What's most important to you when it comes to choosing your financial advisor? Someone who's aligned with your biblical values. How about someone who will take the time to explain your options? Certified Kingdom Advisors are professionals who meet high standards in competence and integrity, and have been trained to offer biblical financial advice.
To find a Certified Kingdom Advisor in your area, visit faithfi.com and click Find a CKA. We sometimes regret the things we say, but often words left unsaid can bother us just as much. Hi, I'm Rob West. We've all had the thought, oh, I wish I'd said this or that. You had more to say, but for whatever reason, time ran out. Sharon Epps has some things to say about unfinished conversations 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. Well, Sharon Epps joins us again today. She's the president of Kingdom Advisors and she's passionate about helping people learn how they're uniquely made by God to use all of their resources for his purposes. Sharon, great to have you back. Always good to be here. Sharon, you've been giving a lot of thought lately to change and unfinished conversations.
Now, I'd love for you to unpack that a bit for our listeners. Well, it may be the time of year. The holidays and the end of year naturally just become seasons of change. We interact with family members in different settings and rhythms than we typically do throughout the rest of the year. We look back at the previous year and look ahead to the next.
We might celebrate things that have been accomplished and regret things undone. This season of change often highlights things that are unfinished like conversations. And recently I've been involved in several conversations where we were interrupted right in the middle of an interesting dialogue.
Maybe it was a child trying to get my attention or text notification or just a distraction in the room. And the words felt like they were hanging there in the air because someone stepped away and I didn't have the opportunity to finish the conversation. And I think change is a lot like that. Sometimes it happens in an instant and sometimes it's planned. But even when it's planned, you can feel like you're in the middle of an unfinished conversation. Yeah, and then of course you're left with this feeling that something's just unresolved.
Yes, let me tell you what happened several years ago. I was working on a project with a group of people that I deeply loved and literally within a day that changed. And after going through the shock and thinking through all the different things that I was trying to process, I finally realized that the pain came more than anything else from those unfinished conversations. Things that I wished I could go back and say, I appreciate you for this.
Thank you for that. I didn't have the opportunity to say those things. And as I processed through the specific change, I realized that some of the conversations needed to be recaptured. We needed to enter the conversation to allow us to walk through the pain in order to reclaim the relationship. In fact, I had a dear friend during that period who wrote me an email that said, sometimes when we don't know what to say, we don't say anything at all.
And that just didn't seem right. So I wanted to write you and tell you that I love you and appreciate you. Well, those were the kindest words and they made the biggest difference in my heart. Yeah, I can only imagine. And unfortunately, we can't always recapture conversations or relationships, can we?
Well, we just don't have the opportunity to finish some here on Earth. It may be because of the death of a loved one or a change in circumstances that the conversations can't happen. And this was kind of my breakthrough, spending time with the Lord and thinking about unfinished conversations. And I just felt this nudge and this phrase, it's finished.
And you know, when he said that, so he was hanging on the cross. And so my response back was, OK, Lord, thank you. I'm glad you finished my salvation. I'm thinking about unfinished conversations.
And it was as if he said, I've completed more than your salvation. I've completed your conversations. Those are the conversations you're longing to finish and you can't. And so he took me on a journey to release those unfinished conversations. I learned to journal them and write them back to him. And it's like he takes out a stamp and stamps that conversation. It is finished. Interesting.
Wow. Well, let's apply this to finances, because sometimes we have unfinished conversations about money. Well, we do. And I think often as spouses, we're distracted by the daily whirlwind of life and we don't stop to set money goals. And we don't have realistic money conversations. Or perhaps we avoid having estate planning talks with our children.
And that can often leave loved ones with a lot of uncertainty. Or maybe we're owed money by a relative and we leave that conversation unfinished. In each of these scenarios, we want to ask, is this a conversation that needs to be recaptured? Or is it one that needs to be released? And I invite you this week to join me in a challenge to consider one unfinished conversation. Do you need to recapture it with a phone call or is it one that needs to be released? Wow. And especially this time of year as we're together with family and friends, and maybe one of those unfinished conversations need to be had.
Make it a matter of prayer before you do it. But Sharon, great reminder. Thanks for stopping by. Thanks for having me.
She's Sharon Epps, president of Kingdom Advisors. Your calls are next, 800-525-7000. I'm Rob West and this is Faith and Finance, biblical wisdom for your financial journey. Are you overwhelmed by financial fear and anxiety? At FaithFi, we hear it every day. People weigh down by worries related to wealth and money. But financial anxiety isn't about the size of your bank account.
It's about the condition of your heart. That's why we've created Look at the Sparrows, a 21-day devotional that'll help you find peace through Jesus's teachings. Request a copy of the Look at the Sparrows devotional today with your gift of $25 or more by going to faithfi.com slash give. Paying too much for health insurance? Frustrated by high deductibles and increasing premiums?
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Take control over your healthcare costs with a program from CHM that could save you up to 40%. Learn more and enroll today at chministries.org slash faithfi. That's chministries.org slash faithfi. Great to have you with us today on Faith and Finance. I'm Rob West. All right, it's going to be time to take your calls and questions here in just a moment. That number 800-525-7000 again, that's 800-525-7000.
You can call right now and we'll look forward to hearing from you throughout the broadcast today. But first in the news today, we like to see what's happening in the news that you might need to be aware of. And this one unfortunately is related to scams. Imposter scams have taken a troubling new turn of affecting investors seeking financial advice online. Now traditionally these scams involved criminals posing as government agencies or well-known companies using emails, texts or phone calls to trick victims into giving up money or personal information. However, scammers are now shifting their focus to WhatsApp and similar platforms posing as trusted financial advisors. Here's the latest on how these scams work. First of all, scammers set up fake chat rooms making them look like they're hosted by real and sometimes well-known financial advisors. They do this by pulling legitimate information from these advisors websites or maybe from their social media profiles that gives the chat rooms an air of authenticity. Then to lure in unsuspecting investors, the crooks initially share mainstream financial advice and market commentary, which builds trust and credibility. So then once the users feel comfortable, the scammers try to rope them into various schemes. They may offer trading advice in digital currencies or other assets or maybe they'll ask for fees in exchange for personalized financial services. No matter the offer, it's all a ploy to steal sensitive personal information and money. Now, here's what investors need to know.
This is a key idea. Legitimate financial advisors in the United States are highly regulated and they're prohibited from using platforms like WhatsApp to give financial advice or to promote their services or even to solicit clients. They also aren't allowed to use social media to provide specific investment advice. And so if they're doing that, you can just assume that they're not legitimate because it's not legal. Now, if you're looking for financial advice, always ensure that you're dealing with a registered and licensed professional through office channels.
And if something feels off, well, it probably is. Your instincts are right and you should avoid these new sophisticated and posture scams. Now, this is a great time for me to remind you as well that here at Faith and Finance, we recommend the Certified Kingdom Advisor designation. These are men and women who've met high standards, including achieving the only industry-accepted designation around biblically-wise professional financial advice.
That means they've gone through a 60-hour university-based course, passed a proctored exam. Beyond that, pastor and client references, statement of faith, code of ethics, annual continuing education, not to mention that on top of all of that, they've had a regulatory review and met an experience requirement. It's a high bar and because of that, and that's the way we want it, we can feel good about you connecting with these folks.
So, I'd interview two or three always, but you can find one in your area when you head to our website faithfi.com. That's faithfi.com. And when you do so, just click find a professional. Hope that helps. But yeah, be on your guard against these imposters out there.
They are getting very, very creative. 800-525-7000 is the number to call. Again, that's 800-525-7000. We've got some lines open today, taking your calls and questions on anything financial.
To Lawrence, Kansas. Stan, go ahead. Yeah, hey, I'm 39 now and I've never stayed for retirement and I have a job where I'm able to and I just have nowhere, I don't know where to start. Yeah, so tell me about the option you have available to you, Stan. You said I have a job where I'm able to but you haven't started.
What does that look like? Oh, it just means I make way more money than I've ever made before. So, I have just a lot of money just laying around, I guess. Okay, very good.
And that's certainly a helpful starting place. What do they have that they've offered to you? Do they have a 401k or something like that? The company has not. I just need to be more personally responsible with my money. Got it. Okay, so they've not offered you or nor do they have available a retirement plan for employees?
No, sir. Okay, and are you self-employed working as an independent contractor or are you W-2? W-2.
Okay. Yeah, so the starting point would be a Roth IRA. Are you single or married?
Single. Okay, so you could put in seven thousand dollars into an IRA this year and that would be a great beginning point, but you're quickly going to get to the end of that. And so then you're going to want to look at other options beyond that. Because you're W-2, it does create some limitations. How much do you think you'd have available to be able to put into a retirement plan? About 2,000 a month.
Okay. Yeah, so 24,000 a year. So, what you perhaps might want to look at is something called an individual 401k. An individual K is what it's called and it's for those who don't have a 401k offered by their employer. That would be one option. Another would be you could basically use an insurance product to save. Normally, I don't recommend those as a first option, but when somebody's run out of their investment options or retirement options because either they don't have them available or they've maxed it out and they're trying to catch up, you could use an insurance product. Here's what I would probably do. I'd probably sit down with an advisor who could look at your situation and advise you on the very best strategy. In the meantime, go ahead and open that Roth IRA.
You could do that at Fidelity or Schwab and then you could start putting in, you know, a couple of thousand a month until you get to the 7,000 cap and get that invested in some good stock mutual funds that could grow for the future. And then you could find a CKA at our website, faithfi.com. Thanks for your call, sir. Let's go to Texas. Hi, Kathy.
How can I help you? Thank you. I have recently retired and my husband will be retiring probably sometime next year, but something that we had started doing is using a credit card to charge our groceries every month and then we pay it off before the finance charges kick in. And the reason we're doing that is to get travel rewards points. Yes, and I was just wondering your thought on using a credit card for things like that, or should we just figure that into our budget monthly and just take the money out of our budget instead of charging? Yeah.
No, I like that, Kathy, a lot. I'm not someone who says you can't use credit cards. It's only an issue when it becomes, you know, a problem because you're not using the credit card for budgeted items. And so if you do, if you use them for non-budgeted items that are outside what you can afford, then that's when you start carrying a balance. But if you're using them only for budgeted items and you're paying it off in full at the end of the month, then you're in great shape because to your point, you're going to get the rewards. You're going to add the convenience of being able to pay electronically.
And then thirdly, you've got the protections as well. So with a debit card, for instance, if the account was compromised, you could maybe get the money back. The problem is until they resolve the issue, the money's gone out of your account until the bank makes you whole. With a credit card, you just dispute the transaction and you never are out the money.
They take it from there. And so, you know, there's some protections, there's flexibility, there's convenience. And when you use it, for instance, with the FaithFi app, you can connect those accounts and see those transactions come in, actually have them go into your digital envelopes and monitor where you're at with each of your envelopes at any point in the month.
So for instance, with your eating out envelope, if you have one, you could say, where are we at? Well, we've got a week left and the money's gone. So we're done for the month and you can make those decisions in real time. But bottom line is, Kathy, no, I don't have any problem with the way you all are doing it.
The key is only budgeted items, pay it off in full, zero interest. Hey, we appreciate your call today. A quick break and back with much more right after this. Stay with us. We're grateful for support from Timothy Plan. For more than 30 years, they've served clients on a biblically responsible journey to invest in a way that honors God and gives dignity to people's lives. More information is at timothyplan.com. The investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses are contained in the prospectus and summary prospectus available on our website, TimothyPlan.com. The investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses are contained in the prospectus and summary prospectus available at timothyplan.com.
Mutual funds distributed by Timothy Partners LTD and ETFs distributed by Foresight Fund Services LLC. Great to have you with us today on Faith and Finance. We're taking your calls and questions today, 800-525-7000. We have a few lines open. You can call right now. All right, back to the phones we go. We're going to head down to Tampa, Florida and welcome Scott to the broadcast. Go ahead, sir.
Hi, I've got a question. We've been trying to sell our house now for about 11 months and it's not going well. The market is dried up down here. We want to move. We've been patient and my wife is wondering if we should go ahead and rent our house out and go ahead and move to where we want to and rent a house up there and just wait for the market to improve here and then sell our house when the market gets better here.
Yeah, you know Scott I'd be really leery of you doing that just because number one, I just wouldn't want you to get stretched too thin. Number two, you would be an absentee landlord at that point. So you would reside in another state and be overseeing a property out of the area.
Number three, I know expenses are high there. You know, you've got the homeowners insurance, which is, you know, through the roof right now in Florida. And you know, if we were to get into even though the market has softened a little bit, it's still a pretty red hot real estate market.
Now. I realize that, you know, each area is different and to your point, maybe your particular area even though Florida real estate has done well and is continuing to be very strong. Maybe it has softened a bit where you are, but I can tell you if we were to get into a recession, it could soften further and what I would not want is you all to go ahead and buy something else and all of a sudden we're in a recession. You're not able to find a renter. Now, you're still having to pay the mortgage and you know, the homeowners insurance and the property taxes and oh by the way, somebody doesn't take care of the property and now you got some maintenance and I just wouldn't want you to get spread too thin. So if it were me, I would try to focus back in on why is the house not moving and maybe you need to get a different real estate professional in there. Either a it's overpriced.
Perhaps you need to consider dropping the price and I realize that's not fun to do but it may be what's necessary. Are there some, you know, repairs or eyesores you need to take care of? You know, what does it look like in terms of the staging of the house?
How is it being marketed? You know, were the pictures done? Well, I mean those things made sound minor and yet they can be the difference in, you know, getting a new, you know, crop of people to go through there. But if it were me, Scott, I think I would focus back in on what do we need to do to get this house sold so that we can take our equity and move and not become landlords and not have this extra burden that could get worse as the economy softens and now all of a sudden, you know, we're in a real financial predicament. But does that make sense to you? Yeah, that's why we were looking at renting a house up where we want to go to. Okay.
Yeah, and that does make sense. But again, I would come back to it. So now, you know, at least you're not buying something that you know, if you got into real hardship could be foreclosed on but it doesn't change the fact that now all of a sudden we've still got the same mortgage and we're renting and then you could say well, but we're going to have a renter. Well, that's great as long as you have a renter. But again, if we go another six months and whatever is causing it not to sell in a hot real estate market over 11 months is still factoring in, you know, over the next six months and then all of a sudden we're into a recession and now you've lost your renter and you're out of state and you've got a rent payment and a mortgage payment.
That's what I want to try to avoid. So I think the better option is let's go to work, make some hard decisions, figure out why this thing isn't selling and do what we need to do to get it sold. Thank you very much for your input. I really appreciate it. Absolutely, Scott. God bless you, sir. Thanks for being on the program. Let's go to Indianapolis. Hi, Kathleen.
How can I help? Hi, thank you for taking my call. So I have a very small pension, did not contribute to it at all. So it would be taxable if I took the, you know, lump sum. I'd be paying taxes or I could roll it over to an IRA or I could take the annuity, which is only about 200 and some dollars a month and do not need the money, but want to do the wise thing financially. Yeah, thinking about the accumulation beyond if I took the money, I'd be taxed and then I'd be taxed on the accumulation or I could roll it over to an IRA and then I'd have to take, I'm 65 or will be in a month, I would have to take that at 70 and a half.
Well, no, that's been pushed out to 73 now, but yes, you would have a required minimum at that point. And then that means I would take the lump sum at that point in time or I would have... No, you just have a required minimum, which would be a very small percentage. What they do is you take your balance, December 31 every year after age 73, divided by the table on the IRS's website that basically is a factor driven by your life expectancy. So it would be a fairly small amount you'd have to take out every year and you could take it as a qualified charitable distribution, which is not taxable.
And so you could do whatever giving you're doing right now. Let's say you're tithed to your church. If you're doing that out of your checking account with after-tax dollars, you could stop doing that and send it from your IRA once you reach age 73. And that's the way to get it out of the IRA without it being taxable to you.
Oh, my husband's here. No, you do not have to wait till 73 to take anything out. No, no. Yeah, that's just the required minimum age that you were talking about. So here's the thing. Listen, if you guys are looking for consistent income right now, that $2,400 a month or a year is pretty good on $30,000. But if you don't need the money because your bills are covered, I kind of like the idea of you keeping it in the tax-deferred environment, rolling it out to the IRA, investing it, letting it grow in that tax-deferred environment where the taxes aren't impacting it.
And then when you get to age 73 and the IRS says you got to start taking some out, take it out as a qualified charitable distribution and swap it for any giving you were already doing out of cash. Does that make sense? Perfect.
That makes perfect sense. Thank you so much. I made my decision. All right. Thank you. All right.
We're going to finish today in Texas. Sean, you'll be our final caller. Go ahead, sir. Yes, sir.
Hi. A couple years ago, we signed up for an indexed annuity and we had parked a couple hundred thousand there. The last couple years I've seen, you know, especially this year, I've seen the stock market has rallied and done tremendous.
And I noticed our funds for two or three years now in a row is sitting at no earnings at all. And I'm just curious because we have a penalty to pull it out. You know, I'm trying to figure out what to do there if I should just leave it or try to take the penalty and move it somewhere. Yeah. Well, you know, it's going to take a little bit more analysis. I think you're right to question that though.
You've got a lot of things going on. And the reason I don't love annuities including indexed annuities is they're complicated. So you have cap rates, which is the max you can earn in a given year. You have participation rates, which is the percent of the markets gained that's applied to your annuity. You've got the fees as well.
And then you've got the actual index that it's tied to and that's perhaps the driver of whether or not you received anything this year. So I would connect with a certified Kingdom advisor to analyze what you have at faithfi.com and then decide whether it makes sense to pull it out or just to ride this out until you get past that surrender penalty. You'll find somebody at faithfi.com. Thanks, Sean. A big thanks to my team today. Hey, come back and join us tomorrow. We'll see you then. Bye bye. Faith and Finance is provided by FaithFi and listeners like you.
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