Through FaithFi's biblically based tools and resources, we're helping millions of Christians navigate their financial lives each week so that they can see God as their ultimate treasure. As we look ahead to the new year, we at FaithFi want to invite you to partner with us as we seek to continue equipping more good and faithful financial stewards for God's kingdom. Every donation made to FaithFi between now and the end of the year will be doubled up to $150,000 through a generous matching gift opportunity. This means your donation will have twice the impact in helping us reach more Christians with biblical financial wisdom. You can make your year-end gift by visiting faithfi.com, that's faithfi.com, and clicking Give, that's faithfi.com slash give.
Now, let's jump into the podcast. From Genesis to Revelation, generosity is a theme throughout the Bible, and we find the ultimate generosity in Romans 6, 23, for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Hi, I'm Rob West. As children of a generous God, Christians are called to be generous in turn. To encourage you in your journey, I'll share 10 famous quotes on generosity today, and 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. While the Bible describes generosity in various ways, Jesus instructs his followers to share with those who have nothing, saying, That's Luke 3, 10 and 11. The Apostle Paul reminds us to give without obligation. Give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
We find that in 2 Corinthians 9. Psalm 112 equates generosity with righteousness, showing that it's not just an action, but a reflection of godly character. Throughout history, godly men and women have pondered the importance of generosity, offering wisdom that continues to inspire. Here are 10 timeless quotes on generosity that highlight its spiritual significance. C.S. Lewis, the beloved author of the Chronicles of Narnia and the Screwtape letters, answered the question, John Wesley, the 18th century preacher and founder of Methodism, offered this memorable encouragement, generosity transforms ordinary possessions into eternal blessings.
A.W. Tozer, a 20th century American pastor and theologian, explained it this way, What about our motives for giving? Pastor Chip Ingram reminds us of the difference between giving and generosity.
He says, Randy Alcorn, the author of The Treasure Principle, explains how giving reshapes our priorities. St. Augustine of Hippo, a 4th century theologian, described giving, what he called charity, as a virtue that connects us to God. Irish missionary and writer Amy Carmichael beautifully captured the link between love and generosity, saying, Finally, Jesus himself offers the ultimate encouragement for generosity in Luke 6-38. When we give, we reflect the love and generosity of our Heavenly Father. We give because He first gave to us our life, salvation, and every blessing we enjoy. Here's my hope and prayer for you, that these quotes would encourage and challenge you to live generously, not out of obligation, but out of a heart filled with gratitude to God. Generosity is not just about sharing wealth, it's about trusting God to meet our needs as we meet the needs of others. If we give, it requires an open hand, which means God can take it out, He can also put it back in. What an opportunity to worship the Lord as we give generously to those causes on the heart of God. All right, your calls are next.
800-525-7000. As 2025 approaches, we want to invite you to partner with us at FaithFi and equipping faithful financial stewards for the Kingdom of God. Every gift made between now and December 31st will be doubled up to $150,000 through a generous matching opportunity. Your donation will have twice the impact, helping us reach more Christians with biblical financial wisdom. Make your year-end gift today by visiting faithfi.com and clicking give.
That's faithfi.com slash give. Frustrated by your health insurance? Confused by the network restrictions and increasing premiums?
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That's chministries.org slash faithfi. Helping you see God as your ultimate treasure. This is Faith in Finance. Looking forward to taking your calls and questions today. Questions on anything financial. That number to call, 800-525-7000. 800-525-7000 calls are coming in, but we have lines open and we'd love to hear from you.
Again, 800-525-7000. In addition to your questions today, if you have a testimony, perhaps God has been at work in your marriage related to finances, or you've been successful at paying off debt, or you trusted God in your giving. Perhaps giving beyond what you could even see in the immediate future. And God rewarded that. You want to share those stories with us? We'd love to hear those as well.
800-525-7000. Before we head to the phones today, in the news, it seems many young adults continue to experience a failure to launch. According to new data from the Census Bureau, about one in three U.S. adults ages 18 to 34 are still living with mom and dad.
This trend spiked during the pandemic, of course, but it's remained high ever since. A 2024 Bank of America survey revealed that more than half of Gen Z adults feel they don't earn enough due to the high cost of living and many lack emergency savings. A 2019 survey by Merrill Lynch found that one in four parents in the U.S. were helping adult children financially, many of them doing it at the expense of their own retirement plans. Of course, it's great that parents can help their children get through a few rough years, but if you've got a Gen Z-er living in the basement, you also need to help them become financially independent. You can set a deadline for moving out, or if they're already out of the house but you're still paying some of the bills, you can start to scale back on that.
Perhaps if you have the ability financially, you could have them pay to offset some of those living expenses for being at your home, and maybe you're socking that away in the savings account, and then when they move out, you could bless them with a gift. Maybe you've been squirreling it away, they don't even have to know that necessarily, and then it provides them something to get started. First, last insecurity on an apartment, or maybe furnishings, or picking up a car if they need one, those kinds of things. At some point, what we have to realize is that our love for our kids and our desire to help is actually counterproductive. It might be reinforcing that they don't grow up, and making poor decisions, and not establishing the rhythms of hard work, and careful budgeting, and delayed gratification, and saving for the future.
So just be careful on that. It might require some tough love along the way, but I think if we're thoughtful and intentional with clear communication, and always looking to reinforce the right behaviors. Another example would be maybe they have student loan debt they're trying to pay off before they move out on their own, and perhaps you say you'll match any payments to debt reduction. Again, reinforcing those right behaviors.
The big idea here is we need to get them out on their own as hardworking adults, understanding a biblical worldview of money, but also establishing those right and proper disciplines of money management. I hope that helps, and let us know if that's going on in your life. Perhaps we can talk about it here on the broadcast. All right, we're going to dive into your questions today. Again, lines are open.
We're ready for you. 800-525-7000. You can call right now.
To Chicago Heights, Illinois. Hi, Nina. How can I help you? Hi, Rob. How are you? I'm doing great. Thanks for your call.
Good. I just have a quick question. So I'm a newlywed, and we're expecting our first child, and we have been looking to do the whole house hunting situation. I just wanted your opinion on what would you recommend, either a mortgage broker or going through like a bank?
Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I like using a mortgage broker. You could also compare what you're getting from a mortgage broker to some of just the online tools. You could also check with your local bank. I think the big mistake people make, Nina, is they just get one quote from one lender and take it. And with this being the largest transaction that you and I will ever have, and it's the same for just about everybody, we should shop around and make sure we're getting the very best rates and terms. You're probably going to want to look for a conventional loan. They require a good credit score and a stable income and a down payment somewhere between three and 20%. And I'd like for you to be at the 20% area.
There's a flexibility in terms. And as long as you have at least 20% down, you could avoid that private mortgage insurance, which, you know, that's going to be a requirement if you get an FHA loan. And that's going to be about 1% of the mortgage value annually, and it doesn't do anything for you. It's all for the lender. So if you can avoid that by having that 20% down on a conventional loan, that's going to be your best option. So to answer your question, though, I would seek out a mortgage broker, but you could also go, you know, online and or, you know, check with your bank. You may also want to check with our friends at Movement Mortgage. They're a nationwide lender. They're an underwriter of this program, and they're believers and really are focused on not only serving God's people with wonderful loans, but building the kingdom at the same time.
You can learn more on that at movement.com slash faith. But is that helpful to you? Yeah. Wow. That really helped a lot.
Yeah. So you do recommend shopping around, though, because we did. We've gone through, like, one mortgage broker. He did, like, a soft pool. We weren't ready to do a hard pool yet, just because, I don't know, the he's first way enough to just go with him.
He's the best one we can get. But, you know, there are a lot of other options out there. So maybe we'll look more into that. Conventional is what we're leaning towards as well. So that's probably better for us rather than the FHA.
But then one more question. We need help with, like, budgeting. Like, is there any advice or wisdom you can give us through just, like, starting, obviously, you know, having a baby and, you know, all that stuff? It all comes with budgeting.
And with this economy, it's obviously crazy. Sure, sure. Yeah, I certainly can. I think a starting point would be to download the faith by app. We just came out with the brand new faith by 4.0. And it's amazing, you'd be able to set up your budget in there, be able to connect all of your checking and savings accounts, your credit card accounts securely using the third party aggregator plaid, which is the biggest in the world. And you could use the envelope system, but in a really beautiful, simple interface on your smartphone, you and your husband would both have logins. So you could see at any point what's left in each of your envelope so you can stay on budget.
And I'd be happy to give you a six month pro subscription just as our thank you for being on the program today. My wife, Julie, and I use it. We're in our faith by app every day. And here's the key is that once you take the time to set up your budget, and then you connect all of your accounts, then all your transactions flow in automatically. And so at any point in the month, you see what's left in each of your envelopes just by opening the smartphone.
You could say, Hey, honey, we've only got, you know, a little bit left in the eating out, I guess we're, you know, eating at home tonight, or, you know, what our gift category is getting a little lean, maybe we need to wait until next month, or, you know, whatever it is, but having the real time information, I think is really key, Nina, in terms of you not waiting until the end of the month to look back and see where you went over, but actually making course corrections along the way. You can find it in your app store if you just go go to either Google Play or Apple and search for faith phi. And if you hang on the line, we'll get your information and get you that six month pro subscription. Okay.
That's huge. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you.
You're welcome. I also want to send you one other thing because you guys are newlyweds and you're just trying to figure out how to manage money God's way. I'd love to send you Howard Dayton's book.
It's called money and marriage God's way. And it'll be our gift to you. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to give you a six month in the faith by app.
And we're going to send you that book money and marriage God's way from Howard Dayton and you guys just seek the Lord and lean into this area of having really good open and honest communication and invite God into your financial life through prayer. And let's see what he does. I can't wait to hear the rest of the story. Call back anytime. Thanks for being on the program today.
Back with more after this. Stay with us. We're grateful for support from Guidestone, whose diversified suite of investment solutions align with Christian values to create positive change in the world. More information is available at Guidestone funds dot com slash faith. Investing involves risk, including potential loss of principal. Carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses of Guidestone funds before investing.
They're distributed by four side funds distributors LLC, which is not an advisory affiliate, a registered investment advisor, nor do they provide investment advice. Do you feel like your hands are tied with debt, preventing you from serving God? If you have credit card debt, Christian credit counselors can help through our debt management program.
We can get you out of credit card debt about 80 percent faster while honoring your debt in full. For more information on how Christian credit counselors can help, visit Christian credit counselors dot org. That's Christian credit counselors dot org or call 800-557-1985.
800-557-1985. I'm so thankful you've joined us today here on faith and finance. Our goal in this program is to help you understand and apply a biblical worldview of financial decision making because we want every domain of your life to line up with God's word. We want you to see through the lens of Scripture as you approach everything and that includes your money management. My experience is if there's one aspect of our lives that we haven't really fully formed a biblical worldview around it, it's probably money just because there's such a lack of teaching around money through the lens of Scripture. Well, we want to step into that gap here at FaithFi and we do that in part each day by offering this program to help you think about and wrestle with some of these big ideas related to money management, but of course through the lens of Scripture. You can also check out much more on our website at faithfi.com.
That's faithfi.com. Now first, let me tackle an email. Marjorie wrote to us and said, I keep hearing about gold-backed IRAs and I'm wondering if it would be good to roll my 401k into a gold-backed IRA. Are gold and silver good investments right now? The gold-backed IRA is something I would stay away from. Now, I like the idea of you having an allocation of precious metals in your IRA. So what I would do is I'd roll just to a regular traditional IRA and then I would invest in gold through the tracker ETFs like GLD or there's about a dozen of them where it follows the price of gold, but you don't actually have to take physical possession. And you can absolutely buy them in an IRA.
But here's the thing, rather than putting 100% in gold, I'd only leave it to 10%. So I hope that helps. Now, let's take a few more calls to round out the program here in our final segment. We'll head out to Maryland.
Robert, thank you for your patience, sir. Go ahead. I'm considering a reverse mortgage. Are they good or bad? Or one of the pitfalls? Some of them.
Yeah, it's a great question, Robert. And you know, the reverse mortgages of today, what are called home equity conversion mortgages are much different than the reverse mortgages of the past, which were problematic in some cases. So I like this as a tool in your toolbox. Does that mean it's right for everybody?
No. If you have a conviction to get out of debt and stay out of debt, entering in this season of life, and you have the income sources, and can rely on other assets, great. But if you find yourself either needing access to funds periodically for certain things, home renovations or repairs or other big ticket items, or you just don't have the income to maintain the lifestyle that you would like to and you're sitting on, among other assets, a lot of home equity. This is a way to boost your retirement income, or at the very least, eliminate an existing mortgage. You remember, you know, 50% of retirees, about five years ago, were heading into retirement debt free.
Now it's only about a third. And so a lot of retirees still have mortgages they're paying on well, paying it off with a reverse mortgage can, at the very least just eliminate that largest expense in your budget, which could be the key to helping you balance it, even if you don't have the additional equity paid out as a monthly income stream over the balance of your life. You know, the benefits are, you can have the income stream, there is no risk of the payout or the mortgage balance growing to greater than the home value, because if that ever happened, the FHA would step in and make up the difference. Thirdly, you know, when you pass away or move, whichever comes first, you know, either your heirs would have to sell it and pay off the mortgage, and then they keep the balance or refinance it if they wanted to hang on to the property.
So you just have to recognize, you know, that's in play. You know, what are the downsides? Well, I guess the only really downside is that you would have a balance that's growing equal to the interest rate that's attached to it, because you're typically not paying anything on it. Because you don't have to, and the fees that are added to it every year. But, you know, other than that, you know, I think it can be a very effective tool to kind of smooth out and allow you to enjoy these retirement years, if you are short the amount of income you need to balance the budget.
But give me any follow up questions you have on that. Well, you pretty much answered them some of the questions I was going to ask, but the yearly fee, generally, how much is that yearly for, I guess, a maintenance fee or whatever? Yeah, you know, the fees for reverse mortgages, I mean, typically, it's the, you know, the upfront premium is 2% for that federal backing from FHA. And so, you know, that's right up front, and then you have some mortgage insurance premium of about a half a percent and some other, you know, fees along the way. So you'd want to just kind of read the fine print and understand what that is. But mainly, it's the, you know, closing costs and the FHA insurance charges, you know, which is an origination fee. And that would be just added to the balance that you have there.
And then it's pretty modest from that point forward. Is there a company or some entity that you would recommend? Yeah, here's what I can do, Robert, is have you, we'll put you on hold, and I'll get some information to you from somebody that can just educate you on this.
And, you know, if you decided it was something you wanted would give you an option of a trusted solution that is biblically oriented. Okay? Well, yes, that would be great. You hit the nail right on the head, I'd like to have some extra income, not terribly in debt, but it would be nice to have some additional cash to live more easily, if you will.
Yeah, very good. And I guess one last question, what happens when I think you hit the nail on the head, when both of you die, then the heirs can pick up the mortgage one way or another if they so wish, or otherwise, just let it go, right? That's right. So what would happen is that the more reverse mortgage would need to be paid, it's not assumeable. And so either they would, you know, typically, the heirs don't want to keep the home just because they have their own house. And, you know, they'd rather redeploy that money out in another way. So they would sell it, the proceeds would then be used to pay the reverse mortgage balance, and whatever's left would be distributed, according to your will, or your trust, whatever it is. Beyond that, if they did want to keep it, they would just need to refinance it and either pay off the mortgage out of other assets or get a conventional mortgage that pays off the reverse.
And then they would have to pay on that over time. All right, sir, you've been most helpful. Good. Stay on the line and our team will get your information. We'll send you a book just as our gift to you called Understanding Reverse that I think will be a great read for you. And then we'll also get somebody in touch with you.
So just stay right there and we will get your information. We covered a lot of ground today. You know, as I think about our role in managing God's money, there are an unlimited number of decisions we make every day around our finances, and yet we can boil them down, we can simplify them into really just four big categories, the money we live on, the money we give, the money we owe, and the money that we grow. But the big idea over it all is that God owns it all. And our goal is to be faithful stewards looking to God's word for counsel and wisdom to apply to our financial decision making. And when we do that, I believe it draws us closer to the heart of God.
It ultimately draws us into a more intimate relationship with Him when we handle His money according to His ways. I hope you found something today helpful and encouraging. I want to say a big thanks to my team today. On behalf of Taylor and Pat and Devin, I'm Rob West. I hope you'll come back and join us next time for another edition of Faith and Finance. May the Lord bless you. Faith and Finance is provided by Faith Buy and listeners like you.
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