Cut Your Healthcare Costs With Lauren Gajdek

This faith and finance podcast is underwritten in part by Christian Healthcare Ministries. Are you finding it increasingly challenging to find affordable healthcare? Christian Healthcare Ministries is a budget-friendly, biblical, and compassionate healthcare cost-sharing alternative that aligns with your Christian values.

And it's available in all 50 states and around the world. Learn more at chministries.org slash faith buy. How often do you get a chance to buy something you really need of higher quality at a lower cost? Hi, I'm Rob West.

You're probably thinking, not very often. Well, you'll get a chance to do just that today. Lauren Gydeck joins us with the details. Then we'll take your calls and questions at 800-525-7000. That's 800-525-7000. This is faith and finance, biblical wisdom for your financial decisions. Well, we always look forward to having our friend Lauren Gydeck on the program. She's vice president of communications and media at Christian Healthcare Ministries, an underwriter of this program. Lauren, welcome back.

Thank you so much for having me back on the program, Rob. Absolutely. You know, Lauren, we often recommend that folks do some spring cleaning of their finances at this time of year. And that means looking at some expenses that are taken for granted, like health insurance.

Would you agree with that? Yeah, absolutely. This is a great time to take another look at finances. They're kind of already on people's minds because we're just coming out of tax season and, you know, some people got a refund. So it's a good time to think about savings goals and polish up that budget a little bit.

Yeah, no doubt about that. And one way folks can cut their costs is by finding more affordable health care. And joining Christian Healthcare Ministries is a great way to do that. So I'd love for you to take a moment and just give us a rundown of the options and rates.

Yeah, I'd be glad to do that. First, though, I want to make sure that your listeners know that Christian Healthcare Ministries is not an insurance company. We are a biblically-based alternative to health insurance, and we've been around for over 40 years, shared over $10 billion in medical bills during that time. But as far as the programs are concerned, we have bronze at only $92 a month with a $5,000 personal responsibility, a silver program with $138 a month for $2,500 personal responsibility. Our gold program is $240 with $1,000 personal responsibility. And then our senior share program is only $115 a month with zero personal responsibility.

And still staggering to think about $10 billion with a B shared since 1981. Now, we said that this is an opportunity to get something that's not only less expensive, but also greater value. So talk to us about why being a member of Christian Healthcare Ministries is actually better than most health insurance. Sure, yeah. What our members tell us they really appreciate about CHM is they're not limited to a provider network.

So they can go to the doctor or hospital of their choice. You know, as long as the treatment is eligible, according to the CHM guidelines, they can have that confidence to work with their doctor, you know, and not have to wait on treatment, but get done whatever they need to get done. Yeah. And another thing, of course, is that CHM has a faith component. Speak to that for a moment.

Yeah, I'd be happy to do that. So CHM draws our concept from the New Testament, where it says in the book of Acts that all of the believers pooled their resources together and they shared what they had. So CHM does that in a very practical way nowadays with medical costs. And we also, you know, it's so important to us, the spiritual component of what we do. So we also pray for each other, we send each other cards and emails of encouragement. And it's just a really great example of the greater body of Christ.

It really is. And Lauren, for somebody out there today who's saying, exactly how does this work? When I show up to the doctor to get my treatment, what happens then?

Would you just explain that quickly? Yeah, I'd be happy to. So when you go to the doctor, you just let them know that you are a member of Christian Healthcare Ministries. It's not an insurance company, but you tell them that you're a self-pay patient, because legally that's the case. And a lot of times they will have an automatic discount that they will give you, and or our staff can help negotiate the medical bills on the back end on your behalf. And then you send the bills to CHM and we'll make sure that they qualify according to our guidelines and send you a check for reimbursement. Okay, so you pay the medical provider and CHM sends you a check as long as the medical bills meet the guidelines, right? Correct.

And you can also set up a payment plan too. Excellent. Well, I know even members of our team, Lauren, have been a part of CHM for a long time and it has been an incredible blessing, especially with the rising costs of healthcare expenses. We so appreciate you being here today. We'll have you back real soon, okay? Thank you.

It's wonderful talking with you. Folks, if you'd like to learn more about Christian Healthcare Ministries, go to chministries.org slash faithfi. That's chministries.org slash faithfi. Back with your questions after this.

800-525-7000. This is Faith and Finance. Stick around. Get answers and share what you're learning.

Go to faithfi.com and click the word app to get started. Frustrated by your health insurance? Confused by the network restrictions and increasing premiums?

There's a better way. Christian Healthcare Ministries. CHM is a Christian community delivering a faith-based solution to the high cost of healthcare.

Take back control of your healthcare with the ability to choose a provider you trust with no network restrictions and savings of up to 40%. Learn more and enroll today at chministries.org slash faithfi. That's chministries.org slash faithfi. Great to have you with us today on Faith and Finance. Whatever's on your mind today, financially speaking, we'd love to dive in, help you think about it, make a wise decision in light of biblical wisdom. That is the principles and passages we see in scripture. The big ideas around managing God's money. We see the heart of God on full display in his word and that includes around this area of money management, which by the way can be one of those areas that can compete with God for lordship if we allow it to. You know this idea that we cannot serve both God and money or mammon as the scripture says because we have to choose one or the other. Now in our day-to-day decisions we can perhaps, I think, not realize that we're choosing money over God. We can find ourselves, if we're not careful, placing our trust in our bank account. Seeing that is really our source of confidence and strength toward the future and yet we realize that God is our ultimate treasure, that he's our source of provision, that we're to worship him, to seek him fully, surrender our lives to him and see money not as a source of strength or really that vehicle that's going to provide for us but really a tool to accomplish God's purposes.

So it starts with a perspective or a mind shift that I think needs to occur and then ultimately we look to God's word to pull out those principles on how we should make wise financial decisions. So we want to help you do that each day on this program in an encouraging and hopeful way. So if you have a question today or perhaps a testimony that you'd like to share with us around God's faithfulness, give us a call. We've got lines open.

Our team is standing by right now. 800-525-7000. That's 800-525-7000. You can call right now. All right, let's dive in. We're going to begin today in Alabama. Hi Kaye, you're our first caller.

Go right ahead. Hi there, how are you today? I'm great, thanks for calling. I was actually wondering because I've been through over a decade of financial abuse and research shows that it's one of the hardest unseen abuses to overcome.

So I'm kind of in a position where I'm starting off or having to re-establish with a low income and I was wondering if there's any type of investment opportunities with just a smaller amount that I can be able to receive returns to keep some but then reinvest the other and then also maybe any other ideas that you have for someone with low income. Yeah, I appreciate that Kaye and I'm so sorry to hear about what you've experienced in the past. Do you feel like, without getting into the details, that you're beyond the issues that have caused you financial harm in the past?

For the most part. Okay, yeah. So even though you don't have a lot, at least we're building from a healthy place, hopefully financially, and you have control over the income that you have coming into you, is that right? Yes, sir.

Okay, very good. You know, first things first, I love investing but I also want to make sure that you have some of those key building blocks in place starting with a good understanding of your income and your expenses. Do you have a written budget or have you taken time to really get all of that into a spending plan? Yes, sir. Okay, and are you able to balance your monthly expenses, including those things you don't get a bill for and perhaps even some of the non-recurring charges like a quarterly insurance payment? Is all that in the plan? Yes, but every month in a while I will come short a little bit.

Sure, yeah, no, I certainly understand that. So that's a great first step. Do you then, secondly, have any savings? Anything that's liquid, that's beyond just what you're spending day to day that's set aside?

It's very small, but yes, sir. Yeah, so that's really the place to begin even before we think about investing. I'd love for you to get, and I know this is probably going to sound, you know, overwhelming, but I'd love for you to get to a place where you have three to six months worth of expenses in that emergency fund before you start thinking about investing because that's really going to be the key to you being able to cover those unexpected expenses that come along the way so we're not having to pull money out of investments, perhaps at a loss because, you know, they've only been in there a short time and the market's down or worse, taking on debt to cover unplanned expenses. And so even if it's $25 a month, I'd love for you to just set up a separate savings account either with your bank or maybe with an online bank where you can get some interest, connect it or link it electronically to your checking account and let's try to set up some automatic savings going in there and make some progress toward building that up.

That's really going to be key. Now, once that's in place, let me just ask, do you have any debt whatsoever today? Just some medical and some student loans. Okay, and are you current on both of those? Are you actively paying toward them? No, sir.

I've, I've kept in touch with them though. Okay, so are your student loans out of deferral and, and you are supposed to be paying on them or are you still in a deferral status? In a deferral status. Okay, and will that continue for some time?

Yes, sir. Okay, very good. And then the medical debts, what is the status of those? I have not been paying on them and someone told me that I may be able to receive some financial assistance for them. Okay, all right.

But they're not, not extreme costs. Okay, great. Well, at some point it'd be good once you're able to go ahead and establish communication with them, they'll likely be very willing to work with you either on a reduced payback or at least on a monthly payment, but it'd be great if you could start making some progress there when you're ready. Beyond that, beyond that, do you have access to a company sponsored retirement plan or anything that would allow you to save for the long term on a tax deferred basis?

Not at the moment, but I do plan to work somewhere soon that I believe I will be receiving those benefits. Okay, great. Yeah, so that would be good. I mean, we're, we're not ready for that right now because of that emergency fund in particular, we need to really get that in place that at least get one month's expenses and then on your way to three to six and I'd love for you to start making some progress toward the medical debt. But once you've got the emergency fund at a minimum in place, then I think that's the time, hopefully if you have a company sponsored plan available, especially if there's some matching involved where you'd get, you know, some sort of, you know, 50 cents to a dollar for dollar match up to a certain amount, you're going to want to take advantage of that because that's a 50 or 100% return immediately.

You're not going to get that anywhere else. So that would be a great opportunity for you, but I don't think we're quite there yet. Apart from that, you could do what's called a Roth IRA, which you'd probably want to open at a Fidelity or Schwab. You could put it into a faith based investing fund, or you could use a robo advisor at Schwab. They call it the Schwab intelligent portfolios and it would just give you, you know, some indexed exchange traded funds. This is just a basket of stocks that mirror the broad market indexes. So you just capture the broad moves of the market and over time you'll do well. I was just looking this morning at the last dozen years of S and P 500 returns. So the S and P 500 is one of those most well-known indexes.

It's a basket of the 500 largest companies here in the United States. And if we look over the last 12 years, nine of those 12 years have been positive. In some cases, more than 20% positive.

Only three of them have been negative. And so that's the idea is that if we're investing over the long haul, properly diversified, but we're taking a long-term perspective, we'll do well. Whether it's in an index fund or an actively managed fund or a faith-based investing fund. But I think your key right now is to get that emergency fund in place.

And if you want, I'd be happy to connect you with a certified Christian financial counselor at our expense to help you review your budget, make sure you're on track with the plan, and set up a process to control the flow of money in and out. So stay on the line. We'll get your information and get you connected with Assert CFC. We're going to take a quick break, folks. Back with more after this. Looks like we have two lines open.

800-525-7000. Encouraging you, taking you back to God's word, and helping you make financial decisions in light of biblical wisdom. That's what we do on this program each day.

I'm Rob West. Stick around. A lot more to come just around the corner. As a faithful listener of the faith and finance program, you know that there is life-changing financial wisdom in God's word to meet all your needs. More than anything, Faithful is here to help you and millions of others see God as your ultimate treasure. As a nonprofit, we're grateful for our partners that help expand our outreach every month with their generosity. Has God provided financial answers for you through this ministry? Please consider becoming a monthly partner by visiting faithfine.com and clicking Give. As the leading advocate for the Christian financial industry, Kingdom Advisors serves the public by promoting the integration of a biblical worldview across every aspect of the financial services industry. And we serve a growing network of thousands of Christian financial professionals, equipping and empowering them to carry biblical financial wisdom to their clients, peers, and community. For more information, visit kingdomadvisors.com.

That's kingdomadvisors.com. Well, I'm glad to have you with us today on faith and finance. Hey, we've got some lines open today with whatever you're thinking about. We'd love to tackle your financial question. You can give us a call right now with lines open at 800-525-7000. Here in our last segment of the broadcast, we've got room for a couple more questions. 800-525-7000.

You can call right now. Here's our goal. We want to encourage you and equip you to make wise financial decisions in light of biblical wisdom. You see a biblical worldview says that God is the creator of everything and money is a good gift, a good creation from God that he entrusts to us as his managers or stewards, which means we're to handle it according to the master's heart. We find his heart in scripture, so we hold it loosely. We live with contentment.

We find our identity in Christ. We keep our eyes fixed on the eternal, not the temporal, but we use money as a good gift to accomplish God's purposes, to enjoy, to meet the needs of our family, and to give generously. And there's principles we find in scripture that we pull out and we can apply to the practical and daily decisions we make with money. As we live, that's our lifestyle, we give generously, we owe for debt and for taxes, and we grow our short-term and long-term wealth. We put it aside for the future, recognizing in Proverbs, among other places, it encourages us to have precious oil in the house of the wise, meaning we don't expend everything we receive today that's a gracious gift from the Lord. We set a portion aside for the future, always bringing that to the Lord in prayer to say, God, what would you have me to do?

What is the appropriate amount for my savings? We might even ask, what is my financial finish line if we have the ability to do so? Now, you may find yourself in a desperate situation as well.

Don't think this program is only for folks who have millions of dollars in the bank. You may find yourself wondering, how am I going to pay the bills this month? And if that's the case, I would remind you that God is your provider, that we will have trouble in this world, but our goal is to be found faithful, to trust the Lord and his provision, to make our needs known, and that's where the body of Christ can step in.

And as we apply these simple and yet hard to live out principles every day by living within our means and avoiding debt and giving systematically and proportionately, we will, I think, experience God's best, but it will not be without hardship because we live in a fallen world. And so together we navigate that and help each other and try to pursue what God has for us in this area. So let's head to Tennessee. Hi, Casey. Go ahead. Hi. I have a question.

I'm not sure what to do. I'm thinking of retiring so I can get my money out of the company that I work for now and take the money. And I don't know how much the government takes because I'm not 65 yet.

Is there a cutoff where they don't take anything? So is this a 401k, Casey? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. So if you pulled the money out, you're not going to pay any penalty at your age because you're over 59 and a half. So there's no penalty. So the only taxes that would be due would be whatever you pull out would be added to your taxable income for the year and then you'd pay taxes on it just like it was income from your employer.

Now with that said, let me just push back for a second and just ask, is that the best approach? Because, you know, how much do you have in, uh, in the 401k today? 20,000. Not enough.

All right. 20,000. And what would you use the money for if you pulled it out? Um, I would pay off. I have two credit cards.

I want them gone and I'm still going to work part time. Okay. And would this, um, let me ask you this way. Have you corrected the problem that got you into the credit card debt in the first place? I mean, are you confident that if you paid this off, you wouldn't call me back in six months and say, guess what?

The credit card debt's back. Uh, yeah, I'm getting a divorce. Okay. All right. So that was the primary cause as you look back on, you know, why the credit card debt's here. Do you feel like you can balance your budget and live within your means moving forward?

I did fine before I got married. Okay. All right. That's fair. I always had extra money when I was by myself.

Okay. Well, I think that's the key is, you know, I just talked to so many folks and I'm, you know, I'm not saying that you're going to go back into debt, but I just hear from so many folks that they take the pressure off by, you know, pulling money out of a 401k or something like that to pay off debt. And they're like, Oh, take a big sigh of relief. And then the pattern of overspending continues. And then the credit card debt comes right back, except now they have a, another loan to boot or, you know, a 401k that's been eliminated, something like that.

I certainly understand what you're saying about. There's a change that's happening here that is going to give you more control over the money and you're confident you can, you can handle it appropriately. The only other approach would be to say, okay, what if I leave the 20,000 there, let it continue to work for me so that, you know, maybe down the road, it's not 20, but it's 30 or 40. And, you know, you get yourself on a debt management program, which would get the interest rates down. But at the end of the day, if you say, listen, Rob, I just want to be out of debt.

And I heard you say that, and that's the most important thing for me, then, you know, I think the key is just make sure that you understand a couple of things. Number one is you don't want to let the tax bill catch you by surprise. So let's say you're in a 25%, you know, effective tax rate. You know, if you take 20,000 and you owe 25% to Uncle Sam, you need to set aside 5,000 so that doesn't catch you by surprise. And you have that money to, you know, pay in when you file your taxes. And then that would allow you to pay off 15, not 20,000 of the credit card debt. So that's number one. And then number two, let's just really dial in your spending, live on that spending plan and try to continue to save for the future so you've got something to fall back on, you know, when the unexpected comes. But apart from that, there won't be any penalties.

You'll just have that tax bill at the end of the year. Okay. Okay.

Sounds great. Thank you so much, sir. Have a great day. And you too, Casey.

Thank you so much. I appreciate you calling. Let's quickly go to Idaho and we'll finish today with Clarence. Go right ahead.

Yeah. Hi, this is Clarence. How are you doing? Doing great. Thank you.

I got a question. When I was stationed down in Fort Polk and Fort Hood and I bought houses, we had an insurance that covered if something would happen to me that the house would be paid for. And I can't find those insurance anymore. You know anything about that?

Yeah. You know, if you can't find the paperwork for these policies, you can check out something called NAIC.org. That stands for National Association of Insurance Commissioners. And they have a policy search feature that could reveal who the insurers are for these policies. So you can contact them directly. It's kind of a central repository or database.

So again, you'd go to the internet, go to NAIC.org, National Association of Insurance Commissioners, and use their policy search tool. Okay? Okay. Appreciate that. Thank you.

All right, Clarence. Hey, God bless you. And thank you for your service to our country, sir. We appreciate it. So thankful for your calls, for you listening, being a part of the program. Thanks also for your great emails and encouragement that come through the mail as well. Let me say thanks to my team today. I certainly couldn't do this without them.

Taylor Standrich, Devin Patrick, and Robert Youngblood, plus the incredible team behind those gentlemen here at Faithfi. Amazing that I get to work with them every day. Hope you have a great day. May the Lord bless you and come back and join us tomorrow. We'll see you then. Bye-bye. Faith in Finance is provided by Faithfi and listeners like you.