Where to Sell Online

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There's no middleman. This advantage often allows us to get you a better rate, which can save you monthly and lifelong money through a refinance, or help you with a cash out refinance, cashing out some of your home's equity to use for life. We are United Faith Mortgage. United Faith Mortgage is a DBA of United Mortgage Corp. 25 Melville Park Road, Melville, New York. Licensed mortgage banker. For all licensing information, go to nmlsconsumeraccess.org. Corporate NMLS number 1330. Equal housing lender.

Not licensed in Alaska, Hawaii, Georgia, Massachusetts, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Utah. Selling stuff online is all the rage these days. There are even jokes about it. In fact, did you hear the one about the broken quiz machine?

It was for sale on eBay for $10. No questions asked. Hey, I don't write them. But if you want to get serious about turning your unused items into cash over the internet, you've got to know how and where to do it. So today, Kingdom Advisors President Rob West has some helpful tips. Then it's your calls on anything financial at 800-525-7000.

800-525-7000. I'm Steve Moore. Where to sell online. That's next here on MoneyWise Live. Well, Rob, there was a time when eBay pretty much had the market locked up for online selling. But that's no longer the case, isn't it?

No, it isn't. Although eBay is still one of the biggest and best places to unload items you no longer need, especially for general merchandise. And why not? Since it's so easy to get started, all you have to do is create an account at eBay.com, snap a few pictures of your items, upload them, and enter a few details, and you're good to go with the whole world as your marketplace. Maybe the best thing, though, about eBay is that you can sell practically anything there from toy soldiers to Toyota parts.

Even whole cars, for that matter. But eBay isn't the only general merchandiser out there. You can also check out Bonanza, E-Bid, and then there's Facebook Marketplace. And by the way, we'll have a link to all these sites we mentioned today in our show notes.

That's right, we will. But if you have a pencil nearby, you might want to grab that. Of course, these days everyone's walking around with a smartphone. There must be plenty of apps for selling stuff, huh? Well, that's exactly right, and most of these are geared toward selling stuff right in your area for easy pickup by buyers. Some of the top neighborhood apps for selling things are OfferUp, FiveMiles, Gone, and then NextDoor. I know I use that in my area. You just have to be careful about letting potential buyers come to your house, and these apps have guidelines to help with that. By the way, Steve, I was at my local county office the other day getting a new car tag, and I noticed a sign that said, basically it said Online Commerce Area. And the little note on the sign said that this has 24-hour video monitoring, and it was right directly in front of the police department. So if you're going to buy or sell something on one of these online commerce sites that requires you to meet someone in person, why not do it at the police station with 24-hour camera monitoring and plenty of lights? Sounds like a fantastic, fantastic idea. Okay. Well, what we've mentioned already are great for general merchandise. Let's get into some specifics. Just about everyone has clothing they no longer wear, like those jeans that used to be a size 8.

They must have shrunk, obviously. So what do these kinds of folks do? Where do they find opportunities? Yeah, and again, the email address for comments. Steve at MoneyWise.org. But for selling clothing online, and we've mentioned some of these before, here's a few sites to check out. Thread Up, Poshmark, Buffalo Exchange, and Tradesy. You won't make a ton of money selling used clothing items, but it'll get them out of your closet. And there's an interesting specialty market in that space just for wedding dresses. So if you have one you'd like to sell, check out Nearly Newlywed, Still White, and preownedweddingdresses.com.

It's on my list. Okay. What about electronics? Right, and who doesn't have a junk drawer full of old cell phones, video games, and the like?

One of the best places to unload electronics is declutter.com. It's actually spelled D-E-C-L-U-T-T-R. And it's different from other sales sites. You log in and get a quote for your old phone, tablet, or game console. If you like the quote, you create an account and complete the order. They email you a postage paid form that you put on a shipping box and you take that to a UPS store. A day after declutter receives the item, you're paid by direct deposit. It doesn't get much simpler than that.

No, sounds pretty simple. Okay, declutter.com. Any other places for used electronics? Yeah, several. Again, these are in our show notes. Check out Gizmogul, Swappa, Buy Back World, and Glide.

That's Glide with an Y. These sites let you unload almost any personal electronic device, including smartphones, laptops, tablets, even smart watches. By the way, Gizmogul donates a dollar from every sale to build schools in underdeveloped countries, so you might want to check that out. And by the way, Amazon buys old electronics as well.

If you're just tuning in, Rob is not speaking in a foreign language today. These are all sites you may or may not know about. And again, they'll all be in our show notes today. We'll come back and chat some more about places you can sell the stuff you don't want or need.

800-525-7000. We'll be right back. Nice to have you joining us today. It's Money Wise Live with Rob West. I'm Steve Moore, and we're talking today about things you don't want or need that would not be you.

Without you, well, we wouldn't have much of a call-in program, so don't put yourself on that list. But if you have stuff, old electronics, maybe musical instruments, anything on your list, Rob, for musical instruments you might need to sell or get rid of in some way? Yeah, well, anyone who's tried to sell a musical instrument or equipment to a music store or pawn shop knows that it's hard to get top dollar there. eBay does offer a special area for selling those items, but you can also check out a dedicated site, Reverb.com. It's dedicated to buying and selling just that, musical items. Yeah, I've used Reverb myself several times and very well thought of and respected website, and you really have a lot of people focusing on that site who are semi-professional, even professional musicians, so it's a great place to start depending on what you have.

Okay, we have time for maybe one more, Rob. What about, how about collectibles? Yeah, these are things like antique furniture, vinyl records, comic books, even coins and currency, even I know one that is near and dear to your heart, Steve, classic cars.

To sell these types of things, you want to check out, well, at least one site to look at would be collectors.com, collectors.com and Statrix. You can also use those sites just to get an idea of what your item might be worth. So again, all of these sites, many of them hard to hear and jot down because of the spellings will be in our show notes today. We'd love for you to check them out. Okay, well, that's a ton of information about selling some things online. Thanks, Rob. Again, you can find all of the links we mentioned today and how to spell them and link on them and all that and much, much more when you visit MoneyWiseLive.org and look on to your radio programs, radio, you'll find us on MoneyWiseLive.org.

Look for today's show notes. Our phone number again, 800-525-7000. Rob, let's dive right in.

St. Louis, Missouri. Hi, Kate. Nice to have you with us today.

What's your question? Thank you for your ministry, first of all. And my question is, my husband of 58 years died just over a year ago. He loved the Lord. He was a faithful steward and together we tied to our local church and above that we gave to other causes and ministries. We were both interested in antiques. And while I would wonder, he was always drawn to the coin collectors counter. And for 40 plus years now and again, he would buy something, but he never said much about it.

So I didn't either. Now I have what I think is an appreciable collection of monies, both coins and bills. As a responsible steward, I don't know how to determine its present value and I don't know what to do with it.

Yes. Well, I'm so glad you called today, Kate, and I'm really sorry to hear about your husband's passing, but it's clear you want to be found faithful with what God has entrusted to the two of you. And now you are the steward of these resources, including this coin collection that you've uncovered, which you're right, may be worth quite a bit of money that you would need to then think and pray through how you want to proceed. And let me just say for a non-collector inheriting a coin collection or discovering one that was already yours because of it was your husband's that was purchasing these, determining the value can be a daunting challenge.

You know, there's so many factors, rarity and meant and series and condition and even others, but you don't have to do it yourself. So I think the next step for you is to find the value of these. So you're going to want to get an appraiser registered with the American Numismatic Association or certified by the PCGS.

That's the Professional Coin Grading Service. And the way you do that is you just go to their website, PCGS.com. You can look for a certified appraiser in your area there in St. Louis, visit with at least one, get an independent certified appraisal of what you have. And that would be obviously the starting point before you then begin to think about whether you do want to sell these.

And if so, who is the dealer that you'd want to use? And you could probably get a referral there on that site as well. They also have a pricing tool that may help you get an idea, at least for a portion of it, what you have in the way of value.

So I would start there. If you want to do some more learning about coins and their value, and now that you have this, have developed an interest in discovering more, you could pick up a copy of a book called Cash in Your Coins, selling the rare coins you've inherited. Just go to Amazon.com. It's a little over $13.

It's by someone named Beth Daisher. Again, cash in your coins. But if not, you could just start by getting that appraisal and then going from there. Well, thank you. That's very helpful. I appreciate your time.

Absolutely, Kate. May God bless you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. All right.

Moving along, Goose Creek, South Carolina. Hi, Marla. What's your question today for Rob? Hi. Longtime listener.

I grew up listening to you, actually. Oh, wow. That's great.

Yeah, thank you. I'm on Social Security disability. I'm a little young to be on it, but I want to try to transition off of it. And because of my disability that I have, I don't have a lot of job skills, and I never went to college, so because of my disability, I don't have a degree. I thought about going to technical school, specifically Paul Mitchell Hare School. But the problem is, is that it costs a lot of money, and even after grants, I'd still have to take out some student loans, and I'm a little nervous about doing that just because I don't know if I should just transition off disability immediately so that I can work and go through school and have it that way, or if I should just bite the bullet, take out the loans and go through Hare School first and then pay it back with a job in the industry. Well, I can certainly appreciate that, Marla, that you want to move in this direction to begin to establish work. You need to have the skills to be able to do that, and I realize that can be costly. I'd love for you to check out some programs that may or may not be helpful to you in this situation. They're certainly designed for what you're describing.

The first is a program from the Social Security Administration called Ticket to Work. Are you familiar with that? Yes.

Okay. Have you looked into it, and could that be a possibility for you? It could be. It's just right now with COVID, it's really hard to get an appointment with them. Well, I know they are doing them virtually over Zoom and other platforms, but for the benefit of our listeners, this is for folks who want to get off Social Security disability, and it does provide a return to work program where they arrange for vocational training, rehabilitation, job referrals, employee assistance, things like that. There's also something that could be helpful to you specifically for those on Social Security disability, and it's a trial work period, Marla, where it allows you to test your ability to work for at least nine months without the loss of benefits, no matter how much you earn. And then after that, you have a special status for 36 more months where you can receive benefits for any amount in which your earnings don't exceed $1,040, which was the ceiling a few years ago.

I'm not quite sure if that has changed, but bottom line is there will be a ceiling there. But I think having that kind of behind you is key. The last thing I want you to do is go out and take on a bunch of debt without having a real understanding of where you're headed, whether there's going to be a job there, what your starting pay will be, and will it be enough to fund your lifestyle coming off disability and pay back the loan. So I'd want you to go slow, look for every available opportunity to get the skills and the training that you need without taking on a lot of work, or at the very least begin to test that out just to determine whether in fact it is viable for you given your situation. So I think the trial work period could be helpful, and if Ticket to Work could allow you to get some of this training without the added cost, obviously that would be great. So I'd be diligent in trying to get that virtual visit with the Social Security Administration scheduled. The other thing I'd like to do if you hold the line is I'd like to get you hooked up with one of our Career Direct coaches at no cost to you who can give you access to a Career Direct assessment just as our gift. And this will help you to uncover your God-given wiring and the potential jobs that would be most suited for you that you could perhaps pursue moving forward.

Again, it's a quick online assessment that you can take, and I think it'll give you a lot of insight to perhaps, you know, whether confirming this is the right direction for you or whether there's another area you should consider. So stay on the line. We'll get your information.

We'll get that right out to you. And if you have other questions along the way, don't hesitate to give us a call. Marla, God bless you. We're glad you called today. Nice to know you're a longtime listener, and we'll pray that God gives you some real wisdom and open doors and open opportunities there.

Thank you very much. 800-525-7000 is our phone number. Give us a call today on anything financial that you're wondering about.

800-525-7000. Hey, we hope you're having a good day wherever you are. Now, in Florida, the temperatures are mild right now, people getting ready for a big Super Bowl weekend in other parts of the country. Yesterday, Rob, we talked to someone in Maine. He said it was 40, and then we talked to the next person. They were in Ohio, and they said it was 20. And who knows, right?

Who knows? And I just learned during the break that Steve Moore does not do drive-through coffee. I don't, because I like, I'm particular about my creamer and my, I don't use sugar, I use the yellow stuff. And I want it put in there properly, and you can't, they either want to do it for you, or they just hand you a stack, or they don't give you anything. And so I'd rather just go in, that way I can go from table to table. You like to be in control of the situation.

I do, and I'm sensing right now that I'm not. So let's go to our phones. Take that.

Boca Raton, Florida. Hey, Barbara, thank you so much for holding. What's your question for Rob West today? Oh, thank you for taking my call. I appreciate your program. Thank you.

I've got a question. I have a current mortgage with 3.5%. It's about $175,000, and I have about 12 years left on it. I wanted to take advantage of the new low interest rates. I see advertised 1.9, 1.89, 1.92% for 15 years. Now, a friend of mine talked me out of this because she said you're paying more towards principal now and less to interest, but if you refinance, you're going to be paying more towards interest and less to principal.

What do you think? Yeah, what rates are you seeing, Barbara, at 15 years? 1.9 to 2. I've actually seen 1.89 to 2.

Yeah, yeah. The key would just be, and there are 2% rates. We were just talking with Dale Vermilion the other day, our kind of mortgage consultant, if you will, to Moneywise and good friend, and he said he is seeing sub two rates for 15-year mortgages without having to buy it down, and that would be the key. You're going to want to look at the expenses embedded in that just so you make sure there's not any discount points where you're essentially paying to bring the loan down.

Without any discount points, you should be getting a rate under 2%, which is just kind of mind-boggling to think that you could borrow that kind of money for that low of a rate. But if you could do that at 2% or below, so you're saving a point and a half, and I would prefer you don't extend the term, so I'd rather you go a 10-year mortgage than a 15-year, but 15 wouldn't be terrible because you'd only be adding three years. And then the key would just be looking at the total interest paid. So you could have your current mortgage company run an amortization schedule that basically tells you how much interest you're going to pay over the remainder of the loan between now and the end, because that's already been determined with a mortgage on the front end.

They'll tell you exactly how much you're going to pay. And then you could look at how much you would pay with a new 10 and a new 15-year mortgage at, let's say, 1.9%, 2% over the life of the 10-year or the 15-year term. And then you're going to have to add to that the cost of the refinance. And if, with this lower rate, you can save money on the 15-year mortgage after you factor in this additional three years and after you factor in the cost of the refinance itself and you plan to stay in this home, then I'd say proceed. It's really going to be a math equation at that point. The only other thing to factor in there would just be the payment. And I would try, if you can afford it, to keep the payment the same if you get this new loan, meaning whatever you're paying now, continue paying that because, remember, the payment is going to come down for all intents and purposes. So I would just look at all of those factors, and then I think that will help you make the decision.

Does that make sense? Yes, yes, yes. Thank you so much. Okay, very good.

So you've got some homework to do, and if you have questions along the way, give us a call, and thanks for your call. Yeah, thank you very much, Barbara. All right, let's say we go to an email here, Rob.

I think we have one that was just sent in. It's from Joe. He says, Dear Rob, my home has a lot of equity. With interest rates so low, should I refinance with cash out? Do I have any guidelines? Do you have any guidelines that I could follow? Well, a couple of things. Yeah, we do have some guidelines. So when do you refinance?

Well, kind of what we were talking about a moment ago. If you can save at least a point in the interest rate, if you're not increasing the term, meaning if you've got 15 years left on a 15-year mortgage, you refinance with 15 years, not a new 30 years, and then you're planning to stay in the home for at least five to seven years, and you shop it around to get the best rate and the lowest expenses. If you can check all those boxes, then go for it. And what I don't like about what I'm hearing you say, Joe, is my home has equity, should I cash out?

No. We want to get as much equity as we can. At some point, we want to pay it off in full.

So don't look at your home as a source of cash out. Let's try to keep the money going in and get it paid off in full. And if you'd like to send a brief email to Rob West, the address is questions at moneywise.org, and we'll be back with phone calls after this.

It's MoneyWise Live with Rob West. I'm Steve Moore. We're taking your financial phone calls today and questions on anything that's important to you. Remember, if it's important to you, it's important to God. So whether it's mortgages or going to school or saving for college, buying a car, investing, saving, giving, or maybe it's a night out on the town to celebrate your wedding anniversary, if we can help you with that, give us a call. Guys, spend a little bit more than you were planning.

800-525-7000, up to Chicago. Hey, Ted, we know you've been holding a while. We thank you for that.

And what's on your mind? I was just telling, I come from a very, very orthodox Muslim family, but now I'm the follower of Jesus as my Savior. And I always, it's not that I try to pull legs off my Muslim friends. I said, Muslims don't need a lesson of money because there is no money lessons in their Quran. It's not that I try to pull the legs, but I hope, I hope there should be a program like this for Muslims.

Unfortunately, there is none. My question is, I bought a house last year by paying $100,000 down. I am an international travel agent and I sold unsold business and first class airline tickets. Coming March, my doors pretty much got locked out, completely shut down. And I have an FH loan and the FH had told me, fine, you don't have to pay us for one year. In meanwhile, the federal gave me $10,000, which we call PPP. And I paid away the part of the mortgage. Then the federal government gave me another PPP, another 10 grand. I paid another mortgage. I'm on the mortgage. I have paid my completely.

Should I stop paying or should I continue paying? Yeah, yeah. Well, Ted, first of all, thank you for your call and thank you for sharing part of your story with us. And obviously what we're overjoyed to hear is that you have given your life, surrendered your life to Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. That was the best decision you and all of us who profess Jesus as our saviors have ever made.

I would encourage you, if you haven't already, to get plugged into a Bible believing church so you can grow in your understanding and knowledge of the Savior and your personal relationship with him and in the fellowship with the other believers. And you're right, the Bible does have a lot to say about money. And I would tell you that the very best that Wall Street has to offer has its roots in biblical truth. And if you share these principles with your Muslim friends, you will know, regardless of whether you acknowledge the source, you're giving them wise counsel that's timeless. It's always right. It's always relevant.

It's never going to change. With your mortgage situation here, you know, the key is that you understand what in fact was done with this postponement or what's otherwise known as a forbearance. You said it was a one year postponement by FHA. You're going to want to ask a few questions.

You want to know and you may know the answers to these. Do you have to pay any interest or escrow advances during the forbearance or is it a complete deferral? Secondly, is the loan maturity date being extended by any way? And then thirdly, will the lender try to recapture the deferred amount through a balloon payment at loan maturity or through an extended maturity or other or some other catch up method? If the answer to all of those is no, then you can take every opportunity given to you, given your situation, because you're in one of those sectors of the economy that was the hardest hit by the covid-19 pandemic.

Not only are you in the hospitality and travel area, but international travel, which is even more difficult. And so the PPP loan was just for the purpose in which you took it to keep you employed, to keep your bills paid while we wait for the economy to recover. And this is going to be one of the areas that comes back the slowest. So the first thing is understand what was done and what the implications are of waiting. And then the key to that is if, in fact, there's not any extra penalties or anything like that, then take every opportunity to delay paying it and hold on to your cash until you know you've weathered the storm.

Because we want to keep your financial foundation as strong as possible because we still don't know what the back end of this pandemic looks like, even though we see positive things developing. Does that make sense to you? Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah. So I think you're on the right track here and I appreciate that you wanted to keep paying it. And that's a good thing, because if you have the ability to do so, then you want you want to get that paid off just as quickly as you can. But during this season, once you know the answers to those questions I mentioned, you need to focus on keeping liquidity, raising cash and keeping that money that was given to you through the PPP programs and other resources that you have available.

So you can sustain and weather the storm just as long as it takes. And by God's grace, you'll be able to do just that and then your business will bounce back. Ted, great to hear from you and great to hear about the wonderful change in your life. We pray that you and your family will find Christ in every aspect of your life and that your business would continue to prosper as we get through this whole COVID thing. Thanks so much for calling today. Steve, would you mind if I just pray for Ted real quick?

I'd like to do that. Wonderful. Father, we just come before you now. We just rejoice with Ted that he's surrendered his life to you. We pray for him, for his family, that they would just grow in their knowledge and understanding of who you are, their creator and their provider and sustainer, and that you sent your son, Lord, just as you did for all of us to pay the penalty for our sins. Lord, we pray that you would provide uniquely in this situation, Lord.

He's been really affected by this pandemic and yet nothing is out of your control. And so we pray for your provision in his life. We pray that this would be a time where his trust, dependence on you is strengthened. And, Lord, that you would show up in only ways that you can miraculously and bring provision into his life, even in unexpected ways. And we'll be sure to give you the glory for that. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Rob.

Okay, up north a little bit, Buffalo, New York. Alex, what's up? Hi, can you hear me okay? Yes, sir. Go right ahead. Yeah, you know, thanks for taking my call. And I'm a fan of your radio show, so it's awesome. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, so I have a question. My question is around, you know, we're looking to purchase our third home. Our first two homes are duplex and we obviously we're staying in the second one right now. And I guess my question is, the first one, we still owe $60,000. And the second, we still owe like $240,000. So question is, you know, we're saving for the third home.

Obviously, we're looking to have 20 percent or more down. So question is, do we, you know, should, you know, we're not thinking to purchase the third home anytime soon, but we're planning for it. We're saving. We have about like $45,000 saved up right now. So the question is, should we pretty much go ahead and wipe out the remaining from the first mortgage and then continue to save?

Or are we going to get somehow get a loan, you know, so we can kind of consolidate the first one and the third loan to at least have, you know, a plan of sort of not too far out in the future for the third home. Yeah, very good. Well, there's a lot of moving parts here, but I think I have the situation down. So we've got to hit a break here. What I'm going to ask Alex is that you stay on the line and as soon as we come back from this break, I'll give you my thoughts on your situation. Alex, we appreciate that. Don't go anywhere. Sandra, Lloyd, we're coming in your direction as well. Hey, we have some open lines right now for any financial questions or concerns you might have. Let Rob West take a stack at those to have at those 800-525-7000. Now we're speaking with Alex.

He's up in Buffalo, New York. Alex, I appreciate your situation. You described it well. So you're living in one half of a duplex. You're renting out the other side. You've got quite a bit of equity on your place, your side with only 60,000 that you owe on a first mortgage. Then you've got a second mortgage on the rental side where you owe about 240 and you're looking to move out of your side of the duplex and buy a third property. If I understood correctly, you would then turn that other half of the duplex you're currently occupying into a rental as well. Is that right? Yeah.

So, Rob, let me kind of clarify. So we have two duplexes. So the first duplex we owe 60. We still owe 60 grand. And the second one is the one that we're staying in, which we still owe 240. And so we'll be moving out from that. So we have three tenants right now and we will have four once we moved out.

And then we're looking to purchase a single family. Got it. Got it. Okay. And your cash flowing, obviously the one that only owes 60, you're cash flowing that, but you're also cash flowing the one where you owe 240 with your current tenants? That's correct. And do you have enough coming in that you're able to pay the taxes and put something aside for maintenance as well as the insurance and so forth?

Yes. Okay, great. And you're comfortable, obviously, you know, you've already got three tenants, so you'd be adding one more and then you'd move to single family. So I think the opportunity for you is certainly I'd want you to keep your primary residence separate.

And it's even more simple now that you're moving to a single family home. I think the question would be, is there an opportunity to refinance the either of these two properties just to improve your situation, get a little better rate? Potentially you can, you know, investment property rates, you know, are typically three quarters of a point higher than standard rates. And so you may just want with the rates having moved down to see if you could refinance these.

I'd rather you not increase the term. But, you know, that may put you in a little better position. Then I think you look at that separately as a business, obviously, and if you can pull profits out, great over time. But the key would just be if you can use that rental income to just keep everything paid, you're over time going to build equity in those properties as it appreciates, as that mortgage gets paid off by your tenants. And eventually you're either going to have something that will throw off a nice cash flow that you could live off of or you could sell them, obviously, for, you know, quite a bit of profit. And then I think that forty five thousand, assuming that's beyond any emergency funds you have, becomes the savings account for the down payment on this new property.

And I think to your point, you'd want to have at least 20 percent going into it. So I'm comfortable with you all just keeping what you've got. You've demonstrated that you can manage that well. It's working for you.

You're cash flowing it. You may be able to improve your situation with a refi. But then as we move off into this other property, assuming you all don't have some concerns just about the overall amount of debt that you have, you know, then I would just proceed with a new first mortgage and keep saving and delay this as long as you need to until you get that full 20 percent for a down payment. Does that make sense?

Yeah, so it does. So I guess, you know, my question is my last question would be, would you would you take let's say, you know, right now we have forty five and we need to have like close to 90 to to be able to afford, you know, the third house with 20 percent down. So would you at that point take the money and wipe off the first mortgage?

Not necessarily, because, you know, obviously it's going to take you quite a while to get to 90 and you've already you know, you're already on your way to 45. So I would look at that separately as a business and the business is working. You're servicing the debt with the rental income. You're about to add more rental income, which is going to help that even more. And then, you know, you're you're covering the taxes, the insurance you're putting away for maintenance. So I'm comfortable just letting that ride and then just look at the forty five thousand as you're halfway there to your down payment on the next property. And, you know, as long as everything else is there in terms of the pieces of the pie for your financial foundation, if you will, then I think you're on a good track. Now, the only caveat to that would just be if you all have a conviction that, no, before we take on this other property, we want to reduce the overall amount of debt. We're just uncomfortable carrying this amount of debt. And if so, then, you know, don't hesitate to pay down and ultimately off that other property and just recognize that's going to mean that you're going to have to save quite a bit longer, you know, to get to the ninety thousand. But if you're comfortable with it, then I'd be fine with you all using that forty five and another forty five.

You'd save on top of it as the down payment for your new single family home purchase. Alex, thank you for calling today. Sounds like you guys are doing well and thinking biblically, practically and smartly. And we wish you the best in that regard.

Up to Michigan, Sandra, you're on with Rob West. OK, I have two annuities. One is locked in for four years. The other one I can draw out every time I want it, you know, but I have to pay taxes.

Sure. If I draw out on the one. And I also have a savings.

But my question is this. The bank has offered me a personal loan against my house. It's one of these that they just drive by and give you. My fifty thousand and they can do a debit card or they can write me a check. I can get it at any given time. OK. The interest rate on that.

Is like five point three, four. I would only pay interest on what I borrowed and I would have 10 years to pay. But, you know, I would probably pay three hundred a month, get it off. But I don't know.

If it's better to take my money out, pay the taxes or go this other route. That's my question. I appreciate that, Sandra. So let me just speculate here.

Are you wanting to do some home improvements or what are you going to use the money for there? Yes, ma'am. Can you hear me? I can hear you now. Great. Are you using the money for home improvements?

I can. To be honest with you, I'm thinking maybe in the summer I might get a sliding glass door. OK. Or say maybe I want to take a fancy vacation. OK. Yeah.

My basic question is, which way would it be better for me tax wise? Yeah, because I pay taxes as it is. Sure.

Yeah. I guess the question, though, I have is, you know, depending upon how you're using the money, I'd prefer not to fund lifestyle with debt, especially with a home equity loan, because it's just too easy, you know, when you get that debit card. And I'm not saying you don't manage your money wisely. You know, you probably have managed it quite well and would continue to do so. But, you know, being able to swipe that card, I remember years ago I saw a billboard that had the put it on the house card. And that just scared me to death, thinking I could walk around with plastic in my wallet that any time I wanted to, I could go out to dinner and swipe it and put the dinner on the house and just thinking, good gracious.

I don't think I want to do that. You know, and so I think, you know, living on a budget within your means with the income sources you have is really the key. Now, if there's a special project and you wanted to take a loan out against the house to do it and you want to pay it back quickly, then I'd get a home equity loan, not a line of credit for a very specific amount for a specific project or projects that has a fixed interest rate. The problem with the home equity line of credit is it's going to be variable, which means over time as interest rates move up, and they will, it's going to continue to climb. As to the annuity, yeah, I mean, you are going to pay taxes on it eventually. I would just rather you leave it there if you can, because that $4,000 is going to end up being, let's say $3,200 because you're going to pay, you know, 20% in taxes or maybe it's 15%. But there will be some amount that you have to pay, and there's the opportunity cost of that money not continuing to grow for you down the road for your future. So I think the key is getting very specific about what you need the money for. If it's for a home improvement, I'd take the home equity loan. If it's for the vacation, I would look at what income sources you have, and perhaps the annuity is the way to go for that.

I would just look at it in light of the overall financial picture, which I don't have the benefit of knowing. But our MoneyWise coaches would love to walk with you in this, Sandro, perhaps get a little bit more detail on your budget, help you work through a spending plan and make these decisions. Once you've, you know, clarified the alternatives, you can connect with those coaches at no cost on our website at MoneyWiseLive.org.

Sandro, thank you very much. We wish you the best as you make these choices and decisions. And Rob, just about out of time, but speaking of making choices and decisions and needing a little help from time to time, not only do our budget coaches help with that, but we've got a brand new tool that we're awfully excited about that will help lots of people. And I'm referring to, of course, the new MoneyWise app.

Well, we sure do, Steve, and we'd love for you to check it out. You can download it in your App Store today. It's there whether you're in the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store.

Just search for MoneyWise Biblical Finance. Three big components to the app. Number one is the best digital envelope system we've ever used.

Download your transactions automatically. You have all the information in your hand to make the right decisions to align your spending with your values. And you can even share it with your spouse so you're both on the same page. The second is our community, where I weigh in from time to time. You can ask questions and get great ideas from others in the MoneyWise community. And third is our Discover tab, which today has all the episodes from the broadcast, but in the coming weeks is going to be populated with content from the best providers all across Biblical Finance. I'm so excited about what we're building, and it'll be out very, very soon. So download it today in your App Store. Search for MoneyWise Biblical Finance. And this program, MoneyWise Live, is a partnership between Moody Radio and MoneyWise Media. Thanks for listening. Join us again tomorrow.