5 Ways to Make and Save Money Online

This is Doug Hastings, Vice President of Moody Radio, and we're thankful for support from our listeners and businesses like United Faith Mortgage. If you go to our mortgage team's website, you'll find hundreds of testimonials of real Christian radio listeners we've helped. Laura here is a recent friend who is kind enough to share a few words with her local station.

I was actually referred to United Faith Mortgage through my mother-in-law. We decided it was time for us to start looking for a house, and I reached out to Kelly, and we found several houses we liked, but you know, with the seller's market, things kept falling through. But any time we needed her, she was there for us. She got everything we needed as soon as we asked for it, and she made it work. She made sure that if that was the house that our family wanted, we were going to get that house. They're a wonderful company, and we're just really blessed that we found them in the process, that they helped us get through it, and we are in the home of our dreams, and our family is so happy.

We are United Faith Mortgage. Today's version of MoneyWise Live is pre-recorded. Hey, looking for a way to make some extra bucks, or maybe you'd just like to hang on to a few more of your hard-earned dollars? Either way, the digital age is providing new ways to improve your cash flow.

If you have an internet connection and a computer or smartphone, you can make or save money online, sometimes with little effort on your part. Financial planner and teacher Rob West tells you how today. Now, we are pre-recorded, so please hold your calls until next time, but we have some great questions already lined up.

I'm Steve Moore. Cashing in online is next on MoneyWise Live. Well, Rob, we've covered a number of ways listeners can use their digital devices these days to improve their bottom line, but you have five more today that we haven't talked about before or maybe just mentioned briefly, so where do we begin, sir? Well, Steve, let's start with thinking about apps that already exist and require no startup effort or time on your part. We've talked about ride-sharing apps like Uber and Lyft before, but there are many others. One of them is called Postmates, and to make money with it, all you need is a smartphone and a car, just like with Uber and Lyft. But instead of driving people around, you do their grocery shopping and deliver it to their homes. Once you're set up and approved, Postmates sends you a free delivery bag and prepaid card to get started. You just have to be at least 18 years of age and have a properly insured vehicle. Postmates says its couriers can make up to $25 an hour, including tips, which they get to keep.

But one reviewer said it's more like $20 an hour for an experienced courier. Postmates isn't available everywhere yet, so you have to check if your area is covered. Well, thanks for the offer. Get me a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread. Will do. Okay. Well, that's great for people who love grocery shopping. What's next? Well, number two is something called Trim, and this is a money-saving app that can allow you to keep hundreds of dollars a year with almost no effort on your part.

Sound good? Well, Trim looks at your monthly spending for places where you might be overspending, like unusually high bills or digital subscriptions you forgot about. It gives you a list of targets, and you can choose the ones you want to cancel.

You'd probably want to use it several times a year. All right. Great for folks who sign up for free trials and then don't realize that they're being charged for things after 30 days or so, and that's something I think maybe I've done once or twice myself. What do you have for us? What's next?

All right. Number three is called Inbox Dollars, and it's a way to earn money just by surfing the web. You use their search engine instead of Google or some other, and the app monitors your search habits and provides data to companies trying to better understand consumers. It doesn't pay much.

Reviewers report making less than 50 cents an hour, but then again, you're only searching online like you normally would, so it doesn't require any extra effort. Now, listen, don't take this personally, Rob, but with all that I've been reading, I'm starting to feel a little antsy about privacy issues. Yeah. Well, that's always a concern with any of these apps, Steve. Legitimate companies aren't supposed to sell or share your personal information like email addresses with third parties, but make sure you opt out of receiving emails and other notifications whenever you sign up for an app. Okay. Good idea.

What's next? Number four is the Nielsen app. We know them for tracking TV ratings, but they're also big into Internet usage research. Nielsen pays $50 a year just for keeping their app on your browsing device, and this is a good one if you are concerned about privacy. You see, the app collects statistics on your Internet usage anonymously, so the data is never linked to you. And as an incentive to sign up, Nielsen offers various other rewards, including a $10,000 prize each month. Oh, okay. Because, yeah, I'm looking at this, I'm thinking $50 a year, that's like less than a dollar a week. But still, it does add up. All right, time for one more.

All right, yes. And number five is an app called User Testing. Most of us have gone to some company's website and found it less than helpful.

Maybe it has problems with navigation or they've buried information that should be readily accessible. Now you can get paid for grumbling about websites. When you sign up to be a website tester, you get to offer your opinions about website design, quality, ease of use. User Testing collects that data for companies so they can improve their sites and increase sales. The company says you can make $10 for every 20-minute test you complete.

So those are five ways, Steve. You can make or save money online, most of them without leaving the house. But I think we should add one other disclaimer, and that is we haven't tried them ourselves, but we have checked online reviews to make sure they're legitimate outfits.

The main complaint we see is that they don't pay a lot of money. But buyer beware, just some ideas for you today as you think about being a good steward of God's money. And listener beware. We'll be right back. This is MoneyWise Live. You may have noticed that Steve Moore retired last week and then reappeared this week. Well, that's because we're giving you one week of encore presentations to enjoy.

But join us next week for the all new MoneyWise Live with that new car smell. So let's go to Alabama and say hi to Carol. And what's your question today, Carol?

Yes. I'm a single grandmother raising my granddaughter, and I'm hearing y'all recently talk about refinancing. So I called my mortgage company who has my current mortgage, which is at 4.5, and I asked them about refinancing.

And they made it sound like, I mean, my house is not very expensive, that it would cost like $5,000, and I only have $9,000 in my emergency fund, and I would have to take money out of that. I mean, is it wise to look or should I, who else should I call? I'm wondering, or just keep it like it is. I appreciate that background.

That's helpful. Give me a rundown of the numbers, if you don't mind. What is your home worth, do you think, roughly? Well, I just got something in the mail, and it says it's worth $1,018,000, and I paid $113,000, and it's all within my budget.

Okay, great. And how much do you owe on this mortgage? $89,000. Okay, very good. And how long ago did you take out the mortgage? Five years.

Okay, and was it a 30-year mortgage at the time? Yes, sir. Okay. All right, and how does it fit into your budget currently?

Is it, you know, placing a burden on you financially, or are you able to make all of your, cover all of your obligations pretty easily? All my obligations are great. Okay, very good. And you said you have about $10,000 in emergency savings? Right, and I'm 60 years old, and I hope to retire when I'm 69.

I mean, that's good grace. Okay, very good. So this mortgage is going to be with us for a while, clearly, and I think the most important thing to consider is that we don't want to extend the term. So if you do a new mortgage, you either want to go with a 20-year or a 25-year.

I'd prefer you go with a 20-year mortgage. The only thing there would be to make sure that the payment, even though the rate is going to be lower, and that'll help, we want to make sure that the payment doesn't jump up on you such that it creates a challenge for you. If it was too high, and we use 25% of your take-home pay as a rule of thumb, but if it gets too high and it creates some challenges for you to cover all of your obligations and have some margin left over, you know, that would be a concern to me, but I just don't want to extend the term. As to the expenses, you know, you should be looking at 1 to 2%. So on an $89,000 loan, $4,000 or $5,000 is way out of line.

You know, you should be looking at 1 to 2,000. And, you know, what you could do would be to roll that into the new mortgage. So I realize you'd be increasing the balance by the amount of the closing costs for this refinance, but the reduction in the interest rate, if you save at least a point, and if I heard you that it's at 4.5%, you know, with a new 20-year mortgage, you should be able to get that down to, you know, maybe 2.5, maybe 2.6. So you'll take almost two points off that interest rate, which will really help. And so even if you roll in this couple of thousand dollars in expenses, as long as you plan to stay in the home, you should save a lot of money over the life of this loan. So I'd probably go to bankrate.com to look at other lender options and see if you can find somebody who could come in at between 1 and 2%. As long as you plan to stay in the home and you can save, you know, a point and a half, maybe even two points, I think it would make sense for you to proceed.

Does that make sense? Yes. Now, are you okay with me taking that 1,000 around from my emergency fund if they're not willing to do that? I am, absolutely.

Yeah, as long as you still have three months' expenses left and you've got some margin on your budget, a little bit left over at the end of the month, I would be fine with that. And if you have questions on that, don't hesitate to reach back out to us once you explore this further. Carol, we wish you the best with that. You sound like a super person, a single grandma raising your granddaughter.

I'm sure that can't be easy, but we'll pray that God really directs you and provides you with grace and wisdom as you go forward. Thanks so much. We appreciate your call.

You're listening to MoneyWise Live with Rob West. Let's go to Charlotte in Oak Lawn, Illinois. And how are you today? I'm great.

I have a question. I've been retired for a little while. My income is just my Social Security and very small pension. And I have $200,000 in an IRA CD that's becoming renewable in the next several months. And I'm trying to figure out how I can live off that money and afford to last. Right now I'm debt-free. I'm giving almost 30% to the church. So I just need to know what's the best place to put the $200,000 or to grow and for us to continue to have some kind of income for the duration of our lives.

Yes. And how much do you need to be able to pull off of that $200,000, Charlotte, to make your budget work each month? Well, right now I don't need anything. But at 72 and a half, I have to start pulling it down.

So how do I make it last if I have to? I think now it's like 27% or something like that. You must pull down. Yeah, no, that's exactly right. Yeah, very good.

Well, a couple of things there. Number one, Charlotte, congratulations for ordering your finances in such a way that you're in this position where you don't need the money. You're debt-free. You're living modestly. You have the income to cover it.

That's great. You are going to have to start taking that required minimum distribution at 72. And so you do want to invest this money to make it grow. So you could cover that and that could be additional money to give away.

And we'll talk about that in a moment. But I think really the key here is hiring an investment professional. This is hard-earned money.

It's a lot of money. And the best way for it to be managed is within a properly diversified stock and bond portfolio, probably a small allocation to stocks, maybe 30%, which is going to be the growth component. And then 70% probably roughly in fixed income bonds and other types of fixed income that will generate a very stable return. And the combination of the two will allow this to grow at probably three or 4% a year, which will be more than you're pulling out for your required minimum distribution.

And you'll never have to tap the principle. So I would go to our website at MoneyWiseLive.org, click Find a CKA and interview a couple of certified kingdom advisors there in Illinois and pick the one that's the best fit who can then manage these funds for you. And with your input, oversight, they'll ask lots of questions, they'll get to know you and what God's doing in your life and what the needs are for the money, and you'll develop a plan and then they'll pick the investments for you. And that way, the money will be deployed properly and biblically, according to biblical principles.

So I think that's key. The other thing you want to ask that person about is something called a qualified charitable distribution, because you can give away to charity directly from your IRA, the required minimum distribution. And the benefit of that, Charlotte, is you never recognize it as income, therefore it's not taxable. So the ministry gets the full amount of the required minimum distribution, you satisfy your RMD required minimum distribution for the year, and you never have to pay a tax bill.

So everybody wins. And it's called a qualified charitable distribution. And that certified kingdom advisor could help you set that up. And if you wanted to, you could use that to offset money you were already giving, which means you hold on to it. Or you could just do additional giving altogether, that would be up to you. Does that make sense? Yeah, so it's qualified.

Say that again. Qualified charitable distribution. And it's the means by which you give your RMD away without it ever being taxable to you as income, satisfies the IRS's annual requirement, and it goes right to the charity. They get the full amount.

Nobody pays any tax, and it's a great, great thing. Charlotte, thank you very much. We appreciate your call today. With that, we're going to pause. We'll be right back. And welcome back to another edition of MoneyWise Live. Please keep in mind that today's program is prerecorded, though we've lined up some calls in advance. So sit back and enjoy the rest of our broadcast today and the calls that we have coming up.

I think you'll probably hear something interesting and probably something that you can apply to your own life as well. He's Rob West. I'm Steve Moore.

Let's go back to our lines. How about Florida, Rob? Fannie, what's on your mind? Hi. Is this Rob or Steve? Well, now it's Steve, but I'm going to hand you off to Rob. Hi. Hello, Fannie. How can I help you? Hi, Rob.

Thank you for taking my call. My husband and I, my husband is 86. I'm 75. We're both retired and faithful tiders. And we have $40,000 in our checking account right now.

And we've been just leaving it there. We haven't been touching it because we want to purchase a mobile home for about $72,000 or $73,000 in a year from now. And we wanted to know how we could put that money in a savings to help it to grow. We're going to be putting like $300 a month in there to increase it.

And by that time, by this time next year in February, we should have $43,600. Okay. All right.

Very good. Well, you know, I think the opportunity you have here, Fannie, is to put this into a high-yield savings account. Unfortunately, they're not paying a whole lot of interest right now.

About the best you're going to find is 0.6%, which is, you know, six-tenths of one percent. Now, you're not going to pay any fees, maintenance fees or anything like that. And that's still, you know, a decent amount of money. You know, on $40,000 over the next year, you'd get $240 and every little bit counts, right? But the key for you as it relates to saving for the future when you have a very specific short-term goal in mind, and I would certainly put one year in the short-term goal category, is it's about the return of your money, not the return on your money. Meaning you want to protect this hard-earned money that you're saving for.

You don't want to take any risk. You want to earn a little bit of interest, but you don't want to have to be concerned that when you need the money, you've invested it in something that has lost value and therefore you have to sell it, take a loss. And, you know, now it's even harder to make this purchase. So I would look at perhaps Ally Bank or Marcus. So Ally Bank is Ally, A-L-L-Y, dot com.

Marcus is Marcus dot com, which is the retail operation of Goldman Sachs. And with either of those, you're going to get just about the very best savings interest rate you can find. And as rates move up, and they will sometime over the next year, they'll move up, these rates will move up too. It wasn't too long ago that these rates were at one and a half, two percent. They're not now because interest rates are so low, but they'll be back there. The key, though, is the money will be protected with FDIC insurance and you'll earn a little bit of interest and you won't pay any fees or expenses.

Does that sound like what you're looking for, Fannie? Yes. And I could take it out when I want to take at least $40,000 out when next year comes and to put it towards their mobile home. Yeah, exactly.

I'm 75. We don't want to put in anything like you say where we're going to be losing money. Well, that's right. But the other thing here is you're not buying a CD where the money is locked up. So you have access to this money at any point, at any day. This is a savings account, completely liquid, even though you're earning a little bit of interest. And the way it's going to work is if you're comfortable doing business online, this is an online bank. It's going to get linked to your checking account electronically.

And then whenever you need the money, you go on their website or if you use a smartphone, you can open the app and just transfer the money. And two to three days later, it'll be sitting in your checking account whenever you want it. But in the meantime, you'll earn a little bit of interest on it. Fannie, do you envision in any way that you would need this money for at least a year?

No, I will not need it. Would she be better off putting it in a CD in that case, Rob? No, just because the rates are not any better for a one-year CD. In fact, in some cases, they're a little bit lower and it would prevent her from getting the higher rates as interest rates move up over the next year. Ah, good point.

That's why he's in charge. Fannie, God bless you. Thanks for your call today. We appreciate it.

Naples, Florida. Claudette, how can we help you? Yes, sir. Go right ahead.

I'm concerned about – yes, I'm here. Can you hear me? Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Go right ahead. Okay.

I'm concerned about the advice to take almost $100,000 out of my TSP and put it in a guaranteed fund that will give me in the next – I need to keep it there for 12 years and then it would amount to roughly $200 and something thousand dollars when I'm ready to retire. I see. And Claudette, is there a financial advisor who's recommending you buy an annuity? Is that what's going on? Yes. The federal advisor that was given to us to go over our retirement information. Okay. And are you still with – are you still a federal employee at this point? Yes.

Okay. And, yeah, so there's not really any reason that you need to move this money out. You've got plenty of options inside the TSP without you having to buy an annuity of any kind. And so I think the key is to really look at what those investment options are that are going to be the best fit for you. There's all kinds of risk levels depending on whether you're in the stock funds like the C or the I or the F or some of the lifecycle funds where it's geared toward your retirement date. So if you're going to retire in 20 years, you could look at the 2045 lifecycle fund which would automatically get more and more conservative as you head toward retirement. So there's not a need for an annuity right now. And this is MoneyWise Live. Steve Moore retired as co-host and Rob West needed a vacation, so this week it's encore presentations of MoneyWise Live.

Let's begin by going just outside of Chicago. And, Deborah, do you have a question for Rob? Yes. Thank you so much for taking my call.

Yes, ma'am. I have a tenant who has not been paying rent. And although she's working, I cannot evict her due to the moratorium. But I have two other tenants who are paying rent, which means I still have 100% of the expenses for the property with only about 60% of the income. So I've drained the property account, my personal savings, and now my credit card debt has exploded. I do have about $20,000 in an annuity that's only earning about 1%. So my question is, would you advise, I mean, I could withdraw that and maybe subtract about 20% for taxes and pay off my credit card debt, which would reduce my monthly bills by about $225 to $250 a month. In addition, I've also put the building on the market because I didn't want to lose it. So with the proceeds from the sale, I would be able to replenish my emergency fund, but of course I don't have any idea of when that sale would happen. So what would you advise? Yeah.

I'm so sorry to hear about this situation, Deborah. I know this is a real challenge. When you say you could reduce your expenses by about $250, what is it that you would need to do to make that happen? That would be paying off the credit card debt with, if I take the $20,000 from that annuity that's only earning about 1% and put aside the 20%, pay that for taxes ahead. That would leave me enough to pay off my credit card debt, which credit cards for the building that I've been using for the building and for my own personal expenses. So I could pay those two off, but then I won't have an emergency fund. I won't have that money left over. I would really kind of be, depending upon the sale of the building, and I of course can't predict when that would happen.

Yeah. And even without the $250 a month that you would no longer be responsible for with the credit card debt gone, what would your shortfall be every month? Yeah, I would still have quite a bit of a shortfall. I don't know exactly, but probably maybe $300 to $400 still short every month, because, well actually it would probably be about a little more than that because I was able to pull from different accounts now, but those accounts are drained.

So really it's probably going to be more like $700 or $800 a month that I would still be short. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And so that would obviously go back on the credit cards at that point. Right.

Yeah. Have you talked to an eviction lawyer just about what your options are from that standpoint? I have.

I have. And pretty much because the eviction laws are pretty muddied right now, things aren't as clear cut as they were in the past, so they really only give you maybe three options for evicting. And even with those three options, which she doesn't technically fit into, she has to physically threaten someone or there has to be some type of danger in the building, which none of those things fit. But even if they were, the eviction process still takes a while. Yes.

Yeah. Well, the current moratoriums, even nationally, I believe run out at the end of March. So obviously it's a last resort. I mean, you want to go through the typical process first where you're putting them on notice and you're doing that in writing and you're charging a late fee and you're documenting every step of the way. And then after that, at some point, you would file for eviction just based on the fact that you don't even have the ability, if you wanted to, to be able to maintain this property.

You're going to lose the property if this continues on much longer. I mean, I think pulling out of the annuity as much as I don't like that is probably the only option right now just to buy you a little bit of time. And I think I would move quickly because you've got equity into selling this property, taking the proceeds, shoring up your financial foundation and kind of moving on. But I realize that can take some time.

So I think we need to kind of take both approaches. We probably need to go ahead and take the pressure off with the credit cards and then move quickly to list the property to try to sell the real estate. And then at the same time, start moving down this road of eviction just for nonpayment and make sure that you've documented every step of the way. So I'd be kind of working all three of these at the same time and just asking the Lord for a breakthrough.

You know, maybe something changes in their life and they are willing to jump in and start to resume payments or something like that. But at the very least, in a good real estate market, hopefully you'd be able to sell this property sooner rather than later. So I'm sorry to hear about the challenges you've had, but I think you're thinking through it correctly. And I would move on all three of these fronts.

Deborah, thank you very much. And Rob, obviously, we all feel sympathy for tenants who, due to the COVID situation, can't afford to pay their rent. But one also has to feel sorry for landlords who are struggling to pay their bills as well. And I mean, there are two sides to that coin, unfortunately.

Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, OK. Let's continue on out to Indiana and Katrina. What's your situation? Hello. Thank you guys for taking my call.

Yes, ma'am. My question is, my son is 17 and I wanted to check his credit report to make sure nothing has been applied to it. He is the second. My husband is a senior and my son is a second.

And they don't always get the senior and the second on everything. So I tried to go to Credit Karma, tried to go to Experian to see if I could pull it up, not realizing that you can't pull up the credit report, I guess, if you're a minor. And I had to use his birthday. So I was kind of wondering how can a parent check their child's credit report just to ensure everything is OK because he's going to turn 18 here in the next few months.

And I just wanted to make sure he's going to start off on the right foot. Well, most minors won't have a credit report at all or a credit score established, but those that do can check their credit just like an adult. So essentially you'd go to, or he would, annualcreditreport.com, enter in the information to try to identify whether a file already exists.

So I think that's the key if you're just trying to understand what's there. If anything, in his name, he would go through the same channels that everybody else does. I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't a credit file on him at this point, but that would be the process you would want to go through to check. And that would cover all three bureaus at the same time. Again, that website, annualcreditreport.com. Katrina, we wish you the best with that.

Thank you very much. And Rob, you have four children. Do any of them, to your knowledge, have a credit report established? I don't know. I've never looked. I don't think so.

I don't know why they would. We just this year opened money debit accounts, essentially a checking account for each of the two older boys who are 16 and 14. But this is their first kind of foray into the financial world with anything in their own name. All right. Rob West, we wish you well. This is MoneyWise Live. We'll be right back.

You're listening to MoneyWise Live, and we're certainly glad that you are. This is a call in program. Wouldn't be much of a call in program without you there. Now, today's broadcast is prerecorded, so please don't try to call right now. But earlier we set up some calls in advance. So let's continue. Let's go back to our phones. Irma and Laura, we are coming in your direction, so don't go anywhere.

But first, Lawrence, Indiana. And Paula, what's on your mind? Hey, thank you so much for your fantastic radio ministry. I am nearing retirement about 18 months from now, and I work with a faith based health care ministry, and they offer I've been there 35 years, so a nice, you know, the monthly pension. However, the decision I need to make ahead of time is, well, not that I want to take a monthly payout from them for the rest of my life. Or do I want to take out I think right now it'd be about one hundred and thirty thousand. But you're guaranteed about I think it would be around thirty one hundred a month for the rest of my life or the lump sum to invest on my own.

Yes. And I'm leaning a little bit more towards taking the monthly payment because that's in my lifestyle. And the other factor is if you take it out away the whole amount, you have to wait six months to work with them, even as we're dating for time, which I would like to do as long as I'm able to. And otherwise, you could be there back to them after retirement after your first pension payment in 30 days.

OK, you broke up there right at the end. So you said give me the six month provision you were talking about. If you take out your lump sum and decide to go invest it on your own, you cannot rehire with them in any capacity for six months waiting.

If you take the monthly pension option, you get your first pension payment in 30 days. And at that point, you're eligible to restart. Yes. Yes.

Very good. OK. Well, this is obviously a choice that you need to give a lot of careful consideration and prayer to. And it really comes down to your life expectancy, which the real question we can ask there is just based on our health and longevity in the family, things like that. That would be one consideration. And then your retirement income.

Does this monthly check in fact cover what you would need to cover your lifestyle moving forward and essential expenses? And if so, having that peace of mind moving forward would be something that a lot of people like to have access to. So you're not ultimately responsible for making sure that this lasts throughout the rest of your life.

You would know that at least that portion is covered. Now, the lump sum, the benefit there is gives you more control over your money, obviously, allowing you the flexibility of spending it or investing in how you see fit. And as long as you can, in fact, make it last the rest of your life, you'd have access to the principal in the event that you needed access to a larger sum of money, maybe a major medical event or you needed some long term care for a period of time, something like that. So I think those are really the considerations you need to look at. But assuming you expect longevity from a health standpoint and, Paula, you really see this as something that would really help you have some confidence that you would be able to fund your lifestyle throughout the rest of your life and whatever the Lord has for you moving forward, then that can be quite attractive. The only other consideration there is, you know, if a pension administrator were to go bankrupt, which is obviously, you know, for most companies, very low risk, not something you often would think about, but it's a possibility.

The pension payments could stop, although there is pension benefit guarantee company insurance that would cover most situations. So that would be the only other consideration. But given that, give me your thoughts on which way you're leaning and whether you have any questions on what I've shared. Well, I'm glad you brought up about the long term care because I do not have that. And the income situation, it would cover about 75%, I believe, of, you know, when you add your Social Security and then I have a little over, not quite $400,000 in the, you know, what I call it, the long term savings investments.

So I feel, seriously, I feel inclined to stay with it because the Lord led me to this position and He's been faithful along that takes me from a spiritual standpoint, if it sounds financial, either way, and the health and all of that, it should be okay. Yeah. So you say you're leaning toward taking the monthly payout of the pension? Yes.

Yeah, yeah. You know, that's, again, comes down to those considerations and sounds like you have thought through this. One thing that might be helpful, because this is a pretty significant decision is for you to take some time and visit with a financial planning professional who could really take a look at both of these options.

Take a look at what the lump sum payout would be, and what a reasonable expectation would be in terms of the income that you could generate from that without touching the principal, which from a wealth transfer standpoint would give you something to pass on to your heirs, if that's appropriate, versus taking this monthly pension that obviously would not pass on beyond your life. And just consider really the imputed kind of interest rate there that you would have to achieve to accomplish the same thing. Although you'd have to consider the fact that you are assuming that risk. And if you're investing in the market to do that, then you'd have to be comfortable with assuming the risk that comes with that. So I think at the end of the day, it sounds like you're leaning toward the monthly payout. And if it does the things you're looking for, and gives you that added peace of mind, that's real.

And that's something that needs to be factored in here beyond just the numbers of it. But I'd probably take some time to visit with somebody who can really help you run these calculations and look at both of these decisions in light of your overall financial plan more than we would be able to do just here quickly on the radio today. So if you want to move in that direction, I'd recommend you go to our website MoneyWiseLive.org, click on Find a CKA, a Certified Kingdom Advisor there in Indiana, and just spend a couple of hours with somebody who can really help you look at this from both perspectives.

This will also be an advisor who shares your values so they can factor in that as well. Paula, I pray God will give you wisdom and direction as you seek Him in this regard. Thank you very much for calling in today.

Let's quickly move to Grand Rapids and Irma. We know you've been holding. I understand you want to get rid of some credit cards, huh?

Or maybe. I do. I do. All right. Go right ahead.

Okay. I'm retired, 74 years old. I work on the Title V program, and I have five credit cards. I know that I would keep one and use maybe two, but I don't want it to hinder my credit score. But I did hear something about you can lock your credit for something like that. And I do have a card that I can pay off probably next month. So I don't know what I should do or how I should go about.

Sure. Irma, are you carrying beyond this one that you'll pay off next month? Do you carry any other balances, or do you pay them off in full? One credit card and it's probably the balance is under $20.

Okay, very good. So the biggest issue that happens when you close a card that will affect you negatively is something called credit utilization, which just basically means when you reduce the available credit, which is what's going to happen when you close the accounts because that money is no longer available to you. Then if you're carrying a balance, the balance you're carrying is a higher percentage of the total credit you have access to. And if it gets above 30%, that really could impact you negatively.

That's not going to be a factor here because you're not carrying a balance. So if you take three of them off the table, you're not any higher percentage because you have no balances. The other issue is just the longevity of the accounts that you have, the average length of the accounts, but most of the credit scoring models now still factor in the age or the history of the account, even though the account is closed. So what I would do is just close two every six months. So I'd probably close two now and then wait six months and do the third one. Other than that, I wouldn't have any concern over your credit.

If you saw a minor drop in your credit score, it would bounce back within a couple of months. Irma, we wish you the best. Thanks very much. Laura, we know you've been holding. We're almost out of time.

Give it to us quickly if you can. Well, my husband and I are working on paying off our mortgage and we'd like to do that within the next 10 years before we retire. We have enough surplus that we could make a considerable monthly payment. And I don't know whether it's to our advantage to just keep putting that money back and then pay it a couple of times a year like we have been, or if it's better for us to set an extra amount each month and just make that payment as though it's part of the mortgage.

Yeah. Laura, I love this idea. And as long as you have your emergency fund in place, you're on track with your other savings goals, I think starting to really focus on reducing that mortgage is a great idea. If you have the money to do it, you build it into your plan, there's no reason to wait. You have no benefit of sending a larger amount twice a year versus sending as much as you can with your regularly scheduled payment. Because as soon as you pay toward principal, as long as they're applying it that way and you'll want to check with your mortgage servicer to make sure you send it in such a way that they're applying it immediately. But as long as they are, that's money that you're not paying interest on for the life of the loan. And the quicker you reduce that principal, the quicker you're reducing the overall amount of interest that you're paying.

So I would go ahead and send it monthly and I would just make sure you contact your servicer to find out how they want you to do it so it can be applied to the principal of the mortgage. Yes, Rob. But over the years, how many people have we spoken to who regretted paying off their mortgage early? Let me count them. Zero. And that's the correct answer.

And with that, we're pretty much out of time. Thanks, Rob. Hey, thanks so much again for being with us today. Hope you found something helpful and useful.

If so, please do us a big favor and tell a friend. We're with you each day at this time, Monday through Friday with MoneyWise Live. Our phone number is 800-525-7000. Our website is MoneyWiseLive.org.

You'll find lots of great free resources there. And of course, MoneyWise Live is a partnership between Moody Radio and MoneyWise Media. My thanks to our technical crew and staff, Jim, Judy, Amy and Courtney. And again, our thanks to you for being there. Join us again tomorrow for MoneyWise Live.