Putting Principles into Practice

Uncle Ryan is going to talk about how hot, hot, hot cash out refinances are. That sounds fun.

I sound like a broken record. I've been doing this for 18 years. I have never seen a market like this in my life. Home values have generally been skyrocketing the last couple of years.

And with interest rates being some low, I've actually seen refinances where people are able to cash out that newly found equity in their homes, do home improvements, whatever it may be, and still save money per month compared to what their prior mortgage payment was. So it's worth a shot just to give us a phone call. And one thing I can promise at United Faith Mortgage is we will not be pushy.

It's one of my biggest pet peeves. I can promise you we will not be that way. I like to see it as my job is to present you with a few different options.

I step back, I let you decide, and I'll let you call me when you want to move forward. We are United Faith Mortgage. In Luke 16 11, Jesus says, If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust you the true riches?

Hi, I'm Rob West. Faith-based investing continues to grow rapidly as Christians acquire new tools to put their money where their values are, in ways that glorify God. I'll talk about that first today with Robert Netsley of Inspire Investing. Then it's on to your calls at 800-525-7000.

That's 800-525-7000. This is MoneyWise Live, biblical wisdom for your financial decisions. Well, my good friend Robert Netsley is our guest today. Robert's the CEO of Inspire Investing and underwriter of MoneyWise.

They're in the forefront of the exciting faith-based investing movement. And Robert, great to have you with us again. It is always good to be here with you, Rob.

Thanks for having me. Robert, we get calls all the time from folks who want to align their investing with their biblical values. They're just not sure how to do it. They may not be familiar with the screening tools that you all there at Inspire have had in place for a long time. So why don't you tell us for a moment just about Inspire Insight?

Sure, I'd love to. Yeah, inspireinsight.com. It's a free tool we've put together just out of many years of talking to Christian investors who just want to know what they're invested in, right, from a biblical values perspective, and have no way of finding out. So put simply, you go to inspireinsight.com, and you can instantly screen your stocks, mutual funds, ETFs, and see all the good, the bad, and the ugly, what's going on inside of those companies, how they're making money. Are they selling pornography?

Are they manufacturing abortion drugs? What are they doing to turn a profit? And all very simple with a click of a mouse. So that's Inspire Insight, and really allows you to get into the granular details of the values-based issues that may be in your investment portfolio. Yeah, this is giving investors access to information, frankly, that they haven't had access to before in one place. Again, inspireinsight.com. Robert, I'd love for you to talk about what has gone into bringing all this data in. And then I know you've recently taken a step further, adding even more screening data. So perhaps you can bring us up to speed on that as well.

Sure. Well, millions of dollars we've put into it. It's just a passion of ours to help God's people invest God's money for God's glory and their joy. And so there's a lot of technology behind this. We screen every publicly traded instrument, whether it's a company or ETF, et cetera, that's on a major global exchange. And it's all updated daily, if you can believe that. So millions of data points. We leverage artificial intelligence technology with our Silicon Valley roots. And every day, all these data points are being scrubbed through this technology. Again, good data, bad data.

It's all going into the machine. And then we have a rules-based algorithm that helps parse that information and produces a simple to understand score. Our Inspire Impact score goes from negative 100 to positive 100. And anything above zero would be more aligned with physical values.

Anything below zero has some issues that you would probably want to be aware of. And like I mentioned, you can dig into the different categories of those good issues, things like good environmental stewardship or good supply chain or corporate governance, as well as the problematic issues such as bioethics, et cetera. So there's a lot of moving parts behind the scenes, that phenomenal team that keeps it running. And it's really inspiring to get these messages from investors all over the world, really, who are finding this tool helpful. And for the first time, being able to really get insight into their portfolios from a biblical values perspective and be informed to make decisions for God's glory and how they're investing his money. And I know you've recently added some new screening data and categories.

Tell us about that. Yeah. So we're always trying to keep up with really the cutting edge of a rapidly developing market in these kind of environmental, social and governance investing categories. And so we have aligned all of our data with, and we get a little technical on these 26 materiality categories of the Sustainable Accounting Standards Board, SASB. There's these 26 categories of issues that have become kind of the standard that we look at in the investment industry. And so we're aligning the data in Inspire Insight.

With that, we've also added data regarding the cannabis industry, which I think were the first screening tool to do so and fading with new data all the time. Very good. Well, it's inspireinsight.com. Robert Netzle joining us today. More to come on the exciting developments related to faith-based investing right around the corner. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

Welcome back. Do you want your biblical values aligned with your investments? Well, the exciting news is the whole faith-based investing movement allows you to do just that. And right on the forefront of this movement is Inspire Investing. And joining us today is the CEO of Inspire Investing, my good friend, Robert Netzle. Robert, just before the break, you were talking about this exciting tool that you make available free to allow investors to see kind of behind the curtain, if you will, what's going on in the companies that they're investing in, whether they're stocks, mutual funds or exchange traded funds. And it can all be found at inspireinsight.com.

Of course, Robert, all of this is just a great idea and nothing happens unless people start using these tools. So tell us what trends you're seeing in the faith-based investing space and whether or not you're encouraged by them. Yeah, it really is fascinating to see the trends as we've been running this program for a number of years, keeping track of what companies are involved in, what problematic issues and what those trends are. And so we just are putting the finishing touches on our annual screening update for the categories of LGBT activism and abortion, two of the primary categories of interest to a lot of our investors.

These are hot buttons in society, of course. And there's a lot going on in the corporate world relative to those issues. And so when we compile this data, a couple of highlights, we're going to put out a paper that goes really in depth on these trends. And also, if you want to get a copy of that paper, you can sign up for free for an account at inspireinsight.com and then you'll be updated and notified when this data comes out.

So if you want to stay up to date, that would be a great way to do that. But there's a couple of trends. So on the LGBT front, we noticed that there are actually a decline, if you can believe that, decline in corporate philanthropy in the LGBT activism arena. So less companies donating money to kind of activist causes. And at the same time, there are slightly more companies that are involved in LGBT promotion campaigns, such as maybe they're creating rainbow themed products or something that go out on a gay pride month celebration.

And also legislation. There's a rise in the legislation support from companies. But the marked difference is that we see the companies who are involved in these items are doing more each year. So there's not that many more companies being involved. But the companies that are involved are doing instead of one or two items, they're involved in three or four items. So it turns the volume up a little bit on those issues. And so that's what we're digging in with our shareholder engagement campaign that is coming on the heels of this new data set.

Well, let's talk about that. Because as you said, screening tools allow you to weed out companies that aren't honoring God with their policies or products. But this more active approach that Christians can take that you're calling corporate engagement is a pretty exciting aspect of faith based investing.

So we're going to talk about this campaign. But first, give us your definition of corporate engagement. Corporate engagement can take a number of shapes.

Basically, it's an investor reaching out to a business and expressing their viewpoints on a certain topic. So in our case, how we do that is we reach out to investor relations departments. And let's say that there's a company that sponsored a gay pride parade, let's say.

And we want to just express how that doesn't really line up with our values. And as shareholders, that's concerning to us. We'd rather the company just kind of do their business or stop donating money to Planned Parenthood or what have you.

And that's engagement. The company might not listen to you, but oftentimes they do. And it can even go a step further and you can file an actual shareholder resolution, which we've done recently. You've been part of a resolution coalition, so to speak, with Amazon and with some positive results there, as well as some others previously. So it can be everything from just a simple phone call to investor relations or filing an official resolution and showing up at a shareholder meeting and talking to the board. Chris Smith That's great. And now you're launching an exciting new corporate engagement campaign this year. So I'd love to hear more about that as well.

David Bonilla Absolutely. So every year, when we kind of finish compiling our annual data and looking at these trends, we don't just want to look at the data and then walk away. We don't be that guy who looks in the mirror and then walks away without fixing his hair. So we want to see, okay, how can we use this data to glorify God? How can we be salt and light as investors, both big and small, and really engage with the culture around us and do we can to shine a light of Christ? And so this year, what we've noticed is there are 113 companies that are what we would call first-time offenders, first-time violators. So they had previously had no negative issues. They had positive impact scores.

But for one reason or the other, this past year, 113 of them have slipped up in one way or the other. And so we really want to pay attention to these companies because we want to nip it in the bud, right? Reach out, let them know that there are investors who care about biblical values and are watching these kind of issues and encourage them to kind of turn back before it's too late, I guess, if you want to call it that. In that group, we noticed that 46 of these first offenders signed on to the HRC Business Coalition to support the Equality Act. There's a big push right now to pass this Equality Act.

It's kind of a misleadingly named act in our opinion. And a lot of businesses are being convinced to sign on to this business coalition saying they support it. And so what we're doing is we're going to be reaching out to these companies and really educating them on the really grievous problems the Equality Act has for religious freedoms and other things like women's sports and all sorts of issues that come up with this act. And what we find is that these companies, you know, they want to support equality. They want to be, you know, seen as supporting their employees, their LGBT employees and others, which is wonderful. I mean, every employee should be supported and cared for by their employer. However, what they don't realize is this act also strips away religious freedoms from their religious employees.

And any employee that has a daughter in women's sports, you know, is going to have issues. So we're educating on that issue and looking to just have them see it in a different light. And God willing, we'll get some get some change. Robert, this is great work.

We have just about a minute left. What are the goals specifically for this campaign? And how can folks get involved?

Well, the goal is simple. We want to just inspire transformation for God's glory, right help these companies to have a fuller respect for the views and freedoms of their religious employees and customers, etc. And so we're going to reach out handsomely and prayerfully and hopefully get some of these corporations to change their ways.

You know, we're looking to, again, educate these companies on what the equality app would really do if it came into effect as it is today. Now, how do you get involved is you go to inspire insight.com, sign up for a free account. And we're going to be launching soon, shareholder engagement campaign feature where you can vote, you can get involved in the campaigns that we're running. We can also, you can start your own campaign, kind of like a Kickstarter, so to speak, really easy. Fire up a page, put in some issues and inspire insight does all the hard work for you.

You can share it on social media. And we're really excited about that. But more to come, you know, in the coming weeks and months on that feature. Very good. We'll be sure to update folks again, inspire insight.com.

And it's all free. Robert, thanks for joining us today and challenging us to put our money where our values are. Always a pleasure, Rob.

Thanks. Robert Netzle, CEO of Inspire Investing has been our guest today. You can get more information at inspireinvesting.com. Your calls are next, 800-525-7000. I'm Rob West and this is MoneyWise Live, biblical wisdom for your financial decisions.

We'll be right back. Delighted to have you along with MoneyWise Live today. I'm Rob West, your host, taking your calls and questions on anything financial.

We'd love to hear from you. We've got some lines open as we apply biblical wisdom to your financial decisions and questions. Here's the number, 800-525-7000.

That's 800-525-7000. We began today by talking with Robert Netzle about faith-based investing, an exciting and growing space in the investment landscape. If you want to align your values with your investments, whether that's with individual stock purchases or mutual funds, there's a great opportunity with a growing number of investment fund families and exchange-traded funds where you can have your values expressed, either by avoiding certain companies that may not align with your Christian values, perhaps embracing others that are making a positive impact in the world, even a kingdom impact, and engaging as a shareholder to express your values to company leadership. It's all a part of an exciting and developing space in investing called faith-based investing. And if you want to know more, we've got some wonderful articles by some of the leaders in this space on our website. Just head to MoneyWiseLive.org. That's MoneyWiseLive.org. Go to the Learn tab, and you can look at all the great content there on faith-based investing, again, from some of the pioneers and most respected names in this investing segment.

So more to come on this in the days ahead. We'll continue to do interviews, and I couldn't be more excited about where this industry is headed as Christians are able to reflect their values, their Christian beliefs, not only in the planning side of financial decision-making, but in the actual investments as well. All right, let's get to your calls today. Here's the number again, 800-525-7000. We're going to begin in Aurora, Illinois, WMBI. Joanne, thank you for calling.

How can I help? Hi, my question is in regard to tithing. So when you're tithing, is that a portion that goes to the church and anything over and beyond would go?

Because let's say for Moody, I give X amount to Moody every month, and then I've upped it this past year, but then I'm looking at some of the programs I listen to, thinking I should be breaking that up and giving that to programs. And the other thing is I've heard some friends say that when there's someone in need, that they take money from what they tie to the church, and they give portions to people that are in need. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's a great question.

Okay, yeah. Well, I appreciate that, Joanne. And you know, we're no longer under the law of Moses, we're under grace, the law of Christ, you might say, as we've seen what Jesus did for us on the cross. And when Christ came, I would say he raised the bar. So, you know, we don't necessarily have to give a tithe, but I love using that as a starting point. You know, if that was the minimum standard for the Old Testament believers, perhaps we should do that plus.

And so what I would say is God's plan A is the local church. What would be most equivalent to storehouse giving that we see in the Old Testament would be that home church where you're planted, they would give to the temple. In fact, they would give more than one tithe. So if we start with a tenth, which is what the word tithe means, of our increase, that's our provision from the Lord from any source, I would say, yeah, let's use that as a beginning point for our giving, build that right into your plan so you're giving proportionately and systematically.

And I would, this is my conviction, start with the local church for that. Then we want to give free will offerings beyond that. I would say we should be looking to increase our giving over time and even think about what it means to give sacrificially. We certainly see that modeled in Scripture. So I would take any gifts to others in need or ministries like you're describing and make that a part of my free will giving beyond the tithe.

But at the end of the day, you want to give not out of compulsion, clearly we see that in the New Testament, you want to give cheerfully. And ultimately, I think it's between you and the Lord to say, Lord, a hundred percent of what you've entrusted to me is yours. Now, how much should I live on?

What should my lifestyle be? And how much should I return to you? And as we've said many times, the author Randy Alcorn calls the tithe the training wheels of giving.

We were talking about that just this week with Howard Dayton. So what if we start there? Now, if you're not able to begin there, and I'm talking generally, not specifically to you, Joanne, but for someone who says, I've not been a giver and I can't begin with a 10 percent tithe, I just, my finances aren't ordered that way. Well, I would say start somewhere and begin to give systematically, build it right into your plan. And yes, start with your local church and then purpose yourself over time to increase that, perhaps a percent at a time until you reach a full tithe, and then look to give beyond that. And here's the real opportunity for you. As you give, not only will you experience the joy that comes from being connected to God's activity through his resources, but I believe that you'll experience more intimacy with the Father and it has a tendency as we give to break the grip of money over our lives. If money has any sort of control over us and the things that money can buy, holding it loosely and giving generously has a real way of connecting our hearts to the Father. So I'm not going to give you kind of a, here's what you have to do, but I think just kind of within that framework is an opportunity for you on your knees to say, Lord, what would you have me to do? And then proceed accordingly.

But give me your thoughts. Yeah, I agree with that. I feel that just like I earn a paycheck every week, I depend on that paycheck to pay the things that I have to pay. And so if your church is accustomed to receiving a certain amount of money, then that's what they're accustomed to receiving. And then we always, you know, in this country, we have more than enough. So to be able to take from some of the things that we're frivolous with and give to things I've seen in my life, it just comes back to me more so to where I have more to give. I've seen it, I've lived it, and I grew up very poor. And I'm telling you, the more you give, the more you get. Well, I've got to tell you, I agree 100%.

Crank it through your calculator, how 90% could go farther than 100. It doesn't work there. And yet, I've seen it play out in my own life. And in thousands of people that I've talked to and counseled over the years, that's just how God's economy works. It's not a cosmic vending machine where we give to get, and yet we know there's real blessing that follows that could come in any number of forms.

And it's the one area in Malachi who said, test me in this. So take him up on that. Give generously and see what the Lord does. Joanne, thank you for your heart and for your call today.

More to come just around the corner. Stay with us. Thanks for joining us for MoneyWise Live. I'm Rob West, your host.

Biblical wisdom for your financial decisions. We've got some lines open today. We'd love to hear from you. Here's the number 800-525-7000. Let's head to Indiana WGNR. Joanna, thank you for your call.

How can I help? Hi. Well, I had a budgeting question. I've been living with a family member for most of my adult life and I may need to be moving into a rental situation in the near future.

I don't know for sure, but I'm just thinking ahead. And I was just wondering about what should I be looking at in terms of rent to income ratio? What sort of a range would I be looking at given my monthly income?

Yeah. Well, this is really important now more than ever just because rental prices are elevated as a result of what's going on in the housing market. As a general rule of thumb, I would look at what your budget can accommodate and then go out and shop for that place, whether you're renting a home or an apartment, and work off of what your budget will support. We advise using no more than 25% of your take-home pay, Joanna, on housing.

And that would include utility costs like heat, water, and electricity. Now, that could be difficult in this environment, but if you can do it, you'd have a much easier time managing your budget. Now, if you find that you need to push it up beyond that, not 25% but 30% or more, again, you just have to make all the numbers balanced. But I'd start with the spending plan, perhaps beginning with that 25% number, looking at what that translates into, and then go out and shop around and just see what you'd be able to find, whether you can get the location and the place that you'd be comfortable with. And if not, you're going to need to push that up a bit, but you've got to, again, go back to the budget and make sure that you've got enough margin to fund an emergency fund and take care of all of your fixed and discretionary expenses.

But that's the better way to go as opposed to going out and finding the place you want and then just saying, okay, now I've got to fit this in, especially with rates a bit higher. But tell me if you have any questions. Well, actually, I do have a follow-up because in terms of my other expenses, I really don't have very many. My car has paid off. I have no debt aside from some minor charges on like a store credit card that I do once in a while. So I have, in terms of margin, I have a lot, like right now, I currently am saving close to half of my income goes into my savings every paycheck, which obviously that would change. But I'm thinking, I could probably, with the numbers I've been trying around so far, I could probably go as high as 40% of my take-home pay and still have plenty leftover. And I'm just wondering, given that I do have a savings plan currently, and obviously that would be adjusted, but would that be too high or is that sort of flirting with danger or would that be feasible given that I really don't have many other, I don't have any other major expenses?

Yeah, you broke up there for a second. Give me the number that you were talking about in terms of, you said, would that be too high? Explain that again. Oh, I'm just talking with the numbers that I've looked at so far in terms of my budget. I could probably go as high as 40% of my take-home pay going towards renting utilities and still have plenty of margin left over. So I was just wondering if that would be flirting with danger or given my lack of other expenses.

Yeah, it's not necessarily dangerous. I think the key is just, what are you giving up? So with limited resources and an unlimited number of opportunities, I think you've got to start with, what are my values and priorities? And if money is a tool, what goals am I trying to move toward, both in the way of giving and saving and, you know, breaking down your savings into what's an appropriate amount to be putting away for the long term for retirement? I'd love for that number to be 10 to 15%. Are you saving for a down payment on ultimately buying a home?

What about replacing a car? And then obviously fitting in, you know, all of the fixed and discretionary expenses. But the more you push up beyond the 25%, even if you can quote, unquote, afford it, you just have to look at what the trade offs are. And, you know, as you begin to plan for the longer term and look at bringing some more specificity to those savings goals that you have, I think then you have to ask yourself, am I okay taking this extra 15% and putting it toward the rent, perhaps temporarily because prices are elevated? And I recognize in doing so I'm giving up my ability to save for these other things. Or would I rather really buckle down and get something that, you know, fits more in that 25 to 30% range and therefore I've got, you know, extra 10% of my take home pay that I can use to fund, you know, some of these other goals. So it's not too dangerous necessarily, because it sounds like you're living well within your means. And that's the key.

I think that what's more important is just really taking the time to define the goals that you have both in the short and medium term as well as longer term, and then just decide whether, you know, pushing your housing expense up in lieu of funding some of those other goals is more important to you. Okay. Okay. All right. Well, that gives me some direction. Thank you.

Good. Thanks, Joanna. We appreciate your call today. To Sandpoint in Idaho. Bill, thank you for holding. How can I help?

Yeah, thanks for taking my call. I'm trying to make a decision when it's appropriate to to tap into the equity in my home. And whether that would be through a home equity loan or a home equity line of credit situation is so we have a three bay garage under our home. The third bay is what we would be converting into a an apartment for our disabled son who lives separate from us now, but they need to move home in the near future.

It's either that or converted into a like a Airbnb apartment so we could get some income from it to maybe, you know, cover something to help subsidize him and or do what my wife and I plan to do when I retired a few years ago, and that was to travel. But with the COVID and all that kind of stuff is kind of difficult. But is it appropriate to tap into a home equity line of credit or something like that to do that?

Yes. Well, certainly you could. I mean, I think the key is what are you trying to accomplish? And if you want to, you know, convert the garage so your disabled son can live with you all, that sounds like a wonderful idea if that's the best place for him and you and your wife have thought and prayed through that. Now, how do we fund that is the key. And you've got to look at what your options are. If you had assets that you could tap that would make sense for that, I'd love for you to do that without taking on debt. But if you have the equity in the home, you've thought through the long term implications of that in terms of being at a place where, you know, you're debt free in a reasonable time period so that, you know, as you move into retirement, if you're not there already, you've got your lifestyle as low as possible. And then, of course, making sure that whatever type of loan you take on fits well within your budget, and you've factored that in and you have the means to cover that without putting any strain on you.

In terms of the type of loan I'd be looking at, you know, you could probably want to look at a home equity loan as opposed to a line of credit because in this historically low interest rate environment, Bill, you're going to be able to lock in a low fixed rate as opposed to a variable rate which will increase over time. So that sounds like a good plan. I mean, a lot of these are non-financial decisions you need to make first. Do we want to try to be able to move, you know, sell our place and do more traveling or hang on to it? Can we afford it? Is this the best place for our son? And if so, then how do we fund it?

And certainly tapping into the home equity through a fixed rate loan that fits into your budget, I think would be a great plan. So we've got to hit a break here. You stay on the line. We'll talk just a bit more off the air. We appreciate your call today. And thanks for listening as well. More to come just around the corner, 800-525-7000. Stay with us. This is MoneyWise Live, biblical wisdom for your financial decisions.

I'm Rob West. Hey, we'd love for you to sign up to receive our brand new MoneyWise Weekly Wisdom. It's an email delivered to your inbox every week with the best articles that we've been able to share with you that week, the best podcasts, the ones that are trending, as well as our Scripture of the Week. We'd love to put that in your inbox so you can renew and refresh your thinking around money according to biblical wisdom. And we've got some great articles to share with you. So sign up at our website.

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And that goes out starting this week. 800-525-7000 to Nashville, Tennessee, WMBW. Hi, Daniella. How can I help? Hi, thanks for taking my call.

I really enjoy your program. So I wanted to get your thoughts on what you think about investing in cryptocurrency like Bitcoin and Ethereum, because there's a lot of excitement about the potential with Bitcoin. I know Fidelity came out with something that said that the potential to go up to $100 million a Bitcoin by 2035.

Yeah, you know, the problem is, I mean, this technology is here to stay. Bitcoin is simply a currency. It's a digital currency without a central bank backing it. Whereas Ethereum is a ledger technology that companies are using to build new programs. They're both built on what's called blockchain, which is the technology behind it. And it's essentially a digital ledger of transactions that's duplicated and distributed across the entire network of computer systems on the blockchain, which, you know, folks are using to track these types of transactions, makes them anonymous.

And, you know, it can be accessed instantly from anywhere. The problem is, if we look at it as not just a technology to use, but we look at it as an investment, it fits into a category of investing, Daniela, that really is hyper volatile. You know, people have made and lost fortunes with these sometimes in the same week, which just puts it in a highly speculative category that I just don't feel comfortable with in investing God's money, because we need to be very well diversified.

And I think taking that level of risk is just not prudent. You know, what we see described in Scripture around investing is steady plotting. And I would think, you know, this type of investing is anything but steady plotting. So although I would agree, there's probably, you know, these are here to stay, and we'll see many of them be huge winners over time. I just think that perhaps the level of anxiety that you would introduce, not to mention just the potential volatility you're adding to your portfolio with these, is just not worth the potential reward. Everything's about risk and reward.

And again, when we're trying to be careful stewards of God's money, I think this highly speculative category, unless you're a professional trader with training doing this for a living, I would say for the average investor, I would stay far away. That's just my perspective, but I hope that's helpful to you. We appreciate you calling today. Denise in Wilmington, PA. How can I help?

Hi, Mr. West. Thank you for taking my call. So my husband and I, using our borrowing power, got a small loan, it was about $10,000, for a family member who was having some financial trouble. So she's paying extra, she's making the payment to me, I'm posting the payment just to make sure it gets done.

So my question is, I have her, from the payments she's been making, I have her paid to January of 2022. My question is, is it better to post these payments so that it advances the due date into the next month, that far ahead? Or would it accelerate the pay down and be faster if I just posted, like right now, I could post three or four payments just principal only? Yes, that would help.

Yeah, it sure does. Because with a simple interest loan, it's calculated by multiplying the daily interest rate by the principal, by the number of days that elapsed between payments. And so you benefit by paying it early each month, because more of that payment goes toward principal. So, you know, if you make your payment before the due date, less interest will have accrued, then if you paid it on time, and we want as much going to principal as possible, because that's what's going to bring this balance down. So if you can make your payment before the due date, less interest will have accrued. So if you can pay early, you can pay more frequently, or you can pay something extra on a simple interest loan, that's certainly going to be in your favor. Okay, so just for cliff notes, the payment's $218.90. She's paying me $300.

Right now, she's due for January. So if for the next three months, I take that entire $300 posted to principal, the interest is still going to accrue. But it's still going to be better for me to post $900 towards the principal and reduce the calculation, that's going to pay me off faster, right?

That's exactly right. Because as the interest is computed, it will be based on a lower principal balance, which means you'll pay less interest, which means that loan gets paid off quicker. So yeah, anything you can do to reduce the principal on a daily basis is going to ultimately benefit you. And I think that's your ultimate goal here. So I would say, yeah, go ahead and try to prepay that if that works for you. And you will come out ahead in the long run and we appreciate your call today. To Joliet, Illinois, Lena, how can I help?

So, hi, thank you for taking my call. So I'm just wondering about foreclosure. I have like a timeshare, which I can't get rid of, and they're threatening to put it into foreclosure. And I wanted to know if this is going to affect my credit negatively.

Yes, it probably will. The payments on that are typically not reported to your credit report, but if it goes into foreclosure or any type of collection, then typically that would be shown either as a collection account or a foreclosure account. So once these types of agreements get into that status, that is going to begin to impact your credit.

So you want to try to avoid that if at all possible. A foreclosure entry appears on your credit report for seven years in the public record section. You might also have past due entries and collection agency entries on your report from previous collection efforts.

So a foreclosure entry alone, and all these scores are different, but it could account for as much as a 160-point drop on your report, which could make it difficult for you to obtain future credit. So I would say if at all possible, let's keep that current and then look for other ways to remedy the situation by either going back to the company that sold it to you, see if they will be willing to take it back, see if you could sell it privately to someone else. And another way to check into all of this in terms of your option would be to look at the timeshare users group, which is at TUG, T-U-G, and then the number 2.com, TUG2.com. So hopefully that's helpful to you, Lena. We appreciate your call today. Let's finish today in Indiana. Mabula, how may I help you? Mabula, are you with us? Okay, it looks like we've lost Mabula.

We'll see if we can get Mabula back. We appreciate your call today. Well, folks, we've covered a lot of ground today. You know, as we think about managing money, we want to look to Scripture and pull out the principles. We tend to make finances pretty complicated, and it can get complicated at times.

So I think whatever we can do to simplify the money conversation around biblical principles and ideas, we're going to come out ahead. Ron Blue, years ago, my good friend and mentor, testified before a Senate subcommittee on low-income Americans. And the question was asked, they said, Ron, if you could tell the American people anything related to their finances, what would you say? And he said, well, I would tell them five things. He said, I would tell them to spend less than they earn. I'd tell them to avoid the use of debt. I'd tell them to have some margin or some liquidity in their financial lives. I'd tell them to set long-term goals, and then I'd tell them to give generously. And Senator Dodd at the time pulled out his pen and started writing that down and said, would you repeat that?

And he went through the five again, spend less than you earn, avoid the use of debt, have some margin and liquidity, set long-term goals, and give generously. And one of the senators then remarked, well, you know, I think that would work even for high-income Americans. And Ron responded, yep, and even the United States government. And here's why, folks.

We might snicker at that a little bit. But the truth is that those five ideas come right out of God's Word. Those are principles we see in Scripture about how we should manage God's money, and they apply to everyone, including nations. And so when we handle what's been entrusted to us, because it all comes from the Lord, and we take what God's given us and we manage it according to his principles by holding it loosely and living with contentment and living well within our means by accepting God's provision, and then having extras so we can give generously and we can save for the future, and we can set some long-term goals because we know the longer the perspective today, the better the decision we're going to have as we make our financial decisions, then I believe we've then put ourselves in a position to experience God's best. Now, that doesn't mean that everything's going to be okay. We're not going to go through hard times.

We're not going to have seasons of financial difficulty. We absolutely will. But the question is, have we done what we need to do to be found faithful? And that's why we want to go back to God's Word and continue to meditate on what he has for us in this area. Twenty-three hundred and fifty verses that I think can help us to calibrate our hearts to his.

And when we do that, we'll experience freedom and joy and contentment and better communication among husband and wife and family members and be able to experience all that God has for us. So that's my encouragement to you today. I hope that's a blessing to you. Thank you for being here. I want to say thank you to my team today, Dan Anderson. I want to say thank you to Amy Rios and Jim Henry. Thank you for being here as well.

MoneyWise Live is a partnership between Moody Radio and MoneyWise Media. Come back and join us tomorrow, will you? We'll look for you then. God bless you. Bye-bye.