IIC 150: Money, Personal Formation, and WalletWin Coaching

Dr. Peter: [00:00:00] Money. What do you feel when I say that word? What do you feel when I say that word? Money. Money. Yeah? Money. Or other related words. Debt. Bills. Credit score. Budget. Overdraft. What happens inside you when I say the word “money”? Notice those reactions. The thoughts, the feelings, the body sensations. Money is such a loaded topic for so many Catholics. For so many non-Catholics too, it’s not just Catholics, right. It’s such a loaded word. There’s so much that goes into it. It brings us, if we follow the trail, to so many deep issues. Fear. Shame. A sense of helplessness for some folks. Disappointment and relational conflicts, especially in marriages. I want to start today with four quotes about money. The first one is from Roger Babson. He said, “More people should learn to tell their dollars where to go instead of asking them where they went.” The second one from Will Rogers. “Too many people spend money they haven’t earned to buy things they don’t want to impress people they don’t like.” And then this third one, from American Showman and the founder of circuses and museums, some would say a charlatan and a fraud — P.T. Barnum said, “Money is a terrible master, but an excellent servant.” Wise words from P.T. Barnum, but that didn’t stop him from asking on his deathbed in April 7th, 1891, the day he died, the last words he said: “What were the receipts at the Garden?” He was asking what his shows and museums took in at Madison Square Garden.

Dr. Peter: [00:02:27] I am Dr. Peter Malinoski, also known as Dr. Peter. I am your host and guide in this Interior Integration for Catholics podcast, and I am so glad to be with you. I’m a clinical psychologist, a trauma therapist, a podcaster, a writer, the co-founder and president of Souls and Hearts, but most of all, most of all, I am a beloved little son of God, a passionate Catholic who wants to help you to taste and see the height and depth and breadth and warmth and the light of the love of God, especially God your father, but also Mary, your mother, your spiritual parents, your primary parents. I am here to help you embrace your identity as a beloved little child of God and Mary. And we are continuing this ongoing series on the integration of personal formation, where we bring in the best, the brightest, the most creative and influential Catholic thought leaders in this personal formation space. We focus on practical, real life ways that these Catholic leaders are teaching us to live out the integration of the four dimensions of personal formation: human, spiritual, intellectual, and pastoral. That includes this thorny, this difficult, this challenging realm of money. And today, in episode 150 of the Interior Integration for Catholics podcast, titled Money, Personal Formation and WalletWin Coaching, which releases on September 23rd, 2024, we are connecting with Jonathan Teixeira of WalletWin. Jonathan shares with us his fascinating story of how he and his wife, Amanda, fell into financial coaching.

Dr. Peter: [00:04:01] He provides a uniquely Catholic take on our relationship with money and how we should think about money, including some ideas that I’ve never heard before. Really, really interesting ideas. Jonathan and Amanda are the authors of How to Attack Debt, Build Savings, and Change the World Through Generosity: A Catholic Guide to Managing Money. They’re the hosts of the Catholic Money Show podcast, and they are the creators of the Catholic Money Course and the Catholic Family Emergency Binder. They’ve appeared on EWTN, formed.org and are regular guests on Relevant Radio. Their financial formation programs are used by parishes, dioceses and schools across the country. So, let’s get right to that interview.

Dr. Peter: [00:04:46] Well, I am super excited. Here we are, we are at the 2024 National Eucharistic Congress. And I am with Jonathan Teixeira of WalletWin. Now, I’m actually really excited to have him with us today because I just found out about WalletWin. I just found out about it because one of our Resilient Catholics Community members recommended your organization to me. And then immediately after that, a friend of mine actually needed financial coaching and money issues coming up in the marriage and so forth. So it was like, boom, boom. And then when I saw that you were going to be here as a vendor in the expo hall, I was like, okay, I’m going to give these guys a call. So I am super excited to introduce Jonathan Teixeira at WalletWin.com. Thank you for being here.

Jonathan Teixeira: [00:05:39] Sure thing. It’s a pleasure. I’m very happy to be here with you.

Dr. Peter: [00:05:42] So just, let’s just get a little bit of a background on this. What is WalletWin? What do you guys do? How did you start all of that?

Jonathan Teixeira: [00:05:51] Well, we provide Catholic financial formation and do it for the whole family. We started off, my wife and I were missionaries with FOCUS. We met doing that, got married our third year on staff, and my present, my wedding gift to my bride was a pile of student loans and credit card debt. I thought I’d figured out this, I thought I knew what I was doing, I even put our honeymoon on a credit card to get a couple extra nights. And then I forgot that I put it on a credit card. And we got, like, a message, like, I don’t know, it was an email or something while on the honeymoon saying like, hey, the bill’s due. And that did not go over well. So we were married for about two days and had our first big blowout fight about money. And we thought, this, we do not want this for the rest of our life. So we got home, started to just, I certainly had no idea what I was doing. All I knew how to do with money was spend it, whether I had it or not. So we figured out how to budget, how to actually talk about money with each other without it turning into a fight. We got married in what, October. It did take a little bit of time to get me on board, but then I did get on board. And so our New Year’s resolution, so we had about $25,000 of debt. We were fundraising our missionary salary, so we weren’t making a whole lot, because I wasn’t that good at it. So we thought, okay, big stretch goal. If we could get this done in a year, if we’re working for that, maybe we’ll hit a year and a half. So we went for it. We were budgeting. We were trimming expenses, trying to get creative. And before we knew it, I think it was May or something and we were under $10K. We thought, this is going a little bit better than we thought. And so then we really buckled down and we were moving. We were getting, you know, to a different placement. So we didn’t have rent over the summer. So like instead of just letting that inflate our lifestyle for a few months, we just plowed all of that into the debt. Like when we moved, we sold, like, almost everything, even the lamps, a couple days too early, because there was like no other light in the apartment. So then we ended up sending our last payment to Sallie Mae back then, and we’re completely debt free seven and a half months later. So that was awesome. That was very exciting. Word started kind of getting out in the rest of FOCUS that if you wanted to figure out something about your money, like go talk to the Teixeiras. And then at missionary training over the summer, at FOCUS conferences or SEEK, as they’re called now, we just had like a sign up sheet and then we’d just like talk with other missionaries over lunch, over dinner, over the breaks.

Jonathan Teixeira: [00:08:38] We ended up teaching a class or two at missionary training, getting invited on podcasts or theology on tap. All that started to grow and we had people over for dinner just to talk about, you know, what was going on with their money. And by that time, our family started to grow. So we had less time to do that, more people, you know, less connected to us, looking for help. And so eventually we were like, all right, I guess maybe we’ll try this thing, I don’t know. We were leading Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University at our parish, but we would have to, you know, hit pause or when that video was done and say, “Okay, okay. Now, as Catholics, we also need to keep in mind this and this and this.” And then eventually we were, you know, we’d meet with people and we’d have, you know, we’d be saying things like, “Well, you know, well, Dave would say…” And they’d go, “I don’t, I just want to know what you would say.” And so eventually we were like, you know, I think there’s a need for this. We looked around, you know, in the church, hardly anybody else is speaking about finances in this way from a Catholic perspective. So in 2017, we started WalletWin to bring the 2000 years of wisdom that the Catholic Church has about managing our finances, our possessions, how to interact with things of this world and bring that into the personal finance space of multitudes of our fellow Catholics.

Dr. Peter: [00:09:54] Wow. All right. So you grew into it over time. Sort of like your own personal experience, then kind of like an avocation you did on the side, and then it’s now your primary focus.

Jonathan Teixeira: [00:10:05] Yeah, in a way it was kind of like our call within a call, like Mother Teresa, right. We were missionaries, we had our full time jobs, you know, in FOCUS, doing these other big things. And then this other thing on the side. You know, we were the money people, but also, you know, all these other jobs. It’s like, all right, we kind of, maybe we need to pick one. And we just felt called, and still do, to help untangle this for folks,

Dr. Peter: [00:10:25] What is at the root of most of these things about money? So I’m a clinical psychologist, right, so I look at money as one of those things like where a lot of things get played out, but it’s more on the surface.

Jonathan Teixeira: [00:10:41] It’s not just the money. No, never.

Dr. Peter: [00:10:41] It’s not just the money. Like it’s not just the toilet seat, right, being up or down. It’s like what goes behind that when there’s conflict among spouses, between spouses. So I’m going to invite you kind of into this deep dive. Like take us down to, what do you notice when you look at this from a more holistic perspective? What do you see driving a lot of these money issues? Or is it just, I don’t know how to budget or, you know, I just need a little program to follow or something like that?

Jonathan Teixeira: [00:11:09] Yeah, I’d say what you just mentioned is kind of the surface level. There’s the practical, I don’t know about budgeting. I don’t know how to handle my money. Nobody ever sat me down and talked to me about if credit cards were a good idea or not, or when to do that, except for the guy selling me a credit card. So there’s that very practical level that can make our finances a little choppier than they need to be. And then that happening, that is what stirs up everything else inside of us. And I’d say typically, for guys, we’re looking at it, especially if we’re married and we’re raising a family. Money is a sign of how, or a vector maybe, of how well we are providing. So my role as provider, I need to take care of my family. Well, a good amount of that is done through money, right? I feed my family because I have a paycheck, right, with the money I have. So all of that’s in there. And it doesn’t matter the amount. It’s like about 70% or so of households are paycheck to paycheck, and it does not matter how much money they make. It’s the same all the way up. So it doesn’t really matter how much we’re making. It’s more of what’s happening with it once we get it home. And so if that’s rough, well, then I’m not providing well enough. I’m not providing enough. Maybe I’m not enough. It’s a sign that I’m not a good husband, father, man, whatever. So that can get really stirred up in men. I’d say for women, again, typically it’s the canary of security, of being taken care of, of tomorrow is going to be all right. At least in our relationship, right, I know my wife. She’s able to just think forward a whole lot better than I can. She can see how all the pieces are going to fall in way down the road. Maybe I see down to the next turn. And so she sees all these things and can already see how maybe even if everything’s going well, how maybe when they start falling into place, they’re actually not going to fall into place. This one’s going to come too early, this one’s going to be too late, this one’s going to be crooked. And so that then can start just bringing up fear and tension and worry. And then through all of that, I think you can go on either side. You can start building, you know, resentments. Because if we’re not on the same page with our money, then, you know, my wife can get mad when I’m, you know, ordering some stuff on Amazon we didn’t talk about first. Or I’m going to roll my eyes when she comes in the door, you know, with an arm full of bags from Target or whatever, because we don’t have that plan, because we haven’t been talking about it. Our own fears are filling in the blanks when we see or we’re guessing maybe at the motives of what the other person is doing. So it can breed a lot of distrust, a lot of tension, which frankly, just doesn’t need to be there.

Dr. Peter: [00:13:53] So bring me in to the Catholic piece here. We talked about the 2000 years of Catholic tradition, and it goes back further because there’s a tradition of, you know, the Jewish tradition before all of that. What makes what you do look or be more Catholic than something that Dave Ramsey would do or something that any number of other financial coaches would do?

Jonathan Teixeira: [00:14:14] Yeah, you could go outside, throw a rock, open up YouTube or TikTok or whatever it is you open.

Dr. Peter: [00:14:19] It’s like one of the biggest areas for people to get into content creation.

Jonathan Teixeira: [00:14:24] Absolutely. Yes. You will find no shortage of people trying to tell you what to do. And I’d say, I mean, and good, right. Because we certainly need it. Most of what most people are saying is going to be helpful. But they’re all missing the Catholic part, right? We wouldn’t, as Catholics, we’re trying to run a marriage retreat. We’re not just going to invite anybody to come down and talk to our couples about natural family planning or marital intimacy. We’re not even going to have the Baptist preacher from down the street come in. Because we’re not sure, and can almost guarantee, he’s probably going to say some things that aren’t going to line up with reality. And so it’s the same with our money. If we are just neglecting certainly looking to Scripture, looking to encyclicals that the popes have put out, other, you know, letters from bishops or whatever it is, we are ignoring the example of the lives of the saints and how they’ve used money. I mean, we have saints who were incredibly wealthy and gave it all away. And then we also have saints who were kings and queens in charge of practically unlimited amounts of wealth. And yet they are both saints, and they’re both in heaven. And they both managed that money in a way that contributed to their holiness. So if we ignore all of that, we are just missing out. I think if you would bring it up with almost anybody, you’ll probably be called a crazy communist or something, if you start talking to people about the universal destination of goods. You know, some of our maybe more Protestant brothers and sisters might go along those lines of, you know, this idea that every good thing was given to humanity as a whole for our good.

Jonathan Teixeira: [00:16:14] And so we all have the right to those goods. So when there’s a starving man on my porch, the food in my house in my pantry, it doesn’t belong to me anymore. It’s his. And it’s my job to give it to him. This might sound crazy, there is an unbelievably wonderful example of this in the Disney movie Aladdin, of all places. At the very beginning, it’s that great musical number when he’s getting chased by the temple guards for stealing bread or whatever. And you could argue about if he could have the bread or not. But then he finally, you know, he gets them off his tail and he sits down to finally enjoy it. He breaks it in half, he gives half to the monkey, and he’s about to dig in, and he sees those two kids, even poorer than he is, even more helpless. And at that moment, he’s proud of himself. He’s happy that he did this. And then he sees them. And, I mean, they didn’t know any of this when they, because it’s innately human. His face like drops because he’s moved by their situation. And then he’s looking at what he has, and he even looks down to what the monkey has. And he looks at the kids and he thinks about it, and then he decides that he’s going to give them the bread. And when that happens, he starts to smile and he gets up and his smile gets bigger, and he gives them the bread. And then, you know, and now he has affection for them. He rumbles their hair or whatever. His example inspires the monkey to come over and do the same thing. And he doesn’t want to do it. He’s like, here you go. And then the kids now, because of the love even the monkey has shown them, they now, they love him. So this is building solidarity between them. They’re, you know, playing with the monkey. He’s laughing. He’s happy. He’s found joy because he’s coming out of himself. He’s giving something to the person who rightly needs it. And then because of that bond, three seconds later, when the kids run out into the road in front of the stuck up prince coming into town, Aladdin, because they’ve built this bond of solidarity, runs out, puts his arm up to get the whip instead of the kids, and stands up for them. That is the power of understanding how things relate to us and how we relate to things. Who really needs this? Who actually, I guess, owns this? Whose bread is this? And when we understand that, we relate to one another so much better. When we look at John the Baptist in Luke 3. He’s coming out to make ready the way for the Messiah. And it’s like the evangelist’s dream because he goes, the Messiah is coming. You don’t want to — this is a paraphrase — you don’t want to go to hell. You need to change your life. And they go, okay, what do we do? That never happened when I was a missionary. If only.

Jonathan Teixeira: [00:19:02] And then he says, okay, you know, you have two cloaks. Give one to the guy who doesn’t have any and do the same with your food. And then the tax collectors ask him what to do. He goes, stop ripping people off. Don’t collect more than you need to. And then the soldiers ask him, what do we do? And he goes, stop extorting people. Be happy with your wages. And those three things. It’s money, money, and money. And those are the three things he starts with. Those are the only three things Luke bothers to write down. The rest are, and then he told him the rest of the good news about Jesus. And he says those three things. And it’s at that point that the crowd thinks, this guy might be the Messiah. No promises of an earthly kingdom, no overthrowing Rome, not even really talking about everlasting life. It’s about our money. And that was enough to make people think, this guy might be it. Because he’s not talking about money. He’s talking about our relationships, right? Help one another. Be happy with what you have. Stop ripping people off.

Jonathan Teixeira: [00:20:08] He’s talking about money because it matters to our relationship with ourselves, with God, with one another. Money touches everything. So if we can get that right, if we can understand money the way God does, that’s a win, right? And then when money is used in Scripture as a teaching tool, right. It’s something like 70% of Jesus’s words are about possessions or money or generosity, things like that. Most of his parables. But if we don’t understand money the way he does, we’re going to miss the other lesson too. If I don’t understand budgeting, making a plan for my money, well, then I’m going to miss what he’s trying to teach me about the cost of discipleship. That I need to understand what the cost is first, before I build the tower, right? Before I go into battle. Before I follow him and take up my cross. If I don’t have an understanding of budgeting and all of that, I might get some of it, but I’m going to miss a lot of it. I’m not going to understand what he’s trying to teach me through money.

Dr. Peter: [00:21:04] So what are the top three mistakes that you see in couples, Catholic couples, that recognize we have a problem with money? Give me a summary. Give me a snapshot of like what’s the typical struggle that at least manifests itself through money. How do you understand that?

Jonathan Teixeira: [00:21:26] Especially in couples?

Dr. Peter: [00:21:27] Especially in couples, well, yeah. I mean, couples, because that’s where a lot of the fighting happens, right? You know. But yeah, I mean, I’d say more generally too. 

Jonathan Teixeira: [00:21:34] But I’d say this first one, we see it most in couples because it involves the two people running into each other. And we do this with everything, you know, we run into this this problem of thinking, the way I understand something is the way that thing is. And there’s no other understanding of that thing, right?

Dr. Peter: [00:21:54] So, like a narrow initial vision. Narrow vision.

Jonathan Teixeira: [00:21:57] Yeah. Real quick, think about cake. What are you thinking about? Describe your cake.

Dr. Peter: [00:22:01] Well, so my cake is a baked Alaska, so it’s, you know, an ice cream cake. It’s got cake. It’s got a big meringue over the top and it’s on fire.

Jonathan Teixeira: [00:22:08] That sounds good. Yeah, when I think of cake, I think of a yellow cake from a box in a rectangle pan with chocolate frosting. Because that’s what I had when I was a kid. And so if we’re throwing a party or whatever, and I asked you to, you know, hey, let’s have a cake. Will you get stuff at the store? And you go, yeah, sure, sure. You’re going to come home with ice cream. You’re going to come home with a bunch of eggs and egg whites, right? You’re going to come home with a torch. And I’m going to sit there and go, what are you talking about? Where’s the chocolate? 

Jonathan Teixeira: [00:22:37] And then we’ll have a fight. And that happens day after day after day in marriages, because we’re not understanding what each other thinks about money. And of course, if you bring me out a slice of that baked Alaska, I’ll go, this is a great cake. We understand that enough. But we have these unspoken expectations or understandings of what’s going to happen because of how I understand the thing. So the first one is just to understand where your spouse is coming from, to know how did they grow up with money? What was it like in their family, right? Maybe your spouse has the memory of standing there at the grocery checkout line. Mom’s card is just getting declined. That’s going to leave an impact in how they’re managing their money today. Maybe they’re more prone to spending or you’re more prone to saving, and that’s going to be a little bit of a conflict. And not that one is better than the other. We just need to know who we are and who each other are so we can make that plan together. So, just not understanding each other, that’s certainly a big mistake people are doing. The next one, I think just very practically, and this could be anybody, just not budgeting. Budget isn’t a diet. There’s a study, it lights up the same pain areas in our brain, the word “budget” as the word “diet”. And it doesn’t have to be painful, right. It’s a misunderstanding of both, right? You go to the zoo, they’re going to say, oh, well, the panda’s diet consists entirely of bamboo shoots or whatever it is. It’s just what they eat. And the budget is just how we spend. It doesn’t have to say no to everything. It’s not a straightjacket. It’s the plan.

Jonathan Teixeira: [00:24:02] If I have it in my budget that I’m going to go out for coffee and spend $20 this month on that, that means I can hit the drive thru, get a cup of coffee, and when I drink it, I don’t have that bitter aftertaste of, is this the mortgage I’m drinking right now? Is this the groceries? No, this is the coffee money. And so there’s freedom to spend. Because I don’t have to worry about, is this money here? It’s freedom to give. When that missionary priest comes and gives a talk after Mass, I look at my wallet. And I know that that $20 bill is available. It’s not needed for groceries. It’s not needed for the electricity bill. But most of the time we look in there, I don’t know what this is for. I don’t know if there’s enough for those other needs. I don’t know if I can give. So the budgeting just takes so much stress out of actually doing the thing. The last one is just not, maybe whether it’s understanding anything, maybe a lot of folks just think maybe this is the way it is, but just looking to improve. I mean, this is probably any area of our life where we’re frustrated, whether it’s our health, whether it’s our prayer life, whether it’s our communication skills at work, whatever it is. But with our money, certainly, like, these are skills. These are things we can learn to do. Just because you made some mistakes with money in your past, just because you didn’t have a lot growing up, doesn’t mean you have to have trouble with money now. Your past does not influence the future. It’s like a favorite phrase of the financial industry, right? Past results do not indicate future results or future earnings or whatever, right? Yeah, the disclaimer on like any investment, even though there’s inherent risks before, you might lose it all. Just because it was bad in the past doesn’t mean it needs to be bad tomorrow.

Jonathan Teixeira: [00:25:45] And so just understanding this is a thing that can change. And there’s a lot, maybe some talk out there. I’d say maybe it’s more on, you know, we get more into the health and wealth gospel and that, I don’t know if it’s technically a heresy or not, but that incorrect teaching. You know, it’s not, you put $10 in the collection basket on Sunday and you get a check for $100 by Wednesday. But God wants us to be generous. He wants us to trust him. He wants us to know that he can provide for us through our money, right? It’s all a gift given to us. And I’d say, you know, there’s a lot of talk out there, you know, we’re managers of the money. We’re we’re the good stewards. And we should be. But even more than stewards, we are sons and daughters. And how much more does what our Lord have belong to us? And how much more responsibility do we have, then, to use it well? In the parable of the Good Father or the Prodigal Son, of course, that’s more than just the things, right? It’s the faith and all this. But if we put ourselves in the place of that older son at the very end of it, right. The dad is like, heartbroken. He says, “Everything I have is yours. Just ask for the goat and it’s yours.” You know, just open our hearts up. You know, God wants to be Lord of our whole lives, including our wallets, including our bank accounts, including that worry about how are we going to make those bills next week? Or why do I keep fighting with my wife about this? He wants to hear about that. He wants to come into that part of your life and restore it, to renew it, to find transformation there for you.

Dr. Peter: [00:27:23] So it sounds like some of this is definitely intellectual formation. It is about learning like sort of the basics. Because I imagine people come to you. They’ve never balanced a checkbook or they’ve never like, some of the skills-based stuff is really about forming the intellect. But when you talk about, and this stays with me, knowing yourself and why you’re reacting the way that you are, and you’re giving these examples about like the credit card being rejected when you’re a kid and then having to put stuff back in the cart and not being able to buy it, and how that impacts you later. Now we’re getting more into the human formation, you know, and then you’re bringing in the pastoral formation with, how do we be more than stewards, but how do we embrace our identity as beloved little sons so that we can be free to give. And there’s an implication in what you’re saying that might be really shocking to a lot of people who struggle with money, and that money can actually bring you closer to God. We’re talking about spiritual formation here. Like, this does not have to be some zone that has to be walled off and has to be like just guilt-ridden and shame-based and like, separated, but that God actually wants to be in that zone with you too.

Jonathan Teixeira: [00:28:37] Absolutely, yes. We can look at it as, and it certainly is, a moral issue. I think you can make the case that money is amoral, but boy, is it weighty. It’s a very weighty, I guess, amoral thing. This is a little extreme, maybe. I think of it like, it can be like, it’s like a gun. Right? It can be a tool. It can provide for you. It can keep you safe. Or it can blow your foot off if you don’t know what you’re doing or you can hurt somebody else. So there’s, like, a moral side of it. Like, we need to use our money in a way that’s moral, and that could get us into trouble or not. But it’s also, yeah, God wants to work through it, through the way he’ll provide for it, through the way he’ll open your heart to taking care of others. There’s so much waiting for us in the way we understand, relate to, and use our money, right. Like when I’m putting it in the budget to go out, to take my daughters out for ice cream, I am leaning in to that role of my vocation as a father. And that gives glory to God, right. Every transaction should give glory to God. We get a lot of questions about how much should I give? Or is it 10% post- or pre-tax? It doesn’t matter! Like just give. And give generously. 

Jonathan Teixeira: [00:30:03] When Jesus comes to fulfill the law, he never just leaves it there, right? He goes, you know what? Again, this will be a paraphrase, but only a very slight one. He says, you know, like, yeah, it’s written. You know, don’t commit murder. But I say to you, if you harbor these thoughts in your heart, you’re a murderer. Don’t commit adultery. But if you look at someone with lust in your heart, you’ve committed adultery. So he raises it. He raises the bar. So I was giving God 10% of my life when I was in high school and hardly believed he existed. Why would he only want 10% of me now? And that doesn’t mean I put the whole paycheck in the collection basket, as much as Father might like that. Everything I do needs to give him glory. It needs to say yes to what he’s calling me to.

Dr. Peter: [00:30:52] So Saint Paul says it’s the love of money that’s the root of all evil, right? It’s the love of money. And many people misinterpret that as money is the root of all evil. You hear that get misquoted a lot, but you’re right. Money tends to pull for so many things because it’s a surrogate or a substitute or an idol, if you will, for security, for a sense of achievement or well-being, a sense of a counteractive to shame, because that’s where this acquisitiveness can come from and so forth. So I really think it’s important to hear what you’re saying, that let’s not just stop with the practical solutions that would take care of these things, because I imagine that’s why they fail sometimes, too, is if you’re not addressing the deeper issues, you’re going to wind up still symptomatic. You know, I think about this as a psychologist, right? I look at money symptoms. I actually think that sex and money are the two most sensitive barometers about problems in a marriage. If you want to know where the problems are in marriages, ask about the sex and ask about the money.

Jonathan Teixeira: [00:31:56] They say it’s sex, money, and communication. But you’re just talking about the money and the sex.

Dr. Peter: [00:32:02] Yeah. I mean, so I’m going to encourage people to really check this out, think about what’s going on in your life with your money, what’s going on in your life, with your spouse or with your family. And think about how this might be connected to deeper things. So you’re at WalletWin.com, right, I’m assuming? And if people want to get engaged with you, where do they start?

Jonathan Teixeira: [00:32:29] Yeah. So, you’re listening to this podcast, so why not listen to another? We’ve got the Catholic Money Show, I think it’s over 250 episodes by now, where we talk about, sometimes it’s very practical. Here’s how we take our whole family to Chipotle and not go broke. Or here’s, you know, what the church says about giving, like why you should tithe and give more, like I said. And so it’s a mix of those things, right. So we dive into all sorts of things on that on that show. So just search the Catholic Money Show anywhere you get podcasts. We’re on YouTube as well with that and some other things there. But yeah, our website WalletWin.com, you can learn about all sorts of things. Our Catholic Money Academy, which is where our course lives. We’ve got kids courses as well for grade school, middle school and high school. And our book, we published a book with Our Sunday Visitor a couple of years ago. They said long titles were in, so it’s How to Attack Debt, Build Savings, and Change the World through Generosity: A Catholic Guide to Managing Your Money. So that’s out there. You can find that on our website or wherever you buy books and stuff. And then what was the other thing I wanted to mention? Oh, on our website. So you just go to WalletWin.com, you’ll see we’re right on the front page. There’s three options. I want to direct you to the first one, which is our Catholic Guide to Budgeting. So you get a how to guide to make a budget. We walk you through it. There’s a video kind of a download to help you do the thing. It’s all right there and it’s entirely free. So we just ask for your email so we know where to send the links. Just go to WalletWin.com or even for that one you can go to CatholicBudgetGuide.com.

Dr. Peter: [00:34:08] So one final parting takeaway thought. Something, if you were to sum up everything in a sentence or two, what would you like to leave our Interior Integration Catholics listeners or viewers with? What’s the one thing you would want them to remember from this time together?

Jonathan Teixeira: [00:34:28] If we look at the parable of the talents, the very beginning of it, and it depends on which version you read the amounts. But like one guy gets one, somebody gets two, the other guy gets five. And it says they got these different amounts according to their, maybe scales or something. They all got different amounts. And they were all expected to come back with a return. And so we’re all going to be given different amounts of everything, but even money. And it doesn’t matter how much I bring back compared to you, right. What the increase is, how I used it. It’s just about how you used it. And that our Lord is asking us to be good stewards. To use it well. And if we look at that parable, the way we use it is going to have an influence on whether he invites us into his joy or throws us out into the wailing and the gnashing. So this is even more, not that it’s not important, it’s even more than not fighting with your spouse or providing for your kids, or just getting along in this world. It’s about making sure we get into the next, where we want to be.

Dr. Peter: [00:35:49] What our Lord, I think, was really getting at with there, is not to live by fear with this. If the guy had taken the one — and a talent is like 600 pounds of silver. This is like a lot of money.

Jonathan Teixeira: [00:36:00] Oh, it’s tons of money.

Dr. Peter: [00:36:02] So he’s giving us a lot, even though it sounds like, he didn’t give him a quarter and say, all right.

Jonathan Teixeira: [00:36:08] Here’s the forklift of gold coins into your lap.

Dr. Peter: [00:36:12] But if he had gone out and he had tried and he had lost it all, right, but was not imprudent, that still would have been pleasing to the Lord. I think so. So I’m going to encourage you. There’s a way to to go about this, where we focus too much on, will we make a mistake, and then we make the mistake of just freezing and not doing anything and just continuing with the status quo. And that didn’t get that guy off the hook. It didn’t count that he was afraid because he had the graces to do what he was asked to do. You know, what he was commanded to do. So, you know, if you are out there with money issues and many of you are. This is a very common thing. I’m going to encourage you to do something about it, even if that something might be a mistake. Even if, you know, you don’t start off on the right foot or something like that. You know, check out WalletWin.com. It is good to have been with you. I’m glad that you’re here at the Eucharistic Congress. Let’s do one more thing though, before we wrap this up. How does the Eucharist factor into money? Come on, since we’re at the Congress, we’ve got to talk about this a little bit. And we’ve got time. We have a little bit more time. So is there a way that you think about, specifically the Eucharist, and how it connects to our Lord, physically present, body, blood, soul, and divinity in the Eucharist? And that connects in some way to this whole theme that we’ve been talking about, money.

Jonathan Teixeira: [00:37:36] Eucharist and money. This might be a, I don’t know if it’s a stretch, but one of my, I don’t know how to say it, favorite things or I don’t know, whatever. A great thing about the Eucharist, right, I mean, it’s Jesus, come down, physically present with us. And he’s with me when I go to Mass back home in Nebraska. He’s with me when I’m here in Indianapolis. He’s here with my parents back in Pennsylvania. It’s connecting us. I have friends who’ve gone into, you know, religious life and, you know, who knows if I’ll ever get to talk to them again. Like, I’ll see you in the Eucharist. And it’s not just some phrase. It’s real. You know, we have this idea. When I was a kid, I’d think, you know, other people are looking up at that moon right now, and I can see that same moon. We look to the altar and we see the same Lord. It’s the same. Sorry, it’s just hitting me, like, it’s the same Lord when I’m here, surrounded by, you know, however many tens of thousands of other Catholics who are, like, all in on this. And it’s the same Lord hidden away in secret, you know, in China or North Korea, or in the slums in Brazil or wherever it is. And he loves us all. And we’re all his sons and daughters. We’re all his creation. And how can that not move me to want to do something for my brothers and sisters, to use the gifts I’ve been given, certainly to take care of my family and those under my charge, like the church teaches me. But also, as the church teaches me, to give and to take care of who are truly my brother and my sister. Those who need the help the most, no matter where they are or who they are.

Dr. Peter: [00:39:32] Well, it’s been a pleasure to be with you. Thank you for being here. Jonathan. Good to be together and I wish you the best at the conference.

Jonathan Teixeira: [00:39:40] Thank you very much. 

Dr. Peter: [00:39:41] God bless.

Dr. Peter: [00:39:42] I really enjoyed my conversation with Jonathan Texiera at the National Eucharistic Congress in July 2024, and I’m grateful for our time together. This brings to a close this little sub-series where I was just meeting people and talking with them at the Congress, doing those live interviews, and we’ll be resuming this series on the integration of personal formation with some longer form interviews starting in the next few weeks. Like and subscribe on YouTube to our channel, Interior Integration for Catholics, the numeral 4, for Catholics. We’d love to get to a thousand subscribers on YouTube. That’s a great milestone. Some great things happen when you’re able to do that, and it really helps us to generate some buzz on those algorithms and get our material out to more people. I’m also going to invite you to write reviews for us on Apple Podcasts, comments on YouTube, and the very core of our outreach. I want to talk about this. Souls and Hearts, that’s our overarching organization, but the core of it is the Resilient Catholics Community, and it’s reopening for new applications on October 1st, 2024, just in one week. I’m really excited. Check all that out at soulsandhearts.com/rcc. We’re accepting applications again from October 1st to October 31st. We accept applications every February, June and October for three cohorts per year, and we’ve got testimonials there from our members. It’s really, really valuable. I talked about this a lot. I’m not going to say much more about it now. Go to our website, soulsandhearts.com/rcc. Take a look at that.

Dr. Peter: [00:41:15] Conversation hours, every Tuesday and Thursday from 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Eastern time. You can call me on my cell (317) 567-9594. And that’s a great opportunity to ask me about anything that comes up in these podcast episodes or in my semimonthly reflections. I can’t give you clinical advice. Sometimes people are hoping that I can do a consultation with them, some kind of clinical interview or something like that. I can’t do that. I can’t get into something that would really require me to render you professional services. But I love to talk about the things that I share with you on this podcast, and also in the monthly reflections. So feel free to ask about that. Or to check out whether the RCC, the Resilient Catholics Community, might be a good fit for you. I’m happy to talk with you about that. Or the Formation for Formators Community. If you are a coach or a spiritual director, or a therapist or a counselor, or if you accompany others in some kind of professional capacity on a one-on-one basis. So with that, we’re going to bring this to a close by invoking our patrons and our patrons. Our Lady, our Mother, Untier of Knots, pray for us. Saint Joseph, pray for us. Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Special thanks to the Human Formation Coalition, who provided the support to make this transcript available.