5 Good Money Habits for Teens

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Today's version of MoneyWise Live is prerecorded, so our phone lines are not open. The longer you do something, the more it becomes ingrained as a habit. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Establishing good habits early in life will be a blessing for years to come. Hi, I'm Rob West. It's never too early to establish wise habits for managing money, especially if you're a teenager. Today, I'll give you five of them. By the way, they're great habits to start any time in life.

We have some great calls lined up, but we won't be taking your live calls today because we're prerecorded. This is MoneyWise Live, where faith and finances go hand in hand. Let's start with spending, more specifically staying on top of it. It's always important to know where your money is going, and you can't do that unless you track it. If you haven't done it already, download and start using our new MoneyWise app. It helps you establish a budget based on the envelope system and allows you to monitor all of your transactions.

This is especially helpful if you've started some bad habits like spending too much time at the mall where spending is always a temptation or buying, let's say, designer coffee every day. The MoneyWise app can generate reports that show you where you need to curb your spending to stay on budget. Also, you might consider getting a cashback debit card that will earn money back on every purchase. Just make sure that they're budgeted.

By the way, for the app, you'll find it in your app store as a free download in the Apple App Store or Google Play. All right, our next good money habit for teens is get a budget buddy. That way, you can rein in each other's impulse spending at the mall or anywhere else. Two heads are better than one, and you can challenge each other to stay on budget and look for ways to save money. If you decide to eat lunch out with a friend, maybe you can share an entree. Buy a full-size sub and split it.

Portion sizes at many restaurants are big enough that you will not go hungry until dinner time. All right, good money habit for teens. Number three is A-B-S, and that stands for always be saving. Another way to say it is pay yourself first. When you get money as a birthday or Christmas present or a paycheck from a part-time job, get into the habit of saving a certain percentage of it. If you have a checking account set up, link it to a savings account in an online bank.

Once you deposit the money into checking, transfer a portion to savings. Do that before you spend even a penny and do it consistently, even if it's only a few dollars a week. The important thing is to establish the habit of saving. Now, if you have money coming in consistently from an allowance or part-time work, you can set up automatic transfers from checking to saving. It's a habit you'll never regret.

No one has ever told us they've saved too much money. And while you're establishing the saving habit, do the same thing for giving. Understanding that God owns everything is key. He is your ultimate provider. He directs every penny that comes your way. You want to show your gratitude by faithfully giving a percentage of your income, any increase you have, to his kingdom and start with your local church.

Remember, we often say tithing is just the training wheels of giving, so look for other ways you can glorify God with your giving beyond that. All right, we've sort of lumped saving and giving together, so the fourth good money habit for teens is building a good credit rating. You may want to ask your parents to set up a secured credit card for you. With a secured credit card, you deposit a certain amount into that account, and then you can make small budgeted purchases, pay them off in full, and as you do that, you'll start to establish a good credit history and score. But remember, having a good credit history is a double-edged sword.

It can be a real convenience or it can lead you into debt if you're not careful. So to avoid that, refer back to habit number one, and that is to stay on top of your spending and stay on budget. All right, our fifth and final good habit for teens is to study how to manage money wisely.

I know with all you do for school, you probably think you study enough, but trust me, learning how the financial world works will pay huge dividends. Of course, there's no better way to do that than studying God's Word. The Bible has more than 2,300 verses to the wise use of money and possessions.

As you study Scripture, be on the lookout for them and consider how they apply to your life. The Proverbs and Jesus parables in particular are rich with God's financial principles. But then you should spend some time learning about the nuts and bolts of managing money. Educate yourself about credit scores and debt, always the best ways to save and even longer-term savings that might seem far off, but will become important before you know it. Also, the MoneyWise app has hundreds of great articles about managing money from a godly perspective, so maybe read one every day after you download it. There you have it, five good money habits for teens.

Take them to heart, pass them along to your friends. Hey, we're going to pause for a brief break. We'll be back with much more.

Stay with us. You're listening to a best of broadcast of MoneyWise Live. This program is prerecorded, so we're not available to take your calls today, but you can email us at questions at moneywise.org. We want to apply God's truth, his principles, which are always timeless, always relevant, always transcending any situation you might have, and apply them directly to the questions that you have. What's going on in your financial life today?

Let us know. We'll celebrate that together and see if we can apply some scripture to what you're dealing with in your financial life. Hey, before we get to our first question today, let me remind you we just graduated a whole new team of volunteer MoneyWise coaches. These are men and women that as a part of their ministry want to come alongside you to help you navigate your financial life, teach you some biblical principles as you meet weekly over a series of usually between six to eight weeks. There's no cost for the coaching.

Apart from a small fee, you'll pay for the digital workbook. They'll walk alongside you, help you set up a spending plan, a giving plan, a debt repayment plan, and they'd love to connect with you. Often we will have a 30 or 60 day wait to get connected with a coach, but because we have some newly trained coaches ready to go, there's no wait. So head over to our website, moneywiselive.org. Just click connect with a coach and we'd be delighted to serve you. All right, let's dive in today. First to Rochester, New York.

Marie, what's on your mind today? Hi Rob, I'm calling because my husband and I are selling our house and we're going to take that money, which the realtor anticipates that we're probably going to make about a hundred to 120,000 and then we're going to rent until we can find the perfect house to move into because the market is terrible right now for buying and we want to know what we should do with that money that we're going to walk away with until we put that money into the next house. Do we put it into a savings account, a money market account?

What do we do with that money? Yeah, are you just trying to wait until you see a pullback in the housing market? Do you have kind of a time frame in mind? Well, we don't want to rent for too long, but we don't want to rush and move into the next house. We don't want to pay too much for the next house, but we also don't want to buy the wrong house. So we're hoping six months, you know, we're not going to buy in a populated area so we don't feel we're going to pay too much no matter what. Yes, okay, very good.

Well, I think a couple of thoughts there. Number one is in terms of your specific question as to where to keep that money given the time frame less than five years for sure. Ideally, you're saying around six months, maybe a year. I think the place to go with that is a high-yield savings account.

I would look at one of the online banks with FDIC insurance so it's fully insured, protected by the full faith and credit of the United States government up to $250,000. You said you'd have about $120,000. You'll get today about a half a percent, maybe 0.6%. Not a whole lot, but again, the whole idea here is to not take a risk with this money. You want to protect it. It's about the return of your capital, not the return on your capital with this specific amount of money because you're looking to redeploy it here in a very short period of time.

With regard to how to approach this, I don't think you're taking a bad approach here, Marie. I would just recognize number one, rent prices are pretty high right now too. Yes, it's a seller's market because there is far fewer homes in terms of inventory nationwide than there are buyers. That coupled with low interest rates and an economy that's chugging along pretty good as the economy reopens from the pandemic has created a real unusual situation. I was just talking to someone in my office today who listed her home, 18 full price offers in 24 hours.

That's a strong market. Keep in mind, Marie, you're going to get top dollar when you sell, which should offset to some degree what you're going to be paying when you go back in. In a depressed market when you're selling, you might get not as much money below market and then you buy at a discount. It offsets itself and I just would caution you when it comes to buying a home, as long as you do your homework and you're buying the right house that fits your budget, trying to wait that out and time this is in some cases a losing proposition.

For instance, think about it this way. Let's say that for the next couple of years, the housing market continues to rise. You're frustrated paying higher than market rental rates, only to say fine, we're going to go ahead and buy that house now.

And then the market turns down because we hit a recession and hit a recession a couple of years down the road. I mean, it's very difficult to try to time the entry, especially with something like your home where the non-financial side, the location, the timing, not to mention the fact this is where you live is equally as important as the financial side. So I might consider maybe moving a little quicker once you find the right house that again fits well within the budget, you're going to have plenty of money to put down, you'll be in a real strong position to hopefully make a purchase where you don't have a lot of contingencies, certainly you won't be counting on a home sale, which would be good in the seller's eyes in terms of them not thinking you might go away if your home doesn't sell. You won't have to sell a home, that's a good thing.

So take your time and find the right house, but I wouldn't try to necessarily time the market in terms of your next entry point just because of the reasons that I mentioned. Does all that make sense though? Yes. Okay. Thank you so much. You're welcome, and let me just give you three options on those online savings accounts.

I'd look at either Marcus, Capital One 360, or Ally Bank, all great customer service, no fees, and you'll get higher than industry averages on those high-yield savings accounts, and we appreciate your call today. Let's head to Indiana WGNR. Gary, thanks for tuning in today. What's on your mind, sir? Hi, great program, longtime listener, first caller, first son caller. I am, well, we'll just say I'm retired, and I have enough income to live off of, plus an extra, oh, $35,000 or so a year.

Okay. I've got seven rental properties plus social security and a small pension that comes in. I kind of outsmarted myself, pulled $130,000 out of the market because I thought trade wars were on the horizon and it was going to crash. It didn't happen, and I'm sitting there with that money in cash. It's in a self-directed IRA, and I don't know if I should just jump all the way in, if I should kind of dollar cost average and just buy a little bit of the time over time, but just kind of looking for some help on strategy since I've already outsmarted myself once.

Well, I think the best thing you can do, and you're not alone in this, we've all been here, is learn from it, right? I think anytime we try to time the market as opposed to taking a well-thought-out long-term diversified approach, usually that's a losing proposition, even if we have some short-term wins along the way and think that maybe we're smarter than the average bear, and we are constantly reminded over the long haul that, no, we need to just stick to tried and true principles of investing in every other financial decision. But nevertheless, you know, here you are asking the right question, and that is how do I wisely move back into the market with money that's genuinely a surplus because, as you said, your income's covered, you've got this extra $35,000 a year that obviously you're either giving or continuing to put away as to add to your investable assets. I think a prudent approach here, Gary, would be to, in fact, what you said, dollar cost average back into the market. The thing you're going to want to decide on the front end, though, is how much do you want at the risk of the stock market? Because even though you have a surplus, do you want to be in a position where, let's say, if you were 100% in stocks, we were to hit a real bump in the road, not just kind of a blip like we had in the stock market last year with the pandemic, but we were to get into a cyclical recession where this economy rolled over and inflation crept up and the market was down for an extended period of time.

When I say that, I mean maybe a couple of years. Would you be comfortable if your account value lost 35%? If you got a statement and that 125 was 80, would that really give you some pause?

Or would you be able to emotionally just kind of say, well, I'm going to wait it out and let it come back? If that causes you some concern, I think that should be the first signal that maybe you shouldn't be fully invested in stocks. You probably need a mix of stocks and bonds. Sounds like you have other asset classes covered, which is part of your diversification through those rental properties with real estate.

That's a good thing. But I would just want to make sure you kind of take an honest assessment of your risk tolerance before you do this. Now, once you decide on that allocation, whether you're doing it yourself or you're using an investment professional to actually select the investments, then I think beginning over let's say the next six months or even a year to systematically put that money back into the market is probably the best approach. I would make sure you're really diversified. I certainly wouldn't be concentrated in what have for the last few years at least been the high flyers, some concentrated positions in tech and things that have done very, very well. I would have a much broader portfolio. That's probably where the gains in the market are going to be over the next year or two.

And I wouldn't expect returns that we've seen over the last 24 months either. Does that all make sense? Yes.

Yes, it does. I appreciate it. And you kind of confirmed already what I thought I should do, but wanted to have the voice of reason on my side. So I appreciate it.

Absolutely. Well, we appreciate you listening and calling today for the first time. And may the Lord bless you as you seek to be found faithful in managing his money wisely and honoring him in the process. We're so glad you're along with us today for MoneyWise Live.

This is where we take God's timeless wisdom and principles from his word and apply them to the decisions we're making each and every day with his money. More to come right around the corner. We're going to deal with a whole host of issues. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Welcome back to MoneyWise Live. I'm Rob West.

This is where God's word intersects with your financial life. So glad to have you along with us today. Hey, our team is taking some time off today. This program is prerecorded, so don't call in today. Wait till we're live in the studio. But we do have some great calls all lined up ready for you today.

I'm sure you'll enjoy them. You know, it seems like there's an unending number of ways to allocate God's resources. The good news is we can boil them down into really five uses of 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 grow, which is the savings that we have.

And God's word speaks to every one of those. And if we live well within our means and we avoid the use of debt and we give generously and we set long-term goals and we have some margin or savings in our lives, you know what? We can put ourselves in the best position possible to experience God's best in this area. Now, does that mean we'll always have more than we need?

No, we'll go through difficult seasons, but at least we've done our part and we can leave the rest to the Lord, placing our trust not in our things, not in our bank account, but in Him as our provider and sustainer. And that's really the core of what we want to understand as we tackle each of these questions and issues related to managing God's money wisely. Let's go back to the phones. Akron, Ohio will be talking about secured credit cards with Gina. And is that your question today?

Yes, sir. I actually want to know about, you had said something about giving it to our children. And I'm having problems getting a secured card myself or maybe just a credit card in general. So what secured cards would you recommend? And how much would you recommend to go into that account? Yeah, well, the key with a secured card is, you know, the purpose you're getting that is generally for the purpose of building credit. And so the limit is not as important as just finding a secured credit card that you can get.

I would start with your local bank and make sure that that's going to be reported to the three bureaus every month. Typically, you would be putting down around two or three hundred dollars where, you know, that's the amount on deposit, that's the limit you have. But, you know, if you would just set up an automatic recurring charge for a budgeted item, it could be something, you know, a subscription for, you know, $6.99 a month, $6.99.

I mean, it could be very small. The idea is that you want to establish yourself as an on-time payer month after month. Bankrate.com is a great resource. They actually list the secured MasterCard from Capital One, the OpenSky Secured Visa and the Discover It Secured card as among the best today. They have around a fifty dollar minimum deposit.

Again, Bankrate.com and you'll find one from Capital One, OpenSky and Discover all offering secured credit cards with pretty low minimums. And again, the idea here is that you're just trying to re-establish yourself, showing yourself as an on-time payer so you can build that credit score, which as you probably know, Gina, is being used today for a lot more than even just whether or not to extend you credit for job applications, insurance premiums, a whole host of issues. Does that make sense, though? Does that answer your question? Appreciate it. Okay, thank you for your call today. We appreciate it.

Let's head south to Stuart, Florida. Rob, how can we help you today? Hi, thanks for the opportunity. I appreciate your blessings.

Ten second history. A couple of years ago, I went through a bout with cancer, lost my house, started re-establishing, beat the cancer by the grace of God, started re-establishing income. I'm 61 years old. Re-established income along comes the pandemic and lost 84% of my income. Now, coming back, you know, I'm starting to see light at the end of the tunnel with the pandemic.

Barely making enough money to live on. I've prayed hard to find, you know, how do I hide properly? Do I include business? Do I include all? Do I, you know, I've made a decision that all is to be tied. So in doing that, now I'm trying to live on what's left after I give my call.

Yeah, I get it. Well, let's do this. I want you to hold the line. We're going to take a quick break and we come back. I'll give you my thoughts. Thank you for your call today. We'll unpack this right around the corner. Stay with us.

Welcome back to MoneyWise Live. Hey, I'd love to encourage you to check out our friends at the National Christian Foundation. You'll find them at ncfgiving.com. They have offices all over the country and they will help you give wisely. First of all, they'll help you develop a giving strategy, unpack what God is doing in your life and help you come up with a plan to give. They can also help you with the where of giving and the how. Incredible tools available at your disposal, not only donor advised funds, but also how you give non-cash assets, giving from a business or appreciated stock, real estate, artwork, whatever it is that the Lord is entrusted to you. If you want to be generous with it, giving it to Christian ministries or your church, the team at NCF would love to walk alongside you.

Again, ncfgiving.com is the place to go. Let's go back to the phones. Rob, just before the break you were describing this journey you've been on. You've been through some difficult times financially, much of that brought on by the pandemic. You're a 1099 contractor. You have some income coming in and you've really decided at this point that you want to honor the Lord in giving with all that he provides, all of your increases.

All of your increase. And I guess you're wondering how best to do that even though you have limited resources. Is that really the heart of the question?

It really is. In the past I've struggled. I've said, you know, business is business. I got to pay the business expenses and I got to take care of business. And then whatever I kept, I considered my wage and I would tithe from that. But I made a biblical decision and that is my life doesn't separate.

I don't get to separate it. In other words, I want the Lord to bless my business as well as my life. So I'm tithing, you know, the full tithe. And as we're coming out of this pandemic, like I said last year, 83% income loss.

But now I struggle because you're playing catch up. And in playing catch up, I bring my tithe to the store and live on what's left. And many, many times it's just, I'm facing a power, power is going to be shut off here in a week, you know, if it's not paid. And these day-to-day decisions and I just want to know, you know, what's the right way to approach this?

Yes. Well, Rob, first of all, let me just say I really appreciate the heart behind the question you're asking. Clearly, you want to honor the Lord with everything he entrusts to you.

Here's a couple of thoughts. Number one is, you know, when we apply the principle of the tithe, it's based on our increase. It's a tenth based on the increase from God's provision. And I would really lump anything that comes your way as an increase as a part of that. Now, when it comes to being a business owner, we recognize not all of what comes into a business is part of your increase.

You are the steward. There are no Christian businesses. There are believers, people that have placed their trust in Jesus that operate businesses. Now, as a business owner, you may decide you want to give out of the business, but let's set that aside for a second. For you, Rob, to be able to give a tithe, and you can certainly give far beyond that. You can't outgive God. And I like to say the tithe is the training wheels of giving. It's the beginning point.

So we'll get to sacrificial giving in a moment. But to apply the principle of the tithe to what God has entrusted to you personally, we have to ask the question, what is your increase? And your increase is what is paid to you out of the business after the business covers its expenses. Because if in some businesses, if a tithe was given on the gross receipts, the business wouldn't stay in business. I mean, think about a grocery store. I mean, they're living on a very small margin of, you know, what's paid into them because they have to pay for the cost of all the food and the products on the shelves. And so that's not, the gross receipts are not the true increase of that particular business. So in your case, you've got to pay for the, you know, if you have an office space, or you've got truck that you got to put gas in, or you've got equipment, or, you know, you've got insurance, you've got marketing expenses.

I mean, all of that is what makes the business run. And then hopefully you're paying yourself a salary. There may be even some distributions that are paid to you out of profits.

All of that is your increase. And then if you were to give a tithe on that, you'd say, okay, Lord, of this increase that has actually come to me out of the business after the business pays its expenses, now I'm going to give back. And then you may say, Lord, I don't want to stop there. I want to give sacrificially beyond that. I want to give, you know, based on, you know, 20%, or 30%, or whatever that number is, and that's between you and the Lord. And I think you need to apply his principles from his word to the whole of your financial life as you make this decision. Now, you may also decide that you want to give out of the business, and that's between you and the Lord. But I think, you know, perhaps that's the starting point is to say, I want to run this business well, I want to grow it. And as Lord, I'm blessed personally with the resources from this business that are paid to me.

I want to be sure to honor you first before I spend a dime on anything else. And I think you would do that out of what's paid to you from the business, not the gross receipts. Does that make sense, though?

It does. And that's the approach that I took in the past. And I have to say, because of the nature of my business, and it is so commingled, it was very difficult to follow.

Yeah. Well, I think the key there, though, and this is often where, you know, small business owners get tripped up, is you really need to have a clear line between you and the business for tax purposes, to be able to deduct certain things, to be able to just keep clarity on what's actually going on in the business. You need separate books, you need separate ledgers, because as soon as everything just becomes one, it becomes very difficult for you to manage, number one. And from a tax standpoint, it becomes very challenging. So I'd encourage you, even if it requires you to spend a little bit of money, to get some help separating your personal finances from the business, keeping two sets of books, and then you can always decide to give as much as the Lord leads you to give. I'm not saying you should cap that.

In fact, R.G. Letourneau was well known for doing what he called the reverse tithe, where he gave 90 and lived on 10%. Nothing wrong with that. We want to live by faith, and if that's what the Lord leads you to do, that's great. But that's not the starting point. I think the starting point is to get things separated, make sure you have clear lines of delineation, start with a tithe on what comes into you personally, and then you can always go up from there.

But I think it honors the Lord when you live well by his principles, managing both the business wisely and your personal finances wisely, but I would say doing them separately and not commingled. So you pray about that. If you have other questions along the way, give us a call back.

Quickly to Cleveland, Ohio. Rachel, you're next on the program. Go ahead.

You can always come back and do that. Hi, Rachel, are you with us? Yes, I'm here. Okay, we've got just a few seconds left. Let's do this, actually. You hold on the line.

You'll be the first caller after the break. We've just got about a minute left, and I don't want to shortchange you in terms of you being able to tell us what God's doing in your life. Hey, folks, we've already dealt with a whole host of issues. We've talked about retirement and secured credit cards, and we've talked about teens.

We've also talked about giving, and I love it. We're applying God's truth to every financial decision that you have. We've actually got a couple of lines open, so if you still have a call, we'd love to hear from you.

800-525-7000. Hey, by the way, we started today talking about how you can encourage your teens to manage God's money wisely from the very earliest of ages, and we asked this question on our Facebook page. What financial habit would you recommend for your teens? We got some great responses. Go check it out at Facebook.com slash MoneyWiseLive.

You'll see what a whole host of MoneyWise listeners said regarding what they would pass on to their teens. Hey, thanks for being along with us today on MoneyWiseLive, where God's Word intersects with your financial life. We're going to pause, but we'll be right back. Stay with us. So glad you're along with us today on MoneyWiseLive.

Let's go right back to our phones. Rachel, thank you for your patience. I appreciate your calling from Cleveland today. What's on your mind?

Yes, hi. Thank you for taking my call. My question is my husband passed away, and he had some money that he left me through a financial company, retirement money, and the way he set it up, and I didn't realize it, is that I get a certain amount each month, and I wanted to find out if there's a way that I could go back and ask for all of that money, or as the annuitant, do I have to just take it the way he set it up? Now that I'm the beneficiary, I wanted to see if I could change that. Is that money in a trust, Rachel, of some kind, or was it just set up this way through the insurance company? It was set up this way through the insurance company. Okay, so it's an annuity, is that right, a retirement annuity? Yes.

Okay. Well, you know, typically with a retirement account as a spouse, you know, when you inherit, let's say, a 403b or, you know, some sort of retirement account, you could roll it into an IRA, and then once you get it into an IRA, you generally have three primary choices. You can cash it in, you'd pay income tax on the amount withdrawn, but no penalty taxes will apply regardless of your age as a spouse inheriting an IRA. You can treat the IRA as your own, you'd name yourself as the account owner, and then, you know, you would be then bound by the requirements from the IRS in terms of required minimum distributions and so forth.

You can also treat yourself as the beneficiary, and you don't need to start taking any post-death RMDs in the year after the death, but you can wait until the original decedent, in this case your husband, would have reached age 70 and a half. In any of those cases, though, that would be where it's in an IRA and the money is available to you. I think in this case, what you're describing is the insurance product that this money is in, and that this money is being paid out as an annuity. And so I would go back to the insurance company, whoever is the, you know, account owner, or you're the account owner, but the custodian of these funds, and ask them what options you have as a spouse that's inherited this particular account to see if you can take a lump sum distribution. There would be nothing preventing you from the IRS's standpoint. The question is just in the fine print of the the type of product that your husband had, was this already converted to an annuity prior to his death, and therefore it has to continue to be paid out that way, or based on his passing and you inheriting this account, is that a triggering event that allows you to take out a lump sum? That's really going to come down to the provisions of that particular account that he set up and, you know, what that reads.

So I would give them a call if you haven't already, tell them your desire is to take this money out in full, or at least accelerate it and see what options are there, and they'll be able to look it up and tell you pretty quickly. Does that make sense though, Rachel? Yes, perfect sense. Thank you so much. Okay, I'm so sorry to hear about your husband's passing and we do appreciate your call today. I'm sure that you'll get the information you need. We hope that works out for you. Let's head to Dallas, Texas. Vivian, you're next on the program. Go right ahead. Hi, how are you? Very well, thanks.

Good. In February, I suddenly lost my daughter to stage four cancer, unexpected. We were told in January, and she passed away this past February, leaving behind two young children, a four-year-old and a five-year-old. I just received an email that the policy on her job, I was the beneficiary of it, and so I really am just not sure what to do with this money that I will be receiving when I file the death claim. There are some things that I would like to, you know, have to do, but with this four and five-year-old, how and what type of funds would be best for my granddaughters?

Yes. Well, Vivian, I'm so sorry to hear about this. Are you going to be a guardian and a caretaker of your grandchildren moving forward? I'm not, and so their father just found out that he will be getting Social Security for them every month, which we sat down with that, and they'll be getting quite a bit that we decided to put into a fund. Not all of it will go into a fund that will help him with expenses, but bulk of that, every month, we're going to be putting aside for them from that, that they'll receive until they're 18. Okay, all right. And in terms of the life insurance proceeds from her job, you were the beneficiary, but you want to hear from her.

Her job, you were the beneficiary, but you want to earmark these funds you're receiving for the benefit of the grandchildren. Is that right? Some of them, yes. And if I chose, chose to put some of that for them, I don't know if they needed a car when they turned 18. I just, I'm not sure.

Sure. I am, I'm, you know, I'm going to hopefully be retiring in about 10 years. And so I want to be able to retire to be able to help them. You know, but I'm just not sure what to do if I decide to put some money away for them.

Yeah. Well, you know, the best thing to do to keep your options open would be to put it in a separate, probably taxable account that you've earmarked for them. So it's not commingled with other funds, you've got it specifically carved out for this purpose. And then down the road, you'd have the ability to make that decision. If sooner rather than later, they needed some assistance, you needed to help their dad with certain expenses, or as you said, down the road, you wanted to use this money to help with college or a first car or something like that, you'd have that ability.

So you just create either an individual account or a joint account if you're married with your husband, but specifically for that purpose, so that you would know that this money has been earmarked, at least a portion of it for their use. And then depending on the time horizon on that would really dictate the investment strategy. So if that's money you want to be available in less than five years, I'd be real conservative with that you could choose, you know, maybe a bond type portfolio with some high yield savings. And once interest rates move back up, maybe some CDs. So this money is largely intact, but you'd earn a little bit more than you might earn in a high yield savings account. Or if you think this is money that, you know, is for 10 years down the road, then you could certainly invest it with at least a portion of it of the risk of the stock market with the idea that you'd want to grow it over time, so that when they needed it 10 or 12 or 15 years down the road, you'd have, you know, a good bit more than you have today. So I think those are the decisions you need to make. First of all, how much do you want to set aside? Second, open the account that you're going to put that in not a custodian account where it becomes automatically theirs to do what they want with at the age of majority, but an account in your name or joint you and your husband. And then depending on the time horizon, pick the investment strategy.

I'd probably look at Charles Schwab as an option or Vanguard, you know, one of those high quality investment firm that could serve as custodian with low costs and a lot of great investments to choose from. Does that all make sense to you, Vivian? Four and five, right.

They're only four and five years old. So you potentially have a good bit of time here. Yes.

So I think that makes sense. I move forward from here. So delighted that you've stepped in to help their dad.

And I know this is a difficult season. We're going to be praying that the Lord will be near to you, give you a lot of wisdom here and that he'll be with those little ones in the days ahead. And we appreciate you thinking of us and calling today so much. God bless you. Let's head to Kansas. Lee, you're next on the program. What's on your mind today? Hey, I was gonna, I received a small business loan for the two and a half months for the pandemic.

Oh, I don't forget what the technical term is. PPP loan or PPP. That's forgivable after two and a half months. And I was, I haven't spent any of it yet.

I got about three weeks to go, but I was considering paying, easing that to pay down my mortgage. It's going to be about three percent of my mortgage on property that is needed for the business. It is, it's a farm, so it's farm real estate.

Yes. Well, you've got to be able to document the use of that. And PPP funds can be used for four purposes. Payroll, mortgage interest, rent and lease and utilities. So I would be real careful to use those for the purpose in which they were intended. There's a lot of great information out there on the web as to documentation articles that have been written about this. You're going to want to check that and I'd go and connect with your tax preparer as well, just to make sure that you talk through all of these issues. But again, those four purposes for that payroll protection program for small businesses was payroll, mortgage interest, rent and lease and utilities. And you're going to need to document that as you file for your forgiveness.

So I'd just be real carefully to use that as it was intended. We appreciate your call very much today. I'm really thankful for each of your calls today. We covered a lot of ground. We started today talking about kids and money and how you can encourage them. Remember, when it comes to kids and money, modeling God's financial principles is so, so key.

You know, more is caught than taught. And, you know, I have talked to in my counseling, hundreds and hundreds of families and the primary driver of where most people manage money is how money was handled when they were growing up. And so don't say that to discourage you, but just to maybe encourage you to say, you know what, from this point forward, I want to think about how I'm handling God's money and am I doing it in such a way that it's encouraging my kids to follow God's financial principles. So when they leave home, they understand that God owns it all and that we should be hard workers and we were created to be workers before the fall and that we have limited resources. So we need to budget God's money wisely and we should give generously.

It all starts there. Hey, thanks for being along with us today. MoneyWise Live is a partnership between Moody Radio and MoneyWise Media. I want to say thank you to Amy Rios, Deb Solomon, Jim Henry and the team here at MoneyWise Live. We're going to be back tomorrow with much more. So I hope you'll join us right here on MoneyWise Live. May the Lord bless you. Thanks for being along with us today.