Tithing inspired them to get debt free

Newlyweds Anthony and Jhanilka Hartzog didn’t worry too much about their $114,000 in combined debt since they both had good jobs. He worked for a New York-based IT firm and she was a licensed mental health counselor.

“I felt like we’ll pay it off whenever we pay it off,” Jhanilka says on a CBN video. “There’s no rush, just kind of like everybody else does, you have car payments, you have student loan payments, this is just part of life.

But as they attended church, they were challenged to think about giving more to help others in need and to think about creating generational wealth, what they hoped to pass along to their children one day.

“I’m going to church now. I want to be a part of it. I want to support,” Anthony says. “The same way we were budgeting for our food and for our clothes, we were budgeting for our tithing as well.”

By budgeting, they reigned in their expenses. The couple took another step; they supplemented their income with side hustles. Anthony signed up his new car for peer-to-peer rental. Jhanilka started a dog sitting business. Anthony worked at a gym on weekends. The industrious couple also started a cleaning business.

Within two years, they had paid off their student loans and credit card debt.

“As we were raising our income, we were tithing,” Anthony confides. “The money we were tithing was never ‘felt’ because we were always getting it back.” Read the rest: Get debt free in God.

Estate planner: Give it away

As an estate planner formerly, my pastor would counsel people how to handle their retirement money: Give it all to your children now, before you die, because if you wait, the government is going to get a bunch of it.

As much as people didn’t want Uncle Sam to gobble his unfair share, they would always balk. They want to make sure they have enough in case they get sick. Or whatever. Inevitably, the IRS trundles away with the kids’ inheritance.

There is a lesson for us Christians: don’t hold back on giving to God. Only what you give is credited to your account in Heaven. Don’t wait for another day, a better offer, a wider safety margin. Because the devil is going for his oversized slice of the pie. Give it recklessly (that is, with faith). Throw caution to the wind and your money to the offering plate. God is able to keep you from the rainy day for which you are saving.