Using Your Money Productively to Live Your Dreams
Kevin Turner • February 16, 2026
A Strategic Sequence to Achieve Financial Freedom
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On some level we all understand that building wealth should be more than a counting exercise. The point of building wealth is not to say you have so much money in your bank account but instead to position you to live the life you desire. Building wealth also can happen in a variety of ways. For some people, building wealth can start with freeing themselves from the burden of debt, while for others it is acquiring the assets that enable them to experience greater financial freedom. I have served on the planning team for the Financial Empowerment Conference hosted by Turner Chapel AME Church for more than the last decade, and in that time, we have put on a number of impactful programs to provide high quality financial education and resources to our audience. In 2026, we are celebrating the 15th anniversary of the Financial Empowerment Conference Series, and our theme for this year’s series brings together these concepts on wealth building with a specific intent, “Eliminate to Accumulate to Activate: Moving from Debt Into Purpose". This theme recognizes that the end goal of building wealth is not simply having your debts paid off or having a healthy sum of money you can put your hands on, but the goal is actually to allow you to do the things you desire without the restriction of money getting in the way of it. The conference will be held the weekend of March 13-15, 2026 at Turner Chapel AME Church in Marietta, Georgia, and we invite all of our readers, listeners, and those who are interested to join us for the conference in-person or virtually by registering at this link. The conference will feature Keynote Speaker, Dr. DeForest B. Soaries, a retired pastor as well as an acclaimed author and speaker, along with a panel who will speak to and answer questions on how to eliminate debt, use debt as a productive tool, and how to build wealth such that you can live the life of your dreams. As we get ready for this year’s conference, we want to highlight the importance of these principles in this issue of the newsletter as a way of laying the groundwork for those who join us for the conference and throughout the year.
Eliminating the Obstacles to Your Financial Success
While debt is a tangible issue to focus on and seek to eliminate to help you better manage your money, the truth is that there are many things that can pull us away from where we want to be financially. The issue could be the habits you’ve developed over the years or even not effectively managing your time to the point where you miss out on opportunities to create income and/or build wealth. Even when we know these things are not in our best interest, it can sometimes be difficult to make the necessary changes to put our finances on a better path. As is often said, the first step in making a turnaround is acknowledging the situation and then identifying the problem. Once you understand what needs to change, you then have to be willing to take the steps to make the change a reality. Eliminating the things that work against your interests, while difficult, can put you on the road to achieving the financial freedom you desire. Because debt is such a burden for so many people, and it is a weight that prevents them from being able to use their money in a more productive way, an area of focus for this Financial Empowerment Conference is eliminating debt. There is nothing inherently wrong with debt. In fact, when used wisely, debt can enable you to take advantage of opportunities you couldn’t otherwise, using other people’s money. The problem is that far too often, debt is used for purchases that do not have lasting value, and because of accrued interest, the amount of that burden can grow to a point where it closes off avenues that you would want to pursue. So, whether you need to eliminate debt or some other issue in your life, we encourage you to take the step of Eliminating to prepare yourself for the future you desire.
Accumulating to Tackle the Moment and Prepare for the Future
It is a law of science that a vacuum is always going to be filled with something. So, if you make the decision to eliminate something that is holding you back, if you don’t intentionally fill that space with something productive, there is a chance that you could eliminate one bad thing for another. From a financial perspective, instead of allowing the void left by your elimination of debt (or something else) to be filled with something that is not working towards your best interest, you can be intentional about your accumulation plan to put the assets or strategies in place that will transform your financial life. When you accumulate assets, you give yourself options. Some assets you acquire on the surface may not seem to be doing a lot for you, but simply by accumulating the asset, you hold something of value that at the proper time can be converted to cash and enable you to accomplish the goals you have set out to achieve. Whether those assets are financial in the form of savings and investments, tangible in the form of real estate, or intellectual in the form of a business, the accumulation of assets increases your Net Worth and affords you the ability to put capital to work without you having to create all of that value on your own, allowing you to better navigate your present circumstances and set yourself up for what you may need in the future.
Activating Your Dreams
We can probably agree that money is necessary for living in this or any society, but hopefully we can also agree that what is more important than the money itself is what it can enable us to do. If you were given the choice of being able to look at a bank account with unlimited dollars or being able to do all of the things that bring you joy for the rest of your life, you would probably choose the latter. Why? Because it’s not the money that brings you joy, it’s what the money allows you to do and the freedom you have to do it, whether it costs a little or a lot. That is why the first two pieces of this theme, Eliminate and Accumulate are important, not just because of what they do for you financially but because of how they unlock your ability to live your dreams. This conversation is similar to the one that people have around their concept of retirement, which we discussed in Volume 215 of this newsletter. To summarize, many people look forward to retiring from the work they have done for their entire career, only to find that their time in retirement didn’t live up to what they expected. They may have focused more on the idea of retirement and what they were leaving rather than what they were retiring into. If you want to be on stronger financial footing but haven’t thought about what your life would look like when that happens, it is worth giving thought to what you want to be able to do once you have achieved a greater level of financial freedom. What you will desire to do likely will be different than what others want to do, but if you can figure out what excites you and will bring you fulfillment, you will have a stronger and more sustainable motivation to take the steps financially that will put you in the position to get there. And that can make all the difference between it being a struggle to implement positive financial change and something worth embracing.
Stewardship Emphasis
“If you feel strong enough about the WHY, the WHAT doesn’t matter.” – Benjamin Pahl.
The Empowerment Channel | Volume CCXLVI | Dedicated to Promoting Financial Education through Stewardship