18/05/25 PERSONAL MANAGEMENT 3

So we have been talking about personal management. I introduced the subject by saying management
is a very broad word that applies to almost every area of human endeavor. But my focus during this
series, I said, would be solely on personal finance.

So we are talking about personal finance management. I told you that I'm teaching this series to enable
us maximize our lives. Nothing can grow big sustainably without good management. A wise man once
said we don't grow big to manage, we manage to grow big.

Every small thing can become big if it is well managed. The future of your finance or your business is in
your hands. Manage well today and it will grow big. Manage poorly and you will lose it. You will not lose
what God has blessed you with in Jesus Name

We said personal finance management is taking care of your money as a resource entrusted to you by
God. And we said another term for it is stewardship. That is what you would find in the Bible.
Stewardship is seeing and managing your money as a resource given to you by God.

So far we have shared two principles for successful stewardship or management

1. Reject over consumption and embrace stewardship

2. Pay your future self first before expenses

Today we will be looking at the third principle for successful personal finance management.

PUT A FINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEM IN PLACE

The third principle of personal finance management is to put a financial accountability system in place in
your life.

Financial accountability is the biggest shield against financial mismanagement.

Proverbs 13:20 KJV

He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.

If you want to walk in the wisdom of personal finance management, you need to learn how to associate
with other wise people who themselves are managers and who will hold you accountable for how you
use your resources.

There is a popular saying in the personal finance space that if you hang around four broke people you
will soon become number five. This saying agrees perfectly with the scripture we just read. When you
spend the majority of your time around those who don't manage their finances right, it will affect the
standards you will set for yourself. It will affect your motivation and it will affect your spending habits.
After all, there is no one to be accountable to at the end of the day, everyone close to you is broke. But
when you change your association and begin to hang out with people who are prudent financially, you
become accountable and responsible in how you manage the resources entrusted to you. Let me
illustrate this in two ways. First of all, let's try to remember what it was like in school. Back in school
some of us discovered that the easiest way to excel in school is to hang around other excellent students.
When you hang around excellent students, you bring yourself under accountability. You cannot just
make a D or an F in a course or subject and wave it off. You will explain what happened because they
will talk about it. Soon, if you continue to fail, you know they will begin to avoid you, so you get serious
about your school work. Do you know it's the same thing in business? If you hang around fellow
business people who always have a full shop, who never spend their capital, who repay their loans
before buying things for themselves, you too will soon become that kind of person. Why?
Accountability. They will be stern with you if you mismanage your own business and sometimes it could
even lead to a quarrel. This is one of the strongest advantages some business persons have in running
their business. There is a strong association among themselves that keeps everybody accountable. If you
borrow some money and rather than invest it well so you can return it, you squander it, there are
certain people who will call you. Even if they don't call you, when you see the thriving businesses of your
other friends, you will be ashamed. This is why many of them thrive in business.

But there are people who raise millions of naira, lose it all and answer to no one. Such people can never
build anything. As long as you have no one to answer to, you will continue to squander money.

So quickly let me define accountability. Accountability is accepting responsibility to act right and to give
a satisfactory explanation for your actions. When you bring this into personal finance, you will see that a
financially accountable person is someone who is responsible and transparent in handling money.

Money handled without a system of openness and transparency will be mismanaged. The key to getting
the most out of the resources in your hand is to get at least one other person or system involved, it may
be your spouse or trusted friend or financial planner or even a cooperative society but until there is
another party involved in your money management system, you will most likely mismanage your funds.
This is true both at a personal level, an organizational level and even national level. When all the people
managing a nation or state are from the same political party and family, how will there be
accountability? This is why even when they call hefty figures as revenue or allocation, we don't see
much come out of it. Like we said previously, money handled without a system of openness and
transparency will be mismanaged. It's a scriptural principle. Let's look into God's Word.

2 Kings 12:1-15 CEV

Joash became king of Judah in Jehu's seventh year as king of Israel, and he ruled forty years from
Jerusalem. His mother Zibiah was from the town of Beersheba. [2] Jehoiada the priest taught Joash what
was right, and so for the rest of his life Joash obeyed the LORD. [3] But even Joash did not destroy the
local shrines, and they were still used as places for offering sacrifices. [4] One day, Joash said to the
priests, "Collect all the money that has been given to the LORD's temple, whether from taxes or gifts, [5]
and use it to repair the temple. You priests can contribute your own money too." [6] But the priests
never started repairing the temple. So in the twenty-third year of his rule, [7] Joash called for Jehoiada
and the other priests and said, "Why aren't you using the money to repair the temple? Don't take any
more money for yourselves. It is only to be used to pay for the repairs." [8] The priests agreed that they
would not collect any more money or be in charge of the temple repairs. [9] Jehoiada found a wooden
box; he cut a hole in the top of it and set it on the right side of the altar where people went into the
temple. Whenever someone gave money to the temple, the priests guarding the entrance would put it
into this box. [10] When the box was full of money, the king's secretary and the chief priest would count
the money and put it in bags. [11] Then they would give it to the men supervising the repairs to the
temple. Some of the money was used to pay the builders, the woodworkers, [12] the stonecutters, and
the men who built the walls. And some was used to buy wood and stone and to pay any other costs for
repairing the temple. [13] While the repairs were being made, the money that was given to the temple
was not used to make silver bowls, lamp snuffers, small sprinkling bowls, trumpets, or anything gold or
silver for the temple. [14] It went only to pay for repairs. [15] The men in charge were honest, so no one
had to keep track of the money.

In this scripture, we see clearly that without a system of openness and transparency, money will be
mismanaged. The nation of Judah was blessed with a godly king who called on the high priest and the
priests (holy men) to take the money brought as gifts into the temple and repair the broken sections in
the temple. The king had good intentions and he gave instructions to good men but because no system
was put in place, after many years, not one single part of the temple had been repaired. Please write
this down

It takes more than good intentions to manage money wisely. And also it takes more than being a good
person to manage money wisely. To manage money in a way that get results, you need to put a system
of accountability in place. Who else knows how much you get? Who have you shared some of your goals
with who can ask you questions? Do you have anyone who can look you in the eyes and ask you what
you did with the last 5 million that passed through your hands? This is what the king in our text did. He
called the high priests and priests and held them accountable. He asked, why has the temple not been
repaired? Good, holy men mismanaged money for almost two decades if not more than, because a
system was not in place. It's systems that manage money best not people.

So after calling the high priest and some priests to give account, the king said, it's okay, now stop
handling the money that comes into the temple.

Write this down. Mismanagement will lead to losses. What you mismanage you will lose. These priests
were the God ordained managers of the temple but the king had to step in and fire them. He took the
resources from them. I pray that the resources God has given to you will not be taken from you by
another in the Name of Jesus. God gave you a good job, a good business, a good ministry but if you
continue to mismanage the money, it will be taken away from you and that vision will die. I pray for you,
your vision will never die in the Name of Jesus.

So the king took the responsibility from the priests. What the high priest then did was create a system.
First he got a box and put it in an open place by the right side of the altar where all the money will be
kept and then when it was full, a representative of the king along with the high priest will count the
money together, put it in bags and hand it directly to those repairing the temple. In a short time, the
work was done. It takes wise management to bring a vision to pass. I pray for you

Your vision will come to pass in the Name of Jesus

Your vision will not fail in the Name of Jesus

But you must put a system of financial accountability in place. Stop running your finance as a secret
operation. Learn to state your objectives clearly like King Joash did. His objective was to repair the
temple. Your objective might be to start building your own house or to raise capital for a major business
investment or to send your children to university abroad or something. After stating your objective, put
an accountability system in place. Something like what the high priest did. He put the money in a public
place, so everyone was seeing that money was coming. You can't come tomorrow and say there is no
money. You need to set an accountability system in place that will put positive pressure on you to use
money responsibly. Once you can do this, you will become a financial achiever and that will be your
portion for life in the Name of Jesus.

PRACTICAL TIPS FOR BRINGING ACCOUNTABILITY INTO YOUR FINANCES.

1. Have a budget.

A Budget is a saving and spending plan for a particular time period. Joash the king presented a plan to
the priests on how the funds coming to the temple should be used. You too must have a clear plan on
how the money coming into your hands this year should be used. Of course you have regular expenses
that cannot be avoided but do not allow expenses take every single money you make.

What dream do you want to start saving for? What amount of money do you want in your emergency
fund? What can you afford to invest in for now or else what will you save for future investment? Then
what are your expenses? How much will you sow as seeds? When you figure all these out, you already
have a budget whether you write in on paper or type it on your phone is not the issue, you have a
budget.

2. Get your financial team in place.

For the king in our text, the first team he put in place, failed, so he got a second team which included his
mentor (the high priest) and his personal secretary. These two men were the ones who counted the
money themselves and handed it directly to the workers. You too must have a team. If you are married,
then you and your spouse MUST be a financial team. You make money together, why not plan it
together? For the unmarried, get a mentor you trust involved. Another thing you can do is join a
cooperative society. A cooperative society is like a financial team with several players all committed to
winning the money game. Of course, you won't be telling the cooperative how much you earn but you
can set your subscription at an amount that keeps you accountable. Every month, you must save such
and such, if you fail, there are penalties. Have you ever wondered why some people cannot save one
million naira on their own yet they can refund two million they borrowed from their cooperative? The
answer is accountability. That same two million they refunded would have passed through their hands
unnoticed but since they had commitment, they were accountable and had to pay it back.

Cooperative societies have been called the Jewish world's best kept secret. In fact, it is said that at a
time when Israel just became a nation almost half of the population were part of different cooperative
societies until the government stepped it and consolidated them into a few banks which today are not
doing much to help much of the people. But the long and short of what I am saying is, accountability is a
team sport. You need people of like minds who will hold you accountable for doing the things you are
capable of doing. Your income can buy a land but you lack the discipline to pull it together, then you join
a cooperative, get money to buy the land and return the amount from that salary you have been
squandering. But won't the pressure be high? Yes. If you can't manage the pressure, choose another
method of accountability but if you desire to grow, just ensure you bring accountability into your
finances.

But a word of warning concerning co-operative societies. Don't overextend yourself or your business by
taking loans you can't pay. You don't take a loan according to the size of your project or problem, you
take a loan according to the size of your income. Be wise. But that being said, cooperative are good for
personal finance management. If you can find a reliable one, don't hesitate to join or else set up your
own accountability system that will make you save compulsorily.

3. Stick to your purpose.

After the high priest and the king's secretary took up the money, they handed it over to the doers of the
work (vs 10-13). When you finally gather your money, please stick to your purpose. Beware of diverting
funds meant for one purpose to another. The Bible says money is deceitful. When you finally get the
money you are looking for, you will begin to get other ideas. This is why people find it hard to repay
their debts. Usually, I have discovered that the money to repay comes but it's diverted. And this again is
where accountability will help you. It will put positive pressure on you to use the funds for the original
purpose. Don't use business money to furnish your house, don't use money meant for a land so you can
build a house for your family to buy a car. Don't use money saved for house rent to move your children
to a more expensive school. Stick to your original plans unless the Lord leads you otherwise. The Lord
will help us in Jesus Name

4. Know that you are accountable to God so be honest in all your dealings.

Accountability is first toward God. Even as we work towards better money management, the goal is not
just to make more money so we can be comfortable. Money is a test of our heart before God. We must
guard our hearts and never allow ourselves become dishonest just so we can make more money and
appear rich in the eyes of men. Money is not everything. If you like, be good with money, if you are
dishonest, God will not be pleased with you. I love the 15th verse of the story. In the midst of all the
lessons on management we are getting from the text, we see the shining character of certain men
mentioned in relation to doing the work.

2 Kings 12:15 CEV

When you handle money with honesty for some time, you will soon earn the trust of everyone. So be
honest.

Do not desire or take money that is not your own. Whether you are being watched by men or not,
ultimate accountability is to the Lord. When you find yourself in government or at the helm of affairs
anywhere, take what is yours by law and leave what is not yours. As a people, we must begin to
disconnect leadership from flamboyance and extravagace. This is part of what is putting our leaders
under pressure. They feel they have to look the part so they rob us just to look the part.

We should be people who can sit over a multi billion naira operation yet live modestly and never take
what is not ours. This is God's will for our lives. When we live like this we will not just have prosperity
but also posterity. I pray that God will give us the grace to be faithful in the Name of Jesus.

So today we have shared the third principle of personal management which is developing personal
accountability in the use of resources. Let's rise.

I see financial giants rising from this church in the Name of Jesus

God is making you one of them in the Name of Jesus

All your goals and dreams are coming to pass in the Name of Jesus

Your dreams that require huge money are being funded in the Name of Jesus

May God bring quality people and systems into your life to provide the accountability you need to rise to
the top in the Name of Jesus

The wisdom to remain open and transparent so God can continue to lift you is granted you in the Name
of Jesus

Your entire monthly income will soon become your weekly income in the Name of Jesus

You will sit over multi million and multi billion interests and not be moved or shaken from your
principles in the Name of Jesus

You are blessed in Jesus Name.