This faith and finance podcast is underwritten in part by Hope for Zambia, empowered by Family Legacy. Hope for Zambia, empowered by Family Legacy, is a ministry providing holistic care for over 14,000 vulnerable and orphaned children spiritually, intellectually, physically and emotionally. Whether distributing five million meals each year to children and young adults, or by empowering students to graduate from high school and go on to pursue trade school or a university education, Hope for Zambia believes that when you educate a child, you transform their world. Go to HopeForZambia.com slash faith to give and change lives. In Matthew 6 21, Jesus gives a timeless financial and spiritual principle. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Hi, I'm Rob West. It's a simple concept and proven true countless times. But why is it true?
The answer may surprise and challenge you. We'll unpack it today and 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, first of all, we can all agree that God's Word has power. Isaiah 55 11 tells us, So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
The Holy Spirit is the author of God's Word and he gives it first and foremost the power to save but to accomplish any and all the things that God shall purpose. So that brings us back to Matthew 6 21. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. That is a truth that has both a positive and negative connotation. The negative is if you spend the resources God gives you on ungodly things, your heart will follow after those things. In the positive sense, then the verse tells us that if we use God's resources in righteous and godly ways, our heart will naturally follow after those things. You can also look at the verse in two other ways. Is Jesus saying that the emotion comes before the act or after? Does the heart follow the treasure or does the treasure follow the heart? And why is that important?
Well, it's important because all of this is leading up to something we talk about a lot here on the program. The power of money. You see, money has power and that's what Jesus is really saying and probably why there are over 2300 verses in the Bible dealing with money and possessions. You may not want to put your treasure, and it's not really yours by the way, on godly things such as giving to your church. Maybe that's very difficult for you to do.
If so, Matthew 6 21 should give you hope and encouragement. It says you can change your attitude by changing your actions. Now, how exactly does that work, especially if money has so much power over our lives? Well, money has power, but so does God's word and so does giving. In fact, giving has a very specific power. It has the power to break money's control over us.
That might seem counterintuitive, but it's true. The late pastor Charles Stanley liked to say that we need to hold money with an open hand because if we close our fist around it, it takes control of our thinking and our behavior. Financial teacher and author Ron Blue says, quoting now, it's not that my heart is where I put my treasure. It's that where I put my treasure, there is where my heart will go.
The heart follows the treasure, not the other way around. Jesus wants me to treasure him and a relationship with him and I can't if money or mammon is my God, unquote. Jesus says a lot about money in the gospels, most of it warning us about its power. A little further in Matthew 6 and verse 24, he says we must make a choice.
No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he'll be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. Note that Jesus doesn't say it's difficult to serve God and money. He says it's impossible to serve God and money. He's saying you have to make a choice, God or money.
In first Timothy 6 10, Paul tells us what happens when we make the wrong choice. He writes, for the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people eager for money have wandered from the faith, and pierced themselves with many griefs. If you doubt that's the case, consider that loving money more than God is really idolatry.
It's no different than the Israelites worshiping a golden calf. Now to be clear, there's nothing wrong with acquiring wealth and acquiring more than you need. If the Lord didn't allow that, we wouldn't have anything to give. Money is not the root of evil, the love of money is.
That's what Jesus is saying in Matthew 19 23 and 24. It reads, truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.
A bit of hyperbole there, perhaps, to make a point. If you love riches, it will be difficult to enter heaven because you're choosing money over God. The only way to break the power that money has over you is to give generously to God's kingdom. I hope this encourages you to be a generous giver, starting with your local church and then expanding to other ministries as you're able. All right, your calls are next, 800-525-7000.
We'll be right back. where you can ask questions, get answers, and share what you're learning. Go to faithfi.com and click the word app to get started. Welcome back to Faith and Finance. I'm Rob West. 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. The calls are coming in quickly, so get on board. We'd love to hear from you.
800-525-7000. Let's start in Tyler, Texas. Hey, John, go right ahead. Hey, how are you doing today, Rob? Really appreciate your show, and I appreciate what basically I consider to be your ministry to help the faithful to be good stewards of what God's given us, because if lies, you said it's His, not ours. Well, I consider it to be my ministry as well, so I'm glad we're on the same page.
Hey, how can I help you, sir? Well, I wanted to call mainly now with a question, but to bring up the topic so that people can understand their mortgage company, their lender, which is their mortgage company, their escrow account, their principal plus interest, which could be fixed or variable, because many people misunderstand why they have fluctuations in their monthly bills for their loan, because of possibly an increase in their escrow account, and they don't totally understand what an escrow is, how it performs, and that they do have some fiscal responsibility as the homeowner to make sure that they have enough money in their escrow because of an increase of property taxes or homeowners insurance, which is not anything to do with their mortgage company. It has to do with their state or their insurance company. So I'll let you maybe dumb it down for folks, and I'll hush for a minute. Well, John, first of all, I'm delighted that you brought this up. We actually had a caller asking about this just the other day, and you're exactly right. You know, with interest rates rising, of course, if you have a variable rate, that's going to cause your mortgage payment to fluctuate. Unfortunately, it's going up as that rate is rising, but few people have variable rates these days. Normally, we have fixed mortgage rates. So why then are you getting notified that your mortgage payment is all of a sudden increasing? Well, to John's point, that has to do with the escrow portion of the account. The mortgage escrow account is what the lender uses to pay your property taxes and your homeowners insurance. They require, and this is right there in the covenants usually, in some cases, they'll let you handle that yourself and escrow your own payments or amounts for homeowners and taxes.
Sorry, I'm not losing my mind here today. But they do typically escrow that for you. And so they require an extra amount each month beyond the principal and interest to pay for your property taxes and homeowners insurance. And the money's then held in that escrow account until those bills come due, usually once or twice a year. And they do that to ensure that those expenses are being paid because they want to keep their investment in your property safe. Now, because home values have risen so sharply, counties and municipalities have really been hiking up property taxes as of late. And depending on what part of the country you're in, you may see your homeowners insurance going up, namely those of you listening in Florida today, you know what I'm talking about. And when those bills increase, well, that means the lender needs to collect more for your escrow account.
Often they'll do it, they'll ask you to make one larger payment to bring it higher, to leave your payment the same or you can choose to spread it out in the form of just raising the payment itself. But yeah, you need to understand what that is and the reason that it's happening. But in the end, it's not anything that the mortgage company is benefiting from, it's just the fact that your taxes and your homeowners insurance are on the rise.
Did I say that well, John? Yes, I believe you did. And I think a good way to kind of dumb down what the escrow portion of your home loan is, is that your escrow is basically kind of like an exo-facto savings account. Pure money that they collect and it's a fixed amount that they have calculated through an escrow analysis. Now that analysis they do yearly, they do it usually at the beginning of the year and they do it after all taxes have been paid, all insurance has been paid. They analyze your account and they will say, okay, well, due to what we're seeing, your taxes are going to go up, your insurance has gone up and we're going to need to increase what your portion to your savings basically account is. And they take from that and they pay your taxes and your insurance. And then if for some reason they haven't done the analysis and your taxes go up and your insurance goes up, they don't just sit there and go, well, I sure wish we had the money to pay it. No, what they do is they go ahead and pay it for you. So now to have a shortfall in your escrow account, which you may have to pay, which you may have to make up.
And I don't think people understand that portion of it. It's not that they're penalizing you. It's that, hey, look, we took the money and paid it for you in advance. It's like a savings account with overdraft protection. So they pay it out, but we got to collect it back because we gave it ahead of time. Hey John, well done.
Well done, my friend. You articulated that very well and hopefully that clears up for some folks maybe that had some confusion around that escrow account, what that looks like. Let me finish with one final thought and then we'll move on to some other callers. The escrow department is not beyond making a mistake. So it's not a bad idea to monitor that escrow account. They'll send you once a year. You can ask for it more frequently. Once a year, they'll send you a reconciliation.
It's not a bad idea to check up on that and just make sure that everything looks good. John, thanks for your call today, my friend. We appreciate it.
To Harrisburg, PA. Hi, William. Go ahead. Hi, Rob. Thanks for taking the call. I'm 61 years old, another five years to work, and late last year everyone was talking about a recession this year. And so I moved my 401k money 75% of it from stock-based to a secure fund. And now that the market's up 3,000 points since then, and it feels good to have no risk, but at the same time, because I'm a little behind on my 401k and retirement funds, I sort of hurt that I lost those 3,000 points.
So my question is this, stay where I'm at with my age being what it is or move it around a little bit? Yeah, very good. Let's do this. I've got to take a quick break, but that was helpful background.
I want to give you my thoughts on that. So, William, if you can stay right there, we'll pick your question up right on the other side of the break. Still two lines open today. 800-525-7000 is the number to call. Vanessa, Lisa, Monica, we're coming your way, plus perhaps your question today. Again, taking your calls and questions.
800-525-7000. Stay with us. Much more to come just around the corner. Thank you. Advice that aligns with Christian values. Discover the skills you need to help your clients make a kingdom impact. Get started today by enrolling in the CKA educational program at kingdomadvisors.com slash get certified.
That's kingdomadvisors.com slash get certified. Welcome back to Faith and Finance. I'm Rob West. We're taking your calls and questions.
All the lines are full, so we'll get to as many of these questions as we can today. Just before the break, we were talking to William in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. William is five years out from retirement because of the uncertainty of the market, the volatility, a looming recession. He took his retirement assets and moved them out of the market to more of the stable, fixed type of guaranteed investment and as a result has missed this rally that most of us didn't expect. I mean this market has just gone straight up and there's really not a whole lot of reason for it other than we are seeing inflation come down and the economy has been resilient despite the massive and quick rise in interest rates and now we're starting to hear more economists than ever during this current cycle say that we may miss a recession. We may actually see that soft landing that the Fed was trying to engineer.
That still remains to be seen. There's still a great likelihood we could have that recession later this year and we could see more hikes or they could stay in place longer. Nevertheless, William's wondering what to do just kind of given his current situation and William what I would go back to is just saying okay despite the fact that maybe if we could redo this you would have changed how you approach this.
You would have just ridden it out. I think the question now is given where you find yourself today what is the very best option for you in terms of the right allocation moving forward because here's the reality even though retirement's only five years away if the Lord tarries and you're in good health you have a decades-long need for this money. This money needs to last you quite a while you know 20 plus years and so we want to have a growth component to it. We also want to have some stability.
We don't want it to be volatile whether we have a recession now or not we're going to have one at some point and the market is cyclical. So let me ask you this did you say your age was 61 today is that right? Yes. All right and when you get to retirement at 66 are you planning to begin drawing an income from this right away or will this just be free to continue to grow because your bills will be covered from other sources? Probably begin to draw. Okay all right and what do you have today in that retirement account? 157. Yeah okay well I mean I would put it back to work and you know the data says you know putting it all in at one time is the best way to go oftentimes we might think well maybe I should stage it back into the market over six months and the only reason at least based on the data you would want to do that is if you just can't stomach it putting it all in at one time and that's going to allow you to actually get that working for you and you'll feel better about it but if you just want to rely purely on the data the data would say when you decide you're going back in the market you put it all back in and you would want to put it in with an allocation that makes sense based on your current balance you'd want to try to not pull more than 500 a month 6,000 a year out of that account in order to preserve it for the rest of your life but obviously you've got five years for it to grow and I think you know as somebody who's roughly 60 years old typically we would say at this point you'd probably want to go 50 50 50 in fixed income bond type investments 50 in stocks and you want to be properly diversified in each of those two asset classes you know once you deploy it but that's going to give you some more stability the bond portion which has been out of favor and you miss that which is good will do well moving forward because as rates fall the bond prices will increase and you'll benefit from the current high yields we've got and then we would hope stocks would continue to do well even though you're going to have to be committed to it and not try to time the market in the future like you did this go around and I'm not faulting you for that that's hard to do and I've been guilty of the same thing in the past so I would say probably 50 50 if you wanted to be a little more conservative you could be 60 40 60 bonds 40 stocks are you in a 401k is that what this is with like kind of a menu of investment options yes 401k and I have more often there as well okay yeah so you'd want to just choose from that menu of investments you could get the counsel of an advisor if you wanted somebody to look over the investment options you have in your 401k but basically you'd want to be broadly diversified with a mix of roughly 50 50 or 60 40 bonds to stocks using the investment options in the 401k and again the data would suggest you move it all in at once right all right well thank you very much I appreciate the information all right sir thank you for your call today we appreciate it uh to Florida hi David go ahead sir hey Rob thank you for taking my call sure um I just want to first start off by saying your knowledge for investing is just outstanding I just want to commend you on that you're truly truly blessed um so I have some uh money sitting in an online savings account it's not a lot it's just 25 000 it's uh taking in a little over four percent right now um but I was thinking on moving it over to a treasury bill um locking it in for a year so it's a low risk moderate type of risk I just want to get your thoughts on that yeah I think the treasury bill is like a little over five percent yeah maybe I'm gaining that percent I guess I just you know again I'm not a I'm not a high gambler when it comes to investing I just don't have the knowledge yeah but well the benefit of the t-bills whether it's treasury bonds bills or notes and bonds are the 20 and 30 year maturities the notes are the two to ten years and the t-bills are you know four eight thirteen twenty six or 52 weeks so yeah that's what you're looking at is the 52 week or the one year t-bill uh they have zero default risk because they're backed by the federal government so when you say there's low risk there's really no risk uh the question is just uh you know is it the return and and could you do better elsewhere I mean it's a it's a very competitive return right now uh t-bills right now I think the yield is around five and a quarter percent for a 12 month and then if you go out to two years it starts to drop four point seven five years just under four ten years three point seven so the downside to these uh treasury bills bonds and notes is just that often you can do better elsewhere uh whether it's a cd or a money market fund or certainly with corporate bonds or stocks so I guess that would be the only other question is what's the purpose of this money if it's you know money you need in the next three years then yeah you want to be looking at high yield savings which right now is over four percent or cds or you could look at t-bills um if you have a little bit longer time horizon corporate uh in government bonds will do well just given where we are in the interest rate cycle or if you want to take a little more risk and you have five years plus preferably 10 then I would uh I would look to maybe stocks and bonds does that make sense it does I think I'll just kind of maybe step up and just go over to a treasury bill for a year okay yeah pretty much pretty much pretty much minimal risk well and I would say I would counter that and say no risk because you've you've got the backing of the full faith and credit the united states government and if that goes under we got much bigger problems I hope that helps you thanks for your call I hope you'll make plans to join us again next time for another edition of faith and finance faith and finance is provided by faith by and listeners like you
