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And it's available in all 50 states and around the world. Learn more at chministries.org faithbuy. Back in 1897, Johnson Oatman Jr. wrote a hymn that remains a favorite even today. You probably know the refrain, count your blessings, name them one by one.
Hi, I'm Rob West. That well-loved Gospel song contains a very important theme for the Christian life, gratitude. 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, last year was the 100th anniversary of Johnson Oatman Jr.'s death. He wrote the words to 5,000 hymns in his lifetime. Count your blessings was his masterpiece, offering comfort and reassurance with its timeless theme of gratitude to the Lord. Well, gratitude is certainly an appropriate topic at this time of year, with Thanksgiving coming up. I'm sure we will all count our blessings as we gather with family and friends, remembering the goodness of God. Of course, gratitude is more than just a holiday feeling. First Thessalonians 5 18 says, giving thanks is an essential part of the Christian life.
Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. So let's look at the hymn more closely. There's deep truth in these verses Johnson Oatman wrote over a century ago. The first verse says, when upon life's billows you are temptest tossed, when you are discouraged, thinking all is lost, count your many blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done. Gratitude has the power to lift us out of fear and discouragement. Psalm 118 4 and 5 gives a testimony of this. Let those who fear the Lord say, his steadfast love endures forever. Out of my distress, I called on the Lord.
The Lord answered me and set me free. When you focus on your problems, they can seem overwhelming. Gratitude refocuses your heart and mind on the Lord. In light of his protection and provision, problems seem much less scary. In John 16 33, Jesus said, in this world you will have trouble, but take heart. I have overcome the world. Now verse 2 of the hymn tells us that gratitude can calm our doubts when times get tough.
Here are the words. Are you ever burdened with a load of care? Does the cross seem heavy? You are called to bear. Count your many blessings. Every doubt will fly and you will be singing as the days go by. Considering what God has done in your life will remind you that he loves you and will never leave you to struggle alone. Remember Psalm 23? Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.
Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. Not only is gratitude effective in dispelling fear and doubt, it also helps us get our priorities straight. The third verse of the hymn puts it this way. When you look at others with their lands and gold, think that Christ has promised you his wealth untold.
Count your many blessings. Money cannot buy your reward in heaven nor your home on high. We don't need to be jealous of the money and possessions of others because we know the treasure we have in the Lord is eternal and it's much more satisfying than anything the world has to offer. The heart that treasures God with gratitude will be at peace. In John 14 27 Jesus said, peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled. Neither let them be afraid. The refrain of the hymn contains one of the best pieces of advice I can think of for Christians. Count your blessings.
Name them one by one. Count your blessings. See what God has done. When was the last time you took a break from the busyness of life and just counted your blessings? I challenge you to set aside a few minutes even today to list all the blessings you can think of big and small. I think you'll be amazed at how many you come up with.
Make this a challenge for the whole family including your children. Here's an important reminder. It's not enough just to count your blessings.
Anybody can do that. For Christians there's a part two. Acknowledge that these good gifts are from the Lord and give thanks to him for each blessing on the list.
I promise you it'll be a joyful exercise. Here are the words to the final verse of Johnson Oatman's much loved hymn. So amid the conflict whether great or small do not be discouraged. God is over all. Count your many blessings. Angels will attend. Help and comfort give you to your journey's end. Well I hope that classic hymn encourages you to count your blessings today.
One of which is that I didn't sing it for you. I can promise you that. All right your calls are next. The number 800-525-7000.
That's 800-525-7000. I'm Rob West and this is Faith and Finance. Biblical wisdom for your financial journey.
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It's available on desktop or mobile. Simply go to faithphi.com and click app to get started. Welcome back to Faith and Finance.
I'm Rob West. We've got a few lines open today for your financial questions. 800-525-7000.
That's 800-525-7000. Why do we take an hour a day out to talk about money? Is it so we can enrich ourselves? Is it so we can figure out how many we can add a few zeros to our net worth?
No, it's not that at all. It's that we recognize as we live with a biblical worldview that part of that approach to our lives needs to include our finances. So we want to help you cultivate and develop not the culture's view of money, but God's view of money. There's the world's way and then there's God's way and they're they're entirely different in every respect and certainly that includes this area of money. You see, through a biblical worldview, we recognize that God owns it all and we're a steward and money is a tool and we're to hold it loosely and give it generously and that we should pursue contentment and that we can align our spending and our investing with our values and priorities and that, you know, we can allow money to compete with God for first position in our lives if we're not careful. So we need to be on our guard about the deceitfulness of riches. That's the goal here is to help you pursue a more intimate relationship with the Lord as you handle money in such a way that it's evident that God is your true treasure and not your things. That's our entire goal here on this program every day. Now we recognize as a part of that effort you have practical decisions you're making as you use God's money every day to live, give, owe, and grow and we want to help you do that through a biblical worldview. So with whatever questions you have today in your financial life, give us a call 800-525-7000. Let's head back to the phones to Klara in Miami, Florida. Go right ahead. Yes.
Hi, hi Bob. 76 years old. I own a rental property which I owe 70,000 on it, but it's worth 400 right now. Okay. And I want to buy a condo for 150,000 plus closing cost and the actual price on that is 339,000. I applied for a home equity loan for 80,000 because I do have a 100,000 cash. I wish I can tell you about all this in more detail but we don't have time.
This is all for the glory of God. Yes, very good. Well I'm delighted to have you on the program Klara and I understand what you're trying to do so you want to buy this second rental property, this condo that would be 150,000 plus closing costs. Are you considering using some of your cash to buy it or are you wanting to borrow all of the money to make the purchase? No, no because I want to do something with that money which I have it for more than 40 years and I just want to use it for something like that to buy another property because yeah go ahead. Well when you say use that money that you've had for 40 years are you talking about the equity in the first rental property or cash in savings? No, cash in savings of 100,000. Okay you have a hundred in savings and is that all of your savings so if you put all of that into the rental this new condo would you have any liquid savings remaining?
No. Okay so we don't want to do that and maybe you're not suggesting you would but we want to make sure we set a portion aside to keep in your savings so that you have what I call an emergency fund. Let me ask you Clara if you were to guess how much you spend not on the rental properties in the business but just on your monthly expenses what do you think you spend on a month's basis? I don't spend I have everything down maybe one thousand well that's counting the tax counting the new wealth. My expenses personally are only around six hundred something dollars. Okay very good so let's say it's a thousand so you probably need to have enough in the way of reserves for at least six thousand dollars for your personal savings. Now you also need reserves for the rental property now you've got plenty of equity there but what if an unexpected expense comes up so typically what we would say is you probably want to take about 30 percent if you can of the rental income and set it aside for maintenance. Another approach would be to say I'm going to you know look at totaling up all of the known expenses I'm going to have you know you need to replace a roof you know you need to replace the air conditioner total all those up and you could set that amount aside but you're going to need going to need to determine how much of that hundred thousand you need to keep liquid to have as reserves not for your personal expenses but for that rental property specifically okay and then once you determine what that number is let's say it's twenty five thousand six thousand you know for your personal emergency savings and then you know another uh nineteen thousand for you know the reserves on the rental property then I think you could take the remaining and put that toward this new property which is going to be income generating so that's good and then the rest you need to decide do you want to get a home equity loan from the four hundred thousand dollar property or do you want to take a first mortgage out you know against the condo itself have you talked to a lender about your options there yes because I'm planning to do the the eighty thousand that I want to borrow to buy the condo cash I only going to need I'm going to have maybe thirty thousand dollars left and that's what I was going to put my personal emergency money and and all that okay that's my thinking but but I want to know if I'm doing the right thing because the mortgage is eight point nine percent yeah that's high because it's a home equity loan so here's what I want you to do I like the plan as long as you're going to have enough income coming in between the two properties to more than cover the debt service but I think you holding back thirty putting seventy in borrowing eighty plus closing cost is the right approach I'd love for you to reach out to my friends at movement mortgage at movement.com forward slash faith movement.com forward slash faith get them to look at this and decide is it better to get a mortgage on the condo or get a home equity loan on the four hundred thousand dollar rental I just want to find out the best way to structure the new loan to get that interest rate and closing costs as low as possible and so it's either going to be a home equity loan against the four hundred thousand dollar rental on top of the the mortgage that you already have because you said you owe I think seventy thousand on that we don't want to we don't want to refinance that we want to leave that where it is and then get a look at getting a home equity loan on top or get a new mortgage on the condo and the mortgage broker will be able to tell you which one will give you the very best rate I'd love to try to you know have you get that a fifteen year fixed rate mortgage at six and a half on the new condo as opposed to a home equity loan at nine that would be the best option I think yeah it's right okay thank you okay the place is called movement mortgage yeah so here's the website do you use the internet well not much but I'm going to have to okay go to movement.com forward slash faith f a i t h movement.com forward slash faith put in your information and they'll call you okay all right thank you so much okay keep blessing you thank you Clara bye-bye well we need to take a break this is faith and finance we'll be back after this 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 Healthcare 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 Healthcare Ministries and if you think it could be right for you learn more at chministries.org faith by we are grateful for support from praxis mutual funds praxis mutual funds has seven impact strategies that are designed to create positive real world change more information is available at praxismutualfunds.com the fund's investment objectives risks charges and expenses are contained in the prospectus and summary prospectus this and other information is available at praxismutualfunds.com investments involve risk principal loss is possible foresight fund services LLC welcome back to faith and finance I'm Rob West your host we're taking our calls and questions today on anything financial 800-525-7000 is the number to call again that's 800-525-7000 let's begin with Emma Lynn in Illinois go right ahead hi yes I'm 74 years old and I just sold my condo and secured a mortgage to get a single family home that I've never owned before and in between the selling and the securing the mortgage I have twenty thousand dollars that I want to use just in case something happening and it being an emergency fund for the home right now I have ten thousand dollars of that in a cd that will mature on the 26th of this month and I have ten thousand dollars still in the checking account so I was wondering what would be the best thing to put that money yeah when that cd matures Emma Lynn are you planning on rolling that over into a new cd or would you rather keep this money liquid well the cd is rolling over every three months I think rolling it over would be better yeah and where do you have that cd it's in a credit union account okay and do you know what they're paying in their high yield savings 4.85 percent okay yeah that's pretty good I mean right now you know that's about as good as you're going to get 4.8 for high yield savings so I would probably just go ahead and open a savings account there and you know move that ten thousand in as long as it's fdic insured or in the case of a credit union you would want to make sure it's ncua insured which just means it's backed by the full faith and credit of the united states government then you know you should be able to link I would imagine electronically if you're comfortable with that that credit union account to your main checking account and that way that money is out of your checking account so you'd have the cd there and a savings account that's completely liquid but if you needed any money you'd be able to transfer it you know within a day or two at no cost to have it readily available in your checking account but it's not too readily available because I don't want it to get mixed up with your day-to-day spending account and therefore you know you may spend it without thinking about it so that would probably be the way that I would go it would be safe it would be liquid you could have both the auto renewing three month cd alongside that high yield savings does that make sense yes it does thank you so much all right you're welcome emily and god bless you and you enjoy that new home of yours 800-525-7000 to Idaho hi Karen go ahead yes I have three I bonds series I and I've heard you talk about these on on the radio from my they're made out to me so I understand that um well they're from 2001 so they're pretty soon they're going to be no good I need to cash them in but I'm worried about having to pay income tax should I do the whole thing should I divide them up or wait until I'm 80 would that make it less cost me less money I don't think so and I think you can do much better than the I bonds will be paying they were very attractive recently the interest is taxed in the year the bond is redeemed or reaches maturity whatever comes first these are 25-year bonds they can renew for five more years so a total of 30 but you would be better served Karen to go ahead and pay the tax on that and then you know move that into a high yield savings or a cd you're going to do better in either of those with the same government backing and so you would probably redeem those you know you could do that treasury direct.gov you probably just want to check with your cpa and see you know whether you want to spread this out over two tax years or whether you know it would be better just to go ahead and do it all in the same year but in either case I would you know do it between now and the first of January depending upon what your cpa says do you use a tax preparer yes okay yeah so I would call that person and just tell them listen I'm looking to get out of these bonds I want to move this into a high yield savings or a cd how do you want me to redeem them to minimize the tax implications they may say it's not going to make a difference let's just go ahead and do it all right now or they may say let's spread it out over two tax years well have they been accruing interest all this time no no the interest is accredited at the end when you redeem them then at that point the interest will be credited and then it's taxable so it doesn't matter what the interest rate my son was saying that the interest rate is higher now I should do it worth high and not wait till it's low oh no it doesn't matter you you're earning that interest that you were due for each six month period based on the the composite interest rate that was available so you know you're you're going to get every bit of the interest you were entitled to um you know every six months and then when you redeem it they'll actually credit the money great thank you so much all right thank you well thank you karen god bless you we appreciate your call today uh 800-525-7000 is the number to call by the way if you'd like to submit a question electronically we always love your calls but the lines fill up quickly and perhaps you've got a question you would like to have me address on the air you can actually now just send an email askrob at faithfi.com that's askrob at faith the letters f i dot com all right uh to chat a new guy gary go ahead hi rob yeah thanks for taking my call now i i am uh 67 and planning on working until i'm 70 to get the max benefits my wife was uh necessarily on disability until she turned 65 and then she rolled over my question is i'm not i'm totally confused about the spousal benefits how that applies and when that when that becomes applicable okay yeah uh so basically um your spouse is eligible for up to 50 of your benefit the spouse has to be at least age 62 or have a qualifying child in their care um and then again it goes up to 50 percent now keep in mind uh that's if they wait till full retirement age uh they can get up to 50 percent of your benefit if they take it early which they could take it as soon as 62 they're going to have a reduced benefit um so you just need to make sure that it makes sense the one reason why some folks go ahead and take it at 62 even though it's reduced is they might take the spousal benefit and let their benefit grow based on their own work record and then switch later but uh you can take it as early as 62 but you'd be locking in a reduction of that benefit probably about 30 percent of your spouse's benefit at 62 versus 50 at full retirement age so just uh make sure that it's a good time and make sure you have a strategy to maximize it before you take it 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 devon 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 and finance faith and finance is provided by faith by and listeners like you
