The Futility of Fear

What's most important to you when it comes to choosing your financial advisor? Someone who's aligned with your biblical values. How about someone who will take the time to explain your options? Certified Kingdom Advisors are professionals who meet high standards in competence and integrity and have been trained to offer biblical financial advice.

To find a Certified Kingdom Advisor in your area, visit faithfi.com and click Find a CKA. Former slave ship captain and author of Amazing Grace, John Newton, once said, If the Lord be with us, we have no cause of fear. Hi, I'm Rob West.

It's easy to let fear take over when financial circumstances spin out of control. But there's a better way. We'll talk about that today. Then we'll take your calls at 800-525-7000.

That's 800-525-7000. This is faith and finance, biblical wisdom for your financial journey. Well, it's comforting to remember that the Lord is with us, but do we always live like we believe it? Unfortunately, we still give in to fear from time to time, especially when it comes to money issues.

It's as if the circumstances seem more real than God's presence. What financial fears are you facing today? Maybe sudden life changes are making your finances unstable.

You could be living paycheck to paycheck without any margin. Or perhaps you're afraid of losing your business or your home. For some folks, anxiety about bad financial news causes discouragement or even depression. You may be struggling with feelings of fear right now. But here's the thing, according to God's word, fear is futile. Being afraid accomplishes nothing except high blood pressure and sleepless nights.

Jesus put it this way, can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? So what do you do when financial troubles tempt you to be fearful? Well, listen to Romans 8.15, for you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear.

But you have received the spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba, Father. The truth is, you don't have to give in to anxiety and fear. Because of Christ's death and resurrection, you can give up your fears to our Heavenly Father.

And even when you don't feel God's presence, you still know He's there, and He is good, and He loves you. By faith, you can trust God's provision and protection, no matter how sticky your circumstances are. If a financial problem is causing you to be anxious or afraid, just remember that faith is the opposite of fear, which is why fear is such an effective tool of Satan. When you stop trusting God and focus on your fear, you're right where the enemy wants you, taking your eyes off the goodness of God and concentrating on your own problems instead. Another of the enemy's fear tactics is the question, what if?

Here are some familiar ones. What if the economy gets worse and I can't pay my bills? What if I don't have enough money for retirement? What if we have a medical emergency and our insurance isn't enough? What if my spouse dies? What if I can't find an affordable car?

Or what if I lose my job? The problem with what if is that it makes us think about what might go wrong in the future. Well, we can't see the future, of course, but we worry about it anyway, don't we? And then we're right back being fearful again.

Here's the point. In the midst of fear and uncertainty, we can hang on to the truth that God gets the victory. Our Lord conquered death and sin, so in Christ, we can stand firm against the fear tactics of our enemy. Isaiah 54-7 contains a fantastic promise about this.

No weapon formed against you shall prosper, and every tongue which rises against you in judgment you shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is from me, says the Lord. You see, as servants of the Lord, we inherit the righteousness of Christ and can trust God to carry us through whatever financial fears and anxieties Satan throws our way. So let's look at a few more passages from God's word about the futility of fear.

Jesus says in John 16-33, In the world you will have tribulation, but take heart, I have overcome the world. When money worries seem overwhelming, it helps to remember that we can endure any troubles with confidence that God is good. Isaiah 41-13 says, I am the Lord your God, who upholds your right hand, who says, Do not fear, I will help you.

God is in control of all the details, and He will provide what we need at just the right time. First Timothy 1-7 says, God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind, so that we can be at peace about our financial circumstances. Finally, fear is just plain bad for you, spiritually, physically, and emotionally. As Proverbs 12-25 says, Anxiety weighs down the heart, but a kind word cheers it up. That's a great thing to remember. When someone you know is struggling with fear, your kind words can make a difference.

In Christ, we can reject the futility of fear, because God gives us the power to walk in faith every day, and the permission to come to our Abba Father for help. Now that's good news. Fear not, your calls are next. The number 800-525-7000, that's 800-525-7000.

I'm Rob West, and we'll be right back. We're grateful for support from Guidestone, whose diversified suite of investment solutions align with Christian values to create positive change in the world. More information is available at GuidestoneFunds.com. Investing involves risk, including potential loss of principal. Carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses of Guidestone Funds before investing.

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This is the program where the 2,300 verses on money and possessions found in God's Word intersect with today's financial decisions and choices. The number to get in on the conversation, 800-525-7000. That's 800-525-7000. Let's head to the phones.

We'll go to Aurora, Illinois. Hi, Jeremy. Go ahead. Hello. How are you?

I'm doing well. Thanks. Good. Good. Yes. My wife and I are looking to purchase a new home, and obviously I know the rates are super high right now, so just wanted to get your advice on when you think we should purchase a home, and is there anywhere we could go to try and get that rate lowered?

Yeah. I mean, you just want to work with a mortgage company that's reputable and that you can trust. I'd check with our friends first at Movement Mortgage, movement.com forward slash faith.

They're great partners of ours here and they're believers and they cover the 50 states. But I think the key here, Jeremy, is yes, rates are high. That's not ideal, and yet we've certainly been higher. This is just above the average interest rate when we look back over a pretty lengthy period of time.

So we're not in uncharted waters. We just got really accustomed to and enjoyed these low mortgage rates in the twos and threes, and we're certainly a good bit from that now. So we just have to go back to the rules of thumb, which says, number one, can you get to a 20% down payment? So can you get $40,000 saved on a $200,000 home? And can you keep the resulting mortgage payment, including principal interest taxes and insurance, in a reasonable range so that you've got enough to cover the rest of your bills and still have some margin so you're not putting unnecessary pressure on your family? And that rule of thumb is 25% of your take-home pay for your mortgage payment. So if you can hit those, then I'd say, yeah, let's go ahead and potentially move forward. You could try to wait it out in hopes that we end the year next year, the analysis or the consensus, I should say, from a lot of economists that will probably be in the high fives by the end of next year, but that could get delayed if we still see continuing strength in the economy, which causes the Fed to have to keep these rates higher for longer.

That could be pushed out into 2025 before we see some relief. And here you are sitting on the sideline throwing a lot of money at rent. So I think it always comes back to, even more than the interest rates, the prevailing rates, it comes back to your financial readiness.

And I would use your ability to make a meaningful down payment of ideally 20% or more and your ability to absorb that mortgage payment into your budget at no more than 25% of your take-home pay is not must-haves, but certainly they're pretty important rules of thumb and the extent to which you're going to violate either of them. I think it just says potentially you're not quite ready and maybe you need to delay this and continue to save. Does that make sense? Okay. Thank you.

It makes sense. All right. Thanks for your call today. We appreciate it.

To Nashville, Tennessee. Maria, thanks for calling. Go ahead. Yes. All right. Thank you, Rob. I wanted to ask you, we have investments in real estate, but also in 401K, our accounts, so we don't have any investments in tax-free accounts.

I don't know if... I guess there's a way to be able to transfer them slowly. My husband is a retirement age, but he's planning on retiring soon.

I'm still two years away. But my question is quickly, I guess, some extra money that we have, do you recommend putting it in annuities or putting them in bank accounts like money markets or CDs? Yeah.

It could be a combination of the two. Are you just about to sell the properties or where are the... Where's the funds coming from? Just extra funds that were coming from the investments that we have on the properties that we're accumulating. Okay.

So you're going to keep the properties, but it's just throwing off income that you don't need and so it's building up in your savings? Correct. Okay. And what kind of surplus do you have on a monthly basis? Oh, probably, let's say about $4,000.

Okay. And how much do you have in retirement accounts at this point? In retirement, about $600,000.

$600,000? Mm-hmm. Okay. And do you know what your ultimate savings goal is?

Have you ever done any retirement planning to know kind of how much is enough? No. Okay. No, we just feel that it's enough, what we have, but, you know. Yeah. Well, obviously, you're throwing out a lot of cash flow and that's great.

I mean, cash is a good thing. But I'd love for you all to know kind of what your finish line is. And I'm not saying you're there. You might be, but that's where some real planning comes in just to say, okay, how long do we want to keep working? What do we think God has for us in this next season of life? Does it continue to involve compensation? If not, what are we going to live on? Obviously, you've got potentially, you know, you'll have social security at some point. You've got these rental properties which are going to continue to throw off cash. At some point, you may want to sell those and then you'd probably want to invest that money just to keep it working for you because if it's sitting in a bank account, it's losing purchasing power just because of the effects of inflation. But at this point, you've got a lot of cash flow. You might be in a position where you determine we've already reached our finish line and so now we could kind of enjoy giving some of this money away out of our current cash flow as the Lord leads.

You may want to, you know, enjoy some of it by building memories with family and friends, things like that. But I think, you know, having a plan is going to answer a lot of those questions and an advisor who shares your values can help you start by saying, hey, what's God doing in our life and what's really most important to us? What are our values as believers and how can we let those values inform our goals? And then that ultimately results in your day-to-day decisions around how you handle God's money, including what you should do with this $200,000 and the $4,000 a month that you have being thrown off in surplus. I mean, yeah, of course, a portion of it should stay right there in emergency savings and, you know, if you're not quite to your savings goal and you're not maxing out, you know, a retirement plan at work while you're still working, well, you could, you know, start funding that.

We could give some of it away right now. If you did want to get it into a tax deferred environment and you've exhausted all of your retirement plans, you could use an insurance product to do that. But again, all of that needs to be considered in light of a well thought out financial plan with an advisor, preferably who shares your values.

So here's what I would do, Maria. There's some wonderful Certified Kingdom Advisors there in Nashville and if you don't already have an advisor, I'd go to our website at faithfi.com and click find a CKA and maybe interview two or three of those CKs there in Nashville. Find one that you feel like is the best fit for you. And the starting place is not to have them manage your money.

The starting place is to do some comprehensive financial planning that's going to help to inform those ultimate decisions that you make with not only the nest egg you have, but the cash flow you're throwing off on a monthly basis. Does that all make sense? Okay. Yes.

Yes, it does. Okay. I think that's the next step. And then the great thing is that if you find that advisor who can do that planning and maybe he or she does end up managing some of the money, they can also help to hold you accountable in a really helpful way in the sense that, you know, you make decisions, you set finish lines, you set goals, and then, you know, periodically they can bring you together as a couple and say, hey, how are we doing?

And kind of ask some questions and help you stay on track with what you feel like God is calling you to do. So anyway, head to our website. I think that'll be a great help to you and if we can help you further, don't hesitate to call back. God bless you. Thanks for being on the program today. Hey, just after this break, we'll be back with a lot more of your calls and questions.

Stay with us. This is Faith in Finance. We're grateful for support from Eventide Investments on the Faith in Finance program. Eventide's approach to values-based investing is grounded in the belief that humankind was created in the image of God with intrinsic dignity, value, and worth. Eventide calls this investing that makes the world rejoice. More information is available at eventideinvestments.com.

That's eventideinvestments.com. Because of my past health history, finding affordable health care was nearly impossible. But then I found CHM, where costs are not adjusted based on medical history. Christian Health Care Ministries even provides the freedom to choose my own providers, and the best part, CHM members pray for me. Too good to be true?

It's not. I'm a proud member of Christian Health Care Ministries, and if you think it could be right for you, learn more at chministries.org-slash-faithfi. We're so glad you're along with us today. Here in our final segment of the broadcast, we're going to try to get through as many questions as we can as we apply God's wisdom to your financial decisions. Let's go.

Well, it's been a floor today. We're going to Lake Worth. Hey, Bruce, thanks for calling. Go ahead.

Hi, Rob. Thank you for all that you do. My question is paying my bills by check or through the bank. The issue is that my kids are telling me you're crazy to write checks. There's all that information on the check. I'm old school, almost 70.

I always written checks, but I guess do I need to get with the new program and go online to pay? Yeah. I love that your kids are telling you that, come on, Dad, you're still writing checks.

What are you doing? That's great. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a double-edged sword, because there's a safety factor in those not going through the mail. Now, we'll talk about that in a second, because just because you do bill pay doesn't mean it's not going through the mail in some cases. But there's this kind of other risk that you run by doing business online, which is somebody can compromise your account and hack in and those kinds of things.

So let's talk about how you approach this. With online bill pay, you've got really two options. If the bank has the ability to do a direct transfer with your particular, let's say, utility company, and when you go to set up your bill pay, it'll tell you whether you can do an electronic payment and even receive your bills direct into the bank's website, then you're right. You would avoid the check going through the mail, which prevents the ability for somebody to get a hold of that envelope and access your account number and your routing number. But in many cases, the people you would be issuing bills, payments to through your bank on their website, they don't have a relationship with. And so then rather than you just writing the check and putting in the mail, they're generating the physical check and putting it in the mail and still traveling through the mail.

And it's arriving at the destination, the vendor or the contractor or utility company that you're paying. So it doesn't automatically eliminate that possibility of somebody intercepting that envelope, although it would certainly reduce the number of checks that are being sent because again, some of them may be able to be paid electronically. Now, if you do this, then you need to also use best practices with regard to just doing business online period. And that means don't use public Wi Fi when you're logging into your bank.

So you wouldn't want to do that from the coffee shop, you'd want to do it at home. And you'd want you know, the WEP encryption, which you would typically have with, you know, typical internet service provider, you'd want to have a good strong password and change that regularly. I mean, there's going to be some things you want to do just to be safe online. But yeah, I like the idea of you getting online and doing this because it will reduce the number of physical checks being mailed. And I think what you'll find Bruce, is even though there's a learning curve, you know, so many of these things can be paid automatically.

So you set it up once, and you may want to monitor it, but you're, you're going to recoup maybe an hour or two of your time every month, just by not having to physically write out those checks, because there's a lot that can be automated at the same time. Does that all make sense? Yes, it does. I appreciate that advice. Thank you so much. All right. Hey, God bless you. And thanks for listening to the program. We appreciate it.

Let's go to Indiana, Randy, go ahead, sir. I have roughly between my giving and product that I'm holding to donate to Salvation Army. We have potentially above 25K for donation. If we held it till after the year end, and then donate it after January 1st, we would like to make these donations then.

My wife is very concerned that we may be audited because going through our audit process is very long and draining. So she is very leery about itemizing. And I've been donating for probably 30 years to Salvation Army, but we have extra items to donate. So I'm concerned with her concern.

Yeah. No, I appreciate that. And I appreciate that you're trying to alleviate your wife's concern. And that may be the reason you need to do this. Now, if you were to just ask me without telling me your wife was concerned, should you perhaps change what you were going to do in terms of your giving this year to stay under the standard deduction, I'd say no. And if, again, she's concerned about it and is going to lose even a bit of sleep over it, then just don't do it. Just wait until the following year. But I would just say, you know, from my perspective, I don't think this really increases your risk at all of an audit by you just being slightly above the standard deduction.

You know, 10% plus upwards of 20% of taxpayers take the itemized deduction and that's what it's there for. Okay. Very good.

All right. Well, thank you very much. Thanks for your call. You're welcome, sir. God bless you. Thanks for your being on the program today. Let's go to Naples. Sylvester, go ahead.

How can I help? Hi. Well, thank you for taking my call. My question is I contribute 15% to my employer toward 401k, to raw 401k. And I just listened to your show and you say it's probably better to split that, like do a little bit to a traditional, some of them to Ross, how does that work?

Yeah, potentially. And here's why. Because we don't know what's happening to the tax rates in the future. You know, because when you're going to be pulling this money out, it's going to be down the road.

I don't know how far away you are from retirement, but you know, tax rates could be higher, could be the same, could be lower, probably not, but they could be, and we don't know what your income is going to be in retirement. So if you want to do some reading on this, let me direct you to soundmindinvesting.org. Soundmindinvesting.org. What you'll see there is an article that I discussed recently with Mark Biller, who took a deep dive into this topic. The article is titled, should you use a Roth IRA or excuse me, a Roth account, even if you prefer traditional. And he's really exploring this topic of why would you want to put in Roth the after tax versus the traditional, or does it make sense to have both? And the conclusion, based on some researchers that really studied this in thousands of cases, came up with this formula.

And it's just a rule of thumb, that's all it is. But the formula was that based on their studies, that you should put, you take your age, you add 20 to it, and that's the percentage that you should put into the pre-tax version. And then you put the balance in your after tax or Roth version. So if you're 50 years old, you take 50, you add 20 to it, that's 70. You'd put 70% in the pre-tax and 30% in the after tax.

And the idea that you have these two buckets to pull from, depending upon the tax code, your income, how you're giving charitably, I mean, all of these factors gives you the most flexibility to do it in a way that minimizes taxes. Hey, God bless you, Sylvester. Thanks for calling today. Hey, we're almost out of time, but I wanted to let you know that you don't ever have to miss a program. Just download our Faithfi app for your mobile device and take us with you anywhere. Thanks for joining us today. I look forward to talking with you again next time on Faith and Finance. Faith and Finance is provided by Faithfi and listeners like you.