Dear friends,
When I launched NextGenSteward here on Substack, my goal was simple: to get up and running quickly with a platform that made it easy to publish and share content with younger Christian adults about faith, money, and stewardship. Substack was great for that—it let me focus on writing and publishing quickly, not setting up and managing a website.
Since then, I’ve published about 60 articles here, covering the topics I originally envisioned: income, taxes, investing, spending, giving, and the biblical foundations of stewardship. It’s been a joy to write them and hear from many of you along the way.
Substack is a great platform, but it is best suited to long-form essays and blogs, not how I structured NextGenSteward. I may add a new article here and there, but it is more likely that I will update an existing one due to economic or tax law changes.
So, now it’s time to think long-term, and I am making some changes. But, “why change it?”, you may ask. Well, for many years, my primary focus has been my WordPress blog, RetirementStewardship.com.
That site primarily targets middle-aged and older readers, but its content overlaps significantly with what I’ve written here—especially for younger adults planning ahead and for older readers looking to support their children and grandchildren.
The reverse is also true. While NextGenSteward was designed for younger adults, I thought many of my “retirement” readers might find the articles here useful—especially those about giving, investing, and taxes. Some of the content applies to every stage of life.
The more I thought about it, the more it made sense to consolidate everything under one roof. To do that, I considered two main options:
Move everything to Substack (including RetirementStewardship.com).
Move the Substack content to the Retirement Stewardship WordPress site.
In the end, I chose option 2.
Why WordPress Instead of Substack? I like Substack. It’s simple, clean, and made for writing. But WordPress gives me more flexibility, more control, and more ways to present content in an organized and reader-friendly way.
I’ll admit, WordPress comes with challenges—there’s more to manage, and it can be costly. Recently, I migrated my site to a cloud-hosted installation where I can adjust the CPU, memory, and storage myself. It wasn’t for the faint of heart (dealing with DNS and URLs will test your patience), but it cut costs, improved performance, and gave me a setup I can easily maintain going forward.
I also took the opportunity to refresh the site with a new theme. The homepage now highlights the major topic areas with colorful buttons and easier, straightforward navigation. It’s still the same blog at its core—just a little fresher and easier to explore. Take a look:
I Set Up NextGenSteward on the WordPress site differently than someone normally would. Rather than add these 60 articles to the 250+ already on RetirementStewardship.com, I wanted to preserve their flow and purpose. From the beginning, I designed NextGenSteward much like a curriculum, with each article building on the last, organized in topical categories.
To keep that structure, I used a WordPress plugin called SmartDocs to create a dedicated “sub-site” within RetirementStewardship.com. Think of it like an online course: the articles are organized by “lever” (Income, Taxes, Investing, Spending, Giving, etc.), with navigation that lets you read straight through or jump into any topic. Here’s what the NGS/SmartDocs “home page” on Retirement Stewardship looks like:
And here’s one of the topical sections (E—Your Income). Notice that all the articles in that “lever” section are displayed with the other sections in the right margin.
Finally, if you click on an article, this is what you’ll see. It will look almost identical to the Substack content:
If you visit the Retirement Stewardship homepage, you’ll see a button in the far right of the top nav bar. It will take you directly to the NextGenSteward section. Once there, you’ll see the full library of articles, neatly grouped and easy to browse, as I described above.
I set up the SmartDocs to function as a “sub-site” on retirementstewardship.com. Because of the way that system works, it uses a separate subscriber list from the main blog. I have NOT migrated this Substack email list to SmartDocs as I didn’t want to do that without your permission. So, if you’d like to continue to receive email notifications for new or updated content, please subscribe to the NGS/SmartDocs newsletter here:
While you’re there, take a look around retirementstewardship.com. If you’d also like to receive my regular blog articles, most of which focus on retirement planning, stewardship in later life, generosity, and other financial topics, you can subscribe to the main Retirement Stewardship email list as well. That way, you’ll have access to both streams of content: the NextGenSteward “SmartDocs” curriculum and my ongoing articles for a broader audience. Many readers find that even if some posts don’t apply right away, others will prove timely and practical much sooner than expected.
If you’ve been following along here, I hope you’ll join me there. You’ll still be able to subscribe by email and get updates when new articles are published. Plus, you can see everything—NextGenSteward and Retirement Stewardship—in one place, which might help you.
Even though you’re younger and much of the content on Retirement Stewardship seems aimed at those further along in life, I’d still encourage you to subscribe. You may not need every article right now, but many of the topics—like investing, giving, taxes, and the foundations of biblical stewardship—will apply to you sooner than you think. And you may even find some of the “later life” articles helpful as you walk alongside parents or grandparents. I hope that wherever you are on your financial journey, you’ll find wisdom, encouragement, and practical help.
But that’s not all; I have some more good news. Some of you suggested I turn this content into a book—and I agreed. Since the writing was already done, I reformatted it to be more “book-like” with subheadings, etc., and published it on Amazon.
The result is a book available in Kindle, paperback, and a free downloadable PDF (get it HERE). The Kindle version keeps the original color cartoons; the PDF and paperback have them in black-and-white (the latter to keep printing costs low). I’ve priced both Amazon versions as low as possible to make this material as accessible as possible for everyone.
One more thing: Since I registered and linked a custom domain (nextgensteward.co) to the Substack, I am going to redirect it to the Retirement Stewardship sub-site in Smart Docs (https://retirementstewardship.com/nextgensteward/). If you use that URL, you’ll notice the change very soon. I will keep the Substack in place for a short time (at nextgensteward.substack.com), but then I will archive it.
Thank you for being part of this Substack journey. Your encouragement, feedback, and readership have been a blessing. This isn’t an ending—it’s just a move to a new home. My hope is that this will make it easier for you (and others) to access everything I’ve written, whether you’re a younger adult just starting out or further along and looking for wisdom to finish well or assist others.
I look forward to seeing you at RetirementStewardship.com/NextGenSteward and RetirementStewardship.com!