The Economics of the Cross

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Today's version of MoneyWise Live is pre-recorded. Matthew 27, 22, 23. Yes, indeed, it's Good Friday, a solemn day for believers when we acknowledge the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Today, host Rob West points out that while the spiritual implications are enormous, politics, and yes, even money, played a role as well. I'm Steve Moore of the Economics of the Cross.

That's next on MoneyWise Live. So Rob, today we're looking at a chapter in the book, The Maker vs. the Takers, of this book written by our good friend, economist, Jerry Boyer. Well, that's right, Steve, and we need to make clear that looking at the economics of the crucifixion in no way diminishes its spiritual importance. But as Jerry points out, understanding the economic factors behind Jesus' execution is valuable because it heightens our understanding of sin and forgiveness.

God's purpose for the crucifixion was to save mankind from sin. But there were many other actors in this drama, the priests and Herodians and the occupying Romans. For them, politics and money played a major role in the decision to murder Jesus because he threatened their monetary interests.

Yeah. All right, well, let's look first at the ruling class in Jerusalem, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. We tend to think that their only problem with Jesus was theological, that he claimed to be the Son of God made man, which was blasphemy to them, and because of that, he should die. But was that their only motivation?

No, although that was their public claim. The scriptures imply that privately, though, they had financial concerns as well. As Jerry often points out, the ruling class in Jerusalem was based on a corrupt system of extracting money from the lower classes for temple sacrifices. After Jesus drove the money changers from the temple in Mark 11, we read, Now, Jesus was exposing their corrupt system and they feared he would put an end to their affluent lifestyle.

But politics played a role as well. You see, the Judean ruling class also feared the great crowds that Jesus drew when he taught and their potential for upheaval. They governed what was essentially a puppet state of the Roman Empire, which hated political upheaval. The Herodians had a good thing going, and they worried that Rome would crack down on Israel and throw them out of power. In John 11, we read, Well, that certainly explains why the elites in Jerusalem wanted Jesus to die. But it doesn't tell us why Pilate went along with it and chose to free the insurrectionist Barabbas over Jesus, who had done nothing wrong. Yes, and that's especially interesting because Pilate had a reputation for not giving in to the elites in Jerusalem.

He detested them and accounts outside the Bible tell us that he was a committed anti-Semite. But as Jerry Boyer points out in the Maker versus the takers, Pilate was in a precarious situation. He was under suspicion in Rome for possibly being part of an attempted coup against the Emperor Tiberius that had recently been put down. The Emperor had crushed his political enemies in Rome, many of whom were part of Rome's financial class and who also held vast real estate holdings. The result was an economic collapse similar to what we saw in 2008. Many of those wealthy Romans became paupers overnight and feared for their lives. And it was among that financial class that the Roman governor, Pilate, had his main support. So he was already on thin ice when the Jerusalem elite came to him demanding that Jesus be executed. So an exasperated and fearful Pilate simply washed his hands, literally, of the entire affair, laying the blame on the Jews.

Well, that's exactly right. In Matthew 27, it reads, Then he released Barabbas for them, but after having Jesus scourged, he delivered him to be crucified. And while Jesus' death is heartbreaking, on Sunday, we celebrate his glorious resurrection and the unspeakable gift of his grace that opened the gates of heaven to believers. Amen and amen. Thanks so much, Rob. It's Good Friday and you're listening to MoneyWise Live, but today we're not live. So if you hear that phone number, please don't call. But do stick around.

Lots of good information ahead. We'll be right back. Hey, we're sure to appreciate you being with us today, a very special day. Good Friday.

He's Rob West. I'm Steve Moore, and we're here taking some calls that we have lined up well in advance. So let's begin.

Middletown, Maryland. Amy, thanks so much for your patience. What's on your mind? Well, thank you for taking my call.

I enjoyed listening to your program. My husband and I are thinking we should probably get some life insurance. We're in our mid 20s. We have two little girls. We recently bought a home, and so we think it would probably be a good idea to get some, at least on him.

And we were wondering if you had any suggestions as to who a reputable company would be to look into. Yeah, well, I love the way you're thinking, Amy. Congrats on your new home, your little ones. It sounds like you all have an exciting life. And I love that you're thinking about your role as provider. And I think insurance is part of the way we do that to make sure we are providing for our families. Because if your husband is the one who's out working and you're at home, then we want to be sure we can replace his income if something were to happen to him.

And as a starting point, 10 to 12 times his income would be a good rule of thumb. If you're working, we certainly want the same on you. If you're not in your home with your little ones, we want to think about perhaps a policy on you as well.

And here's why. If something were to happen to you and he's continuing to work to pay the bills and provide for your children, then he's going to have to put them in daycare full time. And that can be expensive. And so that would provide when we invest the proceeds of that life insurance, that would provide some income to supplement those additional costs.

So that wouldn't be a burden. The good news is, Amy, as a young family, you all can get term life insurance very inexpensively. You can get a 20 or 30 year policy and you really won't add a whole lot to your spending plan. Where to go to get it? Well, I would encourage you not to buy from someone who's a direct insurance company.

It's just not my preferred approach. I'd rather you use either a local independent insurance agent who represents a number of insurance companies and can find the company that's the best fit for you. The high rated company with the proper amount of insurance that fits your budget. And the other option would be to look at an independent online broker.

I think you could go either way. Now, my preference is to work with somebody face to face so they can actually walk you through the process of doing a little bit of planning, making sure you understand exactly what you're getting and what the right amount is for you all, given your situation and perhaps any unusual situations you might have that need to be explored as a part of the planning process. And then that person can go out and find the very best policy for you. You could begin the search online just to have a number of options to compare it to. And then if you don't have an insurance agent, you could go to two places. One is you could go to our website MoneyWiseLive.org and click find a professional and look for a certified kingdom advisor in the insurance area. If you have one in your area, great.

If not, you could check at your local church and just ask for a referral to somebody from the church who specializes in this area and is an independent insurance agent and they would be able to assist you with some life insurance. But you're asking the right questions and hopefully what I shared with you is helpful to you. Yes, thank you. Amy, we're not against any specific insurance companies, but we are suggesting that when you deal with an agent who only represents one company, you don't always get the best price.

If you're dealing with someone who represents multiple companies, there are lots more opportunities and quite frankly, some competition going on that may ultimately help you get a better price. All right. Okay, thank you. All right.

Thanks, Amy. And Rob, one thing we did mention, for younger couples, most often, nine times out of ten term insurance, typically the better option, right? It is because that way, Steve, you can make sure that you get the proper amount of coverage with the lowest impact financially on the family budget and then be sure you're saving separately by putting money away not only in your emergency fund, but in a matched company sponsored retirement plan or a Roth IRA or both. Remember, the goal there is 10 to 15 percent. If you do that throughout your working years, you'll get to a place when you're ready to retire and ask God for your next assignment, you'll be at a place where you don't need insurance because you are self-insured.

You have everything saved up that's going to be able to fund your lifestyle. I like it. And we're glad that you're listening today to our special Good Friday edition of MoneyWise Live. Let's continue. Dexter, Missouri.

Susie, what's your question today? I don't have a whole lot of financial sense at all. Right now, I'm sitting on a pretty good amount of student loan debt. I'm still going to college. I have a little bit in a 401k that I just opened up recently, so I'm starting to learn to save, but my credit is awful.

I'm wanting to try to get my debt and my credit straightened out and I just don't know where to start. Okay. Well, Susie, you've come to the right place. First of all, let me just encourage you. I sense in your voice that you're frustrated.

You don't quite know where to turn. I realize the pressure that debt can bring as that mounts up. And I think the starting place is just to give that over to the Lord and say, regardless of whatever mistakes I've made in the past, Lord, I want to trust you implicitly. Thank you for your word, which gives me principles that I can live by as I manage your money as a steward of that. And God, thank you that you're my provider, because he is not the government, not your employer, not your parents, nobody else. It's ultimately God who provides for you. And our job is just to be found faithful with whatever he's given you, however much or however little day by day, be content with God's provision and make the very best decisions you can within the principles that he's provided.

And the good news is there's 2350 verses in the scripture that tell us how to do it. And we'll help you apply some of those today. So let's start by talking about a few of the things you mentioned. Number one is you mentioned you have some student loans. How much do you have in the way of student loans? Well, right now I have 23,000 in student loans. I'm almost done with my bachelor's and I still got a master's to go. All right. And are you working while you're going to school?

Yes, I have a really good job. It's just I'm so far behind on everything. I'm just trying to figure out how to get saving and I don't tithe and I'm trying to get into doing that like I should and just get everything paid up and straightened out. And I just don't know where to start.

Yeah, I can certainly appreciate that. Are those student loans deferred or are you paying on them actively? They are deferred. I paid a couple of payments because I went past the six months. But right now, most of them are the subsidized, probably about 20% or 15% of them are unsubsidized and I'm not paying on any of them because they're deferred.

Okay, very good. And do you have any credit card debt? I have around 6,000 in credit card debt and then I've got about seven or 8,000 in loans. Okay, what type of loans are those?

Basically, I got them to try to build my credit and then my father died and I had to borrow more to help pay for the funeral. All right. I've got that. Now, what about any savings? Do you have some savings of any kind? Right now, I do not have anything other than my 401k.

Okay, all right. Are you actively contributing to that 401k? Yes, I put my company matches up to 5% so I put what my company matches in there. Okay, and what is that amount that's going in there each month? Oh, it depends.

My paycheck varies somewhere between $100 and $150 maybe. Okay, all right. I'm going to encourage you as much as I like you funding retirement and as much as I don't want to give up the match, that's not the priority place for that money in my opinion. You're young, you'll have plenty of time to save.

We want to establish that discipline at some point but now is not the time. I think we need to get to the place where you have a balanced budget and where you're making some progress toward at the very least building up some emergency savings because that's long-term money and we need money in the short term. So I would suspend that 401k contribution right now if it were me. The next thing I would do is take that money and automatically start applying that to savings. We want to continue to pay the minimums on the credit cards and the loan that you have, anything that is active and not deferred but we want to put the rest into your emergency savings so open a savings account.

You could do that at Marcus or you could do that at Capital One 360 or Ally Bank. Attach it to your checking account and get an automatic debit of $150 a month going in there. Once you get to $1,500, let's cut that off. That's going to give you your cushion so that if something else comes up, let me change that, when something else comes up unexpectedly, you've got that money to fall back on. Then we're going to look at the credit cards.

Now, let's take an aside here. If you don't have a spending plan, we've got to do that before any of this and that's going to involve you really tracking your expenses for 30 days so you get a good sense of what you're spending on, both discretionary and the fixed expenses, those things you get a bill for. Once you know what that budget looks like, you've got to have a system to control it and that's where the MoneyWise app comes in. It's a digital envelope system. The old tried and true envelope system is the best way to control your money.

With our new MoneyWise app that you'll find in your app store, you can connect it to your institutions, download your transactions, they get automatically categorized into your envelopes. Here's the key, at any point in the month, you can open it up and see what's left in an envelope so when you reach the end of what's available in that envelope, you can stop spending. We're going to want to prioritize paying off those credit cards. Once the credit cards are gone, we're going to build that savings up to three months expenses and you're going to really feel some progress being made here.

Then I would re-institute that retirement account to take full advantage of the match as soon as the credit cards are paid off and then take the rest because we're not paying the credit cards anymore so you should have a little left over and we're going to apply that to pay extra on the personal loan, then the student loans once you start playing on those. If you need help with all this, get connected with one of our MoneyWise live coaches at MoneyWiseLive.org. And Suzy, we're going to send you a complimentary copy of Howard Dayton's book, Your Money Counts, you stay on the line. This is MoneyWise Live with Rob West, I'm Steve Moore, back with more after this. Great to have you with us today, this is MoneyWise Live, he's Rob West, I'm Steve Moore and Rob, if I'm not mistaken, I think this is our second Good Friday together since this crazy crazy pandemic began and obviously things seem to be getting better but they're not where we want them to be but that doesn't mean that we aren't blessed by having Good Friday and Easter and that continues until Christ returns. Well that's exactly right Steve, no matter where you are in the country, whether you're in a place that's still completely socially distancing or maybe you're gathering with folks and it's looking a bit like it did before the pandemic, remember this is the most crucial day and weekend of the year for believers, it literally changed the world. Amen to that. Okay Rob, with your permission we'll take some calls, don't forget today's program is pre-recorded.

Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Barbara, welcome to the program, what's on your mind? Appreciate you guys, I listen to you all the time but I'm 70 years old and I want to work full-time for the rest of my life of course because that's my favorite voice but what I'm concerned about was the Medicare, whether I'm required to take Medicare since my company pays insurance for me full-time or am I going to get a penalty for Medicare? I think related to the Medicare, if you're over 65 and you receive coverage under a group health plan provided by an employer that you're actively working at, you have the right in most cases to delay Medicare enrollment until the job ends or the coverage ends, whichever occurs first, at that point you'd be entitled to a special enrollment period of up to eight months to sign up for Medicare without risking the late penalties. Now if you are required to sign up and you don't, then you'll be left with little or no health coverage so it's really important to find out from your employer whether you need to enroll in Medicare and if you don't find out exactly how the employer coverage fits in with Medicare if you're told you don't get that decision in writing. So I think that's really the idea is to go back to your employer just to confirm all of this but generally speaking in your situation where you have coverage and you are working, you would be able to delay taking Medicare. Okay, so my employer is a non-profit and I have a 403b and I wanted to know if I am required at 70 and a half to take that distribution.

Yes, so as a 403b plan participant you have to take an annual required minimum distribution starting by April 1st after the calendar year you turn 70 and a half and you can get that amount from the IRS based on their tables but you will absolutely have to take that RMD at that point. Barbara, we do appreciate your call. Thank you so very much.

An interesting call as most of our calls and questions are. Don't forget that if you miss hearing an answer or if there's a question you've always been wondering about but you're just having trouble getting through on the phone lines you can find lots of our radio programs archived now in those radio archives over the past year as you can imagine there are all sorts of questions and when you have free time you can go back and check those out yourself. Now, how do I get to radio archives you ask?

Well, it's easy just go to MoneyWiseLive.org, MoneyWiseLive.org you'll find links to free resources, budget templates, things like that and also a list of all of our radio archives MoneyWiseLive.org. Aurora, Illinois. Devante, thanks for holding. You want to pay off your car or something. What's going on? Hello, how are you guys doing today? Very good.

Wonderful, thanks. Oh yeah, so I currently still owe $8,000 on my car and I usually put away $300 into my savings. I was wondering if I should just, you know, check the debt all at once with my savings or just keep it how I am doing right now. Yeah, do you have an emergency savings right now separate from this $300 you have extra? Yes, I currently have about maybe around $3,500 or so in my savings for emergencies. Okay, and how many months expenses would that represent for you?

Probably maybe two to three months. I'm not 100% sure. Okay, let's try to get that up to three months expenses. Do you have any other debt besides the auto loan? No, just the auto loan. Okay, and are you saving for retirement?

Not at the moment. Okay, so I would just pay the minimum on the auto loan, let's make sure you have a good spending plan, and then let's start putting 10% to 15% away for retirement. And if you have anything left over, then let's add that to the auto loan at that point. But you're moving in the right direction, Devante. We appreciate your call and hope that helps you. Thanks so much. This is MoneyWise Live with Rob West back with more of our Friday edition of MoneyWise Live. Don't go away. Hope you're having a great day so far and that you and your family will have a wonderful weekend coming up as well. Let's go right back to our phones.

Now, Chad Neuge in Tennessee. Hi, Jo, what's on your mind? Hi, I just had a quick question for you guys. My father is a retired widowed missionary. And I just feel like he's been having a hard time keeping his finances up since his retirement.

And he is now financially struggling because of that. And I'm trying to help him get stuff in order. Yes.

Jo, what is your main question that we can help with today? Just kind of how do you come alongside him to help him get things organized or something else? Pretty much that. And he before I moved him up here with me in Tennessee, he traded he thought he was trading in his car and come to find out the dealership didn't do it that way. They put it as a abandoned vehicle and sold him another car on top of that.

Oh, no. Yeah. So now he owes for the car he had and the one he previously had.

OK. Have you taken time to get a proper accounting of everything he owes to various people and put a budget together to see what it's actually going to take to make payments toward paying those off in addition to any other living expenses he has? I have not done that yet, but I have started. OK.

I think that's the next place. First of all, Jo, I'm delighted to hear that he has you in his life. What a blessing for you to come alongside him.

I'm sure some of this is overwhelming, especially with your mom passing away a few years ago. I think that is the starting point is to first of all, make a list of his assets, any accounts that he has, all the logins, the websites, just get a proper accounting of what's there and then figure out what he owes to anybody. I'd pull a copy of each of the three credit reports from the three credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. He can do that at AnnualCreditReport.com.

Make a list of those. And if there's an active payment, you want to know what that is. If it's an old debt, you'll want to, once you have your budget in place, you'll want to contact each of those folks and work out a repayment plan. Next, you want to get a proper spending plan in place that says, OK, what are the expenses he has on a monthly basis? You'll probably need to track those for one or two months to make sure you have everything and then add in the payments to keep all the debts current and hopefully make some progress on them. I think that's the beginning point.

If you need some help with that, you could visit with our friends at ChristianCreditCounselors.org or you could connect with one of our Money Wise coaches. They'll walk alongside you as you put all this information together. And then I think if there's any unique questions or concerns that you have after you've done that, feel free to give us a call back and we'll see if we can help. I appreciate that. Thank you. OK, Joe. Lord bless you. Thank you, Joe. We appreciate that.

Spokane, Washington. Hello, Robert. What's in your mind?

Hi, guys. Thank you for taking my call. Happy to. When my mother passed away about 20 years ago, I was given an inheritance of an irrevocable trust in my name only. And my wife and I have used that trust for various distributions, most recently to pay off our mortgage. So we're now debt free.

So that's all good. The value of the trust now is such that it's insufficient for the trustee to continue administration. And what they intend to do now is to terminate the trust and give me the distribution of what's left, which is about fourteen thousand dollars. Each year, I get a K-1 for income tax purposes. When this final disbursement is given to me, will I have any other tax liabilities other than receiving the K-1?

Yeah. Well, you're going to want to check with your tax preparer on that. If there are taxes to be paid, they would be levied at the same rate as any other type of inherited asset. I'm not a CPA, and so I think it's really critical when we talk about taxes on inheritance, especially where there's an irrevocable trust involved, that you understand the full implications of that.

Of course, the K-1 is going to be recognized, and you already understand that. But in terms of anything else, I would really visit with a professional who can look at exactly the situation, how it was set up, what you've received, and then let you know what kind of liability is there. If you don't have a tax preparer or CPA that you work with, Robert, I'd encourage you to go to our website, MoneyWiseLive.org.

You can look for a certified Kingdom Advisor in the tax and accounting area. And whether you want to get somebody to actually prepare the return or just help you navigate this specific issue, either could be done. And I'd feel more comfortable with you getting that kind of advice rather than weighing in without knowing all the details. Sure. Well, fine.

Thanks very much, and I'll take that into consideration. Okay, Robert. Thanks for listening and thanks for your call today. We appreciate it. Thank you, Robert.

And because trusts and wills can sometimes be a confusing topic, Michelle is on the line now, and she's got something related to a trust, right? Very good, Michelle. We're so glad you called. How can we help today?

Thank you for taking my call. I'm in the process of looking at retirement. All of it, all of the stuff involved with it. Within a couple of years, I'll be retired. Our total assets will be under $400,000 overall, house and everything. So we're in the process of trying to figure out which is better, a will or a trust. And we currently have a will.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you definitely need a will. The question is whether you need a trust as well. And the person who prepared your will could help you understand that the main difference between the will and the trust is that the will only goes into effect after you die.

The trust can take effect as soon as you create it. So the will that you have that directs who will receive your property at your death and appoints the legal representative to carry out your wishes. The trust though, because I mentioned it can actually go into effect before death. It can be used to begin distributing property before death, at death or even beyond that. And it's a way to have legal title held by another person and then set a beneficiary of that. It's critical that you have the will.

So I'm glad that you do. The trust would be something that you may not need. And that would be something that I think the estate planning attorney who put this together could help you with. One of the benefits is that it passes outside of probate. So a court doesn't oversee the process which can save time and money. It also doesn't become a part of the public record.

So it can remain private. They can also be used for dependents who need money dispersed over a period of time. Those types of things where you want to give special instructions so that the beneficiary can receive the proceeds at your discretion.

But in some cases none of those situations are real beneficial. And so the cost of creating the trust is just unnecessary. So I would feel most comfortable though for you to go back to that estate planning attorney and say can you take a look at this for us and tell us whether we would benefit from a trust and then get some legal counsel on that. If that's an old relationship, you've not been back to that person and you want to look for somebody else, you could get a recommendation from your church for a godly estate planning attorney. Perhaps that's a good time to review your will as well and your beneficiary designations on retirement accounts to make sure that those are current and up to date at the same time you talk about the trust. Michelle, a great question and we're happy to hear that you're at least getting into this line of thinking and addressing wills and trusts. Still a majority of people in this country don't have wills. They know they need one but for various reasons they don't and that will hurt you in the long run.

It's not good stewardship certainly. This is MoneyWise Live with Rob West. I'm Steve Moore and we'll come back and chat some more after this. Welcome back to MoneyWise Live and because I have lots of blinking lights in my view, let's take another phone call. Fort Payne, Alabama and Sharon, welcome to the program. What's on your mind?

Thank you for taking my call. Yes, I just want to know about health insurance and maybe where I could find some cheap, reliable health insurance. Well that's the question of the decade Sharon, I'll tell you. Cheap, reliable health insurance. Have I had a good answer for that?

Well actually I do. So it's not insurance so I'm going to give you two choices. One that we really like is an insurance, a health insurance alternative. We're big fans of Christian Healthcare Ministries. There are others like it and they're all similar but Christian Healthcare Ministries for example covers doctor and hospital visits as well as physical therapy.

It covers medicines that are prescribed for specific short-term treatments but not for long-term maintenance medicines like blood pressure medication or insulin. Most who use it find that their out-of-pocket expenses are a lot lower on an annual basis. Then getting comparable coverage through traditional health insurance as a part of the Affordable Care Act and so that would be a place that I would go to look at as one alternative. You can find them at chministries.org and you can read all the details. If you're looking for traditional health insurance Sharon, I would start if you don't have access to a company-sponsored plan, I would start with an independent health insurance agent. So this would be an insurance agent who's independent, who represents a number of different companies, probably all the big carriers, and specializes in health insurance and can help you evaluate all of the different coverage options. It will probably not be cheap just because health insurance costs are not these days and a lot of people are finding out how expensive they are when they're not getting it under a subsidized company-sponsored plan and that's why Christian Healthcare Ministries is so attractive, but I think either one of those options could serve you well. Okay, you said ehministries.com?

chministries, Christian Healthcare Ministries, chministries.org. Oh, okay. Yes, ma'am. All right, thank you for your call today. Lord bless you. Thanks very much. Let's continue on.

Arthur is in Akron, Ohio and what's on your mind today, Art? Well, thanks for taking my call. Hope you can hear me okay. Yes, sir.

Yes, we can. Okay, I'm calling about, I'll be 65 next year and I've owned my company for the past 23 years and I don't know if I should sign up for the Social Security or not or transfer my company over to my son's name. They work for me now and they have a college fund set up for them as well as myself having a 401k and an IRA, but they're only 10 and 12. Okay. What is the, help me understand a little bit of what you're thinking here. I understand the question about whether or not you should file for Social Security, but what are you asking about specifically related to the business? Right. What if I, I don't know when I should file for it, but is it the best thing to do? And if so, would it be okay to sign my company over to my son's name and have them pay me for working for them? Yeah, yeah.

Okay. Well, there's a whole host of issues related to that that you're going to want to look at, valuation and tax considerations are two that come to mind immediately that you'll need to consider. Also cashflow of the business, their ability to perhaps buy you out, whether there's going to be any estate considerations that need to play in here. So plus your charitable desires would be another factor.

So in terms of what is the right place and time to transfer a family business to family members, and then how to do it in a way that minimizes taxes and maximizes the benefits to all involved, recognizing whether you want to get an income stream for the rest of your life, or whether you want them to buy you out, or if you're just handing it down as an inheritance, and then we've got to deal with gift tax issues, there's just a number of factors there to consider. With regard to the Social Security, that's really a function of whether or not you can wait. Once you reach full retirement age, every year beyond that until age 70 that you wait, you'll get about an 8% increase. And so it's like the government giving you a government guaranteed 8% return on your money, and as long as you have good health, and the Lord tarries, we find that that makes a lot of sense financially, just because you'll collect that larger check by 8% a year for the rest of your life. And if you're still working and you don't need the money, that's where that can make a lot of sense. Going back to the business, what I would do is visit with a financial planner who could help you think through all of the implications related to taxes, estate planning, and the needs that you have, as well as your desires for your children, and really do a deep dive into how that should be structured.

I would also say, I'd really encourage you to visit with somebody who understands your values. That's why we recommend a Certified Kingdom Advisor, because for instance, if you are going to transfer the ownership of your business, you'll want to factor in your charitable desires, because you can actually take a portion of the business, put it into a donor-advised fund, and create a really exciting tax-advantaged giving vehicle at the same time that can make a lot of sense. So that's where some real planning can occur, and it's far more complex than we can get into here on the radio. Rob, would splitting heirs get into this area of leaving an inheritance, the spiritual and the business side of things, would that be helpful at all? Well, there'd be some great principles there. Steve's referring to Ron Blue's book, Splitting Heirs, where he unpacks the principles around inheritance and wealth transfer from a biblical perspective, and there would be certainly some wonderful principles that you could apply to this situation.

But some of these issues related to the business would not be covered and really would involve a financial planner. That's great, because now I know I need to work to 70, because my health is excellent. Great. Great information, great information. Thank you so much. Okay, Arthur. Lord bless you. Thanks for calling. Thanks, Arthur. We appreciate that.

Let's quickly move to Grand Rapids and Irma. We know you've been holding. I understand you want to get rid of some credit cards, huh?

Or maybe. I do, I do. All right, go right ahead. Okay, I'm retired, 74 years old. I work on the Title V program, and I have five credit cards. I know that I would keep one and you maybe two, but I don't want it to hinder my credit score. But I did hear something about you can lock your credit for something like that. And I do have a card that I can pay off probably next month. So I don't know what I should do or how I should go about.

Sure. Irma, are you carrying beyond this one that you'll pay off next month? Do you carry any other balances or do you pay them off in full? One credit card and it's probably the balance is under $20.

Okay, very good. So the biggest issue that happens when you close a card that will affect you negatively is something called credit utilization, which just basically means when you reduce the available credit, which is what's going to happen when you close the accounts because that money is no longer available to you, then if you're carrying a balance, the balance you're carrying is a higher percentage of the total credit you have access to. And if it gets above 30%, that really could impact you negatively.

That's not going to be a factor here because you're not carrying a balance. So if you take three of them off the table, you're not any higher percentage because you have no balances. The other issue is just the longevity of the accounts that you have, the average length of the accounts. But most of the credit scoring models now still factor in the age or the history of the account, even though the account is closed. So what I would do is just close two every six months. So I'd probably close two now and then wait six months and do the third one. Other than that, I wouldn't have any concern over your credit.

If you saw a minor drop in your credit score, it would bounce back within a couple of months. Irma, we wish you the best. Thanks very much. Laura, we know you've been holding. We're almost out of time.

Give it to us quickly if you can. Well, my husband and I are working on paying off our mortgage, and we'd like to do that within the next 10 years before we retire. We have enough surplus that we could make a considerable monthly payment, and I don't know whether it's to our advantage to just keep putting that money back and then pay it, you know, a couple times a year like we have been, or if it's better for us to set an extra amount each month and just make that payment as though it's part of the mortgage.

And yeah, Laura, I love this idea. And as long as you have your emergency fund in place, you're on track with your other savings goals, I think starting to really focus on reducing that mortgage is a great idea. If you have the money to do it, you build it into your plan, there's no reason to wait. You have no benefit of sending a larger amount twice a year versus sending as much as you can with your regularly scheduled payment, because as soon as you pay toward principal, as long as they're applying it that way and you'll want to check with your mortgage servicer to make sure you send it in such a way that they're applying it immediately. But as long as they are, that's money that you're not paying interest on for the life of the loan. And the quicker you reduce that principal, the quicker you're reducing the overall amount of interest that you're paying.

So I would go ahead and send it monthly and I would just make sure you contact your servicer to find out how they want you to do it so it can be applied to the principal of the mortgage. Yes, Rob. But over the years, how many people have we spoken to who regretted paying off their mortgage early? Let me count to zero. And that's the correct answer. And with that, just a few seconds left here. Today is Good Friday, a day of death, a day of sorrow, but also leading to a wonderful day, Easter, a day of redemption, which brings us not only spiritual freedom, but freedom, abundant life and the freedom from financial bondage. And we can praise God for all of that. Well, we sure can, Steve.

This is the day where we know that Sunday is coming and that Jesus has conquered death and that in that we have life. Amen. God bless you, Rob. Thanks so much. This program MoneyWise Live is a partnership between Moody Radio and MoneyWise Media. My thanks to our production staff today doing wonderful work. For Rob West, I'm Steve Moore. Hoping you and yours have a wonderful remainder of the day. Then join us again next time.