Wise Women Managing Money

Today on Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, a practical topic on women and finances. Women oversee 51% of the wealth of our country now.

It's good stewardship to prepare. Many ladies might say, hey, I don't want to know about that. I don't want to manage the finances.

But the reality is, they probably will. Welcome to Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller, "The 5 Love Languages" . As we'll hear today, more and more women are taking responsibility for their finances.

Some are forced to do it because of the death of a spouse. How can you be wise with your money? We'll talk about that with two guests today, a mother and daughter team who want to give practical and biblical advice from their own experiences and study.

Miriam Neff and Valerie Hogan are straight ahead on today's broadcast. Featured resource is their website, wisewomenmanagingmoney.com. We have a link to that at fivelovelanguages.com. And Gary, I think this is going to be a really helpful conversation today. Well, Chris, I'm looking forward to it, not only for women, but the men that might be listening too.

Listen, all of us could use a little help on how to manage money, okay? But I am glad that this mom and this daughter have come together and are putting out materials that are going to really be helpful to women. I mean, it's addressed primarily to women.

And it's not just widows, it can be others as well. But I'm excited about our conversation today. I am too. I've seen the website.

It's just, the videos there are so specific and they're short and you can go from one to the other. Let me introduce them. Miriam Neff, a great friend of Moody Radio, former high school teacher, counselor, the author of eight books, including From One Widow to Another, Conversations on the New You and Women and Their Emotions. Miriam currently teaches a Bible study for widows. She's the founder and president of Widow Connection, widowconnection.com. And she has several projects for widows in Africa.

Her one-minute feature, New Beginnings, is heard on more than 1,200 outlets across the country. She's also an adventurer and a conference speaker. Her daughter, Valerie Neff Hogan, works with National Christian Foundation, Orchard Ministry Development and Widow Connection as well. She holds a law degree and the certified financial planner designation. For the past 20 years, she has helped lead groups and individuals toward good stewardship with Christian Financial Concepts and then Crown Financial and Financial Peace University. She loves to help people move toward financial freedom so they can be more generous and do more ministry. She's married, they have three children, and she's the daughter of Bob and Miriam Neff.

I mentioned that. The website again, wisewomenmanagingmoney.com. Well, Miriam and Valerie, thanks for joining us on Building Relationships. We're glad to be with you today.

Thank you for having us with you. Well, Miriam, we've talked about the impact of your husband, Bob, and your father, Valerie, on Christian Radio and his vision for the outreach of Moody Radio. This topic of women and finances is something you've actually lived with, right, Miriam?

Oh, for sure. And, you know, Bob and I did our budgeting together and sat down at the end of the month. And I had a good handle on some things. And then when he went to heaven, one of the things I hadn't done was investing. And, Gary, I've come to absolutely love that. I love working with the portfolio. And I've learned so many things about the fact that you can do things that you never needed to do.

But I've found many women, whether they're widowed or divorced or whatever situation they're in, have financial issues that they feel they can't quite handle. And we're here to say, yes, you can. And I can say, you know what, if you say you can't look at me, if I can do this, anybody can. But now Valerie brings a whole level of expertise that I do not have. Well, Valerie, you've watched your mom blossom after the loss of your father.

What's your perspective on the way she has tackled some of the tough issues and situations? Well, I saw it just firsthand. You know, mom and dad did budget together and they did have a good handle on things and they did plan together. But they were doing it together.

So it's the two halves. And so when my dad went to heaven, then that left my mom to do a lot of that on her own. And she did have wise counsel around us, her and family. And she did involve us and others at church and good experts. But she did have to tackle these things and go after it and know what to do really on her own, in her own capacity. So I was just so proud. I remember one day coming over and she had this giant stack of investing books that she checked out at the library and she read every one.

And I don't know that everybody can do that, but that's so her. So you're a mother daughter team and you have different credentials, as we've noted already. What prompted the two of you to want to create a video series on money? Valerie, what would you say? Did your mom come up with the idea or did you come up with the idea?

How did this happen? We were told, I started getting involved where I saw mom did have a widow's ministry and she launched that after my dad passed away. And we saw kind of right on the heels of grief came financial issues. So it's kind of a one, two punch that ladies were experiencing. They'd come with grief.

And then in addition to that, here comes either a vulnerability if they did have resources or just finding out how much resources they lacked. And so she would come to me saying, hey, what about this in the law and finance capacity? And so we started making a short feature, writing some materials. Then we were told, hey, you guys should make videos and make them short because that's about, you know, people just want to absorb it a little at a time. So it was recommended to us, but that's kind of how it grew into that. Yeah. Well, that's exciting. Miriam, you see this as a need for all women, not just widows, right?

Oh, absolutely. And, you know, most women in the United States are single, whether they've never been married or they're divorced or they're widowed. So that means most women need this information. And also women oversee 51 percent of the wealth of our country now. So women are managing portfolios and that's going to grow to 73 percent pretty shortly. And you might think, well, that's because there are a few widows that got a big life insurance policy or something like that.

That's a minority. Women have better jobs now. For instance, my daughter is a lawyer, so women have better jobs now. They're in the workforce longer, so they have a greater capacity to save and to invest. And also they're moving more into the finance area, like Valerie in National Christian Foundation with investments and so forth.

But the other thing, I saw women being scammed out of hundreds of thousands of dollars and making poor decisions in what they invested in. Oh, start a new restaurant with me. And then the restaurant folds. And I'm getting really annoyed about this. And so it's kind of like, OK, Valerie, we've got to do some stuff here. And one of our television friends said, if you'll make it 26, because that's what a season in television is and it's short, we'll air it for free. Well, hello, I like free. So, you know, it was kind of things that came together.

And then Valerie and I started having a lot of fun with it because we like to talk about this stuff and we like each other. So there you have it. Well, and that's the whole ministry thing of it. People can go to the website right now.

You don't have to pay anything for it. You can look through the videos if there's something that strikes at your heart, you know, I'm struggling with this. I don't know what to do with that. Then you can just click on the video, watch and listen to it and get the teaching, right? That's right.

Yeah, they're available. There are resources. There are outlines there.

And you can rewatch it and hit pause or rewind or look at the resources and outlines. But we also recommend some reading if people want to go a little deeper on any of the subjects. Well, Valerie, we established that it's not just for widows, but most women who become widows are not prepared financially. What are you seeing? What are the struggles that they're facing? We were seeing when mom was leading this ministry and some of the times when she would come to me, she'd say, you know, I'm seeing widows that are almost one of two branches. They're surprised by the financial situation they're in. And statistically, they're in worse financial situations. Many widows are. There are some that are not.

And so what we'd see is just maybe I'd say it this way. We don't lack the brains to handle these things as women. We lack the confidence because I think in the past, really, financial teaching has not been as geared toward us, you know, just as a as a segment. And so you'd see women lacking confidence.

What do I do? I'm in debt or I'm worse off than I thought. And so just the confidence of you can do this. Then almost on the other end of the spectrum, we'd see women who maybe they did not handle the finances before, but now they're half owner of, you know, some kind of manufacturing company or something. Now they're vulnerable because they don't have the background information. So we were seeing vulnerability on both sides that could be handled with some confidence and good direction and godly counsel.

My perspective, while everything that Valerie said is so accurate for all women, I also saw that because women like confidence, they were listening to the wrong people. And there are so many people that pull their chair up to our table, so to speak, and say, you need to know this and you need to put it in this. And I saw women being advised to do with their resources something that would earn three percent a year.

And the guy would be advised to do something with their resources that would earn seven percent a year. Well, we're biblical women here and it's all God's on loan to us. And Matthew 25 says we're to be stewards.

So I want to be a 10 steward lady. OK, I don't. And three percent won't keep up with inflation or whatever. So I was frustrated that friends of mine and other people I knew were listening to bad advice. And it was sometimes selfish advice. And maybe it wasn't sinful advice.

It just wasn't as productive as it could be. And these women were saying, OK, they know and I don't. So we're kind of like, OK, we can all know. And by the way, that stack of books is pictured on one of the videos. And I think it's a lot of fun reading.

Well, those of us who are authors like people who like to read, Miriam. Amen. Amen. Valerie, throughout the whole series of videos that we were discussing in our first segment, you and your mom focus on the theme of generosity. Describe that concept and why you feel it's so important. One reason is that what we have as believers and I guess as believers or not as believers, the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, everything here is his. And so we are managing or stewarding his resources. And so generosity is just an acknowledgment of that.

It's not ours. He's given us something to manage and we want to do well. And that's part of God writing his story into our lives and the acknowledgment of that. I think it sets our heart and it sets contentment. So many of those things that we would lack, it's just a reset button for reality. And the world just kind of rages against that with all the messages.

You need more, you're entitled more, all of that. Not biblical, not true. So that's one thing that generosity does in our life. And it just resets our position of who we are in the Lord and what we're to do with what we have to manage. It also frees us.

I mean, God's given us what he thinks we can handle or what is wise or what is within his purpose for that in that season. And generosity is a part of that. It's the core of who he is. He sent his son for us. He's the ultimate in generosity.

And so as we're modeling our lives after him, it's a natural. Miriam, you said earlier that 51% of the wealth in the United States is managed by women. I have to be honest, that hit me a little.

I have to be honest, I didn't realize that, okay? And you say it's going up. Talk a little bit about the statistics and why this is so important. Well, when Valerie was talking about generosity, when you think of the wealth that we as women oversee, what are we doing with that? And if we want to be the steward that's really maximizing it, then the world says, then you can have more stuff or you can get a bigger home or you can get two homes or you can have more clothes or whatever. And I want to be that woman who is generous toward what God wants to grow.

And what would that be? God honoring things. The other thing about those statistics, Gary, is that we're seeing, that could be for a lot of reasons. Some women are remaining single and so they're managing their finances their whole life. Or becoming widows.

So statistically, 80% of the time, he will go to heaven before she does in a marriage. And so even women who are not wanting to manage that, it's just a reality that many times we will carry the baton to the end in that husband-wife partnership, in the finances and in many things. So it's good stewardship to prepare. Many ladies might say, hey, I don't want to know about that.

I don't want to manage the finances. But the reality is, they probably will. And so just that preparation and reality to be prepared to step into that and carry the baton to the end well. Another statistic is that women make the decisions for spending three-quarters of the disposable income decisions. So in other words, we're already making a lot of decisions about how money is spent.

But that oversight part is what we want to address. And that's household spending. Right. That would certainly be true in my family.

My wife spends more money than I do on stuff. Just the normal flow of life. And you're okay with that, Gary? And I'm okay with that.

It saves me a whole lot of time. Just want to make sure. No, I have to balance a checkbook. We talked earlier about many women at least lacking confidence in the area of finances. And I'm thinking here, not only about widows or those who have never married, but I'm thinking about the huge number of women who are divorced. And many of them didn't want divorce.

I mean, they're in the middle of it. And of course, divorce situation is a little different because the funds are kind of split halfway, typically. Say a word about that lack of confidence and any insight you might have for those wives who are in a divorce situation.

I would say that there's a couple reasons for the lack of confidence, I think. Just generally, in our education, we don't do a great job educating for managing practical resources. If you think back to maybe in junior high, we might have had one class on reconciling a checkbook. But as far as investing, savings, controlling spending, filtering messages about marketing, building for our future. Understanding interest on a mortgage. If you think about it in our education system, even in general, we don't really tackle that.

And then you gear that too. If you look at maybe several years ago, a lot of the math and finance conversations or education was not really geared toward women. We have a lot of STEM initiatives now that are focused on targeting women and educating them on that matter.

And that's for a purpose because we didn't do such a great job of that before. So now you see generations later, women are lacking some of the confidence in that education. Now maybe they've had a very negative life event and that kind of aggravates it. Well, and I would add regarding the person who's divorced, emotions get in the way here. Because a lot of times, because of divorce, there's a different kind of anger.

There's a different kind of, now I owe it to myself. Or I'm going to spend on the kids to show them that I'm the good parent. So you have some additional temptations and problems for that divorced person. And probably there's been some lack of financial togetherness in the marriage.

There might have been togetherness, but likely not. So you've got that on top of it. And that's why this information is so important for divorced women. Right, and talk about hurt and lack of confidence and just feeling that unsteadiness in that season of life. Now you've got another area where they might not have had confidence to begin with. And it's kind of that double whammy again. And I think a lot of our listeners who are in that divorce situation are saying as they hear you talk, yes, yes, yes, because that's where they're living right now. If you could focus on two basic necessities for being wise with money, maybe you can't boil it down to two, but if you did, what would be those two?

Yeah, I would say from my perspective, and then you'll definitely want to hear my mom's as well, but two basic necessities are understanding what is coming in and going out. So what do you have? What do you owe?

What do you own? Just getting a handle on that and getting a handle on spending. And then savings. Two fundamental concepts is understand what's coming in and going out and what you have, what you owe, and then understand you must save.

You must make less than what you earn. The equation will never work if that is out of balance. It just won't. Well, and now here's why we're a dynamic duo, or no, actually we're just highly caffeinated. Guess what I'd say?

I'd just say the same thing but a little differently. I would just say you've got to have a spending plan that works. That means if it's not coming in, it's not going out. And our culture says you can have debt, you can have credit cards. That's the same thing, Valerie, that you said, so that's the beginning.

That's number one. And the second thing I was going to say is no debt, no debt, no debt, because many divorced people have more debt than they thought. They get assigned to pay off this, oh, I have to do that myself. They get assigned, you know, it's a division of debt as well. And simply we say debt is a greedy beast, and it is, and you can't save if you're spending all your money on credit cards trying to get them down. So, yeah, Val, you're right, again.

You too. You must have margin. You must have margin.

Yeah. Valerie, for all those women who do have credit card debt, typically, what kind of interest rate are they paying on that debt? Abysmal, can I just say, you know, 18, 25%. I mean, it's just almost impossible to get out of if you're, it's a snowball that just becomes very difficult to get out of. And if you think about it, wouldn't we all love to be on the other side of the equation where we're earning 18 to 25% because wouldn't we all have a lot more margin in our life?

You just do not want to be on the other side of that equation. What about house debt, though, because you have to have a place to live, you know, or a condo or even an apartment. Maybe an apartment you wouldn't have the debt for that, but then you're not earning anything either. You know, you could move into an apartment and just be paying, paying, paying and never have an investment come back to you at the end of it.

And Chris, there's some conventional wisdom around that, and then there's some things that are happening now with that. It used to be you got to have a mortgage, you know, you can write some of that interest off, and that is true, and it's especially true if there is a good kind of debt or a less worse kind of debt, let's call it. It could be mortgage, something that's appreciating or growing in value, but not all the areas in our country are doing that. So I'd say approach with caution, because you can buy in a market where it's really not the best investment.

Many times it could be, but you got to watch that carefully. And Miriam, that's where this, you've talked before about your financial advisors or your board of references, you know, they bring around you people that you really do trust who can help you think through all the things that you're not an expert on, right? Oh, exactly, and we do know for many divorced women and widows, many of them have to change where they live, because they can't afford where they were before. And, you know, we don't like to hear that. We don't like someone to say, oh, you know, it's time to put that big house on the market and you might want a town home, but you can't have a town home that maximizes all of your housing, because now you've got fees and, you know, there are just a myriad of decisions.

We have, one of the videos is specifically on housing with a lot of bullet points on that. The idea that it has to be flexible, you know, Scripture, Proverbs says, till your field and then put up your tent. So in other words, you've got to have the money coming in, and sometimes we need to be more flexible.

We don't live in tents here, but still, you may have to move and you may not want to. Well, it may not be an option. And we don't know what we don't know. I think some of that is just having the humility and hopefully wisdom to seek out some wise counsel and maybe not just the first person that you hear. Tax advisors are great at taxes and real estate persons are great at real estate.

And some of these people have spent their whole career becoming an expert. And so seek that out. I hear you saying about a house and whether to buy or not to buy a house depends a lot on where you're living. And maybe you have to check out the local economy. Is that what you were saying earlier?

That's absolutely right. You can be in an area of the country where you're told, and traditionally it's been true, if you buy a house, it's an inflation hedge, it will appreciate in value, you know, you can write off the mortgage interest. That's true, but some areas of the country are not even going up 1%.

And so if you asked me, I'd like to make a quarter of a million or $500,000 investment that will make 1% a year for 20 to 30 years, I would say, please don't. So, I mean, some areas of the country are doing that. And then there's the cycles, Valerie, that we went through in 06, 07, 08, where there were people in the area that we were living, we were renting a house at the time, but they looked at how much they paid for that house. And in a very short amount of time, it was basically, our house was worth about half that much in the area that we were living. And the fear then that came, now since then, things have turned around, and I think it's probably back in that area about what they paid for it, but there were several years there where they were scratching their heads.

If they got a job in some other state and they had to sell, they were losing a lot of money. I would just say what can go up can go down. Well, that's still true in my neighborhood that our homes are worth half what they were that has not gone up again. And we can research that.

You can Google the states and what's happening. But again, here's where we as women are very capable. If you have a fourth grade level math component, you can do budgets, you can do houses, you can do investments, we can do this. And then we have the ownership and the reality of saying, before the Lord, Lord, you allowed me to have this home.

It's not my home, it's yours. So, moving on, and we study Scripture, and we get biblical counseling, and we don't assume more debt. And then we can expect God, because he promises that he will, he's going to honor that, and the component of that of contentment, oh my word, that's more valuable than a really big house. Yeah, it's this tension between due diligence, so we're doing what we can, and then there's what's going to happen, so there's trust in the Lord. And that's a tension where we can't control everything. We may do as much research as we possibly can, and then move into an area, and something happens, and it's outside of our control. But having margin helps, researching helps. It's not going to make it perfect, but we can do our best. In our earlier segment, Miriam, we talked about a spending plan, creating a spending plan. Share some ideas, each of you, on how do you do that? Just get practical. Okay, well, Val and I are different.

You probably noticed that already. But we know people don't like the word budget. But my spending plan is paper and pencil, and I write down, and there are categories, and I write down what's going out all the time. Bob and I did that. I still do that in these different categories.

But I, more importantly, write down what's coming in, and that spending plan, as we've said before, what's going out has to be less than what's coming in. But now I'm a non-techie person, and I'm doing that by myself now. Valerie's techie, and she's married, so. And I'm married to a techie, so we do apps. We do things that have notifications and bank balances showing and graphs and charts and all that fun stuff.

So it can be done either way. You need a budget of what are the parameters that it should be, and then track it, because you want to know is your plan actually happening. Once you track, you know, oh, I'm close to reality, or no, I have to adjust that. And that budget, that overall model, the net is you've got to be bringing in more than you're sending out.

You just can't flip it the other way. If that is in the red every month, something's got to give. So I hear you saying that whether you use technology or whether you use pencil and paper, you've got to keep records of what's going out each month, month by month, what's coming in month by month so that you have a visual picture in front of you of whether or not you're doing what you've just said, and that is there's less going out than is coming in. Yeah, we love this quote. You're either telling your money what to do or you're wondering where it went. And we prefer the telling it what to do.

I like that. We also know that it's vital that because it's God's, we're generous. And so building into that spending plan is margin and emergency fund, some money so that you know something on the car is going to break, you know your children's feet are going to grow.

These are not shocking new realities. So you need to have some margin there, that emergency plan, and then you decide before the Lord what, in terms of generosity, do you give to, it may be a church, it may be philanthropic organization, it may be something like my widow connection, the ministry that I have, maybe something that in your heart, you know, this is God at work and I want to put some momentum to that by generosity. So that's all a part of that spending plan. So I hear you saying it's not just listing the monthly bills for gas and electricity, et cetera, et cetera, but it's also listing a reserve fund to take care of things that are going to happen, we know they're going to happen, and also a record of what's going out in terms of what you're giving. Yeah, and once you track for a year, it really takes a year because some things might come up that, I mean, maybe you anticipated and remembered to put it in your original budget, but for example, we pay car insurance twice a year, we don't pay it every month. Now you can save for it every month, but those things, once you've walked through it for a year, oh yeah, taxes, oh yeah, Christmas presents, right? So some of those things that happen only once or a couple times a year, you can build in and are reminded.

So I think it takes a long time. Do your budget in pencil because it'll keep changing and keep changing. And then once it's done, we like to say, have a look at that. Does that reflect your values?

What's coming in and going out, is that what you'd like it to be and is that what God would like it to be? Let's talk a little bit about debt because you call it the greedy beast. We talked earlier about what an individual is paying percentage-wise interest if the debt is on the credit card. Is there legitimate debt and if so, how do you choose debt? Well, Gary, we used to have a list of debt that was okay and that's changed. We used to say a big mortgage might be okay because the house is going to grow in value. We used to say college debt would be okay because you can get a better job. And now we say not the big mortgage and we also say no college debt, which is kind of hard to hear or very minimal because there might not be a job that accommodates paying back the debt and living expenses. So there's some debt that we would say no to, and we also say no loans to get a car, which might mean you're driving an ugly beast for a while or whatever. And there may be some exceptions to these things, traditionally mortgage debt, educational debt, and investment in businesses. So we would just say not never but be very careful.

I mean due diligence is needed here because it's not the same realities. Is this money you can afford to lose? If you end up with a college degree and have $80,000 in debt, you cannot write that off in bankruptcy right now.

So can you get it back? Some things we've seen now are people are going into debt and they have no intention of ever paying it off or no plan. If I were to say I'm going to take that from you and I have no plan to ever give it back, what would we call that? I mean it's kind of harsh but it's theft. We are taking something with no intent of paying back for it.

So I don't believe that's a biblical plan. We need to really, there are going to be mistakes and we can't predict the future, but very cautiously approach that kind of debt and maybe only invest in things that you can afford to lose. Or if you're going to go get some college debt, look at the program. What are the earnings?

What are the likely? I mean due diligence, are you liable to get a job that is going to earn and you'll be able to have a plan to pay it back? So by and large, is it better to purchase a car or to lease a car? Purchase a cheap car I would say. Mom would say ride a bike.

The third option, ride a bike. I have 230,000 miles on my vehicle and thank you, I'm quite happy. You do not have 230,000.

My estimation of you has just gone through the roof, Miriam. We don't be on roller skates from mom's perspective. Let me address another thing about debt though that's greedy. It's greedy with your emotions because with debt there's anxiety and there's concern and sometimes there's fear and then you're like, well if I borrowed that from this relative or this friend and it hurts that relationship, there's an emotional price to be paid for not paying for your stuff.

That's just not how we're supposed to do life. And in budget counseling I can tell you that I've just seen some heartbreaking scenarios but then some great scenarios where debt will hold people back from maybe what God has for them. Let's say you want to go into the mission field or work for a nonprofit. If you are just saddled in debt, you can't go do that thing. And so it's the freedom that comes from not being heavily in debt.

Now God can send you anywhere. He can anyway but boy if you're strapped with $50,000, $80,000 in debt, it's going to be real tough to have the flexibility to just go where he sends you right then. We're talking primarily about women and managing money but let's talk just a moment about married women, those who are living with their husband. What are your suggestions for doing this financial thing together? One of the things that was delightful in being married to Bob was the time when we came to where we were really talking about everything.

Talk, talk, talk. Nothing is private about money. There can be separate bank accounts but you have to know what's in both of those. You can have some decisions that you don't discuss with each other but it can't be secret. And I say that because so many women, and sometimes it's when the marriage is over, divorce or death, find surprises.

So communicate, communicate, communicate. And in marriages where they're not doing that, that's going to be a problem not just with finances but probably other things. And I'd like to say money is not, it's a leading indicator of the heart, I think. We can have some really great heart-to-heart conversations that really aren't about money. I mean they start as a budget conversation but it's that intimacy of knowing what's important to the other person, how is God working in their life. In our marriage we have joint accounts on everything. And sometimes if we decide we're doing an all-cash budget in that area, we take out money from the bank and then we sit and say, well where are you going this week?

What are you doing this week? And so we're sitting on maybe a Sunday night with our envelopes out or our wallets out and saying, well we're learning about, oh I didn't realize you had that appointment or are doing this thing or this is important or talking about giving. I mean I think it builds a level of intimacy because you are doing life together. This is your spouse, this is your other half, right? So that should all be, I'd say, mirror what my mom said, transparency, communication, and it's about compromise. And I love another quote that we've heard, hey if both of you are, you're going to be different personalities. God made it that way. So if you're both the same, one of you is unnecessary. So go ahead and have that difference.

It's all right. Sometimes I've found that husbands, more than wives, actually are spending money as they don't tell the spouse about. Maybe the husband's also keeping the books and she really doesn't know what's going on and she just simply trusts him. I guess if she has a wonderful husband who's very loving and kind and tender, that might work. But it's going to be harder for her if that's been the pattern for 30 years. When he's gone, it's going to be much harder for her, right?

Oh my word. There are women who find gambling debt when their husbands leave this planet. Because of the ministry I have, I hear so many sad, sad stories and there is another principle that I trust every man and woman remember this. We will stand before God alone. So that woman that didn't know and now is responsible is going to stand before God. She can't point to her husband. She can't say, well, he decided or it was, yes, we're married, but God is our father, Jesus is our savior.

We answer to him. So that's more reason. Sometimes a woman is asked in marriage, well, do you want to know this? And she might say, no, I'm not interested. You know what?

You need to know what you just really need to know. And that hiding money is a dashboard of something else that's going on wrong, right? It's a trust problem. It's a pride problem. It's a problem with lack of humility, lack of transparency, shame. I mean, there's something under that, right?

Yeah. And the other thing about that is a man, a husband who takes care of the books all the time and does the money and does it lovingly and circumspectly. It's a loving thing to bring her into this and show, you know, here's here's why I do this. This is why here are the passwords to this and that and the other thing, because you don't know how long you're going to live.

We all want to live, you know, as long as we think we're going to. But that doesn't happen to everybody. I was invited to speak to a wealth management group and there were many couples of great wealth there. And I knew that one of the couples there, the man did everything and the woman didn't know anything.

And he was happy with that. But I said to the group, I said to the men in the room, I said, men, do you love your wives? If so, they need to know everything about your finances and everything about wills and trust and everything, all of your documents. And then I said again, remember, I asked first, do you love your wife?

Yes. Don't tell me you love your wife if you're not sharing all that information and making sure they're knowledgeable about it. You know, some will say, I don't want to deal with that. And I would just say, come on, girls, you're going to have to cowboy up on this one because you there is a good chance that you will end up.

Do you want to do that? Well, because there's a good chance you're going to have to carry the baton. So we don't we don't get to make that choice and just kind of opt out. This is a big one.

And we can rise and really should rise to the occasion on this. Let's talk about investments and investment strategies. I'm guessing that there are many women who know very little about this, maybe a lot of men who know very little about this.

Valerie, how do you get started even with with the whole concept of investments and understanding it? I think it's essential to try to understand and you really can kind of start at the beginning. And so unfortunately, the financial industry, it's got words, it's got acronyms like a lot that are that just confuse people.

And so they'll hear it. There's a complexity they think to it and then maybe check out. And so hang in there. There are some basic concepts. So I'd say try to understand. You don't need to understand all the segments at once, but start to learn about basic investments.

I think a good starting point is to understand that cost of living generally on average goes up about 3 percent a year. And so many people forget about that. I mean, you've got to overcome that just to get started to make some headway. And there's a lot of different things you could do. So two really important things are to understand risk and how much time do you have before you need that money and what's your tolerance of risk. And then look at the different kinds of categories. There are bank accounts.

There are CDs. They kind of grow in level of risk. There are bonds.

There are stocks. And to just get some basic information. There are good resources out there.

You do not need to be a Wall Street genius in order to be OK and do a fairly good job. And do you want to manage it all the time? Look at it a lot or maybe quarterly. It's not good to look at it daily. There are people that do that.

But then you don't really want to be looking at it never either because that's always a bad idea. So in our video that we do on investments, we talk about going in a grocery store. You see the deli, you see the bakery, you see the different areas in a grocery store. OK, we're going in a grocery store of investments and we have equities that are going to earn on the average 7 percent a year.

They've done this for decades. And our S&P 500 average 10 percent a year growth. But all the way down to the bank account that's like putting your dollar in a shoebox. So the way we say it, it's like you're going to go in and you're going to learn about these different things and then you're going to make selections. And we talk about mutual funds and our opinions on that. So you're going to make selections based on you learning this. And for many women, they already have a 401k maybe connected with their work or some different thing where they're putting money into something and their work might match it. And then they're asked, well, pick which of these you want the money to go into. Well, you can pick in that 401k a shoebox or equities. So she needs to know to pick wisely.

And to know the time frame. So that average that mom's talking about, maybe that 7 percent, that 10 percent, well, it can in some years go wildly up 20 percent, 25. And it can go wildly down. So if you need the money in one year, that's not a good option. So the timing matters.

If you don't need to touch the money for 20 years, you can kind of ride that wave up and down. So it's important to understand. I also think in the financial industry, we could do a better job of explaining, you know, using words like assets and equities and that kind of thing, really to just put it in layman's terms. You know, a mutual fund is a basket of stocks. It's a grouping together. And to just do a better job of explaining in layman's terms.

We don't we don't need all the jargon, but we forget because we use it so often, like any other industry, we just forget we're using it and leave people kind of dazed. Do you think most women will need or would profit from a financial advisor? And if so, how do you how would you select that person? Many women might not be able to afford the cost of that. So it might be worthwhile to have that information, but it might not be realistic. And also, some financial advisors don't give good financial advice. They have self-interest. I think it is worth it.

Well, and so take this with where it's coming from. But I think it's well worth it to have a good one that has your best interests at heart, which means they're putting your interests above theirs. So to find a good one and there are a couple good ways to find one. There's kingdom advisors, certified kingdom advisor is someone who's going to be a believer and be a financial advisor.

But again, meet with several and vet. I believe it's brokercheck.com where you can look at somebody's credentials and look at any reports that are negative about them. But there are some free resources. I love places not, you know, got to name names so that people can find these things, not to be an endorsement, but like nerd wallet on online. Or I like Kiplinger's as a magazine. It's a basic personal finance. I mean, there are other magazines, so people who maybe can't afford or don't want to select yet can start getting some basic wisdom on these things. And then, you know, interview several.

And that's hard work. But I'd say get in there and do it because a good financial advisor that has your best interest at heart and that matches your value system is, I mean, a wonderful thing to have. And I did that when I knew that I would be overseeing my portfolio, I interviewed three different people and I said, assume that you have. And I told them a ballpark number.

It was not the exact number that I had. Show me a plan of what you would do with that amount of money. And one person gave me a plan that took 12 percent off the top and it went into a certain fund. And I thought, OK, that's like lighting a match to some dollar bills.

I don't think I'll go with that person. Well, we could talk another hour on this topic. And I'm glad that you have this video series on the Web site so that women can go and get help over a longer period of time. So thanks for being with us today. This has been very, very helpful. And I know that the women, especially who are listening, are going to go to the Web site and look at some of the resources that you have there. So thanks for being with us today. Gary, we appreciate you. Thank you for addressing this topic. Yes.

Thank you for having us on. Maybe, you know, someone who needs this information, send them to FiveLoveLanguages.com. You can get the program that we've just heard. You can hear the broadcast and you can go to WiseWomenManagingMoney.com and find out what Miriam Neff and Valerie Neff Hogan have been at these videos that they've recorded.

Absolutely free. WiseWomenManagingMoney.com. And again, if you can't remember that, just go to FiveLoveLanguages.com. And next week, we open the phone lines and take your questions about the love languages, marriage, parenting, and more. Don't miss our January edition of Dear Gary in One Week. A big thank you to our production team, Steve Wick and Janice Todd. Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman is a production of Moody Radio in association with Moody Publishers, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute. Thanks for listening.