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Go to faithfi.com and click App to get started. It's New Year's Day, the day we start living by our New Year's resolutions. The trouble is, surveys show 95% of us won't make it to Groundhog Day.
Hi, I'm Rob West. That doesn't stop most of us from making New Year's resolutions, hoping this time will be different. Well, I have some ways to help you achieve your goals this time. Then it's on to your calls and questions at 800-525-7000.
That's 800-525-7000. This is Faith in Finance, biblical wisdom for your financial journey. Well, surveys show that the majority of us still make New Year's resolutions, but only about 8% of us stick to them for a whole year. Have you ever wondered why so many people make resolutions and so few keep them?
Well, I think the reason for them is hope. We hope we can make our lives better with these improvements. And the failure rate is high because, even though many of these resolutions sound simple like lose weight, they require fundamental changes in lifestyle. So what are the top New Year's resolutions?
Well, there really aren't any surprises there. A survey of 2,000 people showed that going on a diet is still number one with 71%, followed by exercise more at 65%. If you're wondering where money comes into the picture, it's not far behind. Save more or spend less came in fourth at 32%. After that, we resolved to learn a new skill, quit smoking, find another job, and spend more time with family and friends.
So pretty much what you'd expect. And all of those are worthy resolutions, good things to strive for in life, and it's fine for believers to want those life improvements. But there are other resolutions that Christians should make that will help them achieve greater success and all the rest. These Christian New Year's resolutions should focus on God and fulfilling His will, not yours. If a resolution honors Him, for example, He's more likely to empower you to achieve it. So these Christian resolutions should come first or be in addition to things like quitting smoking and going to the gym.
Here are some examples. A great place to start is by asking for guidance on what resolutions God would like you to make. James 1-5 says, Then, resolve to pray daily for the wisdom and strength to keep the resolutions you feel God is leading you to make. We know that God works through people, so resolve to be accountable to another person for sticking to your resolutions.
That can be a two-way street with you helping to keep the other person accountable too. If you keep the resolutions we've talked about so far, seeking God's will, praying for wisdom and strength, and making yourself accountable, you'll probably start to see success fairly quickly, and you might start feeling pretty good about yourself. That's where our next Christian New Year's resolution comes in.
Resolve not to take the credit for that success. Philippians 4-13 says, And you'll still experience setbacks along the way, but knowing that God is with you will make it much easier to get back on track. And let's not forget some of the other New Year's resolutions that Christians should make. Things like reading the entire Bible during the year, or praying more, or giving more to your church and other ministries. Those are all very good indeed, and we should all want to achieve them. But make sure you're doing them for the right reason. Many fall short on these spiritual resolutions because they're doing them for the wrong person, to make themselves look good.
In Matthew 6-5, Jesus tells us, When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. Instead, our motivation should be to honor God, or the desire to grow closer to Him, or become more like Christ. You see, when you make a resolution, acknowledge that you'll only be able to keep it with God's help, and that He deserves all the credit.
Ephesians 2-10 reads, So, it's January 1st, New Year's Day. You still have time to make a few more resolutions that honor God, and seek His help in keeping all the rest. We'd love for you to let us know how it's going along the way, and we trust that as you do this, you'll see 2024 as a year where you grow closer to God, and become more like Christ. All right, your calls are next.
800-525-7000. I'm Rob West, and we'll be right back. Stick around. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. Rob, thank you for calling, sir. Go ahead. Hi, sir. God bless you.
Thank you, and you too. So, my question is, what line of resources should I draw from to, we want to refinish our basement. My wife is considering putting a beauty salon in our basement, and currently, we don't have a whole lot of money. We have probably about $15,000 in an IRA. We have about six grand stashed away for emergencies. I have good credit. I have a $5,000 secured credit card, which probably isn't a good idea to draw from.
The only other source I could draw from would be, through my bank, I have a $10,000 available kind of loan credit type of thing, but do you think we should take a line of credit out? I only owe $12,000 on my house yet. Okay. What is your home worth? I don't know. I imagine it's worth a lot more, because we bought it about 15 years ago for $60,000, and I did a lot of work to it.
It's a nice house now, so I imagine it's worth quite a bit more. Okay. All right. Very good. Yeah, so let's back up for a second.
I mean, the first thing you need to do, because this could be a showstopper, is to check with local zoning to make sure you can, in fact, open a business in your basement if you're zoned as residential, and then you would have to inquire about building permits necessary for converting it, and then get a business license if you don't have one already. Have you been able to check any of those boxes yet? Yes. My wife called the local courthouse, and they're checking into it currently, and they said it's about 98% chance that they'll give the green light for it.
Okay, great. Yeah, so the last thing you want to do is get further down this road and find out you can't, so I'd want to make sure that all of that lines up and you do need a business license. And then, obviously, you have the additional requirements just being a beauty salon with regard to keeping your proper licenses there with the county just to make sure you're doing things the way they would want it done so she doesn't get shut down. Beyond that, just in terms of the cost to renovate that space, assuming you have all of those pieces in place, what do you think the total project cost is?
Oh, boy. Well, this day and age, I don't imagine it's going to be cheap. Well, the good news is our basement is really small, so it's not going to be a big salon, but it's down to the cinder block, and it needs a lot of work.
Yeah, okay. Well, I think that would be a next step, perhaps, is to get a contractor in there to get a quote for what this would take for you to build it out so you know how much you're dealing with, and then at that point, you have to decide, do I want to go with a small business loan that's not secured to your personal residence, keep it separate, or do you want to try to finance it against the house? You're close to having the home paid off, and a lot of folks would say, well, that's a great opportunity to tap into that equity, and yes, even though rates are up, it's probably your cheapest source of capital, but you are putting your home at risk, so if something were to come up, you're unable to make those payments personally because the business isn't producing or whatever it is. Now you've put your home in jeopardy, so you're going to want to give careful thought to that and just how important it was for you to get to a place where you were completely debt-free, including your house, even if you take on a small business loan where the small business loan program provides the government guarantees to private lenders who process your application, and therefore it's separate. Even though you may have to give a personal guarantee, you're not necessarily putting your home up as collateral. So that would be one option. You'd probably be looking at the SBA 7A loan. That's their primary business loan program.
And then second to that would be you looking to get, typically we would say a home equity loan, although where rates are now, I'd probably do a home equity line of credit just because you want the ability to have those rates drop with interest rates as they come back down probably sometime next year at the latest year following. Does all that make sense? Yeah, it does. Thank you so much.
Well, you're welcome. I think this is something to give careful thought to. Obviously, she's been down this road before. This isn't kind of her first rodeo in this space, I would imagine. Is that right? That's correct. Yeah, she's been doing hair for 20 years.
Okay, great. So I assume she's got a client base that have said, yeah, if you kind of go out on your own and open this in your basement, I'm with you. So the great thing is she's got a proven clientele, she's got expertise, so you'd have immediate cash flow.
I think you just don't want to get yourself overextended. So I think your next step is let's see it through in terms of being able to check with zoning, being able to get the proper licensing, the health department's going to have to sign off on this, given that she's doing beauty and opening a salon in the home that they're going to want to be able to check up on. All those things are in place. Next thing is let's find a general contractor who can give you a bid, and then let's explore our financing options, either the HELOC or a small business loan. I think that one, you and your wife just need to pray about it. We appreciate your call, Bob. All the best to you, my friend. Thanks for being on the program today.
To Cleveland, Ohio, WCRF. Hey, Deborah, go ahead. Thank you for taking my call. I am recently retired, and I'm expecting a small severance from my former employer. And before we leave exit, we're asked where we want our money to go.
And I have a money market fund with Ally, and so I also opened up a Roth IRA to have that deposited into the Roth IRA at Ally. But I was recently hearing disturbing news about Ally, and so then I got concerned if I had done the right thing. Yeah. Was that news related to just the strength of the bank, or was it related to values type issues? Well, it was related to the leadership. And I was wondering if I should be concerned or if everything else was pretty much solid, I guess. You know, I would say in terms of the strength of the bank, I don't know of any issues there. There are some that have taken issue with just some of the decisions more from a value standpoint that have been made.
And so I think for that reason, you may want to take another look at it and see if you'd want to go somewhere else. I think the key with the Roth IRA is how you want that managed, ultimately. How much do you have going into that account?
Approximately $30,000. Okay. All right. And how are you going to invest that? I haven't even gotten that far yet.
Okay, got it. Yeah, what I might do is open an account instead with Fidelity or Schwab, one of those two, and that's going to give you some more flexibility in terms of how that's ultimately managed, whether you want to pick one of the faith-based investing mutual funds that underwrite this program, like Eventide or Guidestone or Praxis or One Ascent or Timothy, or you want to get some help from somebody like soundmindinvesting.org, where they could help you select some high-quality growth and income mutual funds. Either of those, you'd have more flexibility at a Fidelity or a Schwab. So I might go that direction.
And that way, if you do a bit more digging and you don't like what you're seeing in terms of values alignment at Ally, then you don't have all your eggs in one basket. You've already got your investments somewhere else, and you could easily move your high-yield savings as well. I hope that helps you. If you need some further assistance, head to soundmindinvesting.org, or you could find some mutual funds on our website at faithfi.com. Thanks for your call.
We'll be right back. 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. Welcome back. This is Faith in Finance. I'm Rob West. We're taking your calls today. 800-525-7000. That's 800-525-7000.
By the way, you don't have to call. Just send an email. Askrob at faithfi.com. That's askrob at faith, the letters F-I dot com. To West Palm Beach, Florida. Hi, Heather.
Go ahead. My siblings and I are trying to prepare for the end of the civil. Our parents are 82 years old and 75. And we would like to know what type of insurance can be purchased to help prepare to cover burial expenses for them. Our parents migrated to the United States in their older years. And there's a possibility that they would like to be taken back to their home country to be buried. I see.
OK. Yeah, very good. I appreciate that question. Do they have the assets that at their death that would be available for burial expenses, even something that was maybe a little more costly because it involved an out of country burial or is the insurance necessary in order to provide the resources to do so?
We, my brothers and sisters and I want to take on that insurance so that we can prepare for that. I see. I do believe both of my parents do have some assets.
They do have some pension from when they retired as teachers from their home country in Jamaica. So there are some assets there, but we also want to be prepared. OK, got it.
Yeah. So I think the first thing to do is some pre-planning. So you figure out how much you actually need, especially given the fact that they may want to be buried elsewhere. And that involves some conversations that you all or a member of the family who's been going to be the executor would have with them.
Perhaps I would suggest the whole family just to make sure you understand exactly what their desires are and so that you know how much you need. Now, there's burial insurance, which is basically like a whole life policy. And then you would receive the payout from the life insurance claims.
There's no restrictions on how you use it. And, you know, your parents can make their wishes known and then the money could be spent accordingly. Then there's funeral insurance, which it sounds the same.
It's a little different. It has a payout link directly to the cost of a prearranged funeral burial or cremation. So you typically select the funeral home and choose the details of the funeral and purchase the policy from the funeral director.
If they want to be buried outside the country and you all are wanting to take this policy on, I would probably be looking at burial insurance as the best option. They typically don't have any kind of you know, you don't have to qualify for it. It's a guaranteed issue, you know, and it's just going to be a flat price depending upon their age. You're going to want to understand any of the waiting periods. A lot of people don't realize they can have a couple of year waiting period, often a two year waiting period, where if they die within the first two years of taking out the policy, you won't get the full payout. You would just get the premiums that were paid in or it will pay out a smaller amount. And then after two years, you'd get the full amount. But they're simplified policies, they're guaranteed issue. And for a healthy male at that age, you'd be looking at somewhere around $140 a month for a $10,000 benefit. For a healthy female, about $100 a month for a $10,000 benefit. So, you know, they're not cheap just given the limited amount you get back as a death benefit versus the annual premium. But if you and your siblings are dividing it up and it gives you some added peace of mind, then you know, I think that's fine. I think just given though the additional cost that could be here, it is going to really require you all to spend some time talking through your parents' wishes and then actually do enough planning to know what this will really cost so you get enough coverage. Does that make sense?
Yes, it does. Okay. So burial insurance versus funeral insurance which we would purchase directly from the... Insurance company, yeah. And so not from the funeral director because you probably are going to be working with a funeral director outside the country.
So that's why pre-planning is going to be really important in this case. It sounds like you've got some work to do but I appreciate you thinking through this, Heather, and, you know, it sounds like you and your siblings need to have a conversation with mom and dad just to kind of flesh all of this out. We appreciate your call today. Thanks for being on the program. All right, let's round out the broadcast today to Wheeling, Illinois. Madeline, go right ahead.
Hi. I just wanted to find out because we've sold a pickup truck on September 23rd if we should die on the proceeds of the truck. Yeah, I appreciate that question, Madeline.
Let's back up just for a second. You know, we're tithing preceded the law of Moses with the Alkizadeh. We certainly saw it as a part of the law of Moses, although there was multiple tithes that totaled 23 and a third percent because one of them was every three years.
And then Jesus references the Old Testament law, but we're now under the law of Christ. And I think New Testament giving is really about giving freely. It's giving proportionately. It's giving with a cheerful heart. I think it's giving even sacrificially. Jesus celebrated the giving of the poor widow who gave out of her poverty. So we don't want to give to check a box, and yet I think applying the principle of the tithe is a great way to start your giving. To say, as God prospers me on my increase, I'm going to systematically give back starting with my local church.
I love that. So if we're going to apply the principle of the tithe, it is based on the increase. So when we look at the sale of an asset, which would include the sale of a truck, we say, is there an increase? And with a car, in almost every case, there's not an increase. We buy it at one price, we use it, it depreciates, and then we sell it for a price lower than that. The only time it would not be that way is if you had some sort of collectible automobile where you buy it, it actually appreciates, and you sell it for more. But in the case of a typical car sale or truck sale, you're selling it for less than you bought it for, and therefore there is no increase, and so therefore the tithe doesn't apply. Does that make sense? Yes, it does. But I could still give, though, right?
Absolutely. And I think that's my point about even going back to the Old Testament versus the law of Christ. You know, this idea that God has given us an abundance, and that's even before the first dollar. He's given us his son Jesus to pay the penalty for our sin. And so one of the ways we can worship and we can give out of gratitude is to say, I can't outgive God, and therefore every opportunity I have to give generously to my church or to the work of the Lord, by all means you go for it, Madeline.
And when you free up some money because you've sold an asset, that's a great opportunity to do some giving. So I appreciate you checking in on that, though. Thanks for your call today.
Well, once again, our time went by way too fast. But tune in next time, and we'll do it all over again. Before we go, I'd like to thank our incredible production team, Amy, Devin, Jim, Robert, Brandy, Rob, and Ben. Couldn't do it without them. Have a great rest of your day, and I'll see you again next time for another edition of Faith & Finance. Faith & Finance is provided by Faithfi and listeners like you.
