Kerby Anderson
As December 2024 is winding down, many Americans begin to think about their finances. First, they are considering what donations they might make before the end of the year. Second, they are looking to 2025 and thinking about developing a financial plan. Unfortunately, many of us don’t get past just thinking about developing a plan.
If you are eager to put together a sound financial plan, I recommend Forging Financial Freedom by Chad Hufford. He sets forth seven wealth building lessons he has learned. He argues that financial freedom is not a finish line. He reminds us that “when retirement is your finish line, there is a tendency to put life on ‘pause’ until you realize that achievement.”
He recommends that you get busy “framing your future,” which requires clarity and persistence. You should put your future together, one piece at a time. And you should also know when “enough is enough” by “creating balance along your financial journey.”
Another of his recommendations is to “farm your orchard.” He explains that wealth is like an orchard. When a farmer plants an orchard, the trees are small and produce little fruit. Financial productivity is a long process. Unfortunately, some people are “gambling when they should be farming.”
An important financial battle takes place in your mind. That why he talks about “winning the war in your mind.” Quoting Hebrews 12:1, he encourages us to lay aside encumbrances. Often addition comes from subtraction.
Finally, he reminds us that “persistence beats perfection.” The pressure of perfect can cause us to try to tackle too much, which is unsustainable. We need to develop healthy habits and a healthy lifestyle.
Your financial future is in your hands. Get a copy of Forging Financial Freedom and get to work.

Penna Dexter
The troubled Boeing Company got a new CEO in August. Early on, Kelly Ortberg began winding down DEI at Boeing. DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — has been around for decades. Diversity requires the elevation of immutable differences — like race, age, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual orientation. Equity —often mistaken for equal opportunity — emphasizes equal outcomes. In favor of achieving these, employee merit is necessarily de-emphasized and therein lies the seed of DEI’s failure.
After the death of George Floyd in 2020, Fortune 500 companies launched or beefed up their DEI initiatives. But, when companies that build things take their eye off the ball, quality suffers.
For Boeing, which designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, 2024 brought massive problems, including the midair separation of a panel from an Alaska Airlines plane, difficulties accessing quality parts, flawed flight control software, a 7–week labor strike, and a severe cash crunch.
A Boeing insider told documentary filmmaker and writer, Christopher Rufo, “An organization can prioritize excellence or diversity, but not both simultaneously.” He said, “DEI is the drop in the bucket, and the whole bucket changes. It is anti-excellence, because it is ill-defined, but it became part of the culture.”
That’s why Kelly Ortberg quietly dismantled Boeing’s DEI department.
Another American corporate giant: the country’s number one employer, Walmart announced it is abandoning DEI.
The Washington Stand reports that when DEI warrior Robby Starbuck began investigating Walmart’s policies, company executives “reached out to him.”
The company has announced it will no longer participate in the Human Rights Campaign’s LGBT shakedown campaign: the Corporate Equality Index. It pledged to remove inappropriate sexual and/or transgender products, and to cancel racial equity initiatives.
Walmart joins a growing list of companies rejecting DEI. American businesses are realizing that the woke DEI agenda is polarizing and stifling for businesses. Some are choosing to return to simply running a business.
Chris Rufo affirms, “A reckoning is underway in corporate America.”