More Obnoxious Corporate Policies

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Not licensed in Alaska, Hawaii, Georgia, Massachusetts, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Utah. What does running a major corporation have to do with supporting anti-religious liberty legislation? It's a question many company CEOs don't want to answer.

Hi, I'm Rob West. All too many corporations are involved in obnoxious policies these days, and economist Jerry Boyer has been trying to get them to answer for it. He's here to discuss that first today, then it's on to your calls at 800-525-7000.

Call that number 24-7, 800-525-7000. This is MoneyWise Live, where biblical principles guide our financial decisions. Well, our guest, Jerry Boyer, frequently graces the Fox Business channel with his market insights. He's the founder and president of Boyer Research, and we simply know him as our good friend and favorite economist. Jerry, welcome back. Thank you, my friend.

Always great to be with you. Jerry, a lot of what we'll talk about centers on the so-called Equality Act. It's such a positive sounding name. Who wouldn't want to support that? But it poses a major threat to religious liberty, as you well know. Why don't you begin there?

Tell us about that. Yeah, the Equality Act does two things which directly and severely harm religious liberty rights. One is that it explicitly says in the law that it's not covered by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and that if you are charged under the provisions of the Equality Act, you may not appeal using the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Now, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act is pretty mainstream law. Chuck Schumer introduced it when he was in the House. Teddy Kennedy introduced it in the Senate.

Bill Clinton signed it. It's a pretty mainstream idea that the government should not cause people to do things that are against their conscience, that there shouldn't be excessive entanglement or decrease of religious liberty following some other interests. So it does that. In addition, it goes out of its way to increase and expand the list of buildings or institutions or places that are covered by this. So normally, you know, under the law, under discrimination law, there are public accommodations. So if a Black person goes to a hotel and tries to check in, well, hotels are public accommodations. So they're covered under the Civil Rights Act. And of course, race is covered under the Civil Rights Act. So what the Equality Act does is not only does it take the protections that we've given based on race and extend them to people with different gender identities, which is not an unreasonable thing, I can understand what people would want to do that, but it also vastly expands the list of institutions that this covers. So now churches, ministries, homeless shelters, battered shelters, these places also are covered. So if a man who identifies as a woman wants to go to a Christian shelter for battered women who are in many ways trying to get away from men because of those past relationships, sorry, you got to let him in, otherwise you violated the Equality Act.

So this is pretty obnoxious stuff. And of course, it's named Equality Act, and a bunch of these CEOs just see equality, and they've already essentially surrendered to LGBTQ and whatever comes from that interest group. So they signed on. And I'm convinced, having had many conversations, dozens, that the vast majority of them had no idea that this was also going out of its way to weaken religious liberty. Well, Jerry, thanks for that explanation, because I think, like many companies' CEOs, many of us don't know fully what's behind the Equality Act and its threat to religious liberty. Jerry, a few months ago, you reported having some success in some one-on-one conversations with executives at Target, Pfizer, and even Apple.

It was unrelated to the Equality Act. We'll get to that in just a moment. But any update on those conversations? Well, in the case of Target, what happened is they had banned a couple of books in response to a single tweet of books that were skeptical about transgender surgery for children. They were confronted. They unbanned the book, admitted that they were wrong, and said that they would change their ways. And then I found out at the annual meeting, simply by asking, it looks like they have sneakily re-banned the books again. I don't know where this is going to end, but talking the truth is like leaven.

You put it in there, and then you see what happens. Well, corporate engagement is our topic today, and we're going to talk about some new conversations Jerry's been having, as he's been participating in a number of shareholder meetings, and specifically asking about the Equality Act. More to come with Jerry Boyer, our favorite economist, and then it's on to your questions.

800-525-7000. This is MoneyWise Live. We'll be right back. Welcome back to MoneyWise Live.

I'm Rob West. My guest today is Jerry Boyer, economist. He's also the founder and president of Boyer Research, and it's earning season, which means lots and lots of annual shareholder meetings. Jerry, you've been a responsible investor. You've been participating in a lot of them, and with a very particular reason in mind, and that is to express your values, because we have an opportunity as owners of companies to make our values known and engage with executives during these meetings. Give us an update on what you've been up to. I've been attending a lot of these annual shareholder meetings.

It's easy this year, because they're all virtual. I don't know what will happen in the future. You log on, yet there's a certain number you need, and then you can ask questions. Now, they might ignore the question, but they still have to answer it eventually in writing, so you can force the discussion and actually force the debate. And I focus mainly on ways in which a lot of these companies have, whether they know it or not, been supporting legislation which weakens religious liberty, but also on abortion funding. For example, in the case of AT&T, which was, there was a resolution put forward by shareholders asking AT&T to do something real simple. Just disclose which charities you're giving money to. I mean, it's our money, right, as shareholders. Tell us who you're giving it to. They use shareholder money to fight the resolution from shareholders, which would force them to reveal to shareholders what they're doing with shareholders' money. So I asked them about that, and they said, well, under the law, this is a management matter, not shareholder.

Okay, I don't agree, but you could still tell us. Just because you don't think it ought to be on the ballot, you could still tell us who are you giving money to. Are you giving money to Planned Parenthood?

And why are you hiding things? So I've had a very active discussion, first in the annual meeting and then after, with a lot of emails back and forth with AT&T about funding for abortion. Anything else specifically on your engagements with AT&T?

Yeah, AT&T, it was a really interesting moment. Other people asked questions, and maybe they were responding to our questions about political involvement, and the CEO of AT&T said, well, CEOs are ill-equipped to engage in politics, and we spend, we in upper management, spend a lot of time thinking about this. And not, they didn't go on to the next natural conclusion, which is, hey, stick to the phone job. You know, stick to your day job. You admit you're not good at politics. You admit it hurts you. You admit it's taking up valuable time. Maybe you should stay out of it altogether, except when it's direct. If you want to be involved in the politics of phone regulation, sure, that's on mission. But getting involved in abortion and transgender and all that stuff, it's off mission. You're good at the day job.

Stick to the day job. Yeah. Well, it's not like you bought a share of AT&T stock and then got on the meeting agenda. You were representing a significant group of shareholders, right?

Yes, absolutely. I was there representing institutional shareholders. So it wasn't one share. A lot of activists, particularly on the other side of many of these issues, will buy one share just so they can show up and try to influence. That's not what I'm doing. I'm just trying to be a responsible shareholder citizen. If I don't like what's going on in my state or my country, I vote.

What I don't understand is why Christians don't like what's going on in corporate life, and their response is, don't vote. Leave. Go away.

Disengage. Doesn't make any sense to me. The more concerned about my country I am, the more diligent I'm going to be about registering to vote and making my voice heard. And I think the same thing applies as a shareholder citizen. Same thing applies to the companies we own. Absolutely. Jerry, do you think that AT&T management really understands what's in the legislation their company is supporting and, you know, that they're likely alienating more shareholders and customers than they're attracting?

I think they do now. The sense I'm getting from these companies is that a lot of this stuff they endorsed a year ago or two years ago, and there's a little bit of buyer's remorse about just automatically signing on to anything that comes from LGBTQ and BLM and all these other groups. I think there's a sense that, oh, wait a minute. There are two parts to this country, and we've been putting our thumb on the scale, siding with one group over and over again and, you know, against the other, and they're getting a lot of backlash. They're getting backlash about voter reform issues, like, you know, threatening to boycott Georgia. That's been a big issue. That's not the core issue for me. Life and religious liberty are core issues for me, but I think they're beginning to sense that it wasn't as riskless as they thought to simply sign whatever the human rights campaign put in front of them in terms of gay rights, and that they were sold something, didn't know that they were not siding with gay people, they were siding with gay people at the expense of religious people, playing rights off against one another. I don't think that's what they intended to do, and I think they kind of wish they hadn't.

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's going to take folks like you, Jerry, pointing that out and engaging in that conversation. Talk to us about some of the work you've been doing at Boyer Research. I know you've been putting together a database of corporations. Yes, database of all the corporations that I'm involved with institutionally, and then their ratings on the Equality Act, what did they support on these state boycotts, various other ratings of where they've been on marriage issues and other things. So we've got a database of that, and now an automated process where, for example, we just send out an email to 330 companies that are in indices that we work with saying, we're concerned that companies are getting off mission and too much in politics.

We have a statement of principles we'd like to share with you. Will you read it? So that went out. Some of them, you know, one of them tried to unsubscribe.

I'm going to follow up by phone. Wait a minute. We own you.

You don't unsubscribe from us. Others have responded and said, yeah, I'd like to read that statement. Let's have a conversation about it. In fact, I was just working on that this morning. Then the next one that will go out will be about the Equality Act. So we're trying to use technology to make this something that doesn't take up all of our time. Yeah, that's fascinating.

And I love how intentional you're being, Jerry. Any other shareholder meetings you've attended and the results you've experienced? Well, right now we're about to do Dell. Dell's going on in the other room.

And one that really stands out to me is Marriott, because I found it pretty successful. I and someone from another group both asked about the Equality Act. And the CEO of Marriott said something very interesting. He said, it passed the House. It's now in the Senate. In the Senate is a place we can deal with some of the issues that are of concern to you. In other words, what I heard is, I hear you. We don't want to trash religious liberty.

So we can work in the Senate to maybe deal with some of those issues and not have the version, not support the version that gets rid of religious liberty. So progress can be made, but you have to constantly stay at it and you have to be diligent and you have to be patient. That's the thing.

You lose a lot. A lot of people feel like they need to walk away. But again, if you've delivered the message, you've already succeeded in some ways in God's eyes. Whether they heed the warning or not, that's up to them. But if you don't deliver the message, the guilt is on you.

If you do deliver the message and they don't listen, the guilt is on them. That's what Ezekiel said. And that's what we're trying to follow here. Yeah, that's very good.

Jerry, we've got just a few seconds left. For someone who's listening today, an individual investor, and they're encouraged, perhaps even inspired by what you've been up to here, how might you take what you've learned and equip them to do the same thing? Well, they can seek me out on social media. I'd be happy to give them some pointers. There's even a little white paper that I wrote for you guys, which you could be available to them, which just takes them through, first of all, the biblical case for this, and then also the how-to. It's really not that hard. If you're an investor in a company, they send you an invitation to the meeting, and it has a little 16-digit number that you can use to log on. That's about it. You go to the link, you put in the number, and there's a little box that says, type your question here, and you type your question.

And then you hit send, and it's as simple as that. That's great. Well, Jerry, you're on the front lines. I appreciate the update. We're so grateful for you, my friend. Thanks for stopping by.

And for you. God bless. Jerry Boyer.

You can find more on Jerry and his writing at townhall.com. Much more to come on MoneyWise Live. Stay with us. We're grateful you've decided to join us on MoneyWise Live today. I'm Rob West. In just a moment, we'll be taking your calls and questions. Here's the number, 800-525-7000. Whatever's on your mind today, we'll apply biblical truth to today's financial decisions.

Whatever's going on in your life. Again, 800-525-7000. We've got our amazing team in the background ready to serve you. Gabby T., our call screener today, Amy Rios Engineering, Deb Solomon is producing today, and Mr. Jim Henry providing me some excellent research. Folks, we started today by talking about faith-based investing. And let me just mention, you know, if this is a new idea to you, perhaps what Jerry was talking about was a foreign concept that you could actually take your role as an owner of an individual company through individual shares or perhaps through mutual fund share ownership and express your values. You know, you're invited to those corporate shareholder meetings, as Jerry said. Well, that's just one way that you can leverage your role as owner to make sure that the company knows where you stand. Perhaps you want to avoid certain companies by screening out companies that have activities that conflict with your values. Or maybe you want to buy companies that are making a positive impact in the world, even a kingdom impact. Well, all of that rolls up under a really exciting and emerging segment of the investment universe called faith-based investing.

And if you want an advisor who understands that, can help you think about your faith as it relates to your investments, perhaps you want to connect with a certified kingdom advisor in your area. You can do that when you visit our website, MoneyWiseLive.org. Just click find a CKA. All right, we're going to go to the phones now. Again, we've got a few lines open. Here's the number 800-525-7000.

We're going to begin today in Huntsville, Alabama. And Jana, thank you for your call today. How can I help you? Thank you for taking my call. I am calling in regards to my home mortgage. I currently owe about, let me look at it.

I have it here. $238,000 on my home. Okay. I was widowed two years ago. And I currently have my money with some kingdom advisors here in Huntsville. And I've not asked them this question, but it's been mulling around in my head and I thought, well, I'll call you and see what you think of me paying this off completely.

Given the market situation, I'm a little concerned about everything going down. And I just thought if I have some money here, I might want to pay it off. And I'm currently paying 3.25% interest on this loan.

Yes. I want to know a couple of things, and I love where you're headed with this, because if you listen to this program, you know, Jana, that I'm a big fan of being completely debt-free, including your home mortgage. But I also want to make sure that we don't do that too soon in the sense that I want you to make sure you have ample resources to both fund your lifestyle, if you're relying on income from your investments or you're trying to grow your investments for the future, and just working capital, appropriate reserves. And so, we've got to balance that with the desire to be debt-free. Obviously, if you have a surplus and your income is covered, it's a much different equation than if you're still building wealth, trying to take care or take advantage of compounding and growing money over time and working on perhaps other priorities. Because although I love the idea of being debt-free completely, I'd much rather you focus on things like consumer debt or credit cards. What I call permissible debt is really debt on assets that are appreciating, and certainly your home would be one of those. But in time, when we have ample resources and we're able to, I like the idea of even paying that off.

It gives you incredible freedom and flexibility, peace of mind coming from knowing you're unencumbered. And I would choose that over even perhaps being able to make a few percentage points more in the market when the time is right. So, let me ask, you said you have a $238,000 mortgage. What do you have in investable assets in total?

About $2.4 million. Okay. Yes, ma'am. And are you living on that $2.4 million is that generating an income? Yes.

Yes, that is what I'm living on. I have a small little business that I do with personal training, but it's hardly enough to bring anything in. And the Kingdom Advisors here cut me a check every month to supplement out of that money.

And meanwhile, it's being invested. Very good. And what are you pulling out of that monthly roughly? Between $8,000 and $9,000. Yeah.

Okay. And so, that would be an appropriate amount because if I just do a 4% on that $2.4 million, that's about $96,000 a year, which would be about $8,000 a month. And that would be a level at which most investment advisors would say, yeah, we can have a conservative kind of income-based portfolio that would allow us to both protect and preserve what we have in terms of the principal balance, but give you an ample income to cover your lifestyle needs and hopefully not see that decline. Now, there's going to be a portion of that, I'm sure, that's invested in stocks, which is the growth component. In most years, that's going to add additional return, which is helpful to get that overall return up over time. In other years, if we were to hit a recession a year or two years down the road, that may be down.

But that'd be okay. We'd let that ride and know that we don't need that right away and it would recover, at least historically speaking. I think the opportunity you have here is to say, well, obviously, if I were to pay off my mortgage, then that mortgage payment goes away. And so, perhaps you could reduce the amount that you're pulling out of it. So, if you were to pull $250,000 or so out of that $2.4 million, obviously, now we're pulling a larger percentage every year out of those investments, but hopefully that $8,000 now is $7,000 or the $9,000 is $8,000. Would you be able to cut it back by roughly that amount? Yes, yes. I'm currently paying right around $2,000 every month for my mortgage.

Yeah, very good. So, I like this plan because I think it gives you the ability to own your home, gives you the peace of mind that comes with it, and it's going to be and, you know, I've never, Jana, had anybody call back to the program after doing this saying, I really wish I didn't pay the house off. So, I would say, given what I know about your situation, and it's just a little bit, but given the assets that you have, the home mortgage, I think you're in a prime position to just go ahead and pay that off.

But I would talk to those advisors about that, even mention this conversation, and then pray about it and make a decision. But I think you're headed in the right direction. We appreciate your call today.

Well, much more to come on Money Wise Live. Call us right now, 800-525-7000. We're so thankful you've joined us today from Money Wise Live. I'm Rob West, taking your calls and questions. Here's the number, 800-525-7000.

That's 800-525-7000. You know, if you haven't downloaded the new Money Wise app, this is a great time to do it. In fact, in the next 30 days, we have some exciting updates coming to the Money Wise app and a brand new website we'll be launching as we relaunch our Money Wise community with even more integration of our Money Wise coaches as they're available in all kinds of forums and groups based on topic and life stage to answer your questions and for you to provide encouragement to one another, but also get practical assistance. Also in the Money Wise app, our digital envelope system, but we'll be introducing both a plan and track option if you just want to make a plan and track how you're doing during the month or a track only option. So we want to give you flexibility to manage your money exactly the way you want to. And then finally, we continue to add content from the very best content providers in biblical finance every day in our new Discover tab. It's all there in the Money Wise app plus access to broadcast archives of Money Wise Live.

Just head over to your app store, search for Money Wise biblical finance, and you can download it today. Back to the phone south to West Palm Beach, Florida. Heather, thank you for your patience. How can I help you? Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. How are you today?

I'm doing great, thanks. Thank you. My sister and I came across a business proposal that we are considering and I wanted to know if it was a good proposal to go with.

Okay. We came across an e-commerce marketing company that also does fulfillment. They are looking to establish an 18 month contract with us. And with that contract, they would do the marketing, the fulfillment, the product selection. They would also help with the finance, the accounting portion of it, and so forth. They're looking for a $30,000 investment to start for the 18 months. And then there would be a 50-50 profit share with them. After the 18 months, there is no additional fee to renew the contract. So we would still be in that 50-50 profit share.

And they did offer a money-back guarantee at the end of the 18 months that if we do not make back at least our 30,000, that they would give us the difference at that time. Okay. All right, very good. Well, you know, there are so many e-commerce platforms right now, Heather. Obviously, there's many smaller platforms that cater to businesses that want to sell products and services online, but don't have the ability to establish their own e-commerce website, not to mention some of the things you said, such as fulfillment, caging, even the marketing.

So they come in all varieties. I think the key is the cost structure. Obviously, the larger platforms we would all know, eBay, Amazon, Etsy, they all have different commissions. What you're describing to me sounds a bit expensive, and so I'd want to do a lot of due diligence on really what they're bringing to the table in terms of the marketing, how much you can rely on that. I would be very cautious there. And is it worth putting up the kind of money you're describing when you can get started with much less on a different platform?

Now, I realize you may be giving up some things and having to do more yourself, but I like the idea, especially with the new business, of really going into it slowly, hanging on to your capital, and not giving so much away, both in upfront and the profit sharing. Amazon, for instance, the account fees are somewhere between typically around $20 to $40 a month, and commissions might be somewhere between 6% and 20%. The average seller is paying about 15%.

So anybody wanting 50% of the sales price is pretty high. So I would look for a better deal somewhere else. At the very least, I would encourage you, Heather, to do a good bit of research in terms of looking for reviews on this particular e-commerce platform.

All that information is out there. The internet will be your friend in terms of you just type in the e-commerce platform name and the word review, and you'll get all the information you want. And I suspect you'll hear from people, and you'll want to make sure that they're legitimate folks and not just the company itself, but I suspect you'll hear how it's worked for others, or perhaps it hasn't. But I'm always very cautious about companies asking for that much in the way of an upfront fee and a split. You also want to know a lot about the fine print related to that money-back guarantee to make sure that is, in fact, legitimate and that others have said they've been able to take advantage of that.

So I'd go slow. I would do a good bit of research and I would look for some less expensive options. But I'm excited about your new venture and hope you'll keep us updated as you progress. Let's head to Spokane, Washington. Leo, thank you for your patience.

How can I help you, sir? Yeah, thanks for taking my call. I had a variable annuity with Vanguard. And at the first of this year, they transferred it to Transamerica. And I'm not happy with their customer service.

And I was wondering if you could recommend another management company. Yes. Have you considered if this is a qualified annuity, rolling this into an IRA, that would give you a lot more flexibility? Can you do that within an annuity?

You can, yes. So if it's a qualified variable annuity that was established with pre-tax dollars, it can be rolled into a traditional IRA. This is where typically it would be set up by an employer as a part of a retirement plan. Is that what you have here? Or was this what you might believe to be a non-qualified annuity established with after-tax dollars?

Yeah, I think it was established with after-tax dollars. Okay. All right. Well, I think then you do need to do a bit of research just in terms of, first of all, what do you have that could be transferred out?

Are there any surrender penalties? Whether it is qualified or non-qualified money, because that's going to be pretty important as you make this decision. And then I would look to something that has obviously very good investment options in it.

I would have been a fan of Vanguard. It's a very solid company, tends to have very low fees. And so perhaps what your next step might be, Leo, is to connect with an advisor who can evaluate the policy that you have, help you understand how it's done, what the tax structure is, and then give you several recommendations on perhaps where you can roll it to, either on a pre-tax or an after-tax basis, and the companies that would give you both the lowest fees, the lowest surrender charges, but also really high-quality investments. And so I'd be hesitant to name any particular companies at this point, especially given the fact that I think somebody needs to evaluate the actual policy you have before a recommendation is made. So let me suggest you head to our website.

And if you haven't already, connect with a certified kingdom advisor there in Spokane. I know there's a number of them that have the CKA designation. That person will review the specific policy and then give you, hopefully, a number of recommendations, including whether you might want to surrender the policy and just invest outside of an insurance contract. That may or may not make sense depending on your goals and objectives and whether you're willing to assume the risk or whether you want to transfer that to an insurance company. So our website is MoneyWiseLive.org.

Just click Find a CKA, and I'd go from there. But I think you're certainly headed in the right direction as you think about moving away from a company that you're not happy with. Well, folks, we still have a lot more to come on MoneyWise Live. I hope you'll stay with us. And if you have a question, give us a call, 800-525-7000. We're so thankful you've chosen to spend some time with us on MoneyWise Live this afternoon. Thanks for being with us. In just a moment, we'll be talking to Gabrielle and Lorraine, both in Illinois. Diane's waiting patiently in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

But first, to Merrillville, Indiana. Patricia, how can I help you today? Good afternoon, and thank you very much for taking my call. I'm really very grateful for the beautiful and uplifting job you do here. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Please, I have heard you emphasize so many times of the need for emergency savings fund. And I must confess, this is something I want to really get serious with. And I will appreciate, please, your advice as to where best to put this kind of emergency savings fund. Is this something we should keep in a checking account or savings account?

Or is this something we can put in CD? I just need your guidance, please. Thank you. Yes. Well, Patricia, I'm delighted to hear you say that. And I think this really is a key piece of your financial foundation. You know, as we think about managing the money that God has entrusted to us, and that's what it is. We're stewards of God's resources. We want to establish a priority order for how we should handle those limited resources. Because remember, there's only five things we can do with money. There's the money we live on, the money we give, the money we owe for debt and taxes, and then the money we save or we grow.

And that's it. And the question is, how do we then allocate our resources among those five uses? Well, clearly we should give first.

We should be systematic in our giving and ultimately how much is between you and the Lord. We should live well within our means, which means we have to have a spending plan. But that spending plan should have some margin in it, meaning beyond the fixed and discretionary expenses, we should have something left over. Next, I think, is the emergency fund, because that's really the reserve that's for the unexpected. We all know the unexpected will come, and if we don't have something to fall back on, we either have to pull money out of an account that was not intended for short-term purposes, like a retirement account or some other type of investment account, or we have to use debt to cover those expenses.

And that's really not the opportune situation in either case. So the emergency fund really is critical. Now, where to keep it? I would get it out of the checking account, because it's just too tempting to use that on a monthly basis. So the way I set that up is to say, I'm going to have my checking account, which is where my regular monthly expenses happen. I pay all my fixed and discretionary spending out of the checking account every month based on a plan, a budget. And then the emergency savings that you're building up, ideally with a target of three to six months' worth of expenses, should be in, at least in my recommendation, would be an online savings account.

I like Marcus. I like Capital One 360. I like Ally Bank. Any one of those three will have no fees, and they'll give you both an FDIC-insured account, but also one paying today about a half a percent in interest. That's all good, because it's not going to cost you anything, and you'll make a little money while it sits there. The great part is that you can link that online savings account to your checking account so that your transfer of funds is only a click away in perhaps one to two days of time for that money to transfer at no cost through the ACH system. Why is that important? Well, it makes it accessible, but not too accessible, because it still requires you to plan ahead to get it.

I think, at least in my opinion, that's the ideal scenario where the money's safe, it's secure, it's earning a little bit of interest, but it's still fairly accessible when you need it, because again, the unexpected will come at some point. Does that make sense, though? Yes, please. Thank you so very much. I'm very grateful.

Absolutely. Well, Patricia, we appreciate your call today very much, and you stay on the line. We'll send you a copy of Howard Dayton's book, Your Money Counts. I think it'll be a blessing to you. You obviously are somebody who's interested in handling money God's way, and this is one of the best books out there. So you stay on the line, we'll get your information and get that right to you. On to Chicago, Illinois. Lorraine, how can I help you?

Hi, thank you for taking my call. I have a hard lien on my property. Would it still go to probate court if something happened to me? Yeah, generally speaking, I'm not an attorney, so I would just say kind of general rule of thumb is that a probate can be started with a lien remaining on the property. However, the lien has to be satisfied and removed before probate can be closed. So if there are cash assets in the estate, the executor can petition the court to apply those to satisfy the lien. If that's not possible, the property would likely have to be sold with the lien attached. The lien would then be extinguished when the money's transferred at the close of escrow, but the procedures do vary going back to kind of the legal side of this from state to state.

So I would consult with an attorney for more information, but generally speaking, that's the way that happens. So I hope that provides some clarity to you. We appreciate your call today. To Diane in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Diane, thank you for your call today. How may I assist you? Yes. Hi. Hello. Yes, ma'am. Go right ahead. Oh, just a question. I'm not sure what to do. I sold a house in December and I was planning on reinvesting it here in New Mexico because our property taxes are so low because the real estate market is crazy right now.

You'd be paying so much more. I'm just kind of just having it sit in the bank right now and I don't know. I've never invested. So that's what I'm calling to see. What do I do with the money I got from my house?

Okay. I think the first question we always have to ask when it comes to thinking about how to deploy God's money to seek a return on it is what is the purpose for this money? And that would be my question to you as you think about the proceeds that you have from selling the home. What is your plan moving forward and how quickly might you want to redeploy this in the form of another home purchase or something else? I'm hoping to wait on the home purchase because everything is so, so high. And what I'd like to do with this money in the future is it would be our retirement account.

My husband and I are self-employed and so it's if we work or if we don't, we don't make any money. And so that's something that we like. It was nice having it as a rental for, I don't know, like 30 years.

But the taxes went so high that we decided let's just get the money out and reinvest it in New Mexico, which is the taxes are so much less. But right now it just doesn't seem a good idea. So you believe this money, if you were to invest it, you could have a 10-year time horizon on it? Or is there reason to believe you'd want to use it prior to 10 years?

10 plus. Okay, great. And have you all, you said you're self-employed, have you all set up a retirement plan of any kind? No, we haven't.

We haven't. We don't have any debt, which is a good thing. Well, the only debt we have is our mortgage, but that one's, I think we're at 27,000 and that's it. So do I pay it off with that and then with the rest eventually invest it or I don't know. Well, I like the idea that you all would take these funds that you're not going to redeploy into another piece of property and begin to fund your retirement account. I like a SEP IRA, S-E-P IRA. This is a great option for self-employed individuals. Essentially, this is where you can put in up to 25% of your compensation or $58,000 as a retirement contribution. This is for folks like yourself who are self-employed.

You don't have access to a 401k or 403b at work and it allows you to put away some significant dollars. I think the key for you all is, you know, even if you use this fund, these funds to begin to seed two SEP IRAs or even an individual 401k or a simple IRA, any one of those three, the key would be for you to really prioritize moving forward the ability to add additional funds over time and that's going to require that you limit your lifestyle so that you pull less out of the business and you can divert some of the profits each quarter or certainly each year toward additional retirement contributions. So, I think this could be a good start but the key is to continue to fund that and do what's called dollar cost averaging into additional investments so that when you all reach retirement, you have perhaps a business that has some value that could be sold but also in another asset class, stocks and bonds, a couple of substantial retirement accounts that have been growing over time and the combination of the proceeds of the sale of the business plus the investments, I think could be a real underpinning to your retirement income as a supplement to Social Security. So, what I would recommend you do is you visit with a certified Kingdom Advisor there in Las Cruces, Diane. Ask about the best retirement account for you all to set up. It'll probably either be a SEP, an individual 401k or a simple IRA.

Do some planning and then make a decision as to both how much to put in for this year from these proceeds and how it should be invested and then I would also encourage you to make a plan to fund it with additional resources over time. So, I hope that's helpful to you. I appreciate your call today very much. We're just about out of time but may the Lord bless you. Quickly, to Gabrielle in Illinois. Gabrielle, I just have about a minute left. How can I help you?

Oh, hi. I have some investments in cryptocurrency, $275,000 and I also have a mortgage of $275,000. Should I, would I be wise to take it and pay my mortgage or let it go? Yeah, I'm not a big fan of investments in cryptocurrency. It sounds like perhaps you've done well.

That's great. There's just too much volatility and because of the unregulated nature of the cryptocurrencies, they're prone to volatility. I think that's going to be the case for the foreseeable future which puts it in a really speculative high-risk investment class that I just don't think is prudent. You know, the Bible talks about steady plotting being really properly diversified.

We see that in Ecclesiastes. So, you're not only in a speculative high-risk category of investing but you're also highly concentrated unless you have other assets. So, as to what you should do with it, first is I'd either diversify it into an appropriate stock and bond allocation.

As to whether or not it makes sense to pay off the mortgage, I would just look at what other assets you have and whether this is the right timing and if you hold the line, we'll talk about that off the air. Unfortunately, we're out of time. Folks, that's going to do it for us today. Let me say thank you to my team, Amy, Deb, Gabby, and Jim. Thank you for being here. We're so thankful that you joined us each day on this program.

MoneyWise Live is a partnership between Moody Radio and MoneyWise Media. I hope you'll come back and join us again tomorrow. I'll be here, Lord willing, and we'll look for you then. May the Lord bless you. Bye-bye.