Why More Money Will Not Fix What Is Actually Broken

Machine transcribed from the episode audio, lightly cleaned. Timestamps are approximate.

0:00
If your income disappeared completely tomorrow, who are you? Not what would you do, but who are you? Who are you if the money that you earn and have accumulated is gone? Because if you just come right out and say, I am the same man I am with the money, and yet money is the thing that's constantly wreaking havoc in your life, then what you say and who you really are are two different things. It's this distortion of identity. So you're making more money than you ever have, and yet somehow you feel further from God, further from your family, and further from yourself than you ever did when you were completely broke.

0:46
Look, that's not a coincidence. That's a warning. And if you're not there yet financially, but you believe that getting there will finally fix what's broken, this is gonna be for you too. So this video is for the man who's winning financially or aspires to be winning financially and is losing in every other area of life that actually matters. If that's not you, no problem. But if that sentence just landed somewhere in your chest, I want you to stay with me. By the end of this video, what I wanna be able to do is help you to understand three things that are so important for you. Number one is where your relationship with money actually came from.

1:31
The second thing is why it has been quietly running decisions you thought you were making. And thirdly, I wanna help you with the one shift that is gonna change everything for you as it relates to this topic. It's not a budget. It's not a financial plan. It is really a shift at the root. My name is Ryan James Miller. I've coached hundreds of high-performing Christian professionals, helping them to continue achieving success without destroying their faith of the family in the process. We do that through community, through group coaching, and through a couple of other really cool programs that we run from time to time. And I wanna invite you into this conversation, particularly because I am not talking about

2:17
this topic from a distance. I'm not talking about this in theory. I'm talking about this because I've spent years building income with one hand and really tearing down my marriage, my peace, and even at times my relationship with God with the other. I had no idea that those two things were connected until the whole thing nearly collapsed. I've done the work on this and I wanna share this with you because if I've found it, I believe others are searching for it as well. So I wanna take you back to a moment that really started all of this for me. Not when I started making money, but really when I let the money make me, okay? So some of you know, some of you've heard,

3:05
but if you've read my book or you've heard me talk before, but I grew up for the most part in a single parent household. When I was six, my parents divorced. And when that happened, my dad, he left. He would pay my mom child support. It just really wasn't very much money. And so my mom, she went out, she worked two, even three jobs sometimes just to put food on the table, even going as far at times as to not eat herself. So that way my brother and I could eat. She sacrificed so much for us and I'm forever grateful for that. All along money was tight for us. It was always uncertain.

3:51
And there was always this like background noise that we lived with that nobody really talked about. It was just kind of always there and it was apparent. And I absorbed that. I didn't choose it. It just really was a part of my upbringing. And so that was the narrative that I just learned from and adopted as my own. Fast forward to my late 20s and I'm working with a buddy of mine. We're selling high-end wheels and tires for cars. We were having some really good months. And in those good months, I was pulling in over $10,000 a month. And at 20, I think I was 25, 26 years old

4:36
when that was going on. Actually, no, I had to be younger than that. Anyway, man, when that was happening, I was just over the moon excited. It was a first for me to see that kind of money in my own hands. And so the writing though was on the wall and you may already know what I'm going to say when I say this, but when I got the money, I spent the money. It wasn't always reckless though, but it wasn't always wise. I was spending it pretty quickly. So we'd already owned our own home at that point, but beyond paying the bills,

5:22
I bought nice watches. I bought a bomb Mercedes sedan for my wife and a nice truck for myself, loaded sound system, whatever. You know, I was doing all those things because I was trying to make my life look like the version of success that I thought that it was supposed to be. And really it was because nobody had ever taught me what to do with abundance. I had no idea what else to do. I mean, obviously I had some general idea of saving money, but I was just too ignorant to listen to that. And so for me, all I'd ever learned was really how to live without enough money,

6:07
but not how to live with a good amount of money. So that started to just create some serious issues in my life. And worst of all, I think is, as that was all happening, as I was trying to create this version of success, this optic of success, I was also starting to really struggle with my own identity and a desire to fit in and look successful. And so I started gambling. And there's a long story behind how those things connected, but I started gambling just little bits, and then that started to grow.

6:55
I got my own bookie through a friend, and so I was spending quite a bit of money every single week. And man, it just got out of hand. It got out of hand so much so that, by the grace of God, what would be my last week of gambling, but my last full week of gambling ever, March Madness, I think this was 2006, if I'm not mistaken, I lost $5,000 in a matter of a few days. I called my buddy, Mike. Man, I was so pissed off. I was broken. I was embarrassed. I was just devastated to lose that much money. And he was one of the guys

7:40
that I was gambling with a lot. And I got off the phone, and I remember my wife, Michelle, she's like, hey, what's going on? I think we're actually having a party at the house. And I was like, man, I got hit pretty bad this week. She knew I gambled. She had no idea how much. And she was like, gosh, well, like, how much? And I said, oh, man, about $1,000. And I lied straight to the face of the woman that I loved and that loved me because I was too ashamed to share with her how far I had gone in that. And I just think about the position that I put myself in

8:27
because of this narrative that I had grown up with and then kind of just built on top of. It was wrong to begin with, and it just continued to get worse and worse and worse as I formed my own vision for money in my life. And really, for me, that was just a past wound running my numbers instead of me with wisdom running my numbers. Look at every single one of you guys that is watching this right now or listening to this, if you're going to listen to this on our podcast, you have a money script. It's the words that we've heard growing up. It's the things that we've watched.

9:12
It's the moments that told us what money meant and what it was supposed to protect us from. And all of that, man, it just doesn't disappear. It just doesn't go away when we start earning. As a matter of fact, as we start earning our own money and come into an abundance of it, the problems upgrade. The chaos gets far more sophisticated. And though it learns to sound like wisdom, it is everything but. Look it. Scarcity does not always look like fear. And I think that is something that we really need to consider.

9:59
Sometimes scarcity looks like control. Us wanting to be in complete and total control of everything. Sometimes it looks like us getting angry with our spouse because they spent 40 bucks on something, knowing the real terror is we spent $40,000 on something. All of that leaves us exposed. And when we're exposed to the realities of the predicaments that we put ourselves in, we start to operate from so much more scarcity. So I want you to sit with something for a second that I think is really important for you to think about. I want you to think about right now. Now, if you have an insane amount of money

10:45
and you're listening to this, you may not quite feel this way, though I think it still does happen. I've got quite a few clients that are healthy seven-figure earners. And the same thing applies to them. And I know because I coach them through it. So I want you to think about what happens when money gets tight. And that could be going from making $10,000 to $5,000 in a month. It could go from making $100,000, whatever it is. How do you actually respond? Not what you say, but how you respond. What is your demeanor? What is your action like? How do you treat people that are close to you? How do you operate in your business when all of that happens? That response is your script.

11:32
And that script came from somewhere long before you started to accumulate some level of wealth. So here's something that I want you to do ASAP. Here's the first takeaway that I think is really important for you to consider if this is something that you are striving to grow in. And there's going to be a big reason why as I continue to work through this. But I think all of us, I'll say this now, all of us want freedom from this. We want to continue to be free to make as much money as possible. We want to enjoy all of the amazing things that wealth can afford us. We want to steward that money well. We want to contribute to others. We want to do all those things. But it all starts with this narrative,

12:19
this script. And we're going to have to rewire that before we are ever going to operate in a completely healthy place as it relates to money. And really, if we're ever going to enjoy it, we're going to have to change that script. Okay, so here's what I want you to do right now, which means you can pause the video, the audio, whatever it is, just hit pause after you hear this. I want you to just write down something. Maybe I'll just pause after this. So I want you to write this down, just one sentence, not a whole paragraph, just a simple sentence. In my house growing up, money meant, and then fill in the blank. In my house growing up, money meant, and then fill in the blank.

13:05
What is that sentence for you? It's your script, but what does it say? Because that script is probably continuing to make decisions on behalf of you, even if you don't. I know for me, once I started to read my script, I had to face what was underneath all of it. Because the real problem back then, and even now, and I'll share another story here in a little bit, it wasn't my spending.

13:52
It wasn't even the gambling. It was what I believed would make me happy. What I believed what would keep me in control. What I believed would protect me. It was really what I believed about who was in charge of my life. Okay. You've gotten that written down, and you may be thinking to yourself, well, what am I going to do with this? So I kind of know where this idea came from, but now I have to figure out how to work it out, how to work through it. So I want to be really honest

14:37
with you about something, because I think that that's the only way that you're ever going to feel comfortable enough to work through this is if somebody else is honest with you. So I think a lot of men who call themselves good they're going to hear themselves in this statement or in this story. So I believe myself to be a good husband. I was a good father for the most part, and I thought I was working for the right things. But behind closed doors, in the real decisions, in the way that I responded when income dipped, in the gambling Michelle didn't know about, none of it matched. none of my behavior matched the good husband

15:25
and the good father, the good man that I thought I was, that I desired to be. I was a good man on the surface, but operating out of this place of fear, really fear of being found out. So the night after I lost all that money, you know, again, you know, Michelle, she had asked me what was wrong. Even when she told me, this is what is crazy to me, you guys, and this is something that, again, as a man that's leading your house, that's trying to do the right thing, ultimately, at that time, I was not honoring Christ, but most of you that are listening to this are followers of Jesus, and so, as I am now,

16:12
and so you're going to want to, you're going to want to do as God calls you to do. Okay, so, so check this out. So, that day, you know, Michelle, what's wrong? I tell her, I lie to her. The next day, she came to me, and she just, I remember her just grabbing hold of me and being like, hey, it's okay. We'll figure it out. I felt like such a loser. I mean, not, it wasn't even about the money anymore. It was because I could not be trusted by the person that God had entrusted to me.

16:58
I was so afraid, not even of the repercussions, but of being found out as somebody that couldn't control my spending, as somebody that I let pride get the best of me, as somebody that lied directly to the person that loved me the most. I just couldn't be found out. And again, it wasn't a financial problem. It was an identity problem. A man whose identity is grounded in his income will lie to protect it, to hoard it, or even to gamble it because he's chasing more of it. And he'll do all those things at the same time.

17:45
And I run into this guy all the time. These are good men that have just let money get the best of them. Either because like me, they didn't have any of it growing up and they finally get it and they start to recognize just how amazing it can be. Or they were raised having a decent amount of it and believe that they need to have more and more and more of it to enjoy life. I mean, it's just so twisted that both in a lack and abundance, this can apply. It's just, it's crazy to me. So here's the question I want you to sit with. So this is opportunity number two for you. A couple of questions, but I'll start with this one.

18:32
So if your income disappeared completely tomorrow, who are you? Not what would you do, but who are you? Who are you if the money that you earn and have accumulated is gone? Is that a hard question for you to answer? Because if you just come right out and say, I am the same man I am with the money and yet money is the thing that's constantly wrecking or wreaking havoc in your life, then what you say and who you really are are two different things. So again, it's this distortion of identity. So Proverbs 3, verse 9, it says that we are to honor the Lord with our wealth

19:18
and with the first fruits of all that we produce. The first fruit means that right out of the gate, before we know how the month is going to go, before we know whether or not we crushed it this month in sales, before any of that happens, that we honor the Lord with our wealth, that we honor the Lord with our income. That is the definition of trust and really trusting God. You see, most men that I talk to, they tithe, they give with what is left over. If anything is left over, we give a percentage of that. Or if anything is left over, we give all of that. But that's not really honoring God.

20:04
I mean, that's cool. Good for you. But that's not really honoring God with your wealth. That's managing your wealth and then giving God the change. It's like going to the restaurant, Panda Express, and it's $17.23. And they're like, oh, you want to round up to $18 for Chalk Hospital? They say it all the time. You're like, yeah, no problem. Yeah, I'm so generous. It's like, yeah, but I mean, it was kind of just left. For me, I had to have a turning point. I wish it was the only one, but for me, I had to have a turning point. It took everything falling apart, everything in my life crumbling,

20:50
losing everything that I've accumulated, that I had accumulated from a possession standpoint. All of it. My income going to almost zero. My marriage was a mess and literally on the rocks. The lies were stacking up everywhere. I got to a place where on my own, I had no power. No power to fix my life. I was completely out of options. And the only option that I had left was to consider God. But he couldn't be the backup plan. He had to be the foundation. I obviously didn't understand that day one, but I began to understand that as I stepped into following Jesus and then understanding what it meant to do that day in and day out with my whole life, not just money.

21:36
You see, I had spent so much time gripping money with both hands, but I was watching my whole life slip away in the process. God literally had to pry my hands open to get to a place where I could trust him. So here's challenge number three for you. Question number three. I want you to pull up the last 90 days of your bank statements. And I want you to look for anywhere in there that you've given. Not that you've paid into a charity golf tournament. Not that you have given some money to the association that your client

22:23
is a part of, but when is the last time and or how often are you giving of your first fruits? How often? As a matter of fact, think back to the hard times in your life and see if you were giving as much then as you are during the great times in your life. and obviously there's wisdom in not just giving all of our money away. But we need to believe that what we give is not tied directly to what we get. Either in what we get and then give or give and then we get as a result of it.

23:10
Do you trust God enough that you can commit to giving to him regardless of what your income looks like? And this all ties back, by the way, to who you are and then how you will operate, how you will do business, how you will earn, how you will grow. Your ability to grow your business and grow financially is often tied to how you view money in this world. So, for me, I knew the script. I could see that my foundation was just an absolute mess. But knowing it and changing it were two completely different things. And so that shift, that started to rewire what I thought about money.

23:56
But it didn't start with budgeting. It started with a decision that I made that numbers really didn't support. And it's this. And I want you to hear me say this loud and clear. Generosity is not the reward for getting it together. It is the path to getting it. Okay? So, go back again. So, I come to faith August of 2006. And by the way, if you've not heard this, this was not I finally went into church and started hanging out there. Like, I went all in. My life was a broken disaster of a mess. I step into church and by the grace of God he captures me

24:41
and he just starts to turn my life around. One of the first things that we did as we stepped into church was I started getting serious about that grip I have on money. It just so happened that during that time in our life we were we were still on the rise. We were still earning good money. And so but letting go of it was hard because I had never given like that. I had never had to let go of my own money. But after spending years hoarding it hiding it gambling it spending it on dumb crap that was supposed to make me look and feel successful and really never did

25:27
I had to turn that over. God started working on that grip directly in my life. It wasn't through a financial seminar it wasn't through some app it was through conviction. I needed to be convicted. I remember the first time that Michelle and I started committing to tithing seriously. it wasn't because we were comfortable it wasn't because I was having a better month than the month before. I just did it. But it was hard. It was hard. I remember when that offering plate was coming around to just take money out of my pocket

26:12
and put it in there. that old script that was that was in me was still in there and it was like trying to get out it was like trying to scream at me like dude what are you doing? What's your problem? It wasn't a problem. I just did it. I had to do it. What's crazy was I gave and I didn't get a lot back like the prosperity preachers preach. As a matter of fact I didn't like nothing good happened financially and as a matter of fact fact within two years of actively giving being invested into the church we would start to experience financial ruin

26:58
that would take five years to completely do itself in. But I did have peace. The fear that had been running through me my entire adult life was all but gone. I need you to understand that generosity is not what you do after you feel secure. It's what creates the security. And it's not because God owes you something. It's not because okay well once I give then God is gonna no he's already done it. But when I give that act of giving is an act of trusting in the God that I believe provides everything to me in the first place.

27:44
And to me trust it's the only thing that will kill that fear. Trusting God is the only thing that will kill the fear that was rooted in me for so long. And I want to be clear with you this is not just a video message on tithing. It's not that at all. Because there are three places where this shows up regularly for men either to wreck them or to grow them. So first one is this shows up as financial transparency with your spouse. When I started being honest with Michelle about money and I mean completely honest that was one of the most significant acts

28:29
of restoration in our marriage. Financial transparency is a form of intimacy. I deeply believe that and if you listen to any good marriage counselor a Christian marriage counselor or pastor that does marriage counseling or couples therapy whatever they will all tell you that when you can go deep in finances with your spouse it really is a deeply intimate discussion. I believe that you cannot have a true covenant in marriage if there is financial secrecy. I just don't believe it can exist. So that's the first thing is it shows up as financial transparency with your wife and I believe it gets you a whole lot

29:15
more intimacy. Wink wink. Secondly it is legacy it is legacy planning when you start to view money in this way. This is not just about building income you're about building something that outlasts you. What script are you handing your kids? You know when we were really struggling financially one of the things that was a blessing was our kids knew everything. They knew all the ups and downs they knew the people that were being charitable and gracious to us they knew the struggles that we had they also heard

30:00
a lot of the negative they also heard a lot of the frustration and so we passed along to them a narrative that was both good but then also difficult because one of the things one of the downfalls was our kids even to this day sometimes will go around some places and they're like oh my gosh that's so expensive like how can people afford that and whether they're right or wrong it's like they're almost too too focused on the price they're almost too negative about the cost of things and again there's a lot of wisdom in being aware but yeah they're just too sensitive to it at times but I want to pass along to my kids

30:46
a legacy of financial literacy of financial wisdom and ultimately I want to hand them over a legacy of trusting God with our finances because that's the ultimate hack when it comes to financial growth thirdly transforming how we see this changing the script this is about generosity with our time where you spend your hours will tell your family what you actually value more than anything you say to them I work with so many men some of you guys that are working your tails off and not spending any time with your family and I get that you're in a circumstance or a situation where you have got

31:31
to go earn but if you aren't present your money means nothing to them and frankly they don't really care even right now I've got a 17 year old daughter that will go to college in about a year and a couple of months and I've got a 24 year old daughter that's going to get married in just about a year and in both of those situations they've learned to manage expectations around what that wedding is going to look like and what college is going to look like because they understand finances but I can guarantee you this that if they had to choose between the most elaborate wedding this world had to offer or their dad at home they would choose dad at home I guarantee you if my my younger daughter had to choose

32:15
between an incredible elite four year college all paid for or her dad showing up for her anytime he needed her or she needed him she would choose the latter we need to show our families how we're spending our time and that's a lesson we learn as we change the script second Corinthians nine says that we should so generously because we will reap generously we hear in the Bible that God loves it cheerful giver this isn't about being a strategic giver this isn't about being a reluctant giver this is about being a cheerful giver that word cheerful in the original language in

33:00
the Bible it is it points to this meaning of decision a decision from purpose not from pressure I'm not being compelled it's it's a desire of the heart that's what it means there's this good desire to give of my time my talent and my treasure that's what the Bible is calling us to so if you've heard this and you've resonated with this at all then I want to encourage you to consider that there is a gap that you are living in there's this gap between who you are right now and ultimately who God has created you to be sometimes that gap is as

33:46
obvious as obvious can be other times it is buried deep in a spreadsheet sometimes it's it's in the need to give the thing that you don't think you can give sometimes it's in the conversation with your wife that you really need to have closing this gap you guys it starts with honesty first being honest with ourselves and then being honest with those around us don't you want to live completely and truly as who God made you to be and not some false version and I think that's what we're all after I think that's one of

34:32
the greatest marks of freedom is I just get to be who God created me to be so before I land this because I think it's easy to tell these stories and I know I've gotten a lot longer than than I have recently in these videos but or again if you're listening via the podcast but I want to be honest about something because I think it's easy to talk about things of the past and the ways that we've overcome those hurdles I think it's really hard to talk about things that we're actually experiencing in the present day this is extremely hard for me because I'm a performance coach that helps other people a lot of times grow their own income or their business's income it's also extremely hard for me to share because I

35:13
should have all this figured out by now because I've learned my lessons and yet I just haven't so recently we're I'm recording this in May of 2026 first four months of the year four and a half months of the year have been pretty tight financially in business they haven't gone as well as we had hoped that we had projected and so with that financial anxiety starts to creep its way back in and it starts to consume let's consume me and so I had received my quarter one financials from my accountant and I saw the number and I was like oh my gosh that is not

36:00
good like that that that is not a good number not only is that not a good number is I'm planning for a wedding and college and trying to buy a house but that is just not good for daily living and as I looked at that and went line by line I noticed something was missing and that was our giving to our local church and I was sick I have consistently given in good times and bad times since shortly after we became Christians and I and I've tried to never miss that so much so that my wife and I will talk about what we can give we will plan that for the year and then we will put that on autopilot so we make sure that we don't

36:46
allow control to to to prevent us from giving and yet it was missing and as I looked it had been a couple of months and man I was so embarrassed I was ashamed but it was also sad that I had missed that so I had a decision to make in the moment I could turn the giving back on right away because I noticed it or or I could hold off just a little bit longer because it's not a small sum of money and I could really use that money right now like I mean I could really use that money right now what was I going to do well I'm going to give you the answer but I need you to understand how hard it

37:31
was maybe I could just change it because we said it at the end of 2025 when we were in a good space and I was projecting for growth in 2026 and I just give off of growth I don't give off of where we're at or I could hold back and man with a with a lot of fear but a whole lot more trust I put my eyes on Jesus and I just restarted it now that I'm thinking about it I probably should really pray about going back and closing that gap and that is something I'm actually going to commit to praying about right here in front of you guys if you've got a comment on that go ahead and feel free to to hit me in the

38:18
comments DM whatever you want to do but I had to give I had to start it right back up because I couldn't afford to have that tight grip all over again so here's my final challenge for you guys as we wind this down I want you to identify one act of generosity you've been postponing until it feels comfortable maybe it's a tie to the local church you've not fully committed to maybe it's a financial conversation with your wife that you've been avoiding having maybe it's a legacy decision that you are holding off on until income gets to some next level I want you to write that down I want you to give it a date not someday but a

39:03
specific date that you are going to commit to fulfilling that obligation that desire that call on your life that is how you are going to close the gap between knowing and doing and that's what we've got to do you guys okay so let's bring this together three things to remind you of super helpful for you okay first your money script came from somewhere before you ever earned a dollar so until you name that it's going to keep running you number two you are not grounded in faith if you are gripping money the only way to tell the difference is to look at where you put your trust trust especially when the pressure hits it's

39:49
not what you say right it's what you do thirdly generosity is not a reward for getting your finances right it is the move that changes your relationship with money in the first place what are you going to do about carry that into this next week where is fear influencing your decision especially your financial ones what would it look like to put your hand on that one specific thing and give it over to the Lord just that one thing because that gap between where you're living right now and who God created you to be it is so real but closing that gap down is one of the most incredible things that you can do and if you're still

40:36
not sure what to do where to go how to handle that from this point forward down in the comment section I'm just going to put a simple link to a custom GPT that we've created on chat GPT you can click that link you don't need to opt in you don't need to give a name nothing like that and it will walk you through helping you to identify where that gap is and give you a next step on how you can handle that so I'll make sure to put that link down in the comments in the notes you can check that out there questions comments concerns feel free to hit me up you can find me on all the socials you can DM me please don't let this go this could be a transformational moment between you living with this tight grip

41:24
this constant fear this worry about is it enough I need more and it could end up transforming into the financial freedom that you finally get to experience you get to do the things you want to do you get to be with the people that you want to be with you get to be the man that go peace you