Broke and Blessed Isn't a Business Plan: Money as Stewardship, Not Survival

By Dr. LaSonya Lopez, MD | Financial Literacy & Stewardship | 4 min read

I said it for years before I actually looked at it. Broke and blessed. Said it like a badge. Said it at brunch, said it in group texts, said it to myself in the mirror some mornings when the bank app made my stomach drop and I needed a phrase that made the drop feel spiritual instead of just scary.

Here's what I've come to understand. Blessed isn't the problem with that phrase. Broke being treated like a permanent identity instead of a temporary condition, that's the problem. One of those is a season. The other one, said enough times, becomes a belief system you build your whole financial life around without ever deciding to.

Let's have the real talk. A lot of us were handed a relationship with money that was really a relationship with survival. Get it. Spend it before it disappears. Don't plan too far ahead, because planning implies you expect to still have it. That's not a character flaw. That's an inherited posture, and most of us never sat down and asked whether it was actually still serving the life we're trying to build now.

Stewardship is a different posture entirely. Stewardship means you're not just reacting to money, you're actually deciding what it's for. That's not a savings account balance. That's a mindset shift, and honestly it's the same shift I ask patients to make with their bodies. Stop reacting to whatever's loudest in the moment. Start deciding, on purpose, what you're actually building toward.

I'm not a financial advisor, and this isn't a plan to move your money around. This is a question, one I had to sit with myself before I could say any of this out loud without feeling like a hypocrite.

Here's your deliverable, and it takes five minutes.

Pull up one recurring expense. Doesn't matter which one, subscription, habit, whatever comes to mind first. Ask yourself one honest question: is this expense something I chose on purpose, or something that's just been running on autopilot because stopping it felt like too much effort to think about.

You don't have to cancel anything today. You don't have to have a five-year plan by tonight.

You just have to notice the difference between a choice and a habit that's been quietly

making choices for you.

That's stewardship. Not a spreadsheet. Just paying attention on purpose, one decision at a time, instead of calling the whole thing blessed and hoping it sorts itself out.