FaithFi: The Mission with Chad Clark

At Faithfi, our vision is to redeem God's design for money so that people would come to see God as their ultimate treasure. When you prioritize God above all else, your financial decisions reflect your identity in Christ. We're here to provide biblical wisdom and practical tools to help you on this journey. By becoming a monthly Faithfi partner, you're supporting us and actively participating in our vision to help people integrate their faith and financial decisions for the glory of God. You can make a difference right now at faithfi.com slash give. That's faithfi.com slash give.

Now let's dive into the podcast. You've probably heard the saying, if you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time. But do you know who coined it? Hi, I'm Rob West. Christian author and speaker Zig Ziglar gets credit for that famous quote. It urges us to set goals and stay on mission. What are our goals and what's our mission here at Faithfi? Well, Chad Clark fills us in today and invites you to be a part of it all. And then it's on to your calls at 800-525-7000.

That's 800-525-7000. This is faith and finance, biblical wisdom for your financial journey. Well, as executive director here at Faithfi, Chad Clark helps us all stay on mission. Chad, great to have you back with us. Thanks for having me. So, Chad, people who hear us on the radio, perhaps visit our website and use our Faithfi app, have an idea of what we're all about.

But I'd like to get very specific for a moment. Why does Faithfi exist? Yeah, I'm grateful that I get the opportunity to talk about this because I love what we're about here at Faithfi. Our mission is to equip Christians with tools and resources to integrate faith and financial decisions for the glory of God. And the important piece about this is that the faith comes before the finances because our vision is that Christians would see God as their ultimate treasure. Because when they do, when God becomes primary in their heart, their financial decisions simply are an outflow of a love and devotion for him.

But he has to be primary, not secondary. You see, we believe that money is simply a tool. It's not inherently good or bad, but what we do with it can be good or bad. Yeah, and that's the why behind the mission. Now, let's talk for a second about the how. Yeah, there's a lot of different ways that we help people integrate their faith and financial decisions for the glory of God. One of them, the biggest piece of what we do is this program that you're hosting every single day, Rob, in just a few minutes. That you're hosting every single day, Rob, and just serving our audience so well, answering questions and just pointing them back to God as their treasure.

So, grateful for you and your just servant heart and taking care of our audience and our listeners every single day. You can also go to faithfi.com and get a number of different resources, articles and videos to help you on your stewardship journey. And we built our FaithFi app around this idea of helping you practically apply what you hear on the show and you see on our website to making financial decisions. We just launched FaithFi 4.0.

It's a beautiful new redesign, and we hope that you'll check it out and see how it can help you better steward the resources God has entrusted to you. And the final thing that we do here at FaithFi is our brand new study series, which we're so excited about. We recently launched a study called Rich Toward God on the parable of the rich fool earlier this year. And we're looking to launch a new study this summer on financial fear and anxiety. And these studies are designed to help you go deeper into God's word, to again, treasure Him and to see how money can be a tool to be used for His glory. So everything we do here at FaithFi is really around this idea of faith and financial integration. And we want people to grow in their faith and their ability to make wise financial decisions. And we're so encouraged when we hear stories like Courtney, who has been listening to this program, who has taken seriously the principles that she hears and has been able to really follow the leading of the Lord when it comes to the direction He has for her life.

Let's listen to Courtney's story right now. Thank you so much for this program and everything that you do. I've just learned a tremendous amount of wisdom with finance and how to kind of tackle investments. So you always would say to save up three to six months of an emergency fund before you make any kind of crazy investment. And so I started doing that. And almost to the exact day that I saved up six months of an emergency fund, I lost my job and God called me into global missions. So because I had the six months emergency fund there, I didn't have to be frantic and look for a different job. And I was able to really focus on my ministry and go to training that I needed to do. And I expedited that entire process. And I literally leave for the mission field in January.

So without this program and your advice, who knows where I would be right now? But I just wanted to call in and just say thank you so much for everything that you do. Chad, that is why we do what we do. Now, that doesn't happen without people joining us on that mission, right?

It really doesn't. We need help from our community of faithful stewards. And I'd love to invite you to partner with us as we near the end of our fiscal year on June 30th. We're still $50,000 shy of our fundraising goals. If you've been impacted by this ministry, I'd love to invite you to partner with us by going to faithfi.com slash give and helping us continue to make stories like Courtney's possible.

That's exactly right, Chad. Really appreciate you stopping by today. Thanks so much. Folks, if you want to join us on this mission, as Chad said, this is a critical time for us to hear from you. To support our work, go to faithfi.com and click Give. That's faithfi.com and click Give before June 30th. Back with your questions after this.

Stick around. God has entrusted His finances to you. And we at Faithfi have designed our Faithfi app to help you live, give, owe and grow with that perspective. Our Faithfi app is the leading biblically based finance app. You can manage your money, get top biblical financial resources and interact with the community of like-minded believers, where you can ask questions, get answers and share what you're learning.

Go to faithfi.com and click the word app to get started. Faithfi is grateful for support from One Ascent. One Ascent believes that your values inspire why you invest and how they can inspire how you invest. One Ascent's goal is to provide solutions designed for every need and invest in businesses that bless the people and places God has made. They want to help investors do well by doing good to explore a new way of investing that aligns with your values.

More information is available at oneascent.com and by clicking Analyze My Investments. So thankful to have you joining us today for Faith and Finance. My name is Rob West. I serve as host of this program and we'd love to hear from you with your financial questions today. 800-525-7000. This is where we apply biblical wisdom to your financial decisions and choices.

Let's go to Naperville. Hi, Ann. Thanks for your call today. Go ahead.

Yes. I am a 70-year-old retiree widow and I have about $800,000 in a variety of investments, one of which is $280,000 in an annuity. It's a 408B. I've had it for over 15 years. I got into it before really knowing what an annuity meant.

And so the average rate of return has only been 4.1% over all that time. It's approaching the point in July where I have to make a decision either to turn it on or to surrender. And if I surrender it, there's no surrender fee.

And then what I would do is take it and put it into, you know, half into a money market or high-yield savings and $140 into conservative growth so that at least I make more on this batch of money rather than being, you know, tied into an annuity with just a flat $5.5 or $1,200 a month coming out. Yes. Very good.

That was helpful background. Let me ask, is this qualified money? Did it go in pre-tax? Pre-tax, yes.

Yeah. So you could roll it to an IRA. Now talk to me about why you'd put $140 of it in high-yield savings.

I realize that's compelling right now. It won't be perhaps a year or two from now, but are you looking at this as your emergency fund or do you have some savings set aside separate from the $800,000? I have an emergency fund already. So it's just a matter of right now I'm getting my high-yield savings. I'm getting 4.3%, which is at least it's a decent amount, but I could put more into money market.

I don't know if that's a, you know, slightly higher or just put the whole thing into a conservative growth fund or IRA. You know? Yeah. I just, the idea of it, just that amount just being frozen now for the rest of my life, just, I'd like to have some growth on it, you know? Oh, absolutely.

Yeah. I mean, you know, even at 70, we still need to take a long-term perspective. If the Lord tarries and you're in good health, we need to plan for this money to last to age 95 plus, right?

So we're still looking down the road and, you know, I would say at a starting point, and that's all it is, this doesn't replace more specific planning for your unique situation. But I would say typically you'd want as much as 30 to 40% in stocks and, you know, 60 to 70% in bonds. And perhaps you work in by pulling from both of those, maybe some allocation precious metals, but that would be a typical portfolio. Now, if you wanted to not leave it there frozen, but if you wanted to roll it into another annuity, because you wanted some portion of the 800,000, you know, in this case, you know, we're talking about 35%. If you wanted some portion in something that was guaranteed, as opposed to taking the market risk associated with stock and bond investing, then you could go look for a really high quality annuity, something with low fees, where you're getting a guaranteed rate of return that you could feel good about and know that, okay, at least, you know, that's guaranteed.

I don't have to think about it. I actually prefer what you're thinking, which is to roll it to the IRA and then invest it. And if you want to take that portion that I said, you know, would be the fixed income portion, which, you know, is probably around 60% of the portfolio, typically could be as high as 70, if you want to be more conservative, that could include, you know, brokered CDs, that could include money market, it certainly could include corporate and government bonds as well, real high quality bonds that are going to do well as interest rates fall, but you're already getting a nice yield on them. So I think that makes a lot of sense. Who's managing the half a million right now? I have it with a, with a fiduciary.

Okay. And how's that going? That's going well there. I mean, their average has been six to 7%. So it's at least a decent, decent return. And what do you think about a variety of traditional and rocks and high old savings and I bonds?

I mean, it's just, and I have one other annuity, but I can't do anything with because it's still in the phase where you can't touch it. So got it. Yep. What do you think about moving this into an IRA under the fiduciary's oversight? That's exactly what I was thinking.

Okay. Yeah, I like that a lot. And I just think that gives you ultimate flexibility because if you needed to tap into larger sums of this down the road, let's say you needed long-term care or something like that, you've got access to it, but you're earning a better rate of return over the long haul.

You know, you could be as conservative as you want. You've already got a good relationship with your advisor. So, you know, I like the idea of you having the flexibility of access to the capital, but a growth rate, you know, you're assuming some level of risk. We always are, but we're taking a long view on it.

And as long as you're properly diversified and your asset allocation is right, then I think this is the best of both worlds in my opinion. Sounds good. Thank you for confirming. You're welcome, man. May the Lord bless you. Thanks for calling today.

Indiana is where we're going. Kyle, go ahead, sir. Hey, thanks for taking my call. Yes, sir.

I have a question. My wife and I both retired. We do have pensions, have no debt. We max out our traditional IRA each year, which we'll probably at some point use to have a tax-free tithe option on that.

But we're both still working in other jobs and have a decent amount of cash to invest. Past, you know, maxing out the traditional IRAs. What do you think about dividend stocks?

I like them a lot. First of all, let me just say at a high level, I love your plan here. I mean, you're living modestly on your pensions. You got no debt. I love the idea that you're maxing out these IRAs because you all are continuing to work and you're thinking about this as a potentially down the road, a tax-free tithe for the benefit of our audience.

When he gets to be 70 and a half, he and his wife can pull out from that IRA that went in pre-tax through a qualified charitable distribution to his church and not add that money to his taxable income and give even more, which is just a fabulous idea. In terms of, yeah, you all have further surplus. How do I like dividend paying stocks? I like them a lot because not only do you have, you know, they're more of a sure and steady, not fast and flashy approach to investing. I like the base of income. You know, typically when we think of high yield dividends, we're thinking, you know, utilities, there's nothing terribly exciting about these stocks, but they just tend to do well over time.

I will say they've been somewhat out of favor as so much of the growth in the market as of late has been, you know, in the magnificent seven, these high flying tech stocks and AI and, you know, those types of things. But, you know, I think the more sure and steady long-term approach with high yield or with high dividends is a good approach as a part of an overall balanced portfolio. And, you know, given the other assets that you have, perhaps with this surplus focusing on income generating stocks, I think makes a lot of sense. Exactly. Because I feel like we've got some exposure to that, you know, the high flying stuff through our traditional, you know, I'm watching it go up a lot and then it'll come down, go up, you know, that kind of deal.

Yeah. But, you know, with our additional stuff, we're either, you know, either you're looking at dividend stuff, you're looking at, you know, taking a stock and holding it. You know, I'm like, I have a yard business and it does quite well. And my wife is an online teacher.

So we both, you know, we do both do pretty well. You'd like to even have another kind of retirement for those things. And that's why I've been thinking about the dividend stocks.

I like it a lot. You could do it by picking the actual dividend stocks, the equities yourself, or you could do it through a mutual fund. And by the way, if you wanted one that was faith aligned, where they look at the companies they're picking and screen out those that would be misaligned with your values as a Christian and look for companies promoting human flourishing, one you might want to check out is from our friends at Eventide. It's the Eventide Dividend Opportunities Fund. If you just search for that Eventide Dividend Opportunities, you'll be pretty impressed on their returns.

A lot of income and it's faith aligned. Check that out. But I like your plan here, Kyle. God bless you, my friend. We'll be right back with much more. Stay with us. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.