Many people are using the FaithFi app to help provide the wisdom, community, and money management to stay on track, financially speaking. To date, over 37,000 members are using its digital envelope system, participating in our community forums, and engaging in virtual workshops. And one of the most convenient features is the ability to keep all your accounts in one place for an easy-at-a-glance view. You can choose from one of three options, depending on your management style, and it's available on desktop or mobile.
Go to faithfi.com and click app to get started. Well, it seems as if retailers start the so-called traditional buying season earlier and earlier every year. There's a lot of pressure to spend money on holiday decor, gifts, and experiences starting in the fall and running through December.
Well, if they can start early, so can we. We're going to help you prepare by resisting the temptations of emotional buying and impulse spending. Let's start with emotional buying. Even if you believe you're a rational, practical person, there's no escaping the fact that most of your buying decisions will be emotional. This is especially true during the holidays. You may recognize these emotions that can influence your buying decisions.
Affection. You want the best for your loved ones, even if it means overspending. Parents feel the pressure to show their love by buying what the kids want.
This is a very familiar temptation. Guilt is another emotion that drives spending decisions. Maybe you find yourself buying gifts to make up for not spending time with someone or spending extra money to give your family a quote good Christmas when you really can't afford it. Pride can push you into buying more than you should.
You want the latest and greatest products to be like the celebrities you admire or to keep up with what your neighbors have. The emotion of desire is at the heart of many buying decisions. Everyone wants comfort, love, and appreciation. Desire makes us believe that material things can meet these needs, which, of course, is a lie. Fear is a strong emotion when it comes to making purchases.
In social media, it's known as FOMO, or fear of missing out. Fear of not having enough, not giving enough, or not doing enough can push people to buy things. Unfortunately, allowing these emotions to guide your holiday spending can leave you with financial regret when the credit card bills come in January. Proverbs 25-28 warns about this.
Like a city whose walls are broken through is a person who lacks self-control. Impulse buying is another temptation that hits at this time of year. It's a close relation to emotional buying because many of the impulses that cause it are emotional. Financially speaking, impulse spending is also very unwise, and here's why. First, impulse purchases are hasty decisions. Proverbs 21-5 warns us against being hasty.
The plans of the diligent lead surely to advantage, but everyone who is hasty comes surely to poverty. Next, impulse purchases often result in buyer's remorse. Finally, impulse purchases steal money from better causes. Of course, advertisers know all about the power of emotion and the temptation to buy on impulse, but you don't have to give in. So here's what to do if you want to keep your heart focused on God and your budget under control in the weeks leading up to Christmas. First, know your enemy. Overspending may make you feel good now, but it can destroy your financial peace.
Proverbs 22-3 says the prudent man sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it. Next, make a spending plan and stick to it. Ideally, you should be saving a little each month to pay for things outside your monthly budget.
And if you overspent last Christmas season, start saving now so it doesn't happen again. Once you've got a plan, communicate. Get everyone on board with the family's holiday budget. Your kids will learn valuable lessons when they see you planning wisely, setting boundaries, and honoring the Lord. Finally, focus on others.
Shift the focus from getting to giving, and that will go a long way to solving any emotional or impulse-spying problems. Find ways to share the good news with those less fortunate this Christmas. So now's the time to sharpen your financial acts, preparing to chop down the tree of holiday spending without toppling your budget. A spending plan can help you avoid emotional buying and impulse spending, so get one started at FaithFi.com or download our FaithFi app from your mobile app store.
Just search for FaithFi, Faith and Finances wherever you download apps. Alright, your calls are next. The number? 800-525-7000. Call that 24-7.
800-525-7000. I'm Rob West and this is Faith and Finance. Biblical wisdom for your financial journey.
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This institution is not federally insured. Welcome back. Before we get to our calls, I'm excited to mention a new special offer during the fall season from our friends Ken Boa and Russ Crossan. Their book, Leverage Using Temporal Wealth for Eternal Gain, will give you some creative ideas to help fund God's work here on earth.
Request your copy of Leverage with your gift of any amount at FaithFi.com. Let's head right back to the phones and welcome Karen in Walnut Creek, California. Go ahead.
Hello. I have a question regarding Social Security and when to collect. My husband is turning 69 this year, so we are waiting until he turns 70.
And we were doing that for two reasons. One, his monthly benefit will be greater. And two, the amount in the event of his death, the spousal payoff will be greater if he waits until age 70. So for him, how much can he earn after he turns 70 and starts collecting? I had heard someone saying that if you make a certain amount of money, they'll reduce your monthly benefit. That's only prior to full retirement age. So once you reach full retirement age, which is either 66 or 67, then you can earn an unlimited amount and you won't affect your benefit.
Okay. The second question for me is, I am 63 and I was just going to wait until I turned 70 to collect, but my husband left his job that paid quite a bit more money to work in public service. And I'm thinking that little bit of extra money might help us out to act as a buffer. And I was looking at the amount per month that I would gain if I waited until 65 or 67, which is just about $400. And if I take the $400 and times it by two years, the difference, that's only five monthly payments that they would be making me now.
So would it be advantageous for me to start taking it now? Yeah. Now keep in mind, you can file for your benefits now and then switch to spousal benefits later if that would be higher than what you would get on your own record. Okay. And then is there, let's say I wanted to have a part-time job, how do they figure out what my benefit is and the extent of what I can earn and not have my benefits affected?
Okay. And anything that it's reduced by is going to be eventually paid back to you. So what happens is there's a reduction of $1 for every $2 you go over the limit on what you can earn prior to full retirement age. But when you reach full retirement age, that's all paid back to you in the form of a higher monthly payment until you've been repaid in full for the amount that you were reduced by. Oh, okay.
Does that make sense? Yes, it does. But basically the limit is right now $21,240. So if you're under full retirement age, that would be your limit. If you go over that, then that's when they'd reduce you $1 for every $2, but eventually you'd be made whole. That would be the annual limit? Yes.
Okay. And then we have an IRA and I'm wondering, we've just always thought, oh, well, we'll save it for our kids, but we're thinking we may want to take a trip. We may want to do something.
We may want to have some fun. And so I'm wondering, how do people go about taking money out of an IRA because some of it's invested in stocks and other things. It's a great question. So is somebody managing this for you, Karen? Is somebody picking your investments? Yes. Okay.
Yeah. So what you would want to do, I mean, most, a lot of people, most people, when they reach this season of life, their IRA, they convert to a monthly income stream. So they will say, okay, you know, I want to take 4% a year. So, you know, they take a $100,000 IRA and they, you know, they pull out $4,000 a year or they tell their advisor, listen, send me $330 a month. And they add it to their income. If you're in a situation where you don't need it as income, but you just want to take it periodically as a lump sum distribution, just tell your advisor that that's what you're doing. They would typically always have some portion of the account in the money market portion of the account. And if they knew you were planning to take a trip next summer and you needed $10,000, they would plan accordingly. And so perhaps as they liquidate an investment that, you know, is they're ready to, you know, get out of it and take their profits, they'll leave a portion of it in the money market so that when you're ready to write the, you know, you could have check writing privileges on it, or you just call your advisor and say, send me a check or transfer it electronically.
But, you know, they can plan for that as a, as the normal course of managing the account. Okay. And is there a maximum that we can take out? No.
No. So basically what happens is anything you take out gets added to your taxable income for the year. So the only thing you'd want to consider is whether you're taking out enough that a portion of your income would push up into a higher tax bracket. But you could, you could take the whole thing out if you wanted.
It would just all be taxable income in the year of the withdrawal. Okay. Well, I can tell you it's such a comfort to be able to seek godly counsel. Oh, that's very kind.
And what a weight off my shoulders. Thank you so much. Well, you're so welcome, Karen. If we can help further along the way, don't hesitate to reach out. May the Lord bless you. Let's talk to another Karen.
And this one is in Kansas. Karen, go right ahead. Thanks for calling. Hi, Rob.
Thanks for taking my call. Sure. My husband and I have been retired for a year and we have an emergency fund set aside and we both call our we qualify for a Roth IRA. We're going to that that was my question. Do we want to contribute to our Roth IRA at $15,000 or do we want to put that in a 12 month CD? Hmm.
Yeah, I mean, I think so. There are two different things. One is the type of account that has you put in after tax dollars and you have the benefit of the tax free growth. And as long as you have earned income, you can put in up to at your age.
Seven thousand apiece. So fourteen thousand or, you know, then the second thing you're talking about is CDs. And that's really an investment vehicle. And you can actually hold a CD inside of a Roth. So the first question is, do we want to take that money that you have and just leave it in savings in a taxable account and either put it in a CD or invest it? Or do we want to put it into a Roth IRA? The benefit of the Roth is if you don't need the money for the foreseeable future, it can grow on a tax deferred basis. But the most effective way to leverage that is through investing it.
Are you wanting to eliminate the risk and just keep it in guaranteed products like CDs? I don't know, because a year ago when the market was so low, we just haven't contributed since I retired last summer. We haven't contributed to our IRAs and we had the money we could put it in the Roth this year. That was the dilemma. I didn't know if you want to pay your advisor after they take their cut, does that add to the contribution?
No. So the total amount that you can put in for the year as a contribution is seven thousand each. And then if you have fees that go out to an advisor, it would come out of the account.
You can't put in more than that to cover the fee. So the question is, Roth or not, I would talk to your advisor about that. And then based on your time horizon, I would either invest it or use CDs. But ultimately, that's going to have to do with your risk tolerance and your ultimate goals. I've got to take a break, but we appreciate your call.
We'll be right back. We are grateful for support from Soundmind Investing in the faith and finance program. If you have money in a retirement account or just a general investing account, you know, the stock market can sometimes seem like a roller coaster.
But it is possible to enjoy both profit and peace of mind in investing, no matter what's happening in the market. You can see a short video webinar on that topic at soundmindinvesting.org. Since 1990, Soundmind Investing has sought to offer financial wisdom for living well. Soundmindinvesting.org.
Welcome back to faith and finance. I'm Rob West, your host in just a moment. We'll take your calls and questions on anything financial. We've got some lines open today and we'd love to hear from you. Whatever's on your mind.
Here's the number 800-525-7000. Hey, faith and finance is listener supported, which just simply means that we bring you this program each day because of your listener support. And so we'd be grateful if you find value in this program.
You listen with regularity. You've found something that's been encouraging or hopeful to you and you'd like to make a gift of any amount. And I mean that for 4400 or 4000 dollars, whatever you can do, we would certainly appreciate it. Just head to our website, faithfi.com.
That's faithfi.com and just click the gift button. And thanks in advance. All right. Back to the phones.
We go to Pompano Beach, Florida. I know it well. Hi, Scott. Go ahead. How are you this fine day? I'm doing great. I have two.
Good. I have a couple of questions when I had 18 stock for X number of years and I've lost 50 percent of it. Just wondering if you just suggest me getting out of it and cut my losses.
Yeah, I wonder if I have. All right, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say as to that first question, I really can't weigh in on a specific stock holding, whether it makes sense to hold it or sell it. But what I will say is, you know, I think just being highly concentrated in one particular holding, regardless of what it is, is just not the right approach. So I would work with your tax professional to determine, assuming this is in a taxable account and not a retirement account, what is the right approach to maximize the losses that you have to be able to take advantage of that against your taxes.
And then I would begin to systematically move again, irrespective of what individual holding that is. I'd much rather see you be in a properly diversified portfolio, you know, just waiting for a particular stock to come back. Unless you have really a lot of insight and have done a lot of research into why this particular company is going to outpace the market. I would rather you not take the risk of being so highly concentrated in one stock. I'd rather you just cut your losses and be, you know, more properly diversified.
Yeah, I am very diversified. I have another portfolio that has several thousand dollars in it, but this was suggested by my financial advisor a few years ago. I put $10,000 in it. I lost five, so that's my question. And then the other one, I put $75,000 into a fund and it hasn't done anything in two years.
I mean, right now, I'm just at the break-even point. You think I should just say forget it and take that and put it back in my other portfolio? You know, it's so hard to say, Scott, just not knowing what it is, but let's just talk bigger picture. Who's leading your investment strategy? Are you making these decisions yourself? Do you have an advisor? I have an advisor. Okay. And does he or she have discretion over the portfolio and they make the buy and sell decisions for you or do they make recommendations and then you're essentially making the final decision?
Generally, they do what they want to do and just let me know what they've done. Okay. And would this be one of the funds that was a part of the purview of their management or was this separate? This is a separate fund. I see. Yeah, I think it just makes sense.
I mean, you spent a lifetime building up this nest egg. I like the idea that somebody would be managing it and overseeing it. This obviously hasn't performed very well. You haven't lost a lot of money, but you haven't made much either. So I think, yeah, just going ahead and moving that in and having it a part of the overall investment strategy where somebody's giving more careful attention to what it is and hopefully seeing the performance probably makes sense.
But again, as to this particular holding and whether it will outpace the broad market or your other investment strategy, I would, of course, have no idea. But I think there's wisdom in just having everything in one place. Yeah, well, that's what I was going to do, but I figured I'd run it past the fellow that knew more than I did. So I appreciate your help, your time. And do you do any advising on the side or not? I do not. No, sir.
I don't give any investment advice any longer. I just answer questions on the radio. But if you need an advisor or you wanted to find somebody else, you could connect with one of our Certified Kingdom Advisors on our website at faithfi.com. But listen, all the best to you. We appreciate you being on the program today.
Let's head to Missouri. Hi, Jeff. Go ahead.
Hi, thank you, Rob. I'm 54 years old, was in a vehicle accident, received a sum of money, and I currently draw a disability. And my question was, if they change this age for retirement, would my disability continue until I'm older to retire?
Sure. Yeah, typically the way that would work, and obviously, if you're talking about future legislation, then, you know, we wouldn't know for sure. But typically the way this would work is as long as you continue to qualify for those benefits, you would, they would remain in force until you take to you're eligible for retirement benefits, and then you would convert.
But the amount would stay the same. You would just now be under a retirement benefit, and hopefully that will give you what you need to cover your expenses. Appreciate you being on the program. All the best to you, sir. May the Lord bless you. All right, let's head back to the phones as we round out the broadcast today. We've got a little bit of time, maybe five minutes remaining, to Chicago.
Hi, Tommy. Go ahead. Hi, I'm a pastor in Chicago, and we are a church that has never had the opportunity to invest, have the opportunity now. We have about $100,000 that we're looking to get into some sort of investment. But it is our kind of emergency fund, and we're not sure if it makes sense to use it to invest or how much of it should we invest in the different options we have, whether it's CDs or mutual funds or anything of that sort. Yeah, I like the idea of you all having an emergency fund for the church. I think you need to establish a philosophy of reserves, and I would talk about that among the leadership of the church. Somewhere zero month's worth of reserves is not enough.
Probably more than 12 months of reserves is too much. When it comes to that amount, then I would say anything beyond that, we put it to work for the purpose in which it was given, whether that's programming or reaching people with the gospel, all of the things that you're doing. We don't want to just build up a war chest, so to speak, beyond what would be reasonable as reserves, because the money was given to get into circulation in the kingdom. As to what to do with that money, I wouldn't put stocks or anything that has risk on the table. So I think it's there, so it can be liquid, it can be safe. So we're looking at probably CDs at the most, high yield savings account, business high yield savings, something like that. But I wouldn't be looking to put it into the markets.
And again, I would establish a rationale, not considering the amount that you have currently, just a philosophy of reserves as a church, and then apply that to what you've currently got in the bank. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. Thank you so much. All right. We appreciate your call, Tommy. God bless you, my friend.
Well, that does it for us today. I'm Rob West. Thanks to our amazing production team and to you for listening. I hope you'll join us again next time right here on Faith and Finance. Faith and Finance is provided by Faith Buy and listeners like you.
