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And it's available in all 50 states and around the world. Learn more at chministries.org faithbuy. The Lord will provide. It's one of the most repeated promises in the Bible.
Why then is it often difficult to believe? Hi, I'm Rob West. Whenever we're tested, we can take comfort in knowing the Lord remains in control and is always faithful. Today, we'll talk about finding peace and contentment in uncertain times. Then it's on to your calls at 800-525-7000.
That's 800-525-7000. This is faith and finance, biblical wisdom for your financial journey. Well, you don't have to be a Bible scholar to know that God's word contains many promises. If you use a concordance to look up the word promise or Google Bible and promise, you'll see a long list of verses with God's promises to us. And there are dozens that reassure us that God will provide for our needs. And if we take an honest look at our lives, we'll see that God provides not only for our financial needs by giving us the ability to earn a living, but for many other needs as well. Our family, friends, and our church, for example.
God knows that we need all those things, and He provides them. Even one of the names for God found in the Bible contains that promise. In the King James Version, we read in Genesis 22-14, and Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh. As it is said to this day, in the mount of the Lord it shall be seen.
Other versions translate the Hebrew name Jehovah-jireh as the Lord will provide. And of course that's where God provides a ram in a thicket, in place of the sacrifice of Abraham's son Isaac. But something very important preceded God's provision on Mount Moriah, obedience. After waiting a century for a son, Abraham was prepared to offer him to the Lord as commanded. And how do we relate that lesson to the challenges we face today?
Well first, by understanding that nothing's changed. God kept His promise almost 4,000 years ago with Abraham, and He still keeps His promises today. There's no doubt that Abraham feared losing the child that he and Sarah had waited so long to have, but he overcame that fear with obedience.
Somewhere deep down, Abraham found peace in knowing that he was doing God's will by bringing Isaac to the top of Mount Moriah. And that's how we can find peace today, by obeying the Lord. But what does it mean that God will provide? Well, when we obey the Lord, we're acting according to His will, not ours. You see, if you're deeply afraid that God won't keep His promise to provide, there's a good chance that what you really fear is that He won't provide in the way you want Him to provide.
Ephesus on want. God promises to provide for our needs, not our wants. In the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6 33 and 34, Jesus tells us in no uncertain terms not to be afraid for our daily provision.
He says, but seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. You see, when we obey God, we're seeking His kingdom and becoming more like Christ, who was obedient unto death. Now, for our purposes today, let's just focus on obeying or following God's financial principles. These include acknowledging that God owns everything and that we're only stewards or managers of what He gives us.
We're to live on less than we earn, pay our taxes, save, and be generous. Why do we do those things? Well, for the same reason we exist, to glorify God. When we follow His financial principles, especially by being generous, we act differently than the world, and that points others to Christ. The Bible may have as many verses on finding peace and contentment as it does on God's promise to provide. Paul says in 1 Timothy 6, now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing with these, we will be content. And in Philippians 4, Paul says, I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty.
I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through Him who gives me strength. God knows what we really need even better than we do, and He's provided those things every day of our lives up to this point. So why would we think He won't in the future? Our faith isn't blind. When it comes to God's faithfulness to provide, past performance is a guarantee of future results.
If you find yourself worrying about the future, my encouragement to you is to take that fear to the Lord in prayer. All right, your calls are next. The number is 800-525-7000. That's 800-525-7000. I'm Rob West, and you're listening to Faith and Finance, biblical wisdom for your financial journey.
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This is the program where the 2,300 verses on money and possessions found in God's word intersect with today's financial decisions and choices. The number to get in on the conversation, 800-525-7000. That's 800-525-7000. Let's head to the phones.
We'll go to Cleveland next. Hi, Carolyn. Thank you for calling. How can I help?
Hi, thank you. I really need some financial advice. My sister's a 76-year-old widow, and she has memory issues, and she hasn't been managing her money. And now I have to help her. She's got a reverse mortgage and some credit card debt, and her only income is Social Security, which I don't know how much she gets a month. I didn't know if bankruptcy was an option or really what to do.
Yeah. Well, that's really a last resort, Carolyn. I mean, at least she does have some steady income because if she has that reverse mortgage, then as long as she stays in that property and keeps the taxes paid and the insurance paid, then she's got a stream of income coming out of that on top of her Social Security. So the question really is going to come down to what does that budget look like and what is it going to take for us to balance that budget on a monthly basis given her two income sources, including paying the minimums on the credit card. So what I would typically do is say, let's connect with our friends at christiancreditcounselors.org, have them look at how we can get the interest rates reduced on the credit card so that now, as she's sending that scheduled monthly payment every month, more is going to principle.
So we actually get those balances coming down instead of just staying afloat. But we've got to also be dealing with the budget, the spending plan at the same time, to make sure that that monthly payment fits in to the rest of her expenses. And all of that is less than her total available income on a monthly basis. The folks at christiancreditcounselors.org, perhaps with you and her, if she'd be willing to allow you to be a part of that, could work not only on the budget, but on the the plan to get those credit card interest rates down. And if we can make all that work, then we can avoid bankruptcy, which is really should be a very last resort.
And so I'd love to have somebody go to work on the spending plan and the credit card interest rate reduction, and see if we can make all that work together. Does that make sense? Yes, thank you so much.
I had no idea where to start. Okay, yeah, very good. So what I would do is I'd reach out to christiancreditcounselors.org, do you happen to know what the total balance is on the credit cards? The credit card's probably less than $10,000.
Okay, yeah. So this will be a great solution for you. Just tell the folks at Christian Credit Counselors, you heard about them on faith and finance, they'll take good care of you. These are all believers, Carolyn, they'll sit down over the phone with you and your sister and work through that spending plan, help you get those credit cards enrolled in the program. This is my preferred and what I believe is the most effective way to pay credit card debt down once and for all. But the good news is they'll help you deal with the budget at the same time, which is really key to making sure we've got a plan that's going to work long term. If you need further help along the way, let us know. But again, that website christiancreditcounselors.org. Thanks for your call today.
To Lakeland. Hey, Chris, how can I help you, sir? Hey, so I'm 38. And I haven't really been put money away. I make about 2400 is a month. And I'm just wondering what would be a good starting number and starting area to start putting away for the future married and she has, and she has some income from her job and has retirement and everything. But I was trying to see what I could do on my end.
Yeah, very good. Well, I mean, we need to always have a holistic plan that allows you guys as a married couple to say, Hey, here's where we're going. This is the lifestyle we think God has called us to. And here's, you know, what's most important to us in terms of our giving priorities and our saving priorities, really beginning to talk about just your values and how that can inform your financial decisions. And then once you've uncovered that talked about it, really, you know, understand each other's heart and how you want to use God's money as a tool to accomplish what you believe he's called you to, then that spending plan is really the cornerstone of every financial success that allows you to make sure every dollar has a job and that job is working toward your values and your goals because the purpose of money is not to get more of it. The purpose of money is to accomplish a set of goals informed by our values. So we've got to look at that spending plan and say, Okay, first we should give that should be a priority cheerfully and proportionately and, and freely. And so we give right off the top, and then we need to be savers. And so we need to have that three to six months worth of expenses.
That's just a rule of thumb, you won't find that in the Bible. But that would be just kind of a guideline for how much you need set aside for emergency reserves. And then as long as you don't have any high interest credit card debt or consumer debt that you're carrying month to month, beyond, let's say, a car loan or a mortgage, then I would say, let's build that split spending plan so that you're living within your income, yours and your wife's combined, and you've got a little bit of cushion or margin. And then the goal for your long term savings is going to be 10 to 15% of your income. Now, you may not be able to do that right off the top. But you if you look at your total take home pay your goal between your wife's retirement plan and your retirement plan or your retirement plan plus a Roth IRA doesn't really matter how you, you know, organize it. But the goal is to get 10 to 15% of your pay going into retirement plans, as you're able to now you may say, Well, once we give and once we cover all of our expenses, and we just don't have enough leftover to do that, well, that would give you a goal to work up to that. But give me your thoughts on all that.
No, no, that sounds good. We do have a pretty good little nugget or whatever in savings. And, and like I said, she she's been working where she's the company she's with for a little getting close to 10 years.
So she's been working steadily on on her side. I was just trying to think of where it'd be a good start for me because like, off and on and throughout life, you know, put things away and and whatnot, but then life gets in the way. And so okay, so you know, 38 getting close to 40, you know, what would be a good place to start, you know, to start putting away what like, I was thinking, you know, maybe start with like 200 a month or something like that, just started, you know, maybe investing or something, but I didn't know what would be the right avenue.
I like that a lot. I mean, a systematic investment allows you to dollar cost average, which means you're buying at all points of the market up down sideways, it doesn't matter. But that systematic investment is a great way to do it. Do you have a company sponsored plan available at work, Chris? No, I don't know.
Okay. So then what I would do is I'd open a Roth IRA. So she's got her 401k or retirement plan at work. For you, I'd open a Roth IRA, you can actually open one for each of you because she can fund a Roth in addition to her 401k. Under the age of 50, you guys would do 50, you guys would each be able to put in 6500 this year, but I'd open that probably a Charles Schwab or Fidelity. Our friends at soundmindinvesting.org could give you some great mutual fund suggestions or if you wanted to use a faith based investing strategy, you could use some of the fun families at faithfi.com. Just click on the show and you'll see families like, you know, Eventide and Guidestone and Praxis and One Ascent and, you know, a number of others. But regardless, once you have that account open at let's say Schwab or Fidelity, then you can set up an automatic transfer right into that account.
You could use the Schwab intelligent portfolios, that'd be another way to build a low cost exchange traded fund portfolio that capture the broad moves of the market or again soundmindinvesting.org. But in either case, having that Roth there and setting up that automatic transfer so it just comes right out of your account every month, you don't have to think about it as a great way to go and you'll reap the dividends of that, you know, 20 plus years down the road when you're ready to think about retirement. Thanks for your call, Chris. God bless you. We'll be right back on Faith and Finance. Hope for Zambia, empowered by Family Legacy, is a ministry providing hope to vulnerable and orphaned children in Zambia by investing into their spiritual, intellectual, physical and emotional growth and well-being. Whether distributing five million meals each year to students or empowering them to graduate from high school and go on to pursue post-secondary education, we believe that when you educate a child, you change their world.
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Principal loss is possible. Forsyde Fund Services, LLC. Welcome back to Faith and Finance. I'm Rob West. We're taking your calls and questions today. 800-525-7000.
Right back to the phones to Indianapolis. Hey, Matt. Thanks for calling. Go ahead.
Hey, Rob. Thank you for taking my call today. And I just want to say thank you for all that your ministry does.
And we took Crumb Financial many years ago and it has helped us along so gratefully. And I'm very grateful for the ministry of all that you guys do. Well, thank you. I appreciate that.
I wanted to start with that. So my question is, I think I said to the producer there, I said we were scheduled, but I'm going to change it. I'm going to say we are scheduled to still be paid debt-free in February of 2024. We're scheduled to be all completely paid off with everything in 2024. However, what we have ran into is we've ran into a mold issue with our house. So we've got debt that is in mitigation right now.
We have a company out getting all that mitigated, getting that dried out. The question that I have is, do I pause the debt payment, which I really don't want to do, to help pay as much as we can out of pocket? Or I've looked into options of taking out another personal loan through the house just because, I mean, it's looking like it's starting to get pretty extensive. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm sorry to hear that. And I'm delighted to hear that you're on track to be debt-free. And I understand this is frustrating to have this goal and have it in sight. You can kind of see it around the bend and then all of a sudden you have this thing that comes out of left field that is expensive and complicated.
Mold remediation is no fun. But you'll get there. Just stay the course. And I think you're asking the right question here. Matt, do you have a sense that if you were to slow your accelerated first mortgage payoff down and just maybe pay the scheduled monthly mortgage payment, would you be able to cash flow this without taking out a home equity loan? Or is that going to be required altogether? It's just going to determine how much. We don't have a first mortgage that actually paid off before the rest of our debt.
Oh, okay. Well, the mortgage is done now. What I kind of looked into is to maybe do another mortgage with the bank that we did mortgage the house with that we finished that mortgage with. It seems like they've got the best rate with the intention of taking out a lump sum, whatever we don't use goes right back towards it. And then we just chunk at it after we get the total cost of everything done and be done with it. I'm just trying to figure out what the best way plan is to stay on course to pay the rest of our credit card debt. So how much do you have left to pay off? $7,400. Okay, that's the total amount. And that you're saying will be done early next year. And what's the interest rate roughly on that? Well, it's zero percent. How long does that last? I think we've got through September of next year. Okay, great.
And how much do you think you're going to need based on what you know today for the mold remediation? I don't know. It's still in very early stages. That's the problem. I don't know.
It's still in very early stages. Right now our bathroom. Fortunately, we've got good homeowners insurance. They're covering because we've got the loss of the use of the house because it's a one bathroom house. And that's what is completely ripped out right now. They're paying for our stay at a hotel right now. But as far as I'm still I'm still waiting to hear from the remediation company exactly what you know what's coming from insurance and what's not going to come from insurance. Yeah, so they're working directly together with my insurance. Okay.
Yep. So I mean, I think the key is for you guys, you know, is probably that interest, you know, because it's at zero percent, you got a little bit of time on that. I'd probably, you know, take and divert as much as you can to this project. Now, if you're going to need to borrow either way, normally, I'd recommend you get a home equity loan, just because then you get a fixed rate. The problem is rates are right now at the highest they're going to be over the next year, certainly a couple of years and beyond. We're expecting them to be probably in the low fives by the end of next year.
Right now we're up near seven. So it's probably best for you to get a home equity line of credit, and then only borrow what you need borrow as little as possible. And then just pay the interest only. But you know, try to pay back as quick as you only have to pay the interest only, but you wouldn't do that. You'd pay as much as you can to try to pay it off as quick as you can. And then you're going to have to sync that up with the timing of this, you know, debt jumping back up to, you know, probably 20% on these credit cards, and you'd either have to pay the balance transfer game, or put that into a debt management program, those would probably be your two options. So I think the next step is for you to determine how much is this ultimately going to cost, which you don't know today, just based on how much insurance is going to cover and what's the total scope of the project, determine how much you have as free cash surplus on a monthly basis that you could apply to this to try to cash flow as much as you can. And then you're going to have to sync up the timing of the payoff of the home equity line of credit with the increase in the credit card interest from zero up to whatever it's going to readjust to.
And there's still some variables we've got to solve for, namely, how much is this mold project going to cost in order for you to make that decision. But I think, you know, I would prioritize, you know, getting the the credit card debt paid off first, and then let's go after the home equity line of credit, just because we want to certainly have that paid off before September. Right, correct, yep, yep. And if you have that gone by February, then you're good, and that way you could take 100% of what you were putting toward the credit cards and attack that home equity line of credit at that point. That makes a lot of sense. I think that's, I think that's exactly what I needed to hear.
Yeah, I think, I mean, this is, I know these are tough ones, so I'm sorry to hear you're going through it. I would go to bankrate.com, Matt, before you selected a lender. You could certainly approach your former lender, but I'd get at least a couple of other offers before you check. Not all HELOCs are created equal, and they vary widely in the amount of fees you'll pay and the interest rate you'll pay, you know, prime plus, you know, whatever it's going to be on that HELOC.
So I would get multiple offers here. When you're talking about borrowing a smaller amount of money, some lenders are not equipped to do that, you know, for less than $50,000. And so that's why you're probably going to want to get multiple bids to find out who is going to in fact be the very best lender for you on this small home equity line of credit. So bankrate.com can help you sort that out.
You can also check with our friends at Movement Mortgage, movement.com forward slash faith. Hey, all the best to you, Matt, as you sort this out, you'll get through it. And let us know how it turns out. God bless you.
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