A Lesson in Finance 101

CBN.com Imagine that you’re 18-years-old, on your way to college, and want it all. How do you get it all? 

For Matt Tichon, the answer was easy. He turned to credit cards.  But that “buy now, pay later mentality” put Matt on course for a financial train wreck; not only for him, but for the members of his future family as well. 

Matt would learn a lesson in “Finances 101” that would give him the chance to be an “A student” in money matters.

“The campus is full of people willing to give college students a credit card with almost no qualifications. So when I’d max out the limit, I would go to the next vender and get another one,” said Matt.

Matt Tichon thought nothing of his wild spending habits in college. Then, he met Kate, the future Mrs. Tichon. She had a pile of bills and loans of her own.  When it was time to get married, Matt and Kate used credit cards for the dress, rings, and the honeymoon.

Matt recalled, “My employer realized since Kate and I were just married and out of college that we should go to a financial planner. We met with a financial planner and we had to fill out these forms that we got.  We quickly skipped over the assets pages because we had none.”

Matt continued, “Then we listed all our debt. It was the first time we had a good look at our finances, the big picture. The big picture was that we were over $100,000 in debt."   

“It consumed my waking and sleeping.  I was worried about it.  I didn’t know how I was going to pay it off.  I was fearful also that we were going to have to live in it.  It felt like a prison to me and we were going to have to live there,” said Matt. 

“We had no other place to turn but to God. And that’s when I started praying about it, and just admitted that we had not been good stewards, and we had trusted ourselves and not God. We just cried out to Him and asked Him to forgive us.”

Next, Matt and Kate worked on a Bible study on finances together.

“There are verses that talk about the borrower being slave to the lender, and I looked at Kate and said, 'That’s us, we feel enslaved and trapped.' '"

"And wow, it’s in the Bible!  Who would have ever thought the Bible talks about finances?” wondered Matt. 

 “We decided to have a plastic surgery party and cut up those credit cards,” added Matt.

Meanwhile, Matt was getting a lesson on giving 10 percent of their income away.

“I just opened the Bible and came to a passage about tithing. At the time we were so far in debt, and I said, 'This Scripture cannot be for me, this can’t be right.'  So, I quickly shut the Bible, and the next day on the way to work, I turned on the radio and heard a message about tithing. It all clicked and I said, 'OK, God, if You are trying to tell me to tithe, this is something I need to look into,' ” remembered Matt. 

After just one month of tithing, Kate got a call from a recruiter offering her a new job.  The increase in salary was exactly the amount of their annual tithe that they had pledged to pay.

“It feIt like, ‘He’s here!  He cares about us.’  We felt like we took this big jump off a cliff and said, ‘God help us. God catch us, we need You.’ And there He was,” said Matt.

The Tichon’s decided to live off Matt’s income and use Kate’s to pay down the debt.

“I put a graph together of our debt, and then every month figured how much we would pay off. I had this bar chart that I would show Kate on a monthly basis, so she could physically see this bar going lower and lower toward the zero line,” offered Matt.

Matt continued, “I could almost feel the oppression lifting off of me. Those chains slowly became looser and I really felt like that I felt liberated.”

A few years later, the Tichons payed the last of their entire $100,000 in debt.

“I called Kate the last day I made the last payment excited, just bubbling with excitement, and said 'Yea, we did it. God was with us.' ” 

The Tichons have a word of encouragement for anyone ready to take a step of faith in the area of finances.
 
“I would encourage others to reach out to God and pray about it, and open their heart for what God wants in their life. When He speaks, take action.  Don’t hesitate. Take action. Even if you say, 'I don’t know how this is possible.' If God has put it on your heart, He’ll see you through it.”

God wants to bless you too, just as He has blessed Matt and Kate for their faithfulness. One way you can give to God’s work is through CBN. Not only will you reach thousands each day with a message of truth and hope through The 700 Club, you will also help feed and clothe children around the world, bring medical aid to those suffering and so much more. Please join with us today.