Tithing Off Your Gains with Brian Mumbert

This faith and finance podcast is underwritten in part by Timothy Plan. Timothy Plan embraces biblically responsible investing. For more than 30 years financial advisors and shareholders have looked to Timothy Plan for pro-life and pro-family investment options. Learn more at TimothyPlan.com together, running over will be put into your lap.

For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you. Luke 638. I am Rob West. Jesus words in the sermon on the plane are a reminder that we should look for ways to be generous with all aspects of our finances, including investments. Brian Mumburt is here today to share some helpful ideas. Then it's on to your calls at 800-525-7000.

That's 800-525-7000. This is faith and finance podcast. Faith and finance, biblical wisdom for your financial decisions. Well, it's always a pleasure to have Brian Mumburt with us. He's vice president for regional sales at Timothy Plan, a pioneer in faith-based investing.

They're also an underwriter of this program. Brian, great to have you back. Rob, great to be here.

Thank you. Brian, we're talking about tithing on your gains. But before we start, could we dispel the notion that investors have to give up performance with faith-based investments?

Certainly, Rob. You know, this notion is something that dates back to the early days of faith-based investing. As one of the founders of faith-based investing in 1994, there were a lot of headwinds and limited resources that we had when we started this. But you fast forward 30 years, you have proven fund management, solid fundamentals to go along with all of the screening, and you can see very competitive performance with us and others in the marketplace now. There's no doubt about that.

We have come a long way and it's an exciting space to see all of the compelling products and as you said, the opportunity to get great risk adjusted returns and intersect well with your value. So I appreciate you clearing that up. Absolutely.

All right. We've been getting some questions about tithing off of investment gains and I'm glad you're going to weigh in on this. Why is that important and how does Timothy plan encourage investors to tithe off their mutual fund gains? Well, honestly, Rob, the sad reality here is that the typical American earning over $150,000 annually only gives away about 1.7% of what they make and Christians aren't a whole lot better.

We only do about 2.5% of our income on average. But in Luke chapter 12, Jesus tells us to store treasures in heaven where decay and theft cannot destroy. In 2 Corinthians, we see that the earth is not our home. We are stewards of all that God has entrusted to us. And we should not hold money in a close hand but with an open hand to help those that are in need.

Yeah, there's no doubt about that. And I know Timothy plan tithes off the revenue it receives from mutual funds. Why did you all make that decision? We needed to find a way to be obedient stewards of what God has entrusted us as a company. And at the heart of our mission, if we cannot have an impact on the other side of the screens through crisis pregnancy centers, or promoting faith-based movies and media, or helping develop biblical entrepreneurs in underprivileged cities across America and the world, then we're honestly failing in our mission of being a true faith-based investment. And so we give away much more than just the 10% as we feel compelled to really make an impact in the kingdom in more ways than just making money for our investors.

Yeah, what does that look like? How do you determine the ministries or causes that you give to? Honestly, what we like to do is look at the other side of the screen. So you know, we're a pro-life, pro-family mutual fund and ETF company. And so what's on the other side of the abortion screen? Well, it's crisis pregnancy centers. What's on the other side of anti-family entertainment?

Well, it's groups like Movieguy that are advocating for family-friendly films in Hollywood right now. And so, yes, we like to take a look at the other side of the screen and make an impact locally here in Orlando, Florida, where we're based, but also broadly across America and even the world. Oh, yeah, that's great. So for those investors who are wondering what it looks like to give or even tithe off of their investment gains, what principles or ideas might you share with them? I'd encourage everyone, as always, to seek the Scriptures. We know the Bible speaks more about money than any other topic in Scripture. And as stewards, God owns it all. And I really like what it says in Psalm 24. It says, The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein. It all belongs to God.

Yeah, there's no doubt about that. Brian, you all have a number of investments that our listeners are taking advantage of. Anything new as we wrap up here today at Timothy Plan for 2025 that you want them to know about? We're just excited with the growth of Faith-Based Investing broadly through Timothy Plan and others.

And as we move on into a new season here in the country and a new president, and we're looking forward to the impact that Faith-Based Investing can have throughout this country. Well said. We're going to have to leave it there for today. Brian, thanks for stopping by. Rob, thank you for having me. That's Brian Mumberg, Vice President for Regional Sales at Timothy Plan, a leader and pioneer in Faith-Based Investing. To learn more, go to TimothyPlan.com. That's TimothyPlan.com. Back with your calls after this, 800-525-7000.

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Grow in wisdom and knowledge by connecting with a community of thousands of Christians striving to be good and faithful stewards at FaithFi.com or by downloading the FaithFi app. 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 at TimothyPlan.com.

All 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. Well, it's almost time to take your calls and questions here in just a moment, but it's right now the best time to call to get in that queue. The number to call 800-525-7000. Again, that's 800-525-7000. We'd love to hear from you today and tackle whatever is on your mind financially. Lines are open.

We're ready for you. Again, that number 800-525-7000. You can call right now.

To Indiana WGNR. Hi, Greg. Go ahead.

Yeah, Rob. It's just a couple different questions. One, when looking for a mortgage company, when buying a home, I would like to be able to put down at least half what I know to purchase another one in the future. Because I actually have two homes to sell.

I'm just going to have to stagger them, I know. One this year and then one later. But I didn't know if there's any key questions to ask mortgage companies or what to look for. Definitely for interest rates to get it as low as possible.

Okay. Yeah, so you're looking to sell two properties and then you're going to take the proceeds and buy just one new property or are you going to buy multiple? We're just going to buy one property and we're hoping to spend anywhere from 400-450, what we're seeing, the price range around our area here. Like I said, we'd like to put at least half down to get that payment down and go to a 15-year mortgage. But I don't know if any mortgage companies have any better questions to ask or what to look for.

Yeah, very good. Well, I like your plan a lot. I mean, I think the key is to start with, assuming you have good credit, I suspect you do, you're going to want to make sure, number one, you get a really competitive rate. Now, am I hearing, though, that when you sell the second property, eventually you will be free and clear? Or do you plan to keep this mortgage in place even beyond the sale of the second home? When we sell both homes, they will be completely paid off and the additional proceeds will be going to purchasing another home we'd like to have new, but we definitely do not have to. We'd just like to take that money and spend the majority of it by putting a good share down on the new home, maybe have a little left over, especially if it's an existing home. Some need to be a little updated and we're willing to do that if needed, but just want cash on hand to do it.

Yeah, makes sense. Yeah, so I would start with that interest rate, make sure you're getting a competitive offer. I think second is the range of loan types.

Now, you probably are just going to take a conventional loan, but to the extent you wanted, you know, you qualified for a VA loan or something like that, you'd want to make sure that they offer those. You're going to want to certainly look at the fees and closing costs. So what are those origination fees for processing the loan? Compare that with other charges like appraisal, credit report, underwriting fees. You want a lender that's upfront and transparent about all those fees.

So you don't want any of that on the back end. You want them to provide you everything right up front. And then I would just do some reviews on their reputation. You could look at online reviews just to see, you know, what are people saying about them in terms of their responsiveness, their pre-approval process, loan processing times, those kinds of things.

I'd also make sure you get at least three bids, and I'd probably get one of them from our longtime underwriter here at Faith and Finance Movement Mortgage at movement.com slash faith, but they're all pretty standard. And again, you're not going to be with this for too long. And they're probably going to sell the servicing to someone else anyway.

So the key is get those low costs, get that competitive rate, and you should be in good shape. Thanks for your call. Let's go to Miami, Florida. Josiah, thanks for calling. Go ahead.

Hi, thank you so much. I have a small architecture business. And over the last three and a half years that I've had the practice, my income has fluctuated a lot.

And it's not really stable. And my financial advisor has advised that I put my small practice on the back burner, because I need to get a consistent salary in order to meet my family's budget and pay down our debt. So I wanted to know if you had any advice for how to be transparent, respectful, basically how to communicate with a potential employer that hey, I want to work and get a salary. But I also have this business on the side. Should I keep the business on the side? Yeah, I think it's a great thought. And I think, you know, being transparent is always a good idea. Because, you know, in this day and age, you know, not only do we need to be above reproach here and in your, you know, work and your conduct as a Christ follower, but I think, you know, it's probably something that, you know, your employer may stumble across, I think, if it were me, I would appreciate somebody calling that to my attention. I think the big idea is that and you would need to communicate this as long as you could do so with integrity is that you would never do any work for your business on company time. And that you're not in a competing business or that, you know, your company doesn't have anything in the employment agreement that specifies that anything related to outside work. But assuming you're not on company time, and you're not violating anything that you've agreed to with regarding your employment agreement, I think essentially what you're doing there is just bringing it to their attention. Again, I would appreciate that, as you know, somebody who's really just trying to be transparent, I can't imagine they're going to have any problem with it. You know, in this gig economy, people are more accustomed than ever to people having multiple sources of income.

So long as you're giving, you know, your employer everything they're due in terms of your time, your energy, your attention, and certainly you're not using company time or equipment for any of your other work. Hope that helps Josiah. Thanks for your call. Let's take an email. These come into us all the time and ask Rob at faithfi.com.

I try to bring them into the broadcast periodically. Jill writes to us, is it better to continue putting the maximum amount toward my retirement? That's 200 a month for her going into an IRA that my employer matches at 50%?

Or should we put that money toward paying off our debt? I would ask first, just is this a simple IRA? If so, the maximum contribution your employer can make is 3%.

Now, if you said IRA and you meant 401k, then yeah, absolutely, your employer could match you up to 50% or even 100%. It's a tough question because you obviously want to pay down debt as quickly as possible to avoid interest. On the other hand, your employer's contributions are essentially free money. And if your employer is matching 50%, you can probably contribute enough to your 401k to come out ahead even if you pay more interest on the debt because remember, we're putting money away now we get that 50% bonus 50% return on your money immediately guaranteed, you're not going to get that anywhere else. That's higher than the interest on the debt, no doubt. And we keep that money in the tax deferred environment between now and your retirement years. With that said, I want to get you out of debt as soon as you can. So what I would do is not put $1 more than you're getting matched at 50% in the retirement plan. But as soon as you cap out that employer match, let's immediately go over to the debt and try to get that paid off, especially that's high interest credit card debt.

I would really go after that and attack it as best you can. So hopefully that helps you, Jill, we appreciate you writing to us at AskRob at faithfi.com. Before we head to the break, let me remind you if you listen to this program regularly, you're a part of the faith and finance family, and you want to help others learn God's way of handling money so they can be a faithful steward. Well, we'd like to invite you to become a FaithFi partner.

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More information, including a short video webinar on profit and peace of mind no matter what's happening in the market, is available at soundmindinvesting.org. Thanks for joining us today on Faith and Finance. I'm Rob West. Here in our final segment today, we'll get to as many calls as we can. So let's head right back to the phones.

Crown Point, Indiana. Hi, Rick. Go ahead.

Hi. I'm 12 months away from turning 59 and a half, which means I could, of course, take a retirement with no penalty. My wife and I each have a Roth IRA as well, and she's also over 55. So my question is, at that time, 12 months from now, would it make sense for me to make withdrawals from the 401k at 8,000 apiece to fund, max out both IRAs? I don't plan on retiring next year. I plan on working for another four or five years. So if I did that for five years, that's another 80 grand into the Roth IRA. Does that make sense?

You know, it could. I mean, the real benefit from the Roth comes, you know, by you putting the money in a lot earlier, so you get the benefit of the tax free growth. The question is whether or not it makes sense for you to go and pay the tax now or in the future. And that a lot of that has to do with two things. What are tax rates, the marginal tax rates, which there looks like they're either staying the same or going down, at least in the near term.

And then second, what is your income? Now, are you talking about doing this after 59 and a half, but while you're still working? Yes.

Yeah. See, that typically doesn't work because you're at probably the peak of your earnings throughout your working life, which means, you know, you're paying more tax than ever. And so for you to pile on top of the income you already have, you know, the taxes that would have to be paid on the withdrawals that you make from that 401k, you know, are probably going to push some portion of that up into a higher tax bracket. And, you know, you technically don't have to put this take withdrawals and then fund the Roth, which is going to be subject subject to that contribution limit. You could roll it out, you know, to an IRA once you separate from employment down the road and then convert it to a Roth.

And you can do as much of that as you want. Doesn't have to be under the annual limit. But if you're wanting to do it as a contribution, then you could employ the strategy you're describing, I'm just not seeing the benefit for the reasons I mentioned. You know, even though we're in a fairly low tax environment, you know, I think you piling these withdrawals on top of your existing income and then paying tax on it, probably in a higher bracket, just doesn't make some sense for the benefit you're going to get, you know, because you don't have as much time for this money to grow. And really, the only benefit is, if we have much higher taxes in the future, that could be one benefit. The other benefit is you don't have the required money. You don't have the required minimum with the Roth. But other than that, you know, I kind of like this money just staying in the traditional IRA, and then you just pulling it out in retirement when you need it. But give me your thoughts on all that.

No, that makes sense. And I just stopped contributing through cash a couple years ago, because I felt like I had enough where I didn't. I'm saving now cash. I have two daughters in their 20s.

I expect two weddings in the near future. So that's why I've not been putting it into the Roth. So I was trying to find a way to continue to get into the Roth without using cash.

Yeah, I see. Yeah, and I just don't think you pulling out of that traditional 401k, even though you're not paying the penalty, you're going to pay the tax on it, but it's going to be put on top. So you know, because we're in a progressive tax environment, you know, as you make more income, you pay more tax. And if any portion of that gets pushed into a higher bracket, you know, you're going to be paying even more tax than you are on just your regular w two income.

And I'm just not sure you get enough benefit for that. So I think I'd probably just let this 401k ride. And perhaps when you get on the other side of the the weddings, then you could resume your your Roth contributions when you have some more disposable income. That makes sense.

Thank you. Just one more, you mentioned something about rolling over that after retirement, when I when I'm done working, I roll over into a Roth. Well, you don't have to be done working, you just have to separate from employment from this current employer. So the 401k with your current employer, if you were to move to another employer or retire, in either case, you'd separate from employment. And at that point, that 401k would be eligible to roll to a traditional IRA. And that IRA could stay in that pre tax environment, or it could be converted to a Roth.

And whatever portion you convert would be taxable as federal income tax, you know, in the year of the conversion. Got it. Thank you for taking my call. All right. Thanks, Rick. Take care.

To St. Louis. Hi, Michael, go ahead. Thanks for taking my call. longtime listener.

Great. I had a question about finding mortgage rates. So I looked at bankrate.com. And I only had one mortgage company that popped back out to me. So I was looking for others. I checked the website of the mortgage company you guys have been talking about with the charitable background.

But I didn't on their website, I didn't find anything for St. Louis. And so I was looking for resources for more options to try and find a quality mortgage lender. And then also, you know, narrowing it down to three based on points and the rates about trying to get a quality answer on what their interest rate would be without them pulling a hard credit.

And you know, I got multiple hard credit polls, and then it's gonna affect my credit score and then possibly affect my rate. Okay. Did you say that's already happened where the hard increase hasn't happened? I know it hasn't happened. I just want to make sure what to say to them to keep that from happening.

Yeah, got it. Yeah, I mean, you would have to give them permission to pull your credit for the purpose of evaluating, you know, whether or not they would extend you a loan and what the terms are, and you would have to authorize that. So, you know, I think you can basically do some initial fact finding just based on what you might share with them as your credit score. Now, eventually, they're going to need to pull a lender's report, which has a different score and a different scoring algorithm, and they're going to use that for their ultimate determination. But just as you're checking around, you can absolutely, you know, avoid having them pull the report until you nail down perhaps the two or three lenders you want to receive good faith estimates from. In terms of, you know, the period in which you do that, you know, all the hard inquiries you authorize within a two week window are considered one by most credit scoring algorithms. So I wouldn't worry about that, but I would kind of do your homework and be ready, you know, to proceed. Let's say you pick three, you know, I'd probably do that in a fairly short window of time.

I will say Movement Mortgage, who is the underwriter here and we have a lot of faith in, does work in all 50 states, including Missouri. And so that would be one you could check with movement.com slash faith and they could give you a call back and give you all the details. But I think you're on the right track here. Definitely. You know, this is often the biggest transaction most of us will have. And therefore you should get two or three bids.

Right. Anybody else besides bank rate that would have the mortgage rates? You could go to like, you know, Lending Tree or one of those online that would do a search for you and kind of look at all the low cost providers in the space. But I would make sure you go with somebody who's reputable, which is why we recommend Movement, because there's a lot more to it than just the rate and the term in terms of getting you from the initial inquiry all the way through the closing table. But certainly worth checking and having some things to compare it to. And I think that's where some of these online tools can be really helpful.

I'd probably check Lending Tree in addition to bank rate. All right. Thank you very much. Thanks for being on the program today. Lord bless you. Hey, thanks for being along with us today, folks.

Remember, we want God to be your ultimate treasure and money, the tool to accomplish his purposes. On behalf of my team today, Jim Henry, Devin Patrick and Robert Youngblood, I'm Rob West. We're so thankful you were with us today. Come back and join us tomorrow. We'll see you then. Bye bye. Faith and Finance is provided by Faith Buy and listeners like you.