Maximum Investment Seminar

Report and Observations

I want to give a brief report on the Maximum Investment Seminar which I did at First Methodist Gladewater last Saturday. I especially want to thank all of those who were praying for this. That is such a blessing. I also appreciate those of you who texted or emailed to let me know you were praying.

Let me just give a quick reminder about why I was doing the Maximum Investment Seminar. I believe that, overall, our young people are not well-educated in how to manage their money. I believe that this is SO important for many reasons. I considered it a blessing to be able to teach the material which I have been working on for decades to a very responsive and engaged group of young people.

There were eight people at the conference: a fifteen-year-old accompanied by an adult family member, a sixteen-year-old, two eighteen-year-olds, a twenty-year-old and a twenty-two-year-old. This was the perfect blend of ages. I greatly appreciate the adult who attended and gave input and was able to help me evaluate the effectiveness of the seminar. I had prayed for eight to ten people, and this is an ideal sized group for interaction and discussion.

Key points of emphasis of the seminar were:

It is important to begin trying to budget and for most of these young people this will mean tracking every expense in some form or fashion. They need to develop the practice of knowing where their money is going.

I believe that it can be a good thing to establish the practice of knowing your net worth. At this point in their lives, most of them have a positive net worth, because they have not incurred any debt. Neither of the two young people who were attending college had taken on any debt thus far. That is amazing and a blessing. I have met with several university students who have had debt ranging from $50,000 to $120,000 - yes, $120,000! That just seems like a very bad plan!

I encouraged the young people to open a high yield savings account, which is currently paying an interest rate of 3.6% to 4.0%.

We also discussed the incredible power of compound interest: how it can compound for you, or it can come pound against you. We talked about the average mortgage interest rate right now being around 7.0% and how if one has a good credit score, that rate may be slide just under 7.0%. (This prompted a discussion of what variables go into your credit score. I will need to add this to any future seminars.). We also discussed the average interest rate for financing vehicles: a new vehicle, which is also around 7.0%, and a used vehicle at around 11.9%.

Here is the kicker though: The average interest rate for a standard credit card is around 21%! For a retail credit card, the average rate is around 30%.

HERE ARE SOME OF THE KEY REASONS WHY I BELIEVE THAT IT IS SO VERY IMPORTANT THAT WE EDUCATE OUR YOUNG PEOPLE REGARDING HANDLING THEIR FINANCES:

In 1970, the average household credit card debt was $0! In 2025 the average household credit card debt is estimated to be around $7,000 or higher! In the third quarter of 2024 the total revolving national credit card debt was a record $1.17 TRILLION. This was surpassed in the fourth quarter of 2024 by a new record of $1.2 TRILLION!

Delinquency rates are currently around 3 to 3.6%, which is the highest since the Great Recession. Around 10% of credit card users are making only the minimum payments.

Credit cards have become a part of our culture. Rewards and perks, contactless tech such as “tap and pay” have made it all attractive and easy. Many are now using their credit cards to cover essential household expenses and/or unexpected bills. Most individuals and families have not been encouraged to establish emergency savings funds. Perhaps most cannot do this because they are living without budgets and with little margin.

The other side of this is that there are so many great financial opportunities for investing so that you can learn how to make your money work for you. This is not the prevalent way of doing things in our culture! Our young people need to be educated so they can know the true ramifications of their habits and financial decisions. Many don’t know this until they are under the bondage of compound interest instead of knowing the blessing of having their money working for them! It is a whole different ball game if you can get to the place where your money is working for you instead of having it all working against you! I pray for the young people who attended the seminar that they got a glimpse of this!

In the week leading up to the Maximum Investment Seminar, I showed my son, Mark, the notes for the seminar. He is a financial advisor, so I was curious to get his input and insights. He carefully looked it all over, and then he began to give me numbers and percentages and use terminology that I didn’t fully understand, and in a few minutes my head was spinning. In that moment, I prayed that it would not be like that for the students as I shared what I considered to be some very basic information which could make an incredible difference for their future! I am not 100% sure how it went for them. They seemed to stay engaged, and they asked some good questions. That is a key sign for me. You have to be processing the information at some level to be able to ask a good question.

I am praying that God will open doors so that I can continue to teach this information. Please join me in this prayer! I am convinced that this is some helpful and needed information for today’s young people!