The Cost and Blessing of Commitment

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Go to faithfi.com and click App to get started. Staying in shape requires willpower, finishing a college degree involves determination, and achieving your professional goals takes a lot of hard work. In other words, success takes commitment.

Hi, I'm Rob West. The same goes for your financial life. Today we'll talk about what happens when you make a commitment to follow biblical financial principles. 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, you've heard the saying that things worth doing are worth doing well. Well, think about all the things worth doing in your finances, like saving for the future, making a spending plan, paying off debt, giving generously, dealing honestly, and living with integrity. If you want positive results in any of these areas, you have to expend some effort, sometimes a lot of effort. Commitment to biblical financial standards requires determination, planning, patience, and even sacrifice.

So why put in all that hard work? Well, while commitment has its costs, it comes with benefits as well. Living with faith and integrity in your finances and your life results in peace, contentment, and even joy. When you serve God with your finances, you'll participate in his work of mercy and blessing for people around you. Experiencing the Lord's provision in your own life will build your faith and give you a testimony to encourage others. The Bible is full of examples of commitment.

Hebrews chapter 11 is known as the Hall of Faith because it tells the story of godly men and women through the Old Testament who put their commitment to God ahead of everything else. These believers had faith in God's promise to redeem mankind even before the time of Jesus. Of course, the ultimate example of commitment is Jesus.

For the joy set before him, he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. That's Hebrews 12-2. A God who is so committed to us that he would die to save us is surely worth our commitment. So faith is an essential part of your commitment to follow God with your financial decisions and choices. Hebrews 1 defines faith as confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. God's word gives clear directions about financial attitudes and actions.

You can follow those principles and trust God to take care of you in good times and bad. Here's Hebrews 11-6. So commitment to biblical financial principles takes faith. Another key to successful biblical money management is to understand who's in charge.

Is it you or the Lord? In Matthew 6-24 Jesus says no one can serve two masters, either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

Jesus doesn't mince words. It's impossible to be committed to both money and God. One or the other will have to play second fiddle and you'll feel the tension. Here are a few questions to consider. Do financial worries occupy your thoughts all the time? Does the desire for more things or more money motivate you? Are you constantly checking your investments or your social media feed?

Is your career or hobby the most important thing in your life right now? If you answered yes to any of those questions, maybe you're trying to serve two masters. When you devote yourself to money or your job or anything else besides God, you're serving an idol, and that idol cannot provide peace or power for living. Commitment to biblical principles requires faith and devotion to God alone, and that takes work, but it's all worth it according to Hebrews 10. Listen to this, Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.

So do not throw away your confidence, it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. You know, one of the benefits of a commitment to follow God is the encouragement that comes from being a part of the body of Christ. When you're a Christian, you're not alone in your faith journey. So if you've ever felt like giving up on that budget or putting off your promise to give more, don't worry, we all have struggles.

In fact, if everything was easy, we'd never get stronger. As part of the body of Christ with you, the community here at FaithFi is ready to walk beside you in your financial journey with compassion, kindness, and humility. Most of all, we want you to discover how great it is to commit to following Jesus with everything, including your finances. Your calls are next, 800-525-7000.

Stick around. As a faithful listener of this program, you know that there's life-changing financial wisdom in God's Word, and FaithFi is here to help you and millions of others learn to be good and faithful stewards. As a nonprofit organization, we rely on help from monthly FaithFi patrons, supporters of this mission, to help us continue and expand our outreach. Has God provided financial answers for you through this ministry? If so, consider becoming a monthly FaithFi patron.

Visit faithfi.com and click Give. We are grateful for support from One Ascent Investments on the Faith and Finance Program. They manage a comprehensive suite of value-based investment strategies designed to help Christian investors live aligned with what they value most. One Ascent believes that if your values inspire the way you live, they should also inspire the way you invest.

This can be a unique form of worship. More information is available at investments.oneascent.com. That web address is investments.oneascent.com. Welcome back to Faith and Finance. I'm your host, Rob West.

The number to call is 800-525-7000. I'm looking forward to hearing from you as we take your calls and questions from across the country to Austin, Texas. Hi, Misty. Go right ahead.

Hey, Mr. West. Thank you. I am 57 years old. I have been investing in my company's 403b for the last 33 years, so I have a sizable amount. They just started offering a Roth option, and I am wondering if at this stage, the Roth would be beneficial at all.

Yeah, you know, you're not going to get the maximum benefit, which is the tax-free growth, which is most effective when you have a long runway and you can let that grow on a compounded basis for a long time. The benefit, though, of doing that is I kind of like you having two buckets to pull from in retirement, and as long as you have earned income, you could continue to fund this Roth 401K, and then eventually you could roll it to a Roth IRA. But the nice thing about that is you don't have to take the money out. So if you didn't need it because you had enough between Social Security and your traditional 401K, when you get to the required minimum distribution age, there is none for the Roth, and that way it could continue to grow so that you could give it away to charity or ministry or leave it as an inheritance.

So I kind of like that option. The other benefit is we're paying the taxes now, and you could argue that we're probably in the lowest tax environment we're going to see into the future. I mean, we know the Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is going to expire in 2025 unless somebody renews it. It's probably not going down.

If anything, it's going up or staying the same. And so you get the benefit of the Roth of going ahead and paying the taxes now at hopefully lower marginal tax rates, and then it grows tax-free and you don't have to pull it out. So even though you're not going to get as much benefit, I kind of like you having these two buckets kind of growing together, and then you can decide how to use them down the road. So do you suggest me putting half of what I'm contributing in the Roth? I think that would be fine, yeah, or you could switch and just let the current contributions grow in the traditional and you just start moving into the Roth from here on out.

I think you could go either way or split it between the two. Okay, all right. That's great. Thank you. All right, Misty. Thanks for your call today. 800-525-7000 is the number to call.

To Tampa, Phillip, go right ahead. Yeah, my wife and I, we're both 72 on Social Security, and we have a term life that has matured, and they want us to keep it, but at the same time, the price is up about 800%. We want to know if we should go to a whole life or look for a new term life or what do you suggest? Yeah, well, the idea with term life is you definitely don't want to keep it past the term. That doesn't make sense as you're pointing out from a cost standpoint. The question is whether you all still need life insurance at all at 72 years old. Typically, I like that you had term because you bought the pure insurance, so you didn't mix it with a savings vehicle. You just paid for the true mortality cost of offsetting that risk that you or your wife or both of you as wage earners, and if something were to happen to you, the other would have a hardship during your working years. But if you're now retired, you've got Social Security, you've got your retirement assets. If the Lord were to take one of you home, it doesn't create a hardship for the other. So is there really a need for this life insurance? I would say for most people, the answer is no, but give me your thoughts on that.

Well, we got about 35,000 in savings, and we're still paying a mortgage of about 800 a month, so we didn't want to put another 500 stress on our finances, because it went from $40 a month to $261 a month. Oh, yeah. No, no, you definitely don't want to do that. What I'm saying is do you need that life insurance, meaning do we replace it? You would never want to keep the existing term policy 800% higher.

That's going away. The question is do you replace it with a new term policy, which is going to be expensive, or a new whole life, which is going to be expensive. I'm saying you don't need life insurance at all unless I'm missing something.

But what do you think? Would you be okay not having any life insurance? Well, you know, I had prostate cancer a couple of years ago, and she said, ah, I need some security, but that phase is over, and I'm doing fine now. Well, but if the Lord took you home, what's going to change in her financial life? Is there income that would go away if you died? I don't think so. So then she's not in any worse shape financially.

She's in exactly the same shape today. So it just doesn't make sense for most folks to add what would be a major expense to their finances in this season of life, because insuring your life, especially with your health history and your age, it's going to be very expensive, and there's just not a need for it. It's like saying, well, we're going to keep the car insurance, but we sold the car. Well, why do we have the car insurance if we don't have? In this case, you have life insurance to cover the loss of an income. Well, your income sources are already locked in. They're your assets and your social security. You're not working.

So there's nothing that goes away at your death or her death that would create a hardship for the other person, and for that reason, there's not a need for the insurance, so you get to drop that expense, which just means you have more every month that she can stick in a savings account, and ten years from now, if the Lord still has more for you to do, you guys will have built up quite an estate by putting what would be those expensive insurance premiums in a savings account. Great. We didn't look at it from that perspective, but thank you very much. That sounds great. All right, Philip. God bless you, my friend. Thanks for calling today.

Franklin, Tennessee. Hi, Sarah. Go ahead. Hi. So I have $15,000 in debt, and I'm proud to say I've had my car for 240,000 miles on it, but it comes with a crossroad where I need a lot of work on my car, about $2,500 worth, and I really want to keep it, you know, and everyone's saying, no, don't do it. Get rid of it.

Oh, amazing. Well, usually, here's the rule of thumb, and I love driving cars as long as you have. We turned in our last minivan with 250,000 miles. But generally, the rule of thumb is if the repairs are more than 50% of the value of the car or more than one year's worth of payments, it probably doesn't make sense. Now, that's just a rule of thumb.

That doesn't mean that applies in every case, but if you were to use that rule of thumb, how would that relate here? What is this worth, and are these repairs going to push 50% plus of the value? Oh, my car is probably not worth $1,500 this and that, or really nothing.

Yeah. So in that case, what you would do is you would say, you know, it just doesn't make sense to put that kind of money, which is significant, into this car, and therefore, as much as hard as it is, it's time to part with it, and we buy a good quality, older, used car as well, but something that you're not going to keep pouring money into that just doesn't make sense. I see, because there's no value in the car. What if I put $2,500 into it and I got another year out of it? Yeah, but that's a lot of money for 12 months. So $2,500 over 12 months, you're spending $208 a month, and then what do you have in a year? You're kind of right back in the same spot. So I think you're kind of getting to the end of the useful life of this car, and the question is just what's the right timing to say, okay, I'm going to start over, and as much as I don't want to, you know, I'm going to buy my next car, and I'm going to drive that one to 250 or 300,000 miles. Well, thanks for clarifying.

I guess I could keep my van and use it as a tiny house, maybe. There you go. I like it.

Hey, God bless you, Sarah. Thanks for calling today. We appreciate it. Thank you. Well, we need to take a break. This is Faith in Finance.

We'll be back after this. 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. You're listening to Faith in Finance, where we talk about how we handle God's resources. How are you using God's resources? We're talking about it, and the lines are open to take your calls and questions.

800-525-7000 is the number to call to Chicago. Anthony, you're next on the program, sir. Go ahead. My mother passed a message to me on my transfer a couple of years ago. Her lawyers send us money from past employers that expose her to asbestos, and each sibling has got about $30,000 so far to keep on sending checks. I just want to know what's the best way to invest that money since you paid the ultimate price, and of course donate some, but what to do with that money?

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, as I had said earlier in a different context, the purpose of money is to accomplish a set of goals informed by our values. So I think we have to start there with our values. What's most important to us? What is God doing in our life?

What is it we're trying to accomplish? You know, there's only four things you can do with money. The money you live on, the money you give, the money you owe, and the money you grow. And if we look at kind of the priority use of that, you know, we would want to give first.

The Bible is very clear. The first day of the week, give freely and cheerfully, proportionately. Then we would want to look at opportunities to grow the money, which is what you're talking about investing in. But that starts with an emergency fund. So we want to make sure you've got some good reserves, a cushion.

We usually say three to six months expenses. And then beyond that, we'd want to look at owing. How can we reduce our debt levels? Do you have any high interest credit card debt? Well, that would be a no brainer. If not, is there a higher interest consumer debt? And if not, then, you know, the last thing we would do is look to increase our lifestyle. And there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, you may decide, hey, I want to take a trip and I'm going to take a portion of this money and just enjoy it.

I think that's very biblical as well. But as you just kind of take a step back and think about those opportunities to give and to save, starting with emergencies. And then if you've got that for longer term, which is where we would look at investing or paying down debt or increasing lifestyle or just enjoying portion of it. Where do you feel like this money you would want to go with it? Well, we have I have emergency money.

I mean, that we hide that at least. So just like I said, once I donate my type and we keep on getting checks. So what to do, what to where to go with some kind of investment. Yeah, great. So the great part about that is you can do what's called dollar cost averaging.

We talk a lot about that. And that's just a fancy way of saying when you make a systematic investment, think of what people typically do in their 401K. But in this case, you'd just be taking those checks, that stream of income. And every time you receive one, you drop it into another investment. You're buying when the market's high, you're buying when the market's low, you're buying at all points in the market. And that ability to dollar cost average in is a very effective way to invest over the long haul. In terms of where to put that, as long as the time horizon is a minimum of 10 years, I would say you really have a great opportunity just to invest in any way you want. With that amount of money, you don't want to probably buy individual stocks. You'd want to buy through mutual funds or exchange traded funds. So you have a basket of investments that gives you good diversification. So where might I go with that?

Well, I'll give you three options. One is if you had a conviction to only invest in companies that were aligned with your values and avoiding companies who aren't, I would look at some of the faith-based investing fund families on our website at faithfi.com. Just click on the show like Eventide, like Praxis, like Crossmark, like Guidestone, some wonderful fund families that are faith-aligned but will seek to grow the money. And you could just make an automatic systematic investment.

Maybe you'd open an account at Fidelity or Schwab and then just every time you get a check, you'd reinvest it. If you wanted what's called an indexed approach, which is just where you're buying the broad market indexes, I mentioned the Dow Jones and the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ. Well, the Dow Jones is the 30 largest companies.

The S&P 500 is the 500 largest US large cap companies and the NASDAQ is heavily concentrated in the tech sector. If you just wanted to kind of capture the broad moves of the market, then I'd recommend probably the Schwab Intelligent Portfolios. It's basically just a very low cost but automated way of buying these broad market indexes and after you answer a series of questions, it would determine based on your age and risk tolerance which indexes to use, how much in stocks versus bonds. And then every time you invest or put a deposit in, it would just automatically rebalance it. And then the third option is if you wanted something a little more hands on, our friends at soundmindinvesting.org could help you with some mutual fund suggestions.

That's what they do and they work all the way down at the level of those who are just beginning. Does one of those sound like it might be more of what you're looking for than another? Yes, the Schwab Intelligent Portfolios. You could do just a traditional brokerage account, you'd answer a series of questions, you'd probably end up paying about a quarter of 1% a year.

But the nice thing is every time you make a deposit, whether it's 10 or 20 or 30,000 on the front end, and then let's say you're adding 100 or 200 a month to it every time you get a check, there's no transaction costs, it automatically reinvest it, and you would just kind of capture the broad moves of the market over time. I think that'll give you a great option, Anthony, that you'll be really pleased with. Hey, thanks for your call today. Quickly to Broward County, Florida where I was born and raised. Kevin, go right ahead, sir.

Hey, Rob. I'm 24 years old. I've been married just two years now and we are out of debt thanks to your program. We have no debt whatsoever. We have 25,000 in a high yield savings. We have another 7,000 in an emergency fund. And I guess our only financial obstacle really is we've been renting for two years, but the landlord finally wants to sell the unit to us.

So I think it's an opportunity to take but I'd rather hear from you. Yeah, how much are you going to be able to put down? My realtor said maybe three to 5%. Why only three to 5% just because that's all you have to put down? Not really.

I could put down more, but I guess to keep the numbers. Yeah, so a couple of thoughts first. I mean, first of all, congratulations, Kevin. I love when I'm here. You're 24, you're newly married.

I mean, you guys are just starting out in such a great place. You have no debt. You've got savings. You've got an emergency fund. You're doing it right.

And that's just incredible. I would love for you, especially in light of where these interest rates are, and if you have the money, I wouldn't touch your emergency fund, but I'd try to get up as close to 20% down as you can. Even if the bank's going to lend you 97 or 95% of the purchase price, I wouldn't do it. I'd try to get up to 20, get rid of the PMI.

If you can't get to 20, that's fine, but get as close to it as you can. And the goal will be to keep that principal interest taxes insurance payment at 25% for you guys because you have no debt and because you're in South Florida, maybe you need to go to 30, but I would try to keep it 30% or lower. 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.