The 21-Day Financial Fast: Your Path to Financial Peace and Freedom

Acknowledgments

I can’t begin this book without first giving thanks to God. I know now that even during the times I was down and feeling alone, He was right there carrying me. It was God who allowed me to be placed in the care of my grandmother, Big Mama. And it was my grandmother who taught me to think about money in a way that would someday be a blessing to members of my family, my church, my community, and millions of newspaper readers, radio listeners, and television viewers across the country.

I also thank God for leading me to First Baptist Church of Glenarden. Under the leadership of Pastor John K. Jenkins Sr. and his wife, First Lady Trina Jenkins, I have grown tremendously in my faith. It was at First Baptist, and with the encouragement of my pastor and his wife, that I began conducting the 21-day financial fast.

I will forever be grateful and thankful for the members of Prosperity Partners Ministry and for its incredible leadership team. It has been a privilege to serve with the following individuals: Adrienne Alexander, Olivia Baker, Alton Croslin, Deenice Galloway, Min. Angelia Rowe Garner, Trinita McCall, Tonya Muse, Yolanda Oliver, Michael Rhim, Kiesha Samee’Ud-Deen, the late Juanita Ann Waller, and Bethany Williams. This dedicated group work hard and diligently to support a ministry that has helped so many to get their financial lives in order. I also want to thank the staff at First Baptist Church of Glenarden (especially the audio visual team) and the many members of my church who together continue to show me unwavering support. In particular, I’m grateful for Barbara and Malcolm Streeter, two friends who always have my back.

This book would not have been possible without my wonderful and hardworking agent, Richard Abate. The staff at Zondervan, including Bob Hudson, Karen Campbell, Courtney Lasater, Becky Philpott, and Marcy Schorsch, has been fantastic. I couldn’t have had a better and more thoughtful editor than Sandy Vander Zicht. The entire Zondervan team who worked on this book has just been wonderful. This has truly been a team effort.

I am very blessed to work at the Washington Post and with an incredible group of people who have been tremendously supportive of my book endeavors. I’m especially appreciative of my former research assistant, Charity Brown, my current assistant, Tia Lewis, and my past and present editors, Steve Levingston, Gregory Schneider, Kelly Johnson, and James Hill, and Alan Shearer of the Washington Post Writers Group.

Writing a book often comes with much sacrifice. The friends and family of the author are the ones who make the process easier. So it is with much love that I thank my friends and family, especially Terri and Larry Ames, Debbie and Pat Berry, Alexa Steele, Sade Dennis, and Wiley Hall. I couldn’t have made it through the long nights and lack of sleep without your encouragement. You made me laugh sometimes when all I wanted to do was cry. Thanks to Robin Tarver and Nicole Rochester for letting me vent. One of my biggest fans is my brother, Michael Singletary. I am so blessed to have a brother who is so incredibly enthusiastic about my work. Just as supportive is my extended family, including my mother, sister-in-law, Kim, in-laws, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins.

Also I wouldn’t have had the time to work on the book without the help of my dear sister, Monique Reynolds, and my loving godmother, Lois Thompson, and godsister, Courtney Bethea, who all helped with my children.

I owe so much to my children, Olivia, Kevin, and Jillian, who checked on me and gave me many hugs to encourage me during this project. They even sacrificed several family movie nights so I could work on the book.

Finally, there’s my husband, Kevin. I have no doubt that God sent me this wonderful, loving, patient man who pushes me to be a better Christian, wife, mother, and friend. Even more, I’m blessed that he has joined me in directing Prosperity Partners. It has been a joy to work alongside a man who has such great love for the Lord and his family.

Prosperity on Purpose

If you want to be rich, change. Grow. Get organized. Make the decision that you want to prosper.

Those are the lesson I’ve learned since I first created the 21-day financial fast in 2005. At the time, I was fasting from food when it occurred to me that the same concept of discipline and self-denial might be applied to people’s finances. My epiphany for the fast came long before the Great Recession. In fact, the country was enjoying growth and prosperity when I had the idea for the fast. Yet I was concerned and weary from watching people struggle with their finances even though times were good.

In the years to come, the economy will both prosper and decline. The employment numbers will rise and fall. And, as we learned in the last recession, home values can drop as well as increase. The stock market will do what it has always done — we will have bearish (bad) and bullish (good) years. But through it all, you need to be steady with how you handle your money. What never changes is the work it takes to create lasting wealth. Real net worth is created by hard work, delayed gratification, and financial education.

So I’m asking you to work at your wealth building. I’m challenging you to take twenty-one days and curb your consumerism. Buy only what’s necessary. For three weeks, stop using credit. Use the twenty-one days to consider what being rich means to you.

And in case you’re wondering, when I use the word rich, I’m not talking about material wealth. I’m talking about the peace that comes when you’ve done all you can to wisely use the financial resources God has entrusted to you. The 21-day financial fast is about preparing yourself to prosper and leaving a legacy for your family that allows them to prosper, too.

The fast is also about getting your financial house in order. Aren’t you tired of the chaos and clutter? When you get your financial house in order, it directly impacts your financial life.

Let me explain.

I’ve dealt with a lot of death. My grandfather, brother, and father-in-law died from lung cancer. They died with their affairs not in order. I contrast their situations to what happened when a close friend, Juanita Ann Waller, whose testimonies you’ll read in this book, died in an automobile accident in 2012. She was the most ardent supporter of my 21-day financial fast. She took it to a level even I haven’t achieved.

Juanita left her personal financial affairs and her apartment in an astonishingly organized condition. She got her finances and house in order, never anticipating she would die at age fifty-four. She left a will, life insurance, and the necessary paperwork to take care of her estate. But there was a higher level of organization in her affairs than I’ve ever seen. She not only freed herself from debt, she freed herself from wanting, buying, and accumulating too much stuff.

Juanita had a place for everything. She catalogued what was in her file cabinet. She had a notebook that detailed what was in each cabinet drawer. As a result, when several of us who were her friends went to pack up her belongings, we didn’t have to look through her private papers to be able to label the boxes. She kept binders of her awards and accolades, including a letter to her signed by President Obama, protected behind sheets of plastic. She had sent Obama an email saying she was praying for him, and the White House responded.

There wasn’t a single junk drawer in her apartment. There were no stacks of papers on her desk threatening to unleash an avalanche of craziness on the floor. Nor did she have bags of papers stuffed in corners or in her closets. She didn’t even have a trash can because there wasn’t much waste to throw away. Her closets weren’t overstuffed. Her pantry and refrigerator weren’t overstocked with food that would take months to eat or go to waste. There wasn’t a single item in any room that we could tell went unused for very long.

My friend was a financial fast devotee striving to get people to reduce their consumption and material possessions. Her place was so tidy and uncluttered that I wept. It made me ashamed of my personal living space, my disorderly office, and my hoarding of things that long ago should have been tossed, recycled, or donated.

Over the years, I’ve promised myself to get organized. But whenever I clean my office, it’s cluttered again a few weeks later with piles of papers sitting in stacks on the floor.

Just think about this: If you were to die, how long would it take for people to go through your stuff? How many hours would they have to take off from their jobs to find and organize your personal property? Could they find your will? Where would they look for any instructions on your estate? Have you written down in a secure place the passwords to your computer or phone so friends and family can contact people if you pass away?

Juanita wasn’t obsessive with her orderliness. She was organized for a purpose. As we were packing her possessions, we all felt embarrassed — but for ourselves, not Juanita. We, in our abundance, saw a woman who kept only what she needed, knowing it was more than enough. That’s what Juanita learned from the fast.

We all pledged to spend some time organizing and getting rid of stuff as a remembrance of Juanita, who gave an abundance of hugs, in addition to her time helping others achieve financial peace. We promised her that we’d get our houses in order.

I want you to get what Juanita got. I want you to understand that you have so much already. I want you to take your prosperity seriously by consuming less, shunning debt, and organizing your financial life. I want you to be rich in the way Juanita was rich.

THIS FAST IS FOR YOU

The Bible is the key source for this book. Even if you are not religious, the Old and New Testaments give the best and most basic advice on how to handle your money — in good times and bad. We’ve seen what the world can evolve into by listening to and following the corrupt and greedy advice of financial companies and advisers. The Bible says, The wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight (1 Cor. 3:19). So why not give Scripture a chance to change your financial life?

I love the way the Bible provides a roadmap to wealth — it promises prosperity, but prosperity with a purpose as a means to an end that isn’t about stuff. It all boils down to this: The more you get, the more you are commanded to give. This universal concept is one we all can and should embrace.

The key feature of this book is the financial fast. But if you think you can do this 21-day financial fast on your own, you are mistaken. It’s going to take discipline. The discipline of fasting forces you to turn your focus away from the things of the world — credit and shopping — and reach out to God. Fasting at its essence is about self-denial. And Lord knows there’s a need these days for people to deny their desires. For it’s these wanton desires that have caused financial pain for so many.

Fasting is also about obedience. Scripture gives us many examples of people who fasted. Moses fasted. Elijah fasted. David fasted. Daniel fasted. And Jesus fasted.

This fast is for you if you’re at your financial wit’s end. This fast is for you if the stress of money is causing pain in your relationship with your spouse, friends, or family. It’s for you if you’re worried about your retirement portfolio or saving enough to send your children to college. It’s for you if you’re not sure whether you’ll have enough money to carry you through a long, prosperous retirement. If you have more month than money, this fast is designed just for you. Or maybe you are already a good money manager, and now you’re looking for ways to do better with the resources God has given you. This fast is for you even if you’re doing just fine financially.

Whatever your financial situation, I challenge you to spend the next twenty-one days fasting.

Now this isn’t going to be like any fast you’ve heard about or done before. Rather than eliminating only food or certain types of food, you’re going to curtail your consumption in everything you buy.

The path to prosperity begins by breaking the yoke to buy and buy and then buy some more.

TAKE THE CLEANSING CHALLENGE

I’m inviting you to take a 21-day financial fast in which you will purchase only necessities. The fast is really about curbing the need to consume. It doesn’t matter if you’re a good steward or a spendthrift; all of us consume more than we need. We shop so much, we don’t even stop to think about what we’re buying. How many times have you gone to Walmart or Target with the intention of buying just a few things, but you ended up tossing more than a few things into your shopping cart? You get to the register, and a trip that should have cost you $20 ends up costing you $200.

If we all waited longer before making many of our purchases, we’d have more money. During this fast, don’t even go window-shopping. Take shopping off your weekend to-do list.

For twenty-one days, you will exercise discipline in your use of credit. I want you to become acquainted again with the feel and limitations of cash. Using plastic in any form — credit card or debit card — makes it too easy to overspend. By breaking your attachment to credit and debit cards, I hope to help you realize how much you’ve come to rely on this plastic devil. You might protest, But why give up my debit card? Isn’t it the same as cash? No, a debit card is not the same as cash because you can still spend more than you have. Despite how the banks have marketed debit cards, many people have found themselves hit with countless overdraft fees for swiping when they didn’t have enough money in their bank accounts.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

This book includes twenty-one chapters — one for each day of the fast — and is divided into four parts:

Part 1: Why a Financial Fast?

Part 2: Fasting for a Better Financial Life

Part 3: Fasting to Avoid Financial Drama

Part 4: Fasting for Financial Peace

The chapters and parts build on each other to help you establish a strong foundation for financial peace and freedom. Part 1 lays the foundation of the fast. Whether you are a believer or not, prosperity just doesn’t happen on its own. You have to make the right moves to prosper. But I also believe that God has the power to deliver financial freedom when you show Him you are a responsible steward over your money.

Part 2 is all about preparation, which includes addressing entitlement issues, learning to be content, budgeting, saving, and investing. If you’re married and have children, it also means handling your money in a way that strengthens your relationship with your spouse and creates wealth for your heirs.

Part 3 is designed to help you get rid of the things that stand in the way of your prosperity — debt, credit, and greed. It also addresses one of the most pressing financial issues facing families, which is long-term care for oneself or for aging parents or relatives.

Part 4 focuses on the testimonies of people who have taken the 21-day fast and whose lives have been changed because of it. This section takes a look at what stands in your way of achieving financial peace.

The best way to read this book is one chapter a day. And even if that day’s chapter doesn’t directly apply to your life, find a takeaway that will help someone you know. Part of my mission is to multiply the success of this fast by equipping you to pass on what you learn to your family and friends.

Each chapter includes a daily assignment to help you apply what you’re learning. In addition to reading time, you’ll need to set aside some time each day to complete the assignment or assignments. In most cases you will be able to complete the tasks in one day, but some may take longer. For example, the assignment on Day 7 is to complete a budget, which is often a time-consuming task. Even if you can’t finish it in a day, you can at least start the budgeting process by collecting all your debt, checking, savings, and income information — or get a head start and begin to gather those things now!

I’ve included lots of practical and inspirational tools to help you in this challenge. You will find several online tools at www.michellesingletary.com. In addition to things such as budgeting templates and a spending journal, the book features testimonies from people who have completed the fast, some several times. You may be surprised at the honesty of their self-assessments. No matter how strictly or loosely people followed the fast, everyone came away with some revelation that helped them manage their money better. Use their words as inspiration on the days you’re tempted to cheat or actually cheat.

I want you to record your progress toward completing your assignments in a journal. Journaling is a wonderful way to have a conversation with yourself and with God. It also provides a record of your challenges and progress. In your journal, start off each day by indicating which day of the fast you are on.

This fast may be hard for you. Perhaps you have used shopping as a form of entertainment for so long, you can’t even imagine going one weekend, let alone twenty-one days, without a trip to the mall. If you’ve become addicted to shopping or if you’ve been brainwashed to believe you can use credit wisely, prepare to be challenged!

Or maybe the fast won’t be hard for you at all. You may already be a faithful steward over your money. And yet, I’m sure there are areas in which you can grow even more. Perhaps you’re so tight with your money that you aren’t as generous as you could be. Or maybe you’re afraid to spend and enjoy your wealth because you fear poverty. This was a bond I had to break.

Wherever you fall on the financial spectrum — compulsive spender or good steward — you’ll be surprised at how much more you can have when you follow God’s blueprint for making, keeping, and giving away money. My prayer for you is that this 21-day financial fast will give you both the biblical principles and the practical tools to achieve the prosperity God promises.

Part One

WHY A FINANCIAL FAST?

Together, the first four chapters of this book focus on helping you understand what the financial fast is all about. Over the next four days, we’ll consider the responsibilities that come with being rich, God’s promise of prosperity, and the importance of things like generosity and tithing.

The chapters that follow build on the fasting theme and how depriving yourself will actually enrich your life. I want you to start thinking about your money and how often leaning on your own understanding can ultimately lead to making decisions about your money that aren’t wise.

If you truly want to change the way you handle your money or view your finances, the Scripture references in this book can be your Lally column. In home construction, Lally columns are steel posts that provide important structural support to the house. The columns are typically found in a basement to support large, heavy overhead beams. So, too, does God’s Word provide the structural support to achieve prosperity. Without that support, you might still achieve wealth, but you won’t have the foundation you’ll need in order to prosper with a purpose.

Day

1

Twenty-One Days to Financial Freedom

21 Days to Go: Breaking Bonds

Main Point: We need to be set free from the bondage spending holds on our lives.

My Pledge: For the next twenty-one days, I will be on