5 Signs You May Need a Certified Christian Financial Counselor With Art Rainer

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Would you believe that almost 40% of adults say they don't? Hi, I'm Rob West. You may be among them, struggling to manage your finances on your own with no one to answer your questions. Well, it doesn't have to be that way, and Art Rayner joins us today to talk about the very special Certified Christian Financial Counselor Program. Then it's on to your calls at 800-532-7200.

That's 800-525-7000. This is faith and finance, biblical wisdom for your financial journey. Well, our guest Art Rayner is Director of the Institute for Christian Financial Health, which administers the Certified Christian Financial Counselor Program. Art, great to have you back.

Rob, it's always a pleasure. Art, why don't we begin by you sharing with our listeners what these special counselors actually do? Yeah, Christian financial counselors help individuals and couples discover and pursue God's design for money. So practically, Christian financial counselors guide individuals and couples in making wise financial decisions, build sound financial habits, and increase their biblical and financial literacy. Yeah, that's really important. Now, for our listeners today who are wondering whether they need a Christian financial counselor, what would be some of those maybe warning signs or indications that they're ready for one?

Yeah, that's a great question. We actually have a list of signs that may indicate you would benefit from a Christian financial counselor, starting with the fact that your finances feel out of control. Your finances feel like one big mess. You know, every month, you're just flying by the seat of your pants. There's no direction, only disorganization, and it stresses you out.

You know that something must change. So a Christian financial counselor can help make sense of the mess. They can help you develop financial goals and organize your finances. They can help you know what financial step to take next. Second, you need help creating and maintaining a budget.

Now, most of us know that budgeting is a good idea. However, many don't know how to craft a reasonable budget or have struggled to stick with one. This is one of the top reasons individuals and couples seek out a Christian financial counselor.

A Christian financial counselor educates clients on how to craft a budget and keeps them on track. Third, you are loaded with debt. You know, the Bible says that debt is a burden, and anyone who has carried debt would agree with that.

And as time goes on, the burden feels heavier and heavier. And so a Christian financial counselor will review a client's debt and craft a debt payoff plan. Having this plan in place and providing a regular check-in motivates clients to pay off debt more quickly. Fourth, you are regularly arguing about money with your spouse.

This is a big one. God designed married couples to operate as one, even in the area of finances. And you want this, but you need help to get on the same financial page with your spouse. Money is not a point of unity but a point of division. So a Christian financial counselor can help a couple get on the same financial page.

They can help couples understand one another's money personality and how their past experiences with money are influencing their decisions today. And then finally, you need accountability. You know what you need to do, but this knowledge only sometimes leads to the right action. You are still tempted to spend money you should save. You still should give, but you're giving out of your leftovers.

You still need to pay off your debt, but you're adding to the credit card balance. Regular meetings with a Christian financial counselor can help create accountability around your finances. Boy, those are so helpful, and I'm sure many of our audience find themselves in one of those five ideas that you just shared. Now, I'm sure they're wondering, is there a fee for this service? So how does that work, Art?

Yeah, another really good question. Ultimately, it will depend on the Christian financial counselor that you choose to work with, but usually there is some type of hourly session fee, just like you would pay with any other type of counseling. And this fee actually helps clients stay engaged and finish any next steps the financial counselor provides.

They have skin in the game, and so they are more motivated to do the work. Plus, the ROI that you typically get from a Christian financial counselor is more than worth the fee. That's really helpful, Art.

And then the last question, of course, is where do they go to get more information? Yeah, so they can go to christianfinancialhealth.com, and if you're looking for a certified Christian financial counselor, there's a search tab right up at the top. If you want to become a Christian financial counselor, click on the certification tab to learn more about the program. We are honored to partner with the Institute for Christian Health, and Art, it's been great to have you with us today, my friend. Always a pleasure.

Thank you. Folks, to learn more, go to christianfinancialhealth.com. That's christianfinancialhealth.com.

We're back with your questions right after this. If you enjoy this radio program, you're going to love all of the many different resources waiting for you at faithfi.com and the Faithfi app. You'll find powerful wisdom, free podcasts, articles, videos, and more from leading voices such as Randy Alcorn, Howard Dayton, Ron Blue, and our own Rob West. Grow in wisdom and knowledge by connecting with a community of thousands of Christians striving to be good and faithful stewards at faithfi.com or by downloading the Faithfi app. 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 a 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. Welcome back to Faith and Finance. I'm Rob West. We're taking your calls and questions today. The lines are filling quickly, but we have a few lines open. If you have a question today, financially speaking, give us a call, 800-525-7000. Let's dive in today. We're going to begin in Oxford, Nebraska. Hi, Florence. Go right ahead.

Hi, Rob. My question is, my husband and I have term life insurance policies each $100,000. We're in our 70s, and it's not to leave necessarily.

I don't know how to say this, I guess. But the question is, would it be wise to drop mine and pay? We are about $100,000 in debt. We have two big loans. And I was wondering if it would be wise to drop mine and use that same amount of money towards one of the loans.

Yeah. It's a great question, Florence. And I think the question is, do you need any life insurance at this point? I mean, you know, the reason we carry car insurance is to make sure we can, you know, fix our car, repair it if it were lost or stolen or damaged. And in this case, the question would be, if one of you were to pass away, would it create a hardship on the other one because of a loss of income or some additional expense that would be incurred? And generally speaking, when you're beyond your working years, that's no longer the case. The lower assets and income sources you have in place, you know, if your husband were to pass away, in many cases, those would remain the same. And this opposite would be true for him.

But let me ask that question. Is there a need for life insurance on either of you at this point? Well, the two loans that I spoke of, one is like $43,000. The other one's about $50,000 that we still owe him.

So, yeah. And so you'd like to be able to pay those off. But what are your income sources today? Well, he works full-time, plus receiving Social Security. I work part-time, plus receiving Social Security.

We do get some RMDs, plus some Veterans benefits. Okay. So I guess your thought is... ...roughly $7,000 to $8,000 each month. Okay. You're bringing in $7,000 to $8,000 between his full-time and your part-time work, or across all of your income sources?

Across all of them. Okay. And what do you have left over in a typical month?

Oh, maybe $2,000 or $3,000. Okay. Yeah. And if his income were to go away, would it be difficult for you to cover the bills just on your part-time income, including servicing those debts? Yes, I think it would be. Okay.

Yeah. So I think that's perhaps getting to what you're saying here, which is in the case where he dies before you, you probably want that life insurance on his life payable to you because you could wipe out those debts and then you could live just based on whatever income would still come to you. You know, perhaps the veteran's benefits, you get a survivor's benefit, you're still working part-time, the debt is paid off, your income is now, you know, the monthly need that you have is lower. That would not necessarily need to be the case if you die before him because, you know, you're only working part-time. He'd still have his full income plus the veteran's benefits and could probably continue servicing the debt. Do you think that's true? I believe so, yes.

Okay. So in that case, yeah, I think, you know, what you could do would be to drop the life insurance that you have on your life payable to him, recoup that 300 a month and start paying that as extra payments toward, you know, the debt reduction to try to get that paid off a little bit quicker. The only thing I might do in advance of that before you let that go is just say, you know, do the math and make sure that given his, you know, retirement veteran's benefits plus his income that it is in fact enough to cover the bills without anything, you know, your Social Security and your part-time work even if the debt were still to be around. Because if we drop the life insurance on your life, we're not going to be able to pay off the debt so we just want to make sure he's got enough income, you know, and what if 10 years from now he's no longer able to work full-time in the debt still hanging around, you know, is that going to put him in a difficult spot? If so, then we'd want to keep both $100,000 policies in place until either the premium jumps up to where it's no longer, it no longer makes sense because it's too expensive or the debts paid off. But if you feel like he's got enough income to service the debt and cover his lifestyle needs, you know, after your passing then absolutely I think you could drop your policy and that would recoup $300 a month and that would give you more to put toward, you know, debt eradication. Does that make sense? Well, yes it does.

The only thing I had questions about too was my health. I have health issues and if I was to drop this policy and try to get another one, I don't think I could. Well, right, and that's why you wouldn't want to do that. I mean it's $300 a month. Is this a term policy? Yes. And how many years do you have left on the term? Oh, I don't know.

I forgot to look, Rob. Okay. Yeah, that would be important because obviously, you know, especially if you have health issues, you don't want to drop this policy if you still need it. So the first question is do we still need life insurance on your life, insuring your life with a death benefit payable to him? If the answer is yes, while this debt is still around, then you'd want to make sure you keep this in force until at least the debt's paid off or the end of the term, whichever comes first because when the end of the term comes, that premium is going to jump or when the debt's paid off, you certainly don't need it anymore. And by really crunching those numbers, you're going to need to decide is he able to maintain his lifestyle without this death benefit and service the debt both in, you know, when he's working and when he's no longer working because that, you know, that time will come at some point. And then I think that will help you decide do we keep this policy and continue to pay the 300 a month until the end of the term or until the debt's paid off or do we let it go and recoup that $3,600 a year back into our budget, which we could use to pay down debt.

So I think you've got a little bit of homework to figure out, you know, does he have enough income if you pass away to service the debt and maintain his lifestyle and look at how long that term continues and I think that will give you the information you need. Florence, thank you for your call today. We appreciate it very, very much. To Chicago, hi Michelle, give us your question and then I'll probably have to answer it on the other side of the break.

How can I help? Okay, thank you for taking my call. I recently increased my company contributions to 10% in a 401k. My company also offers a Roth option.

I'm in my mid 50s, don't plan to retire until I'm about 70. Just wondering if it would benefit me to put my Roth into, like cut my giving in half and put half of it into the Roth with the company or to take half and put it into something else outside of the company that would give me more options for diversification. Yeah, good question. You know, we actually just did a pretty thorough look at this topic with Mark Biller. Go to soundmindinvesting.org, you'll find an article that addresses this. What he shared with us on this topic was a study that was done recently by some university researchers that determined based on the uncertainties and the changes in the tax code, it's good to have two buckets, both the tax free and the tax deferred environments, the Roth and the traditional. And so you take your age plus 20. And that's what you put in traditional and put the balance in the Roth.

So if you're 50, you'd put 70% into the traditional 30% into the Roth. Check out that article. I think that'll give you a bit more information and a deeper dive. You'll find it at soundmindinvesting.org. Michelle, thanks for your call today. Well, we need to take a break. This is Faith and Finance.

We'll be back after this. 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. Welcome back to Faith and Finance. I'm Rob West. Let's head back to the phones.

Cleveland, Ohio. Hi, Ellen. Thanks for calling. Go ahead.

Hi, thank you. I have an older car, a 2011 Ford Escape. It has 243,000 miles on it. It has a few issues with it, like I have to add fuel injector cleaner when I fill up or the engine light will come on. It has a slow leak somewhere that they recommended I not get fixed because it would be over $1,000 and it's a pretty negligible leak.

It's got some rust starting on it. And so I want to drive this car until it dies, and I'm hoping that I can drive it another four years while I'm saving up for my next car. So I'm just wondering at what point would it make sense or would it ever make sense to drop the comprehensive part of my insurance? Yeah, it can make some sense. There are some rules of thumb here as long as you understand what you're giving up and the collision pays for damage to your car after an accident with an object.

It could be a tree or a guardrail. Comprehensive is not exactly comprehensive, but it pays for car theft or damage from weather, floods, fire, things like that. And the rules of thumb say that you can either look at it simply by saying once you get past five or six years old or reach 100,000 miles, then you should consider dropping the collision. You're clearly well beyond that.

The other rule of thumb is to total up the total premiums that you pay for that portion of your coverage over a 12-month period, and if that's more than half the car's value, then that's the time when you should be comfortable dropping the comprehensive and collision. Certainly number one applies. Do you know if number two does? I'm guessing it would, but I wouldn't be able to see that off the top of my head.

Yeah, so you could take a look at that. But I think the bottom line is, yeah, I mean, you've obviously kind of ridden this thing beyond its useful life. There's not a whole lot of value left into it, other than it's valuable to you because it still runs. So I love the idea of you continuing to drive this until it dies, as you said.

Why not, right? The last car we turned in, we had a minivan. We've got four kids, a busy household. We had a minivan with 230,000 miles on it, and it was valuable to us right up until it wasn't anymore because it wasn't worth fixing. I think that's the right idea, but if you can save some money by dropping the collision and comprehensive, that does make some sense.

Hopefully those two rules of thumb will lead you to think, you know what, this is exactly what I'm describing here in my car, and therefore I can save some money. Okay, great. Super. Thank you very much. All right, Ellen, thanks for your call today. Yeah, God bless you. Appreciate you hanging on.

800-525-7000 is the number to call to Ohio. Anna, you'll be our next caller. Go ahead.

Hello. We have $100,000 right now in an annuity that's come. We can take the money out if we want without a penalty at this point, or we can reinvest it at like 4.2% for five years, re-up it. And in that time, we could take out like $10,000 a year if we needed it, or we could take that out of the annuity and buy some CDs online. And we also have, we just have $16,000 right now in savings because we just bought a vehicle and we have one for sale and we haven't sold it yet. So right now, that's how we have the size $100,000. We're just not sure which online CDs to look at or if we should stay with the annuity.

Yeah. I kind of like the idea of you putting it into a CD. I mean, you're going to get about a comparable rate there. I mean, five-year CDs right now are right at, the very best rates you're going to find are around that 4.6% for five years. Interestingly, you can actually do a lot better than that with a shorter duration, and it's just because the banks know these rates aren't going to last forever.

Eventually, it's going to deteriorate too much the economy. They're going to have to lower the rates. But right now, you can get 5.6% on a one-year CD.

In some cases, there'll be a minimum of $10,000 or $25,000, but you've obviously got more than that. So you could do better in a CD, but not for five years. If that rate is lower a year from now, you may not end up with that 4.6% that you can get in a five-year CD or in the annuity.

So I think it really comes down to you. Obviously, when you lock it up in a five-year CD, you're losing access to the money without penalties for the full five years. I think in the case of the annuity, you have this provision where you can get, I think you said, 10% or $10,000 out per year. Is this qualified money, Anna? Meaning, did it go in pre-tax? It must have, because he told me there'd be no penalty. I don't know.

Is that a tax? He said there'd be no penalty to get it out now. So I'm sorry. Yeah, you'd want to understand.

That's okay. You just want to understand that, because that penalty is different from it being taxable. So you're going to want to understand the tax implications of you taking the money out. If this money went in pre-tax, then you'd want to roll it to an IRA, an Individual Retirement Account, and then you could invest it in CDs inside the IRA. If it's after-tax money, then you just need to understand any taxes you're due on the gains you've had and just factor that in. But at that point, you'd be free to move this to your savings account and then put it into a taxable CD because it's not in a tax-deferred environment.

So you're just going to want to understand that. I'd probably check with a CPA before you do anything just to make sure you understand, if you move it out, what type of account it needs to go into so you don't incur a tax liability without understanding what you're doing. But in terms of the annuity or the CD, it's kind of a wash, Anna. I think you're going to end up with about the same rate. If the annuity is paying 4.6, that's exactly what you're going to get on a five-year CD. So I think it's whichever you're most comfortable with, and I don't have any problem with you staying right where you're at in the annuity if that's what they're going to pay you for that period of time. Okay. Right now, we're both on Social Security, and we actually don't make enough to do a lot with taxes at this point. I don't know if that's a consideration here.

Well, it just would be if this is all pre-tax money, the distribution of it would create $100,000 in taxable income if you pulled it out and it was in a pre-tax environment. So just make sure you have somebody take a look at that because if you did withdraw it, I don't want you to create a lot of taxable income that you didn't intend to. Okay. Okay. We will do that.

All right. Thank you for your call. God bless you, Anna.

Thanks for being on the program today. Quick email. This comes from Mary. She writes, if online banking is considered safe, then why do people recommend not using online banking at a public library?

I find this conflicting and confusing. Mary, I'm not sure what advice you're referring to. Perhaps what they're talking about is that you shouldn't do any kind of online financial transactions using a public library's computer or anyone else's Wi-Fi network because that internet connection wouldn't be safe and therefore your transactions with your bank wouldn't be safe.

But as long as you're using your own Wi-Fi at home and you're using just generally accepted safeguarding principles, then I don't see any different with you doing business with an online bank. 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.