Dan Smith: Happy holidays everyone. It's December and we're back with another episode of Dan Has a Plan Beyond the Balance Sheet. I'm Daniel B. Smith, a financial advisor on the Family Wealth Management team at UBS Financial Services. Our branch is located in Paramus, New Jersey, and I can be reached at Daniel.B.Smith@ubs.com. I'm joined by my daughter Alanna J. Smith. Alanna Smith: Happy holidays. Dan Smith: Beautiful. Alanna Smith: Thank you. Dan Smith: Our guest today is Richard Hong. Richard is a pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Englewood in New Jersey, and he is someone who spends a lot of time helping people navigate big life questions. He's joining us to explore how purpose and personal values intersect with financial planning. He is not affiliated with UBS financial services and his views are his own. Alanna Smith: Okay, so we have Pastor Rich on today. Dan Smith: He's the best. Alanna Smith: He's a professional speaker. Dan Smith: Tremendous storyteller. Alanna Smith: And has a lot to share. So we'll get started real soon, but we wanted to kick it off with an Ask Dan question, the last one of the year. We hope you've been
enjoying them. And reminder, if you have a question for Dan, reach out to me at alanna.smith@ubs.com, alanna.smith@ubs.com. You might have your question answered. Okay, you ready? Dan Smith: Born ready. Alanna Smith: This question says, I'm staring at my credit card statement like it's a horror movie. How do I recover from holiday overspending. Dan Smith: It's a common financial planning thing that happens when I meet with clients in January and February. Alanna Smith: Yeah. So it's not really a question of how do I budget for the holidays? Maybe that's next year's question, but how do they stop freaking out? Dan Smith: So when you incur credit card debt, that cannot be paid off in full when you receive the account statement, then other things have to go in abeyance, for example, I'm a true believer of this. If you're contributing monthly to a Roth, IRA, a traditional IRA or your 401k…people do that religiously monthly. I'm not a believer in investing unless you're debt free. I'm talking about no
credit card debt, no student loans. Those are the two main pieces of debt I talk to people about. There's always gonna be a transportation expense, and there's always gonna be a housing expense, mortgage, etc. So let's take it in bite-size pieces. Let's say you have 10,000 in credit card debt and you're contributing a thousand dollars a month to your 401k. I'd rather you stop contributing to your 401k and attack the debt. And usually with doing it at a thousand a month for that $10,000 bill, that can be retired in six months and then you can reengage with adding two your retirement plans. You know, it's a difficult discussion. People are happy coming off the holidays, but they're unhappy with their debt. Alanna Smith: Well, quick question, if say you have someone who isn't contributing regularly, how would you attack that debt without taking from that other pot? Dan Smith: Well, if they're not contributing to 401k plans or IRAs or Roth IRAs yet, that means that, you know, the steps are simple. You have to have a certain amount of cash that you can rely upon for your monthly expenses,
and then it's a matter of examining your budget as to where the money's going. So if you have, like I said, 5,000, 10,000 in credit card debt, I usually sit down with a client. We go over their budget and we see where we can commit to an amount monthly taking from maybe a discretionary area of their budget, could be dining out, it could be entertainment, like going to concerts, something like that, so that they can be out of that. When the warm weather comes, especially in the Northeast, they can enjoy the outside activities they like and they can prioritize their budget for the rest of the year. 'Cause what you don't want to have is that you have debt in January, and then the holidays come up again at the end of the year and you have more debt. So that compounds things. Alanna Smith: So you gotta move it to the top of the priority— Dan Smith: You gotta move it to the top. And then along with that, once the debt is retired, if holiday spending is important to you and is meaningful to you, come up with a number, then you have to save for it. Alanna Smith: Yeah. Dan Smith: Those are the cold, hard facts. And you know, my personal experience with the holidays is this. If you're gifting to someone,
obviously you have a relationship with them, whatever it is. First and foremost, they know intuitively that you care for them, and I know that people are generous for the holidays. Grandmas and grandpas are very generous with grandchildren as an example. Alanna Smith: Of course. Dan Smith: And the joke is always they play more with the boxes of the presents they open than they do with the toys themselves. Alanna Smith: Right. Dan Smith: Okay? So I would just say that the cost of the gift is not a representation of how much you love someone. For example, if you spend a hundred dollars on something and give it to the person as opposed to a thousand, it doesn't mean you love them any less. Alanna Smith: Yeah. Good reminder. Dan Smith: I don't mean to be the Grinch here, but— Alanna Smith: You're not. I think you're the opposite of the Grinch. Dan Smith: And the other thing is there's gifts that cost nothing. You know, one of my favorite gifts that I receive or give is spending time with someone. Just a simple example. I have three children. If I could take a walk with them or a hike with them for an hour and we just talk, that is a gift to
me. I love that type of gift. Alanna Smith: I love it too. That's a great reminder. Obviously this person is scared of their credit card statement already, so we just wanna send some love and say, start with the plan and you'll get through it. Dan Smith: Correct. There's always a way to attack problems, and I always tell clients I look out the front window. Alright, I'm not looking in the rear view mirror. Alanna Smith: Yeah. Dan Smith: The front window of the car is where we're going. How do we get there? You know, spending time on how we got to where we are, it's debilitating to the conversation. Alanna Smith: Yeah. It makes people feel bad. There's shame. We talk about that all the time. Yes. But there's like all these emotions tied up and you're saying just look forward. Dan Smith: I always tell clients, listen, if your budget is $10,000 and you spend 5,000 on lollipops, if it brings you joy and it's in your budget. And you're not sacrificing your long-term goals… Alanna Smith: Bring on the lollipops. Dan Smith: Bring on the lollipops. Alanna Smith: All right, good. On that note, let's welcome Richard Hong. Dan Smith: The Richard Hong.
Jingle Dan Smith: All right, so Alanna, we are blessed to have the Richard Hong with us today. Thank you. So glad to be here. Richard is the pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Englewood, New Jersey. Shout out to New Jersey. Alanna Smith: Now. First, do you go by Pastor Hong? Pastor Richard? Richard Hong: Pastor, yeah. Yeah. Formally the title is Reverend, but I don't Alanna Smith: Great. Richard Hong: Actually. Go very formally, so, Alanna Smith: Okay. Richard Hong: Yeah. Dan Smith: I've always wanted to ask this first question. So dating back to my Presbyterian years, I was brought up Presbyterian. We had Reverend Mitchell. Richard Hong: Okay. Dan Smith: And I loved him. He had this thing called the junior sermon, and I got to know him and I was in the choir. And— Alanna Smith: This is the first I'm hearing of the choir. I just want everyone to know. Dan Smith: So I was in a small town. And in that small town we had an Episcopalian church, a
Methodist church, a Baptist church, a Presbyterian church, and a Catholic church. And the next town over was Herkimer, which had the temple. So I've always wondered, are there professional titles for each? I knew Reverend as Presbyterian. I knew that. You go by pastor. So can you expound on that? Richard Hong: Okay. First of all, pastor refers to your job, in terms of your title within the church. So a reverend is really my title being ordained clergy. But a reverend can serve as a hospital chaplain, in which case they aren't serving as a pastor, or they could serve as a professor in a seminary, and then they're not serving as a pastor. So pastor is specifically related to being the shepherd, which is really what it comes from in terms of the origins of the word. Being the shepherd of a flock. Alanna Smith: Sure. Richard Hong: And in fact, in Spanish, pastor means shepherd. And then in terms of function within the church, when you have the term priest. Which some denominations use,
but Presbyterians, Methodists would not use the term priest, but Roman Catholics would use the term priest. And as well as in Judaism, there is a function of a priesthood that doesn't exist because the temple in Jerusalem does not yet exist again. Alanna Smith: Oh. Richard Hong: Okay. And so the function of priests is whether they're serving in kind of an intermediary position between God and people. And so it's not that they are, God never mistake them as making that claim. They aren't, the question is whether God is working to the people through the clergy or not. And so a priest, for instance, would do things like declare people. Clean. They're very minor parts of the service that you might not notice the difference in. But if you read your scriptures in terms of the Hebrew scriptures, when animals were brought to be sacrificed, it was a priest who would determine if the animal
was clean, was worthy of being sacrificed. Alanna Smith: Oh, wow. Richard Hong: And if a person had a disease like leprosy, they said, go to the priest, and the priest would determine whether your disease had been cured. So when it comes to things like confessing your sins and then you know, being pronounced that you are forgiven. There's a very subtle difference in language when you're in a denomination that uses the term priest. The priest will say in the name of God, I declare that you are forgiven. When you're not a priest. We would never say that. And so in our services, the liturgy is such that the people say we are forgiven. Because in our theology, God works directly with the people. Alanna Smith: Huh. Richard Hong: And my job is to tell you about it, teach you about it, help you to become more aware of this relationship with God that is available to you. But where that relationship exists, it's a direct relationship between
you and God and doesn't need to be mediated through a clergy person. Alanna Smith: Fascinating. Was that a lifelong question for you? 'cause it is for me. Dan Smith: It was. It was. Alanna Smith: But I grew up Jewish, so I really didn't know. Dan Smith: So what is your path to becoming the pastor at the church? Richard Hong: Well, I mean, I was trained as a chemist. My first career was as a software developer, and I had my own business. I was a software consultant through the pharmaceutical industry. Alanna Smith: Wow. Richard Hong: And my joke answer is that I was having too much fun and making too much money, and God felt a need to put a stop to it. But what was actually kind of happening in my life was I was in a very specialized field of new drug development, and there were maybe 20 companies in the world who needed what I did. And there were maybe only a dozen of us in the world who did what I did in terms of consulting, in terms of working with these companies. The per diem rate was kind of lucrative. There weren't that many diems, so I was able to make a living, but I had a lot of free time and a lot of that free
time was spent working in my local church. And so I was volunteering all the time, and occasionally I'd have to, you know, just go fly somewhere for a few weeks and then I'd be back home with nothing to do for a few weeks, and I could put all that time and energy into the church. And eventually you begin to realize that that's actually what I'm passionate about, and that's actually what I felt I should be doing with my life. And so I just said, I'm gonna follow that. Alanna Smith: Yeah. Dan Smith: That's great. When I counsel clients, I always tell them, listen, if you're passionate about something. Don't look at the dollar sign. You know, it's really not work. If you're passionate about it, there'll be a path for you. So you found your path. Richard Hong: Absolutely. Dan Smith: Awesome. You're a pastor of the church and it's a business, right? Richard Hong: Absolutely. Dan Smith: How has the business of the church or other houses of worship evolved over the save the time that you started? Richard Hong: I think one of the things that we've noticed, and this is really something that is very common for people in general, is that as the
conditions have changed and society has changed, churches have struggled to change their model in order to adapt to the changes in society that are affecting your people. And so, you know, how many businesses have we seen who have failed to adapt to the changes in lifestyle that we've seen in people. Right. And churches have failed miserably in that regard. And you know, it's a thing of you get used to what worked and the heyday of the mainline church in the United States was the post-war era. Alanna Smith: Right. Richard Hong: Fifties into the early sixties. That world doesn't exist anymore. For so many different reasons, and churches have really struggled to change their structure, change the way they operate, to adapt to those changes. Dan Smith: So to reach your congregation, I assume the model is multifaceted. How do you do it now? Richard Hong: You're definitely, first of all, just trying to make sure that what you are doing and what you're about is
meeting people where they're at in terms of the struggles that they are having in their lives. Because the biggest shift in the last 60 years is simply that people no longer feel either a personal or societal obligation to go to church. If you were gonna be considered a good citizen, then you had to have a church and you had to be seen going to church on Sunday— didn't matter if you fell asleep during the service, you know, Alanna Smith: Check the box. Richard Hong: You just had to put on Sunday best and go there, yeah. And now without that, churches who were built on that, you know, were suddenly saying, Hey, wait a second. People actually want something. I mean, it is a business in the sense of you have people who have a need, they're going to come to you. In whatever medium they do, whether it's in person or online or whatever, if you have something that helps them meet the needs that they're feeling and those needs, I actually think the church is failing at meeting them because I think life is
so much more stressful than it used to be, and there's so much angst. I mean, when you look at the explosion of the self-help section or selfhelp categories of books. And the problem is that not only have churches spent too much time not addressing them, many churches have spent too much time making the problem worse, making the people feel like they're not adequate, making the people feel like they're not loved, making the people feel like they aren't accepted and they aren't really belonging in the fold. And that's just completely opposite to the faith that I hold. Alanna Smith: It's so interesting you mentioned the self-help book section because I think it ends up being a double-edged sword of the more people talk about it, the more people will talk about it, but then it almost reinforces the narrative. Richard Hong: And when you're trying to do it by yourself, one of the aspects of a healthy faith community, and I use that word because so many are
unhealthy, is that you can surround yourself with a supportive community that also values you and that you bring value too, and that's a big part of it as well. Because one of the best ways to feel better about yourself is to be of help or service to someone else. Alanna Smith: Yeah, we were just talking about facing the problem head on in person and not burying it. Having a team of people, you know, like a financial planner, for example, like a church community, like any kind of community, the problem will balloon without those things. Dan Smith: Yeah, so to be analogous to our professions, okay, there is a tie here. A lot of people portray what we do as stocks, bonds, returns, cash flow, what have you, right? But when I do financial planning, I spend very little time on risk tolerance. I spend more time on tell me what's going on in your life. How's your health? What's the relationship you have with your children? You know, are you happy in your job? Do you have
interests outside work? Okay. And usually that's where faith comes in. Okay? So I don't promote going to a specific faith, okay? Nor do I say to a client, Hey, you should be following a faith. I say to them, listen, like you said, it's a sense of community. Okay. So when you go to church, there's subgroups of people that have things they're passionate about. It could be getting food to the hungry. It could be visiting people who are sick, driving someone who has lost their driving privileges to a doctor's appointment. And those are things that I talk about all the time in financial planning, which I'm sure you're talking about with your congregation. Richard Hong: Absolutely. Dan Smith: Your typical week, where are you spending your time? How does the Rich Hong week kind of evolve? Richard Hong: Well, I mean it begins on Sunday afternoon watching football, but— Dan Smith: We should note he’s, am I right in saying you're a Chicago Bear fan? Richard Hong: I am absolutely a Chicago Bears fan and— Dan Smith: You know, it happens to be a year this year. Richard Hong: This is the year to bring that. Dan Smith: I don't know if it's a
Super Bowl shuffle year, but it's shuffling. Right? Alanna Smith: Hey, knock on wood. Richard Hong: You never, you never know. But a lot of it is, I think part of the interesting thing is, although Sunday comes every single week and you have a sermon to prepare every single week, it's interesting because even in the preparation of a sermon, you're always trying to make that connection between what the scripture text that you're talking about is saying that would be actually meaningful in the life of people. So you spend actually a fair amount of your week dealing with people in their issues, and it often just starts to present in terms of, wow, this is where folks are struggling in my community. That's why there's a saying among pastors, is that you never reuse a sermon from a different community. If you're somewhere else, because it's not the same audience, Dan Smith: Right. Richard Hong: The congregation is different, their struggles are different, the context is different, the times are different. And so yeah, there's a lot of actual administrative work. I mean, we're generally the
point person who's on site to deal with a lot of just the administrative issues around the church, but then you are dealing with a person who has issues, who has troubles, and you're just talking to them about that and trying to help them away through. And one of the things that happens is most of the people don't understand how many other people are in the same boat. Alanna Smith: So you mentioned acts of service. So your whole week is acts of service. Does it come with challenges? Is it mostly good? You know, what's the balance? Richard Hong: Oh, it's absolutely, mostly good. Alanna Smith: That's great. Richard Hong: Okay. So it's mostly good. You do have to learn to have boundaries 'cause there will always be, you know, people who just are incredible bottomless buckets of need and you have to have boundaries around how much time, energy, effort. That you can appropriately spend with one person or one family. I mean, it's one thing when they go through a crisis, obviously it's all hands on deck. When a person has a loved one who's dying, has
just gotten, you know, that diagnosis that you dread, that kind of tragedy is one thing. But sometimes you do have people who are in a chronic place of need and you do have to have boundaries. Around that. But aside from that, it really is good and fulfilling because you get to spend so much of your life, even if they never come back to church, for example, I do so many funerals, weddings in a year, baptisms of babies, and many of those people are just coming to a church for that. But you got to be a part of it. And, and that's an amazing privilege at the end of my days when I'm looking back to be able to say. Wow. How many couples did I marry? How many babies did I baptize? How many funerals did I do? How many times did I help a family process that grief and get closure around the loss of a loved one? And you don't really have many professions where you get to be an integral part of important moments
in a person's life, even if only there for that moment. Alanna Smith: Yeah. Wow. Dan Smith: Yeah, that’s— Alanna Smith: really special. Dan Smith: So again, financial planning: I have to be creative in how I do meetings with people. You know, obviously I use Zoom and Teams. I do road trips. I go to where people have retired so I can experience what they're going through and they're more comfortable in their homes talking to me. So in your profession or business or passion, I assume there's a lot of outreach where if someone's been coming to the congregation, say religiously for three years and you haven't seen them in a while, you might reach out to them proactively and make contact. How much outreach is there? Richard Hong: There's a fair amount. You have to strike a balance between trying to find out exactly what happened and why. You never know. Sometimes they're just mad at you. For whatever reason Alanna Smith: You're a Bears fan, you know? Richard Hong: It can be any of those kinds of things, but definitely you are trying to keep an eye on what's happening in their lives. And what's interesting when you talk
about financial planning in that regard, one of the aspects of churches that they actually are taught to look for is that a precipitous change in a person's giving to the church is often a sign of something going on in their lives. Obviously, if a person suddenly stops giving, it's like, well, what happened? Are they mad? That's one thing that's actually the best possibility 'cause people are gonna get mad. What you really are on the lookout for is I've had elderly members who got scammed out of a big chunk of their retirement savings and wow Are they embarrassed to admit it? They don't wanna admit it to anybody. Alanna Smith: You see that Dad? Dan Smith: Unfortunately, yes. Yeah, unfortunately. Richard Hong: So that happens as well as maybe someone lost a job, maybe suddenly they had to put a parent into a memory care facility that they didn't have funds for, and now all of their available cash is being diverted into that. All of those kinds of things. So the best possibility is they're just ticked off because you said something in a sermon they didn't like, because I would
much rather have that be the reason. Than one of these other circumstances. Alanna Smith: Sure. Dan Smith: Are you progressively going through the Bible for your sermon ideas or will you jump around depending on what's happening in the community? Richard Hong: What's happening is that we happen to follow a recommended rotation of Bible passages. It's called the lectionary. Dan Smith: Okay. Richard Hong: It's a three year cycle. We prefer to follow that. Because, not to get too deep into the sermon prep, but— Alanna Smith: It's interesting. Richard Hong: When you pick a passage, you are often deciding what you want it to mean. And when a passage is sort of thrust at you, whether it's through the lectionary or by whatever, then you really have to work at extracting relevant meaning from that passage. And by relevant, I mean relevant to the lives of your parishioners. And that's actually where the better sermons come from. Okay? 'cause you have to work at it, and you really have to dig deep to sit there and say, okay, these aren't just
words on a page. What do they mean in the hearts of the people who need to be hearing these words? Dan Smith: So I don't wanna stereotype people that go to church. I'm trying not to do that in this question. Generally speaking, is there a good blend of younger to older? Richard Hong: Overall nationally, it does skew older. In our particular congregation, it skews more toward parents with children. Dan Smith: Oh, wow. Richard Hong: One big area which you can imagine is parents who want their children to be associating with other kids who they consider to be good. Now. We all know that boy church kids can be, they can be a handful. Alanna Smith: You heard it here. Richard Hong: Yeah. One of the big services though, that we do and that a lot of churches are seeing is actually a really significant percentage of the kids coming to church are neurodivergent, have special needs of some kind. Alanna Smith: Wow. Richard Hong: And the church is actually one of the places that bends over backwards to
make those children feel welcome. Dan Smith: Wow. Richard Hong: And just feel like just one of the kids. Alanna Smith: Yeah. Richard Hong: And that doesn't necessarily happen in certain school settings. And so the parents of those kids, we sometimes just see their faces light up when they've seen that their kids were just one of the kids. Dan Smith: Exactly. Alanna Smith: That's beautiful. Dan Smith: So how do you convey a financial discussion with your congregation, other than putting something in the collection basket, which I assume is still done? Richard Hong: Well, there are a number of different approaches that you can make, but primarily it's simply presenting and talking to people about finances is just one of the resources that you have available to make an impact. You can make an impact with your time. You can make an impact with particular skills that you may have, and you can make an impact with your financial resources. And so it's really a matter of presenting to people the idea that what they give. Can actually make an impact in the world to make the world a better place, to make
their community a better place. And so it's more presenting the motivation of what it is they can do. Dan Smith: Got it. Richard Hong: And that's really the thing. And so it, you know, it used to be presented so much as, oh, you need to give to God and they are giving to God. But it's a part of our faith that says that yeah, but what God cares about is God's people. And so it's almost like, you know, as a parent, right, what do you want? Would you rather have someone give a gift to you or your kids? My kids, of course. Alanna Smith: Good answer. So we were just talking about gifting in a different way. Any sort of volunteering opportunities around the holidays, like how does the month of December shape your church? Richard Hong: We're actually busy and you know, obviously with so many services going on, it's not that we concentrate volunteer opportunities around the holidays because that's when people actually have so many, for example, most food pantries, soup kitchens will tell you, don't come on Thanksgiving. We've got a million people who want to help serve a Thanksgiving dinner. What they
really need is July. Alanna Smith: Wow. Dan Smith: Right. Richard Hong: And so what we try to do is put forth more the idea that giving. Just as in financial planning, you'd say this about saving or whatever. It's a lifestyle that you have to make as a regular habit. So what we really want is not that concentrated seasonal burst, but we really want people to sit there and say that giving in every way, whether it's time or whether it's money, is just a part of who I am. It's a part of what I do. Dan Smith: Right? 'Cause I talk to people about retirement a lot, and this is the exact synergy that I think you're speaking to. So they're always telling me, I just dunno what I'm gonna do with my time. And to me, I'd like to have more time. Right? But for example, if I'm a plumber, if I'm a carpenter, or if I'm an electrician, okay, these are services that I can do to help people. If I speak a second language, I can help with language barrier. So it's not always the financial thing. Richard Hong: Absolutely. Dan Smith: So when people
retire and they're in their sixties and seventies, they have great things to bring to their community. Alanna Smith: Oh yeah. Richard Hong: And really what we also want, you know, within that is that personal connection. So it's, it's not just that the plumber can go to a person's home and fix leaky pipes that they couldn't afford to fix or something like that, but it's also just being engaged with the person in just their life struggle because frankly, a lot of the people who you might be helping are probably also lonely. Alanna Smith: Yeah. Richard Hong: And they really just love having somebody come and talk to them. And so we try to give people opportunities to simply engage the community. And that's more the way that we phrase it, because we don't want people feeling like there's this hierarchical superiority of I'm the helper and you are the helpee, but rather you are a fellow human being and we can do more in life by connecting in life. Dan Smith: Right. There's a duality to that. If I sit down and have
coffee with someone that, let's just say they're in an independent living somewhere. I go have coffee with them and we talk for a half hour. I don't know who benefits more, me or the person. And that's the duality you're looking for. Right? Richard Hong: Exactly. Alanna Smith: You mentioned the change and the world being so much more stressful. Can you speak a little more on that and what you've seen and what people are struggling with right now? Richard Hong: Well, I think the change is actually kind of really interesting from a demographic perspective. And finances are a big part of this, but one of the huge changes in our world that the church was not prepared for was the birth control pill. Alanna Smith: Ah. Richard Hong: Because it enabled for the first time in human history delayed childbearing. And what has happened is that since that advent, for example, I was looking up stats because I was doing a presentation on this within church circles. So in 1970, only 10% of women between the ages of 30 and 34 had not yet had a child. Alanna Smith: Wow. Richard Hong: It's now 40%. Dan Smith: Oh wow.
Richard Hong: And as income increases and educational attainment increases. It's even higher than that. You combine that with other factors. I remember in the very start of my career, companies didn't lay people off unless they were desperate. Remember, IBM was very proud of never having had a layoff. And if there were going to be layoffs, it was always by seniority. And so back in the day, you go back 30, 40 years, if you had seniority in your company, you were protected from layoffs, yet you were making more than you'd ever made. Now making more than you've ever made makes you a target for reductions in force. Alanna Smith: Wow. Dan Smith: Sure does. Richard Hong: Okay, so if you go back 50 years, what's happened? You had your children younger because you couldn't avoid it. So by the time you were 50, you were empty nesting, you were making more money than you've ever made, and you're not at risk of losing your job unless your company goes under, because you've got, you know, 10, 20 years of seniority under your belt. You've paid off your home.
Because you are able to afford to buy one because from 1970 to today, I also looked up this stat, median home price has gone up 20 fold while income has only gone up ninefold. Alright. Dan Smith: Exactly. Richard Hong: So I'm sure you’ve seen this, Dan, I mean the percentage of income going to housing is higher than it ever used to be. Dan Smith: It's massive. Richard Hong: It's massive. So now you have our 50 year olds today, now have a teenager or even younger in the home. The mortgage is chewing up an incredible percentage of their income. They're trying to figure out how to put their kids through college since apparently financial aid is based on bankrupting the parents, then they're gonna find themselves empty nesting in their early sixties, desperately trying to figure out how they're going to retire. In the seventies, that 50-year-old who had empty-nested, paid off their mortgage, their kids are through college, all that kind of thing. What did they do with that time and money? They could put it in the church. So the church's model was based around an availability of money and
volunteer time rather than staff. Dan Smith: Right. Richard Hong: And now. That's just not there. And so what you have is the new generation of leadership in churches going, how come people don't volunteer the way they used to? It's not that they don't want to. They can't. Alanna Smith: Right. Just to survive. Richard Hong: Just to survive. And so all of those changes have really impacted the church, but a lot of that just comes from the delayed childbearing. Alanna Smith: Yeah, that's interesting. Richard Hong: It's not a value judgment. At all. Alanna Smith: No, I hear you. Richard Hong: I’m not saying that that's a bad decision. I'm simply saying it's had an impact and, and churches have failed to really adjust their model, which was built around the availability of volunteer hours that don't exist. Alanna Smith: Fascinating. Dan Smith: It is. I deal with people that were born in the timeframe he's talking about that are my clients and now I'm dealing with a married couple, both are working, clawing to afford housing and delaying having kids. Job security is the reverse of what it once was. That combined with how the
job market is changing, you just don't sit in a factory and you know, put cars together for 40 years anymore. Okay? Alanna Smith: We're all getting replaced by AI, so— Dan Smith: Right so it's a lot to contend with and essentially a lot of the financial planning meeting is around motivation. Okay. They feel like everything's against them, and it's getting those rays of light to say, okay, here's how we can move forward. I always say, we gotta look out the front windshield, not the rear view mirror. I'm telling them to build things around their financial life. You have to have community around the financial life to survive, really. Correct? Richard Hong: I believe that. Absolutely. Yeah. And for helping people try to stay focused, the continual challenge of the church is to put before people the challenge of are you staying focused on what really matters? What's actually important? Dan Smith: Yeah. So you know, I always start off with health. I believe you have to be healthy and live a healthy lifestyle. That's paramount. I feel that you have to have community, family, and then purpose. Okay. What is your purpose? What's the purpose of your job? Do you love your
job? Do you wanna change careers? In my profession, I'm not talking about the money in your profession, you're just not talking about God. You know, the lanes are multifaceted. I go to places where I never thought I'd be before, as I'm sure you do. Alanna Smith: So when you meet someone who's maybe going through a shift in their life and they feel like they've lost their purpose, how do you guide them back? It's a hard question for someone to answer on their own. Richard Hong: You just start asking questions, the kinds of exploratory questions that would help people try to put a framework around rethinking what they're about. And what's really interesting is that a lot of the resources I use actually come from the business world. Alanna Smith: Oh, cool. Richard Hong: Because a lot of business books are talking about how people can become very tunnel visioned. Alanna Smith: Yes. Richard Hong: And they forget to adapt. And so one of the things that has to happen is are. Framing your world of possibilities broadly enough. 'Cause a lot of times people feel hopeless because they've got blinders on and they only see a very,
very narrow possible path in front of them. And that path doesn't appear to be going anywhere they want to go, but maybe they can take their blinders off and see a much wider path for their lives. And one of the things that faith does is faith has both an eternal timeline in terms of looking at your life and a universal breadth in terms of scope. And so one of the things that we try to do in faith is to have people look more. Broadly and longer term in terms of what the possibilities are for their lives. And then within that wider frame, maybe there's hope that they can find a path that's good for them. Alanna Smith: You plan to 96? Dan Smith: I do plan to 96 and I add another year. Every time we meet. Every year we meet, yeah. Alanna Smith: 104. Dan Smith: Exactly. So I talk about A-ha moments a lot with our guests. This is the type of thing where you're involved in something that you just felt you were walking on air when you left that meeting or experience,
is there something that comes to mind that you wouldn't mind sharing and keeping names and addresses out of it? Richard Hong: Oh gosh, I, I mean, there have been all kinds of. Aha moments. I would say one that's sort of profound for me was the first time I was ever actually in a hospital room when a person died. Alanna Smith: Wow. Richard Hong: You know, just with them as they literally took their last breath, which, unless you're in a medical profession or clergy, thankfully you won't have that experience as often as we do. But the first time I had it, it was an aha moment 'cause I had this extreme sense of looking at the person and truly feeling like, wow, something has left the room. Alanna Smith: Wow. Richard Hong: Interesting. There was something real that happened and you could just sense that something was gone and the sense that something was gone is actually one of the ways, you know, that something had been there. And and so that was a real. Profound moment. Dan Smith: Wow. Richard Hong: Another thing that has driven our church, actually
impacted our response to COVID was the story of a famous theologian named Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is that he was a German theologian who had escaped in the thirties to New York City, and he was actually at Union Theological Seminary in New York, which is where I went to seminary. Alanna Smith: Oh wow. Richard Hong: And he made a decision to go back to Germany, and when he went back, he got tangentially involved in a plot to kill Hitler. Alanna Smith: Woah. Richard Hong: And he was arrested and executed just weeks before the liberation of Germany. And he was so respected by the guards that he continued writing from prison and his writings were collected and he exchanged correspondence with some of his friends. Because the guards so respected him, but he wrote a letter to a professor at Union. His name was Reinhold Niebuhr, who you may have heard of, and President Obama liked to quote Niebuhr's books explaining why he went back to Germany and
he said, I've made a great mistake in coming to America. I will have no right to pastor the people of Germany after the war if I have not gone through the trials of this period with them. And so a couple of things that were really important there is understanding that as a pastor, you have to earn the right to speak to people in their lives. You don't get it because some denomination declared you clergy and you get to hang a certificate on your wall. You have to earn that. And so one of the things that we started doing at the church was after COVID happened, and you know, the first weeks of COVID, we were thinking, oh, this three weeks and it'll burn out. We'll be right back. And then once we realized that's not the case, by the summer, I learned of a program in town that was packing up, donated food for free distribution, no questions asked. Just come on by, get it. I mean, and in fact, we were so afraid of getting COVID that cars would pull up and you would ask 'em to pop the trunk and you just put food in their trunk. Alanna Smith: Yeah. Richard Hong: Because you didn't wanna talk to them, didn't wanna say anything. And we started getting involved there. And
so to this day, ever since COVID, every Tuesday we have a crew at this organization helping to pack food. The distribution has continued. Early on there was huge amounts of food since all the restaurants had closed down, all these wholesalers had nowhere to get rid of their food. It's going bad. So they just donated it all. But we did that because I said, wait a second. This is a crisis in our community. We have to earn the right to pastor to the community by doing whatever we can. No matter how big or small, we have to do something. We can't just hunker down and try to survive it. We have to. Earn the right to speak to the people after it by doing something to help them get through it. Alanna Smith: Wow. You gotta walk the walk. Dan Smith: That's beautiful. Really beautiful. Richard Hong: You know, Dan, I think that financial planning and what we do, 'cause it is really about planning more realistically and on a longer timeframe than most people are used to. I think that's one of the things that we both deal with is I'm sure you deal with people who don't want to confront the reality of their budgets and don't want to confront the
reality of their finances. Dan Smith: You can't microwave a financial plan. You can't do it. I always say it's not what you make, it's what you put away. It's a lifestyle you live and it's a longterm approach. A healthy financial plan is a long-term approach and I think, like I said, our respective professions preach that Richard Hong: We have the same thing. Dan Smith: No pun intended. Richard Hong: We have the same issue. People talk about how faith got them through a crisis. One of the things that we try to remind people is that it can't get you through a crisis if you only get to it when the crisis has hit. Alanna Smith: Yeah. You can't just work out before the doctor's appointment and say, oh, we're all good. Richard Hong: I've tried. I eat healthy the night before the blood draw. Alanna Smith: Right. Right. Well, it's a balance. Dan Smith: Yeah so we wanna thank you for coming on the show. Richard Hong: Oh, I had a blast. Thank you so much. Dan Smith: It's a big feather in our cap that you agreed to be with us today. Alanna Smith: Big time. Yeah. Thanks for taking the time out. Richard Hong: Loved it.
Jingle. Alanna Smith: That was Reverend Rich Hong. Everybody calls him Rich. Dan Smith: Pastor. Alanna Smith: Pastor. Well, he is a pastor. We're probably gonna get confused about it over and over again, but we can always listen to the episode and reference. Dan Smith: Yeah, he's a dynamic guy. Really is. Alanna Smith: Yeah. Clearly. So intent on his purpose. What do you feel like your purpose is? Dan Smith: I really feel that I have two purposes. One is to my family. I've spent my whole life trying to be the best dad, spouse, uncle. I try to do my best. I really do. That's my purpose. And my second purpose is my job. I just love my job. It's tough to explain. At age 42, I kind of got thrust into this profession. It just has been gaining steam, like a steam ruler and, uh, I'm loving every bit of it and I love the team I work on and, and I do love my clients. Alanna Smith: Yeah. Dan Smith: In a way of, I want what's best for them. Alanna Smith: You're such a good dad. Dan Smith: Yeah, well, I try to be, and I have three great kids, so I'm blessed. I really am blessed, in a time of year where we're just coming off
Thanksgiving, which is clearly my favorite holiday by far. Alanna Smith: Yeah. I mean, let's ride. Dan Smith: Yeah, exactly. I'm very, I'm very thankful when it comes to the next wave of holidays, Hanukkah, and Christmas and New Year's, and you know, everything that everybody celebrates. It's a very reflective time. At this point in my life. You know, my cup is full. I feel like I have a full cup. Alanna Smith: Nice. What more could you ask for? Dan Smith: Yeah. Alanna Smith: All right. Well, we wanna wish everybody a happy holiday, and we will be back in the new year with some fresh Dan questions, some new episodes, new guests. And we hope you'll join us in 2026. Dan Smith: Most importantly, stay safe out there. Alanna Smith: Stay safe and happy holidays. Dan Smith: Happy holidays. Jingle.