David vs. Goliath in the Boardroom

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Not licensed in Alaska, Hawaii, Georgia, Massachusetts, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Utah. Reaching into his bag and taking out a stone, he slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead, and he fell face down on the ground. That's 1 Samuel 17 as David slays Goliath. A similar battle is now underway as Christian investors take on corporate giants who defy God with unrighteous practices. Host Rob West talks with economist Jerry Boyer about three examples today and how you can join that fight. And it's your calls on anything financial at 800-525-7000.

800-525-7000. I'm Steve Moore. David versus Goliath in the boardroom. That's next on Money Wise Live. Well, Rob, Jerry Boyer is the chief economist at Vidant Financial, but he's also become a thorn in the side of some companies whose activities run counter to the deeply held beliefs of a significant portion of their investors, namely Christians. And doing the Lord's work in the process, Jerry, always great to have you with us again on the program.

And always a pleasure to be with you. Of course, we're talking about corporate engagement, Jerry. And before we get into the great examples you brought today, I'd love for you to start with your definition of corporate engagement for our listeners.

What are we talking about? Corporate engagement means that you talk to the corporations that you do business with, including the corporations that you invest in. There's different ways to talk.

You can write a letter, you can make a phone call, you can send an email. And I think people do that to some degree, but most of the Christian conversation that I've seen so far is about some form of boycotting. And I'm not opposed to boycotting in principle. If you don't think you should do business with a company, that's fine. But I think we tend to underestimate the ability, the power that we have, when instead of boycotting, we stay engaged, continue to do business.

Or, you know, keep them in your 401k or IRA and then use that connection to reach out and say, listen, I want to educate you about something. When you ban a book, like, for instance, Target did, and Apple recently did, and Amazon did. When you ban a book that simply expresses the Christian view of gender, you are denying human dignity to half the people in the country on the pretense of giving human dignity to one particular interest group. And you shouldn't do that because it's wrong, and you also shouldn't do it because it's bad business.

You're a publicly traded company, you work for us, and you should not be alienating half the country. Yeah, well, you're exactly right. In fact, my wife did this, Julie, you know her well. Just the other day in the grocery store we use every few days, she was walking down the aisle, saw in the magazine section a cover of a magazine that had no business being displayed where anybody is, let alone children. She grabbed the whole stack, walked over to the customer service, asked for the manager, handed them to him, and asked that he remove them.

And he said, you know what? I've been thinking the same thing. I'll stick them in my office.

Go Julie! I love it. That's exactly the kind of boldness we need. One person can do that. We think that they're so big and they're so powerful, we're grasshoppers in their eyes. But we really, I think we underestimate the power of holy boldness.

Yes. Well, and we've been largely absent as the faith community from this conversation, isn't that true? It is. And I think part of the problem is that we've convinced ourselves or we think that we morally have to be absent. That kind of dealing with people who are not aligned with our values is something that's forbidden to us.

And in fact, it's not. It's not a biblical value that you only sup with and deal with and do business with people who are aligned with your values. Jesus spent most of his time with people, including in commercial and financial relationships, with people who didn't align with his values.

But he also didn't waste it. He realigned a lot of people in accordance with the will of the Father. And I think we have the ability to do that too. But you know what? Even if they don't realign, that's in God's hands. Our job is to be there and to speak, and that's already a victory no matter what they do in response. Yeah, that's right. Well, Jerry, I know after the break you're going to get into some specific examples. But at a high level, does this idea that a tiny minority of shareholders can take on these Goliath companies and actually make a difference?

Yes, absolutely. Because it's been 99.999% all from one side. So you come in, you might be the only person in the room who thinks what you think.

But one person in a room with the Holy Spirit is a majority. I love it. With us today, one of our favorite guests on MoneyWise, author and economist Jerry Boyer, we're discussing how to make an impact in the boardroom, particularly the boardroom of the companies you may be invested in. You're listening to MoneyWise Live. Your host is Rob West. I'm Steve Moore, back with more after this. Jerry Boyer is our guest today on the program.

We're glad to have you there. We're discussing David versus Goliath, not specifically that Old Testament passage, but how it applies in today's marketplace. Jerry, we're talking about corporate engagement here, using your voice to let your values be known. And as you'll point out in some examples here in just a moment, this is an effective strategy. First, Jerry, why are corporations so quick to fold under pressure when it doesn't seem to be in their best interest?

So I'm thinking of Target putting in transgender bathrooms, for example, probably alienated more customers than it appeased. Because there's a difference between the self-interest of the CEO and the self-interest of the company itself. So in the case of Target, there was a CEO who gave money to a conservative candidate, and the mob, you know, the Twitter mob, came after him. And that's personally painful. And I've heard, you know, from some people who knew him, he's not the CEO anymore, that he didn't have any allies at all.

Nobody showed up from our side to defend him. So he was labeled a transphobe and a homophobe, and all the pressure was from one direction. So CEOs, you know, they want to minimize their pain.

And if all the pressure is coming from one direction, then they minimize the pain by caving in. Even though they understand, maybe they don't understand, but the reality is, over the long run, it hurts them with half of the country. So this is the problem with publicly traded companies in general. Unless we, as shareholders, assert our interests, the stewards of our resources, which is what the CEO is, just like in all those biblical parables, stewards can be faithful to the owner, or stewards can kind of be self-dealing. And I think that what's called woke capitalism, which is the tendency to give in to certain political forces, is in essence a form of bad stewardship. It's, you know, I get prestige with the opinion makers as a CEO, and yeah, the company loses market share, but I'm better off personally. Yes. Well, as you said, Jerry, if all of the noise is coming from one direction, then we can't be surprised that they're going to cave to that pressure.

We're going to try to do something about it by bringing some noise from the other direction. In fact, that's something you've been working on lately, and your first example involves Target. What do you have to report? Yeah, I've been in conversation with a number of companies.

As you know, I work with Vidant, and we have a domestic equity firm, so we're owners. So I reached out to Target about book banning. They had banned a book by Abigail Schreier, Irreparable or Irreversible Damage, which said, hey, maybe we should be a little cautious about sexual reassignment surgery for teenagers.

You know, not exactly crazy stuff, right? And one tweeter said to Target, obviously, you know, you sell this book, you're supporting homophobes or transphobes, and the next day they tweeted back, you're right, thank you, and we've delisted the book or we've removed it from our catalog. A couple of days later, they did another book from a feminist who was just supporting the idea that gender is a real thing. So, you know, I'm a client, institutionally and also personally, so I wrote to him and I said, hey, can I talk to you about this? I got an answer back in about an hour from a vice president who said, how's tomorrow morning? And we had a half an hour, 45-minute conversation.

Now, I told him that conversation was off the record, so I'll leave the content of that conversation off the record, but we're talking to each other and we're going to continue to talk to each other. I have a conversation with Pfizer about the use of fetal tissue in COVID vaccines, and they say, well, we don't use it directly, but yes, it was used as some of the research. Okay, Pfizer, do you have an ethical policy on this? Because this is clearly an ethical issue, and it's really surprising.

We think we're going to run up against people who hate us. I've had conversations with Apple. They were respectful conversations. I'm showing them I'm a human being. Conservative Christians are human beings, and we can reason together.

And it's really surprising the amount of progress you can make. Well, that's fascinating, Jerry, and kudos to you for taking this on and engaging in a civil discourse with mutual respect but open dialogue and conversation. Did you sense in the Pfizer situation any discomfort with them knowing that abortions were likely the source of the fetal tissue they were using?

Well, it's interesting. There's almost a kind of we get this a lot, you know, and no, there's no fetal tissue in the vaccine. Okay, I understand that sometimes things go around the Christian orbit that aren't quite accurate, and so they maybe have been attacked for having fetal tissue in the vaccine. Now, of course, they don't have fetal tissue in the vaccine. There's not enough of that to go around.

So then the question is, well, what is your position on using? I mean, they do have in their line what's called, you know, quote, female human embryo lung tissue, aborted female embryo lung tissue. That's in there. They report that. So I want to know, what's your position on that?

Now, it's one thing if something happened 30 or 40 years ago and you're using knowledge from it, but it's another thing to be actively using it, and the ball's in their court for them to answer back. It's really surprising what one person, the difference one person can make in a room. And I think, you know, I hadn't planned David and Goliath, right? That's kind of your framing. But think about the story of David and Goliath.

It really works. David was one person. David didn't know that he wasn't going to die.

David didn't know that he was going to win. David went for the head. I strongly emphasize, go for the head. Talk to headquarters.

In your local store, talk to the manager if you need to. Don't be afraid to go for the head. But one other thing. David didn't fight in Saul's armor. Remember this interesting thing where Saul tries to put his armor on David? This is the Lord's fight, and we should fight it his way, which means no toxic rhetoric, no lying, no rumor mongering, love.

That's how we respond. Now, David and Goliath, that's not exactly a love situation, but Goliath is really kind of a stand-in for the real enemy. So who's the real enemy? The real enemy is the enemy. The real enemy isn't Apple, their CEO, or their counsel.

It's not Target. The real enemy is the ideology, the enemy himself, who is using these corporations to advance his agenda. And we know that when it's Jesus versus the enemy, when it's David versus Goliath, we know whose head gets crushed.

Jerry, just a couple of minutes here. What about a preemptive strike, if you will, encouraging companies who are making good choices and decisions to continue to make those good choices? Is that rational or helpful at all?

I think that's great. There's this idea in the financial literature about a quality shareholder, and a quality shareholder stays in touch, right? And when things get tough for a company, but they have good reason to believe that things will get better, you know, they stick with that company. So I think Christians should be the highest quality shareholders.

I mean, even to the point of saying, we're praying for you. Now, when I started with Target, what I said is, by the way, you know, I love your company. You know, why do I hold an investment? Why do we hold an investment in your company? You've got a good return on asset. You're using assets well. You're using your cash well.

You're avoiding debt. You are a good story, but you're not quite living up to the greatness that you could be when you're alienating customers and when you are, in the name of human dignity, sacrificing the dignity of Christians and conservatives in order to appease the angriest and noisiest group. So I think that there's real influence here, and I agree with you.

I think it's better if you're in relationship with them all the time before something goes wrong. I think that would be much better. We're not there yet.

Christians are still in reaction mode. But wouldn't it be wonderful if we were the people whose management felt like, hey, we're invested in you. We're invested in you financially. We're invested in you spiritually, emotionally. We're your allies, and we're rooting for you. Oh, but, hmm, aborted tissue, no, that's the wrong way to go.

That's not, you know, aborting or participating, giving money to Planned Parenthood, killing off future customers. No, no, no. That's not the best that you have to offer. That's great. Jerry, thanks for stopping by, and thanks for your great work, my friend. Always a pleasure.

God bless you all. That's Jerry Boyer, chief economist at Biden Financial. You can find his commentaries at townhall.com. Your call's next. This is MoneyWise Live. Great to have you out there listening today. Now we'd love to have you dialing today. It is a call-in program, after all, if you have a question or a comment for Rob West. Call right now while we have several open lines, 800-525-7000. Again, 800-525-7000.

Rob, let's begin by going to, let's see, how about Crown Point, Indiana? Hi, Vicki, how can we help you? Hi.

Yes, I have about $1,000 to invest, and I have never invested before, and I was considering a Roth IRA. Okay. And I have a little information with that.

Yeah, you sure can. Vicki, tell me a little bit about your situation. First off, are you working? No, I'm a widow, and I'm retired. Okay.

All right. So, in order to contribute to an IRA, you have to have what's called earned income. So, unfortunately, I don't think you're in a position where you would be able to make that contribution. This is going to be wages, salaries, tips, other taxable employee compensation. That's all considered earned income, and you have to have earned income to contribute to an IRA. You can contribute only to the extent you have earned income, and then there's going to be a cap, either $6,000 or $7,000, depending on whether you're under or over age 50. So, I think in this case, you wouldn't be able to put that money as a new contribution in an IRA, but what could you do with it? Well, as long as you have, Vicki, an emergency fund shored up, I'm going to say in this season of life, I'd love for you to have six months' worth of expenses. So, you total up all of your fixed and discretionary spending on a monthly basis, multiply that by six. That would be the goal in a liquid savings account. Earning some interest, perhaps in an online savings account, you'll get today about a half of one percent. Then beyond that, I'd want to make sure you've eradicated, hopefully, all of your debt to keep your lifestyle as low as possible. You're doing the giving that the Lord is leading you to do on a systematic basis. And then beyond that, if you've got a bit left over, and as long as that time horizon is at least 10 years, and you wanted to take what you have now and what you might add to it in the months ahead, you certainly could look at investing that. You're likely going to need to consider, though, Vicki, probably at what's called a taxable account, which just simply means as you have realized gains and losses, those will be taxable events as opposed to the IRA, which is a retirement account, meaning you either get a tax deduction when the money goes in or you don't, but it's growing tax-free. But in either case, it's growing tax either free or deferred.

But without earned income, that's not going to be an option. Does that make sense, though? Yes, that's great.

Just what I needed to hear. Yeah, that's wonderful. Now, how about a credit union? Am I going to get a little more interest with a credit union? Yeah, in terms of a savings account? Yes.

Yeah, typically you will. One option would be to look at bankrate.com. It's a website, bankrate.com, where they rate the best lenders for mortgages if you're looking for a credit card or a mortgage or a home equity line, but also they rate the interest rates being paid by various banks for things like high-yield savings accounts. Typically, what you'll find with a credit union is that they're better than a traditional brick-and-mortar bank, but not as good as an online bank because the whole idea behind those online banks is they redirect a lot of the savings that they have by not maintaining brick-and-mortar facilities into higher payouts on their savings and lower fees. In fact, I'd look for one that doesn't have any fees with regard to you maintaining an account.

But you could explore all of those at bankrate.com and find the one that's for you. Vicki, nice to hear from you. Thanks very much for that.

Let's move along to York, Pennsylvania. Marie, what's your question for Rob? Hi. Thanks for taking my call.

Yes, ma'am. I'm calling concerning the latest stimulus check that was just deposited into my husband and I's account, direct deposit. We have not done our 2020 taxes yet, so this money was based on our 2019 taxes. During that time, we had a total of nine dependents because we had seven children and then plus my children and I. I'm sorry, my husband and I.

Yes. So it was quite a substantial check that went in, and we were looking forward to putting a new roof on the house and new flooring, which totally needs to be done. However, two of my dependents got married over the summer and they are my daughters and they both have done their 2020 taxes and they received a stimulus payment. So I'm wondering, before my husband and I do our home repairs using that money, would that be considered double dipping because we were given a stimulus for them because of our 2019 taxes when we were able to claim them? They were both college students at the time, but then during the pandemic, they both got married, one in May and one in August. So I don't want to spend the money and then come back several years later and then tell me that we owe that money back.

Right. In fact, it will probably come even quicker than that, Marie, because you're exactly right in what's going on. As soon as the IRS gets your 2020 return and realize that they are no longer dependents, then that money will be owed back to the IRS. And that's exactly what happened because you haven't filed your 2020 return. Your children who are now on their own in filing separately have filed their 2020 return. That money was paid out. And so that money would need to be returned. The numbers you're saying are a little confusing, though, because typically it would be fourteen hundred for you and your husband and then five hundred for each child. But regardless, whatever was paid out on on them based on your 2019 return, that is not accurate based on the fact that they are now dependents means that money needs to be sent back.

So I would contact your local office of the IRS, explain what happened, confirm that the money, in fact, has to be returned and then ask about the correct procedure for doing that. But you're wise to get to the bottom of this before you spend that money because I'm pretty confident you're going to be sending that back. Marie, thank you very much. We appreciate that call. Sorry about that.

But if you need a roof, I'm confident that the Lord will provide. Thank you very much. Angela in Central now, Alabama, will speak with her momentarily after we come back from this break. Now we have phone lines available and we'd love to say hi. We'd love to chat if you're driving. Maybe pull over.

At least keep your hands. What is it? Nine and five, no, 10 and two, I think 10 and two was what they recommend these days. Eight hundred five to five, seven thousand. Welcome back. It's Money Wise Live.

He's Rob West. I'm Steve Moore. We'd love to chat with you today.

Eight hundred five to five, seven thousand. Let's go to Citronelle, Alabama. Angela, I've never heard of Citronelle. What part of the state is it located in? Do you know? It's Mobile County. It's out of Mobile County. Sure, sure. I know that area.

Mobile, Alabama County. Sure. Well, fantastic. Well, I think you're our first caller from that area. Say that again. I'm sorry. It's just north of Mobile, north of Mobile. Right, right. Well, hey, good to have you there.

Thanks for your patience. And what's your question for Rob West? My question is, I have a retirement. I worked at a job and I lost that job, but I was able to take my retirement with me. And I did invest that retirement.

Okay. But I'm drawing my pension. And I invested, my retirement is invested. And I'm 57 and I want to work maybe 60 years, seven, eight years, however. But I want to be able to still invest in my own personal money a little bit more to grow what I already have. Even though it's still growing, I just want to, you know, add more to it.

What would be the best way for me to do that? Actually, when I lost my job, I paid off about 90% of my bills. Yeah, very good. Angela, tell me, you had a 401K or a 403B, is that right, when you left your employer? Right, right. And I took it to another company and they're managing it for me. So you rolled it out to an IRA?

Right, right. Okay. And at your new place of employment, do you have access to a retirement plan there? No, I do not. I do not.

Okay. So the best option for you, at least to get started, would be for you to contribute to that IRA. So as long as you have earned income, you'd be able to make a contribution to that account.

And for 2021, it's the same as last year. It's $6,000 if you're under the age of 50, you can add another $1,000 to it, $7,000 over the age of 50. So were you looking at putting in more than $7,000 in the course of a year? Probably about $7,000 would be fast.

Okay, great. So that would be able to be contributed, assuming you had earned income of at least that amount, to that IRA. You'd want to contact them, probably set up an automatic systematic contribution right out of your checking account.

That way you don't see the money and you're not tempted to spend it on something else. And then as that's added, that, according to how it's being invested, would be redeployed every time they rebalance. Or if a rebalance wasn't taking place, they could buy additional shares consistent with the strategy that they're employing. So I think I would reach out to them, let them know that you'd like to set that up. They'll probably send you some paperwork to establish an automatic transfer. And then that would allow you to keep contributing to this retirement account for them to redeploy as additional investments.

And it'll keep this portfolio growing, not just because of the appreciation, but also because of the contributions. Does that make sense to you? That makes sense to me.

That makes sense. Okay, very good. Well, I think that's what you're looking for. Hopefully that'll be of help to you. If you have any confusion or questions along the way, let us know. God bless, Angela.

Thank you very much for that. Down to West Palm Beach next. Rob, did you have something before we take our next caller? Well, we did have somebody who wanted to correct the record, and they're exactly right. Yeah, on this third round of stimulus, these additional $2 trillion that we're going to borrow, we will have a $1,400 payment to dependents. First round was $500, second round it was $600. Now with the third round, it is in fact $1,400 per dependent. So for that previous caller, that would be exactly right in terms of what she received. $1,400 for she and her husband, and then $1,400 for each dependent. Again, because they filed their 2020 return, they got their stimulus because she hasn't filed, and the IRS doesn't know they're no longer dependents of hers. They went ahead and paid out on that, so that money will need to be returned.

But that number does line up with the law based on this third round of stimulus. Now the $2 trillion you mentioned, I mean, that's more than I paid for my first house. Where did we borrow that from? What bank gave us that loan? Yeah, it's called a printing press, and we have a big one here in this country.

A printing press, okay. West Palm Beach. Hi, Kathy. How are you doing today, and how can we help? Hi there. I'm doing great.

Thank you for taking my call. My question is, several years ago, my husband and I enrolled our children in the Florida prepaid college plan. My son just completed high school in November, and he's turning 18 in May. Unfortunately, at this time, he does not want to go to college. He prefers to jump into the workforce.

The last time I looked, the Florida prepaid plan was about $12,000. This money was set aside for him. Eventually, we'd like him to have it. However, it was set aside for education. So I'd like to keep it aside, just in case in the near future.

So he wants to go to trade school or something along those lines. But if I keep it in Florida prepaid, it's not going to get any interest. It's just going to sit at that amount. Anyway, we can transfer it over to something where we retain control. However, it's available if he needs the funds for trade school.

And we're not penalized if we take it out at the end without any educational purposes. Sure. And do you have reason to believe, Kathy, that you would qualify for financial aid? No, probably not. If you take college classes. Okay.

Very good. What you're probably going to want to do, the Florida prepaid plan does allow you to cancel the prepaid plan at any time. For any reason, you request a refund equal to the payments you've made. They're going to take out some fees and usage and refunds.

But you'll get that money back. And then you want to redeploy it in a way that's consistent with your goals and objectives moving forward. So what I've heard is we want this money to be available perhaps in less than 10 years, maybe even five. Is that right?

Correct, yes. I think by the age of 25, if he's still being mature enough and if he doesn't want to go to school, then we would just give him control of the account. And how long is that from now? He's 17. He'll be 18 in May. So that will be about seven years.

Okay. But it could happen quicker than that. But probably the outside limit is that seven years and then you plan to give it to him. But you don't want to have him take control over it until you're ready for him to do so. And you don't want to be tied to educational expenses like you would be with a 529 or something like that. So I think what you're probably going to want to do is just open a brokerage account. It's a taxable account, probably joint account in the name of you and your husband. You'd retain control over it. So we're not talking about a custodial account that becomes his asset at the age of majority there in the state of Florida.

And you would then be able to deploy it in a way that's consistent with what you're trying to accomplish. So I would say a mix of stocks and bonds. You could visit with our friends at soundmindinvesting.org for some great advice on some mutual fund investment options on what's called a balanced mutual fund, a mix of, again, stocks, but also bonds. You're not going to want to get too aggressive because the idea is he might need this money in five years. Now, if you have reason to believe it's going to be less than five years, I'd be really hesitant about taking a stock position with that because you may find yourself in a position where he's ready to deploy this money in the form of trade school and you're having to sell at a loss. You know, a couple of years from now, let's say we're in a recession and the market has pulled back pretty significantly. You know, the reason we want a 10 year time horizon is because we want to be able to have time on our side to weather those downturns.

So from that standpoint, you wouldn't be able to earn much on it, but you would be able to get it working for you. So I think you've got to just pray and think through kind of what your strategy is and then soundmindinvesting.org or one of the robo-advisors at Fidelity or Schwab would be a second option. Kathy, thank you very much.

We wish you the best. You're listening to MoneyWise Live. Rob West taking your calls at 800-525-7000. We're MoneyWise Live, where God's timeless wisdom meets today's financial choices and decisions. Let's go right back to our phones. Rob, Allegan, Michigan.

John, we appreciate your holding, sir. What's going on in your life? Well, I just sold my house and I expect to get around $80,000 to $90,000 out of it in profit. I'm having a home built. It's a spec home and it's going to cost me $250,000. I have $4,000 in debt, in credit card debt. I own a newer car that I owe $19,000 on. And my credit score is about $660,000. I've had a few late payments because I've tried to go through a credit helping thing and it put me behind. But I'm wondering what I should do with that money because I would like to build a pole barn along with the house, which is going to be about $40,000.

I just want to get my credit score up, but I also want to use that money wisely in what I'm doing. Yeah, yeah. Very good. Well, how quickly are you looking to do this and where are you living in the meantime?

Well, the papers, we haven't closed on the house yet and I'll probably live in a trailer in a campground with my wife for a month or so before the house is done. Cool. Okay. And have you all already qualified for the construction loan that you're using? Yes.

But I haven't. I've qualified for $215,000 or rather $115,000, but that was about a year ago. So I'm hoping that I've gotten my credit score up a little bit and hopefully a little bit more that I can qualify for more. Yeah. Like at least $200,000. And have you already signed to build the spec home? It's already being built, yes. Okay.

But you don't have the loan that's going to fund that in place quite yet? No. Okay. Well, yeah.

So, I mean, we've got to get a move on all of this. I mean, I think the key right now is we've got to find out as soon as possible what you qualify for. And based on what you qualify for, make sure that it actually fits into the budget in terms of the loan based on the terms you're going to get.

Because it's one thing for somebody to say they'll give you some money. It's another thing based on the terms they provide if that's something that actually fits into your spending plan so you can continue to cover your lifestyle and obligations, including the car payment and the other paying off those credit cards and that type of thing. You've got $80,000 to $90,000 in profit that you're sitting on.

That's great. But you're also looking to spend, I hear, $250,000 plus $40,000, $290,000. I mean, obviously, one option is we wait on the barn, right? Or is that already under construction as well? No, that's not under construction yet.

Okay. So, ideally, what I would say is, and again, this is all based on with that credit score whether you're going to be able to qualify for something that's reasonable in terms of terms. Ideally, I'd say let's wait on the barn. You'd want to put $50,000 of that $80,000 to $90,000 profit down on that spec home, which is 20%. That would leave you with a $200,000 mortgage. Hopefully, the principal interest taxes and insurance on that once it's complete is no more than 25% of your take-home pay, which gives you then the rest of it for all of your other fixed and discretionary expenses. And then once you settle into that and make sure that that's actually going to work for you, and assuming you have an emergency fund, then I would start ticking off these other debts starting with the credit cards. So, I'd love for you to, at a very minimum, pay off the credit cards and then fund at least three months' worth of your emergency savings before you even think about the car or anything else. But that's all assuming that you can qualify for a loan that is going to meet your obligations in terms of fit well within the budget. So, I think that's really the next step here, John, is for you to do some real due diligence on what construction to permanent loan you can get.

And then with that loan that will result from that when it's all done, how is that going to fit into your budget? Does that make sense? Okay.

Yeah, it makes perfect sense. Okay. So, that's where I'd go next. And if you have any questions along the way, don't hesitate to give us a call back, sir. John, thank you very much.

Cleveland, Ohio. Hello, Ray. How can we help you, sir?

Hi. I have a son that is a teenager and he doesn't make very good choices with his money. He was trying to use some apps on his phone and he said, you know, the problem with them is they all charge a monthly fee and he doesn't want to do that. And the problem is he really won't do something that's on paper or trying to do it in that fashion. He needs something that will help him get on a budget.

I was wondering if you guys had a recommendation for something that is pretty easy to use and free. Well, you've come to the right place, Ray. Let me ask you this. Does he want to be able to download his transactions? You know, does he have some financial accounts that he's wanting to pull in automatically or is he wanting to just kind of enter these transactions manually and keep up with it that way? I think he's going to probably want to download the transactions. He has a bank account. He also works for a major distributor that does a lot of the stuff on his phone. He's pretty tech savvy, but I can't see him manually entering things in.

I mean, money, but I'm thinking if it's not easy, he won't do it. Let's do this. I'd be happy to help you. Normally we don't do this, but I'm going to give you a year subscription to the MoneyWise app. So we just came out with the MoneyWise app last fall. I think it's the best digital envelope system out there.

I know I'm biased, but the reason we had a team spend over a year building it is because I couldn't find one that I really liked and enjoyed using. So it's beautiful. It's easy to use. It'll connect securely to 11,000 institutions. You download your transactions automatically.

You categorize them in envelopes. It helps you manage your money, but it also has a whole community of people trying to manage money God's way that are encouraging each other. And there's a lot of great content in there as well to help you along your way. If you want to do it manually, it's free. The pro subscription is normally $6.99, but we're going to give that to you as our gift to him. So if you hang on the line, we'll get your or his information, whichever you prefer. Let him know that we're going to give him a year subscription to the MoneyWise app. Let him get that set up.

And every week we do a workshop to help folks get up and running and know how to use it really easily and simply. So you hang on the line, we'll get that out to you. Does that sound good, Ray?

It sounds fantastic. Thank you very much. All right. God bless you, sir.

Thanks very, very much. And let's see, what was it? Oh, yeah.

Go Browns out to Colorado. Hi, Pam. Just a couple of minutes here.

What's on your mind? Hi, thanks for your time and wise counsel. Hey, I have heard about DocuFi Solutions, which is a school loan debt forgiveness plan based on your income.

And I'm going to retire and want to know if that's going to be a smart thing or not a smart thing. Yeah, unless you're talking about something else, the DocuFi that I'm aware of, Pam, is basically a company that prepares the documents for you to help you apply for student loan forgiveness. So it's not a scam, but they're not actually the ones providing the forgiveness. The Department of Education is what provides the forgiveness. So you make payment to them and that's for the doc prep services that they're providing for you, which, by the way, you can do yourself if you happen to qualify for one of the federal loan forgiveness programs like teacher loan forgiveness or any of the others that are available. You've got to look at the fine print, though, not from DocuFi, but from the government to make sure that you do, in fact, qualify for one of those loan forgiveness services. And then if you do, I'd say, you know, do it yourself, because essentially with DocuFi, you're just paying someone to fill out forms that you can fill out on your own.

So I don't think that's a necessary expense. So I would look a bit closer at that if you think it's something other than that, because that's the only DocuFi I'm aware of. Thank you so much. Appreciate your time. OK, Pam, God bless you. Thanks very much.

Let's squeeze one more in Somerville, Georgia. Denise, your question is about the stimulus check, huh? Yeah, I'm a senior and my husband is, too, and neither one of us got one, but my grandkids all live with us and they got one.

And they're all of age, you know? Yes. I thought that I mean, why would they be holding up back on ours when we got the first one when Trump was in there?

But now that Biden's in there, we didn't even get the 600. Yeah. Did you file a tax return last year?

No. OK, that's probably why. And so, you know, you have the ability to go to the IRS website and check on the status of it and you can actually request that it be sent to you. But if they don't have a tax return on file for you, that's probably what's going on here. So if you qualify, you're going to probably need to be a little bit more patient and you may even have to initiate that so that they know you're entitled to it. So I'd head over to the IRS website, IRS dot gov. They have a lot of helpful resources, including a tool that they've completely revamped recently for you to determine your eligibility and the status of your check.

Again, you'll find all that at IRS dot gov. And we appreciate your call, Denise. And it's going to take a while for these checks to get out. We haven't received ours. I don't know if you've received one, Rob, but it's going to take a while. If you received one in the past, more than likely you receive this one as well, right?

That's exactly right. And Social Security recipients should have gotten those checks. If it's a paper check that's coming, though, as opposed to a direct deposit, it can take just a little bit longer.

Okay. Rob, this time around, you know, people were receiving checks in the form of what appeared to be a credit card. Will that be happening this time or don't you know about that? You know, I'm not sure if they're doing that for this third round, Steve, or not. I haven't seen that report. I know they did for the previous rounds. I'm just not sure if they're doing that again.

Frankly, I hope they don't because that just created so much confusion, but I don't have a good answer to that. It certainly did. Rob, thanks very much. Hope you and yours have a wonderful weekend. All right, Steve, thanks. And my thanks to our technical crew today doing all the heavy lifting in the background, Amy, Dan, Clara, and of course, none other than the man with two first names, Jim Henry, who, when he's not filling in his bracket, handles all of our research, biblical exegesis, and hermeneutics. For Rob West, I'm Steve Moore hoping you have a great weekend. Drive safely, 10 and 2 or something in that proximity. Tell someone you love them and join us again on Monday.