about
The bigger house Matt and Lauren almost bought (and the math that decided it)
"The finish line always moves" — the trap most Christians never name
The diagnostic Matt uses to spot whether money is serving you
What bad stewardship actually does to the peace in a home
How Matt and Lauren built radical generosity into their budget when he made $12,000 a year
Why budgeting is a spiritual discipline, not a numbers nerd thing
 
BIBLE VERSES MENTIONED
1 Corinthians 16:2
 
RESOURCES MENTIONED
Matt Chandler's Book: Becoming Like Jesus
 
DISCLAIMER
Obligatory legal disclaimer: I'm a financial educator, not your financial advisor, investment advisor, tax pro, or lawyer. This channel is for general education, not personalized advice, and nothing here should be taken as a recommendation to buy, sell, or use any specific investment, account, or financial product. I'm just sharing what I'm doing, what I'm learning, and what I find interesting.
Markets can be humbling. Investing involves risk, including the risk of losing money, and my results are personal, may not be typical, and are not guaranteed. Do your own research, use wisdom, and talk with a qualified professional before making financial decisions.
Some links are to our resources and some are affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. That helps keep the lights on around here, so thanks for the support.

We are opening up our Mission Driven Millionaire Cohort to 15 people and we are enrolling now until spots fill up. Get details and apply here: https://seedtime.com/cohort
Also, this is an episode you might just want to watch (you know, with your eyeballs lol) for it to make the most sense. And you can do that here if you want.
I have coached people pulling in 250,000 a year who are completely broke. No margin, no savings, no clue where any of it went. And I have sat with families bringing in 40,000 who quietly become millionaires. It is not income. It is not pinching pennies. There is one specific thing that decides which side of that line you end up on.
In this episode, I'm walking you through the exact system Linda and I built that helped us give away over a million dollars by my 40th birthday and pay off our mortgage in the process. We get into why most extra money disappears before you ever see it, why holding water in your hands is the picture of money without a system, the simple framework we use for budgeting, bills, and automated giving and investing, and why the system itself is what made the miracles possible.
I will show you what Joseph storing grain has to do with your 401k, why pinching pennies is what people try when they do not have a system, and what to put in place so when extra shows up it actually has somewhere to land.
 
What We Cover
Here's a little of what we cover in this episode:
Why most extra money disappears within a month of showing up
The one decision Linda and I made before money landed that changed everything
How to hold water without spilling it (the analogy that finally made this click for me)
Why income alone never fixes the problem (we have coached 250,000-a-year families who are dead broke)
The exact flow of how money moves through our system, from paycheck to giving to investing
Why pinching pennies is a sign you do not have a system yet
The Joseph principle that links faith and structure, and why miracles ride on top of it
The slow leak that drains every raise, bonus, and tax refund you have ever received
 
Bible Verses Mentioned
Matthew 6:33
1 Corinthians 16:2
 
Disclaimer
Obligatory legal disclaimer: I'm a financial educator, not your financial advisor, investment advisor, tax pro, or lawyer. This channel is for general education, not personalized advice, and nothing here should be taken as a recommendation to buy, sell, or use any specific investment, account, or financial product. I'm just sharing what I'm doing, what I'm learning, and what I find interesting.
Markets can be humbling. Investing involves risk, including the risk of losing money, and my results are personal, may not be typical, and are not guaranteed. Do your own research, use wisdom, and talk with a qualified professional before making financial decisions.
Some links are to our resources and some are affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. That helps keep the lights on around here, so thanks for the support.

37% of people making $250,000 a year are living paycheck to paycheck right now. Which means the thing keeping most of us stuck financially has almost nothing to do with how much we make. Linda and I have coached people pulling in $250k who are dead broke. We've watched a $20,000 raise get absorbed by lifestyle inside six months and leave them exactly where they started. The problem isn't income. The problem is that most of us are working hard on the wrong math problem.
In this episode we walk through the four stages of money (surviving, stable, secure, and surplus) and the one mistake almost everybody makes when they try to jump from one stage to the next. We get into why "boring" is the actual investing strategy, why we wish we wouldn't have taken the raise, the bank-manager story that explains why the system is rigged against people in stage one, and the moment we finally figured out that the move that got us from stage one to stage two was the exact same move keeping us stuck in stage two for years.
If you enjoyed this, we'd love to send you a free copy of our book. You just cover shipping. It has over 1,000 5-star reviews on Amazon. Grab it at seedtime.com/free.
 
WHAT WE COVER IN THIS EPISODE
Here's a little of what we cover in this episode:
The stat that proves your financial stage has almost nothing to do with your income
The 4 stages of money and how to know which one you're actually in
The one mistake almost everybody makes trying to jump from one stage to the next
Why a $20k raise can leave you with the same $0 left at the end of the month
The bank manager story that exposes how the system is rigged against people in stage one
Why "boring" is actually the right investing strategy at stage three
The Elon-Musk-doesn't-mow-his-own-lawn principle most people get backwards
Why willpower-based budgeting always fails (and what to do instead)
 
BIBLE VERSES MENTIONED
Matthew 14:13-21 (referenced. The five loaves and two fish. "You bring it to me and I'll multiply it.")
 
RESOURCES MENTIONED
Mission-Driven Millionaire cohort
Simple Money, Rich Life (the book)
Free book offer
 
DISCLAIMER
Obligatory legal disclaimer: I'm a financial educator, not your financial advisor, investment advisor, tax pro, or lawyer. This channel is for general education, not personalized advice, and nothing here should be taken as a recommendation to buy, sell, or use any specific investment, account, or financial product. I'm just sharing what I'm doing, what I'm learning, and what I find interesting.
Markets can be humbling. Investing involves risk, including the risk of losing money, and my results are personal, may not be typical, and are not guaranteed. Do your own research, use wisdom, and talk with a qualified professional before making financial decisions.
Some links are to our resources and some are affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. That helps keep the lights on around here, so thanks for the support.

In this episode I walk through our entire 2026 investment portfolio: every account, every position, and exactly what I'm doing with our money. That includes a full update on gold (which has nearly doubled but I genuinely don't care), where we stand with Bitcoin at $65k, why I moved Linda's Roth IRA into a fixed indexed annuity after spending my whole career skeptical of them, our real estate split between Fundrise and Roots, the Tesla concentration problem in our stock portfolio, and what happened when I ran an app that automatically copies Nancy Pelosi's trades for 8 months — including the $1,500 I put in and the 12.4% it returned.
If you enjoyed this, we'd love to send you a free copy of our book — you just cover shipping. It has over 1,000 5-star reviews on Amazon. Grab it at seedtime.com/free.
 
WHAT WE COVER IN THIS EPISODE
Here's a little of what we cover in this episode:
The Christian fund I've held for a year that's down 3% while the S&P is up 17% — and why I'm not selling
The app that automatically mirrors Nancy Pelosi's stock trades (Trump mentioned her record in the State of the Union)
Why gold has nearly doubled — and why I genuinely don't care
The Tesla concentration problem in our stock portfolio that every rebalancing strategy says to fix (but I won't)
Why I spent my whole career skeptical of annuities — then moved Linda's Roth IRA into one
What we're actually putting in crypto right now, and why 80% of it is in one coin
Why I want as few US dollars as possible right now — and what I'm holding instead
 
BIBLE REFERENCES
Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25)
 
RESOURCES MENTIONED
Sound Mind Investing (FCTE / Full Cycle Trading Fund)
Roots
Fundrise Innovation Fund
Alto IRA
OneGold
Autopilot app
Webull
 
DISCLAIMER
Obligatory legal disclaimer: I'm a financial educator, not your financial advisor, investment advisor, tax pro, or lawyer. This channel is for general education, not personalized advice, and nothing here should be taken as a recommendation to buy, sell, or use any specific investment, account, or financial product. I'm just sharing what I'm doing, what I'm learning, and what I find interesting.
Markets can be humbling. Investing involves risk, including the risk of losing money, and my results are personal, may not be typical, and are not guaranteed. Do your own research, use wisdom, and talk with a qualified professional before making financial decisions.
Some links are to our resources and some are affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. That helps keep the lights on around here, so thanks for the support.