Crossing the class divide

A lightbulb moment about how we should view money

Fescue season is officially over for the year. It was a disappointing season - due to the wet weather in our county this spring, fescue seed did poorly, so we’re recovering from the long days of harvest the last week and a half and praying for wisdom on future plans for the seed house.

I am working on putting together a vlog recap of this year’s fescue harvest, but for now, I wanted to share something that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately and writing on and off for weeks, trying to put my thoughts into words.

Daniel and I recently finished reading J.D. Vance's memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, and it’s initiated some interesting conversations between us.

Maybe it’s because we saw our own story reflected in there with what it's like to be the first in your family to go to college and how that alters the entire projection of your life, especially when many of the kids you grew up didn’t end up going to college.

When Vance talks about the world he discovered in law school - how the wealthy operated in a whole different sphere with different rules and access to opportunities only available to those in that world - I felt that personally.

Vance shared about his experience interviewing with law firms and being in rooms where you're in awe of how much a meal costs, and what fork to use, and gawk at exactly how much money people make. And it took me back to being in that exact place too.

I remember being in rooms with lawyers, judges, and senators and honestly, it felt like winning a lottery. I'd sneak in photos to show my parents and tell my mom all about the fancy food and rooms I found myself in.

I would yo-yo between trying not to gawk at what I heard and saw about how "the other side" lived and being hyper aware to not stand out and make it obvious that I didn't belong. I'd wait for everyone else to order and mimic what they ordered. I took an eating etiquette class to make sure I knew what fork to use and which direction to pass the butter.

Higher education for women in Christian circles continues to be something frowned upon, especially with the rise of the trad wife movement. The "getting a Mrs. Degree" is treated like a joke, but also becomes an unspoken expectation that you'll "get a ring by spring" with college becoming a place to find a mate, not a career.

But this is something only those who grew up poor will understand: college isn't really about the degree or what you'll learn (yes, those are important). It's about the rooms and the world it opens up for you, especially if you choose to major something like business or law - two professions that continue to be the realms where the wealthy live.

Yes, one can break out of poverty and build a good life doing blue collar work and/or starting your own business without a higher education. I have seen that firsthand. But, at least in the U.S., and for the majority of people, a college degree is the ticket to cross the class divide and break the cycle of poverty that you grew up in.

I know for a fact that neither Daniel nor I would be where we are today, together or apart, if it wasn't for our college education and working in corporate America. Going to college and seeing the inside of how corporations and the wealthy live and make money changes how you think and see the world.

Because it's not really about the money. It's about access and the way you see the world around you.

When I was applying to law schools and almost every Slavic Christian around me - outside of my immediate family and close friends - told me it was a mistake and questioned my choices, there was an elderly prophet for whom my mom worked as a caretaker that said something that has forever stuck with me.

Her name was Yevdokiya. I came to pick up my mom from Yevdokiya's house because we were sharing a car that day, and as I waited for my mom to finish up, Yevdokiya, who was probably in her late 70's at that point, looked at me and said:

"God needs people in all places and positions. The thing you're thinking about doing that people are telling you not to do, don't listen to them. God needs people in those rooms too."

I went back to the car and cried. I knew deep in my heart that God was opening doors for me that no one I knew personally had ever gone through before. But it was a lonely path and it was hard to tune out all the voices telling me that as a Christian woman, my only option was to get married and have children. That a Christian, certainly not a Christian woman, should not be in business or in law.

I recently got a job offer. A chance to take on a leadership role in a major firm with a pay increase. To be honest, I struggled whether to accept the offer.

The job has more responsibility, and part of me wondered if in this season of being a mama to littles, I should be taking a step back, not leaning into my career.

Growing up, my dream was to end up in an executive, leadership position, but once I became a mom, I figured that dream would be temporarily, or permanently, on hold. I justified it as becoming a "new" me with new dreams and goals.

But as I've prayed about this shift in my identity and expected God to agree with me that the smart thing is to decline the job offer or tell me to quit working entirely to become a SAHM, something that kept surfacing is reminders of who I was in college and law school.

Part of me wanted to say that the girl I was then - her dreams and ambitions - were skewed and influenced "by the world" (aka girl boss culture and feminism), and write it off in favor of the more “traditional” ways so popular right know (and it is a modern trend, not going back to the “good old days” as some trad wife content paints it to be).

But then I started hearing Yevdokiya's voice again recently, transporting me back to her house that one afternoon in my senior year of college. She's long passed away, but to me, that moment has felt so real to me lately, like she's right here in the room with me.

And it feels like God saying, "I didn't put you into these rooms for you to walk away."

So, I've been doing a lot of reflecting and looking back at younger me in my college and law school days. When I went to law school, I figured God was calling me to public service as a career - I considered immigration law or working for a legal clinic or becoming a prosecutor. I tried those paths and although I enjoyed it, it didn't fit.

I ended up working in tax at an accounting firm, and I struggled with that for years. I wondered if I was a "sell out" for choosing money and corporate work over public service. I told myself it was only until I paid off my student loans, but then I found myself thriving in this career. Doors have opened miraculously and it truly felt like a supernatural force was clearing a path for me.

So, here I am, nearly ten years (!!!) into my career, wrestling with this dream of a career opportunity. When I was negotiating the salary for my new job, Daniel and I talked and prayed a lot about how to avoid lifestyle creep with a pay raise.

What we kept coming back to is - similar to the last time I changed jobs two years ago and got a pay increase - that God had a purpose for this pay increase. Without my last job change and pay increase two years ago (an opportunity that appeared out of the blue when a recruiter reached out), we would not have been able to make this move to buy a homestead and a business. But God knew we'd need my salary to get us to here.

So, when this latest job opportunity showed up out of the blue, we knew that God was providing for something in our future and we're praying for wisdom to discern what that is. But here's an interesting lesson we're seeing pop up over and over again as a result of our prayers about this:

Viewing our income as capital to be invested and given away, not spent.

One thing that separates the wealthy from the poor is that the wealthy invest into what appreciates in value and generates more money but the poor spend, often on things that depreciate in value and purchased on credit.

Vance mentions this example in his book that I hadn't noticed before but now makes complete sense to me: Families in lower classes often go into debt and go overboard on Christmas gifts, spending money they often don't have on electronics and trending items, while the wealthy are more likely to gift things like books or giving to charity.

But it's also not just Christmas gifts. In America, we buy a lot of stuff. I buy too much stuff.

• Americans spend roughly $18 k/year on non‑essentials and nearly $5 k/year on impulse purchases.

• Nearly 40 % feel pressure to match peers’ spending, and about 21–44 % admit impulse purchases linked to influencer marketing.

• Typical household credit card debt stands around $5,300 to $8,000.

• 78 % of Americans live paycheck-to‑paycheck and 66 % shop online monthly

The middle class is shrinking in the U.S. — according to the Pew Research Center, the share of Americans living in middle-class households decreased from 61% in 1971 to 51% in 2023. It's why you often hear the phrase that "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer." There's a lot of factors for this growing class divide, but the one I personally want to be weary of is lifestyle creep.

Lifestyle creep is when as you make more money, you spend more. In other words, you use bonuses and pay raises to buy more stuff and upgrade your house, car, vacations, etc., usually to keep up with "the Joneses" or to maintain a certain type of lifestyle. It's a trap many people who grew up in poverty can easily end up in, and it's something I see in myself: there's this desire to buy something because you can after growing up not being able to afford anything for years. You feel like you "deserve" it. But just because you can afford it, doesn’t always mean you have to buy it.

Because living like that just keeps you living paycheck to paycheck, in debt and one layoff or recession away from losing it all.

So, here's the shift we're navigating right now as a couple: asking God to give us wisdom on how to invest our money instead of spending it or keeping it in savings.

I'm not just talking about investing in the stock market. That's one very small part of a bigger picture. We're also considering investments like land, businesses, and investing it others through entrepreneurship grants, scholarships, supporting churches and local community needs, etc.

We don't have that much at this point to invest, but we are realizing that it's not really about the amount, but about the practice and discipline of giving generously and investing in something that has a long-term impact rather than just spending on random purchases for that blip of a dopamine high (to be fair, that's all on me - I have the spending problem in our relationship; Daniel is definitely the saver and investor!).

Tim Stoddart puts it well here:

"If wealth creation is a goal, one of the first things you need to do is change your mindset around income. Even the language you use matters. Think of your paycheck as revenue, not just income. This mindset shift helps you treat yourself like a business."

Daniel and I have big dreams for our family, but for us, it’s not the money we’re after. It’s a thriving marriage, a purposeful life and an enduring legacy without the financial stress.

I've talked about it before, but Daniel and I both feel the responsibility to grow what we have for our family's good and God's glory - both of us being able to go to college and get into "rooms" that our parents never had access to means that we are in a position to grow "wealth."

Note, when I'm talking about building "wealth," I'm not talking about being "rich" - I'm talking about being in a position where:

1. We can live a simple, quiet life working side by side as a family and not having to rely on anyone financially (including employers, the government or banks) - see 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12

2. We are able to leave an inheritance to our children so that they build on to what we've built instead of starting from zero (or in the negative, as we did with student loan debt) - see Proverbs 13:22

3. We have the financial resources to be a blessing to others and give generously - see the parable of the shrewd manager in Luke 16:1-13

It's odd to even talk about this - in this influencer culture, you can't log onto any social media platform without someone telling you how to become a millionaire, so it feels like any mention of building "wealth" automatically makes it sound like you're becoming one of those financial influencers telling others to get rich.

I'm sharing all this in case anyone else finds themselves navigating this class divide where you're making more money than your parents did, and praying about how to steward this privilege in a way that will give a better life for your children and makes a positive impact instead of spending it all on material things and lifestyle creep.

When you grow up poor and dependent on government and financial aid, and you get a chance to break that cycle and maybe even build wealth, even if it's not millionaire level "wealth," it begins with rewiring how you view and use money.

Because let's be honest: contrary to what social media influencers try to tell you about the ten easy steps to become a millionaire, it is actually harder than ever to cross the class divide, whether you're going from poverty to the middle class or from the middle class to the "wealthy" class.

And if you do, it's truly a whole new world - especially for first-generation college graduates and immigrants - to navigate building any type of wealth and an inheritance: trusts, tax planning, investments, legal entities for asset protection, charitable giving, business structuring, and all the things that those born into "wealth" seem to innately know but is a bit foreign - and sometimes even fully inaccessible - to those who grew up on the other side of the class divide.

Even with a finance and law degree and a career in tax, I still feel like I’m continuing to learn a whole new language when it comes to the financial side of building a legacy.

Yes, all of these wealth building systems and tactics are “of the world,” but in Luke 16, Jesus uses the parable of a shrewd manager to say:

“I tell you, use wordly wealth to gain friends for yourself so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will you give you property of your own?” —Luke 16:9-11

The way we treat our finances says everything about our spiritual life. We try to put money into the “worldly” category, and yet, Jesus says that if you can’t be trusted with wordly wealth, you can’t also be trusted with eternal wealth.

Why? Because it gets to the root of what you love and what kind of steward you are.

If your finances show that you love the things of the world — keeping up appearances, bigger and fancier material possessions, trying to live a certain “rich” lifestyle in how the world views “rich” — that’s when money becomes an evil thing.

That’s why when the young rich ruler came to Jesus, He told him to sell all of his possessions and give them to the poor — he loved all the wealth he had and he didn’t want to give it away.

So, that’s the key, I’m learning: viewing our finances as not something to be spent, but invested and given away.

“Instruct those who are rich in the present age not to be arrogant or to set their hope on the uncertainty of wealth, but on God, who richly provides us with all things to enjoy. Instruct them to do what is good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and willing to share, storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of what is truly life.” — 1 Timothy‬ ‭6‬:‭17‬-‭19‬ ‭

Do you see the same message in Luke 16 and in 1 Timothy 6?

Be willing to share. Give generously. Use your wordly wealth for the benefit of others. Even if it’s a little — be trustworthy with the financial means you have.

Notice also in the parable of the talents, the Master doesn’t question the servants about what they spent their talents on.

Instead, He looked for a return — what did you invest it in? How did you grow what I gave you?

That’s what building generational wealth is: investing what your parents gave you with the goal of multiplying it.

Our parents didn’t have much in terms of material wealth to give us but they found many other ways to invest in us to set us up to have more financially that they did — they moved us to the U.S., encouraged us to go to college, gave us a healthy home life and upbringing, prayed over us and instilled in us a strong work ethic.

Thanks to our parents sacrifices and investments into our future, we have more resources and opportunities to work with than they did. Now, as a parents ourselves, it’s our turn to do what we can with what God has given us to put our kids in a better position for their future families.

And it’s not just money — it’s deeper than that. It’s values, faith, habits, mindsets, networks, assets, community. It’s building a legacy with generational and eternal impact.

If you also feel called to intentionally build your family legacy and build a life of impact, this guide has some of the questions we worked through to define our family vision - praying it’s helpful for other couples.

Because I truly believe that building a legacy together as a couple is what God intended marriage to be, but many of us get so caught up blending in and keeping up, that we miss out on the unique mission God has in store for each family.

So, here’s to crossing the divide and building on what was handed down to us, so that it grows and multiplies for His glory and as a blessing for future generations.

"Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old, they will not turn from it." -Proverbs 22:6