Praying for Provision

Do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think they will be heard for their many words. Matthew 6 7.

Hi, I'm Rob West. Fortunately, Jesus didn't stop there. He goes on to give us the Lord's prayer as the way we should bring our needs to God. But do we sometimes skim over part of it, the part about provision? I'll talk about that today, and then it's on to your calls at 800-525-7000.

That's 800-525-7000. We've got to make the first disciples and us that God is our provider and we're to ask Him to provide for our needs and the most basic physical need is food. Our friend Pastor David Platt has written about this, reminding us that the verse is intended to destroy our pride. How often do we ask God to provide us with the food and water that we'll need today? And to thank Him for doing so, especially these days when prices are so high. When we say those words in the Lord's Prayer, do we really mean them? I think sometimes we're just reciting words, because we forget that only God can provide us with the food and water we need to survive.

He of course owns everything. We may think that our actions, earning and saving money, provide those things, but that's never the case. Even our ability to earn money comes from God. We're only reminded that God is our real provider when we sense that those things are about to be taken from us, and we begin to feel hunger and thirst.

But this is about more than making money to buy food. We hunger for many other things in this world, peace, love, purpose, healthy relationships, you name it. The Lord's Prayer is an example of how we should pray for all of those things.

Jesus wants us to go before our Holy Father in prayer and ask for everything we need, humbly admitting that only He can provide them. Give us this day our daily bread probably had more immediate importance 2,000 years ago when famine was always a real possibility. It may seem like an odd request to us because we live in the richest nation in history.

Most of us, with some exceptions, never worry about where our next meal is coming from. It seems especially odd when many of us actually need less food, not more. But it's still important to pray for God's daily provision, even in America, because that prayer will keep you from thinking you can provide for your daily needs without God. In other words, it's a bulwark against prideful thinking that we, or the things of this world, provide what we need. Jesus knew that we're prone to that kind of thinking. That's why those words are in the Lord's Prayer, and that's why we should take them seriously.

All this really shows how dangerous materialism can be. We should take a hard look at how much we're conforming to disturbing trends in Western Christianity. Maybe we really believe we can sustain our lives all on our own, without God, and that's a reason that many of us are so casual about prayer in general. In addition to warning about pride, Jesus is also telling us that our Father in Heaven wants to give us every good and perfect gift.

A few verses later in Matthew 6, he tells his disciples, Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. What that means is, we really don't need to worry about bread or water or money. We need God, and prayer reminds us of that, and of God's promise that He'll provide all of those things. In his article about this, David Platt goes on to say that in today's wealthy culture, we should ask God to deliver us from what he calls self-sustaining Christian lives.

We must acknowledge daily that we can't sustain ourselves. Of course, with every believer, that begins by admitting that we need Christ as our Savior. But it must also extend into every area of our lives, that we need God to sustain us with even our most basic needs. And that's how we can avoid the pride that comes from materialism. No matter how much money we make, how big a house we live in, or how fancy the car we drive, we don't really need those things, we only need God. So when we say those words, give us this day our daily bread, we need to really mean them and thank God for providing it. Oh, and one more thing, we can show our thankfulness through generosity. Giving breaks the power that money has over us and demonstrates our faith that God will meet our needs. All right, your calls are next on these Bible verses or anything else financial.

The number to call is 800-525-7000. I'm Rob West and we'll be right back. Well, it's great to have you with us today on MoneyWise Live, as we apply the wisdom from the Word of God to your financial decisions and choices. We're going to turn the corner to your questions today.

What's on your mind financially speaking? We'd love to hear from you. We've got some lines open, the number to call is 800-525-7000. We'll begin today in Florida. Yvonne, thank you for calling. Go right ahead.

Hi, thank you for taking my call, Rob. I am a recent widower and I have a home that's financed under VA and one of the perks with trying to sell it was to give another buyer the ability to assume my mortgage. And I've gotten some information from the mortgage company, the bank that has the loan, but it's not real clear how it would fit for me as far as the seller goes. I know there's all kinds of advantages for the buyer and this would all be done through the mortgage company, they have to qualify and everything like that, so it would be perfectly legitimate kind of a transaction going on here. But what worries me is there's something that says in the paperwork, credit and liability, the seller's credit is notated to show an assumption was processed, credit reporting on the seller's account stops, however, the account will still appear on the seller's credit until the buyer refinances or sells the property, which could be years in the future. So I didn't know how that could possibly affect me.

Yes. Well, the key here is, first of all, you're right, this is a huge benefit, especially given where rates are right now. Most mortgages, conventional mortgages these days are not assumeable, VA loans are, so that makes it very attractive as we've had these rates rising sharply and when you can assume someone's VA mortgage, you get the original lower interest rate. The key here for you is what's called a release of liability from the lender. And so your liability doesn't go away automatically when another person assumes your VA mortgage. So you'll just want to call them and confirm with the lender that in writing that a release of liability will be provided after the sale. If they were unwilling to provide this, then that would be a showstopper for me because that would be like co-signing a loan. But I'm assuming they would provide that.

There's no reason why they wouldn't. And then you'll just want to clarify as to the credit report. It would not surprise me that that account will stay on your credit report. What I would not want to be the case is for the new owner's payment history to now start reflecting on your credit. But that shouldn't happen once that release of liability occurs because you're no longer responsible for it and therefore that reporting should stop as of that release date. And then that history up until that point would remain on the credit report.

That would be very typical, but there wouldn't be any new information reported. And as far as the lender is concerned, you are no longer liable for that mortgage. Does that make sense? Yes, it makes sense. So ask them to verify that they would give me a release of liability when this transaction is all completed.

Yes, that's exactly right. Okay. Okay.

All right. That makes a lot of sense. But it shouldn't be a problem as long as I can get the release of liability. And if it ever did show up on my credit, that paperwork that I have would be able to straighten that out, I guess. Yeah, that's exactly right.

No one would really assume these mortgages if they were going to continue to be responsible for them, because not only would they be responsible if that person failed to make the payment, but they would then be obligated and that would hinder their ability to go out and get another loan for a new home. So this is going to be very customary, but you want to make sure everything's done properly just so there's no confusion or potential liability for you. So Yvonne, it sounds like you're headed in the right direction. Delighted to hear you were able to make this sale attractive through this VA mortgage. And if we can help you further along the way, don't hesitate to reach out.

God bless you. 800-525-7000. We've got some lines open today. We'd love to hear from you with your financial question to Howard, New York. Tracy, you're next on the program. Go right ahead. Hi.

Thank you so much for speaking with me, Rob. Sure. I have a question about a home. So I have a two-unit home. It's about two hours away from me. I used to live in it.

I have family nearby that location, but I'm not there. And it's been a challenge to get a handyman to work on it, so I decided to sell it. And that's when mortgage rates were, yeah, mortgages were a great price for the seller, but not so much now. And one agent said to list it at 175, and then that contract is over.

And this new agent says, oh, no, I think maybe 100 is what you should, 100,000 is what you should list it for. And that's a big difference. Wow. Yeah, it sure is. So I'm just not sure at this point if I should rent it for a little longer or if I should go ahead and take what seems like a really low figure for the house. Yeah.

Well, here's the thing, Tracy. Although the housing market has cooled a bit, nationally, housing prices are only down about six or seven percent. So there's no reason why you should have that wide gap between what, you know, conceptually the house was worth prior to the mortgage rates climbing versus today.

So something is not right with regard to one of those numbers. So I think the first thing you need to do is really establish what is the true market value. And normally, a real estate professional would do what's called a comparative market analysis where they just basically use evaluation of similar properties that have recently sold in the same area to evaluate the property value of your property. Another way that's a bit more formal that because of this discrepancy may make some sense is for you to pay to have an appraisal done. It could cost you somewhere between $300 and $500.

So I realize that's not insignificant. But that would take really an academic approach to establishing the market value. And that would be something that you would have available to justify the selling price. But we've got to figure out what is this property worth first for you to determine is it better for you to go ahead and cash out and be done with being a landlord, especially since this is a couple of hours away, which, as you said, makes it more challenging.

And if, in fact, you'd like to sell it, let's not just take the word of the person that said it's worth only $100,000 without doing a little bit more legwork to at least establish the true market value so that you're operating from good information in order to make that decision. Does that make sense? Yeah, excellent. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. All right. Very good.

Yeah. And keep us posted on that, Tracy. I'd love to know how that turns out. Thanks for your call today. God bless you.

Eight hundred five two five seven thousand is the number to call quickly to Chicago. Chad, you're next on the program. How can I help you? Hey, how are you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks. Hello. Yes, sir.

I have a quick question for you. I just started a part time job that allows you that actually does a nine percent matching for five or one. They give you two choices. You can do a five or one K or you do a rough.

I'm trying to decide which of the two should I do. Yeah. What is it? I can't. I'm sorry. No, it's OK. What is your age, Chad?

I am sixty five years old. OK. And how long do you plan to continue to work? Oh, it's going to be back in. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, yeah. There's something to be said about that traditional 401K in this season of life. You know, if you were 20 years younger, maybe even 10 years younger, I would have said, let's go with the Roth. You're probably I would suspect that the peak of your earning potential, which means you're in the highest tax bracket, you will be because when you are in retirement, your income drops and your taxes drop with that. Plus, the benefit, the true benefit of the Roth is the tax free growth over a long period of time. So I think you would benefit a bit more today from that traditional 401K and the deduction than you would the after tax contribution with the tax free growth.

So I'd go the traditional 401K, but take full advantage of that nine percent match, Chad. That's incredible. We'll be right back. We'll be right back with this. Well, it's great to have you with us today on a Friday afternoon as we apply God's wisdom to your financial decisions and choices.

I'm Rob West. We're taking your calls and questions at 800-525-7000. We've got plenty of time remaining in the program. We've got some lines open. So whatever's on your mind today, we'd love to hear from you. Let's head back to the phones.

Grand Rapids, Michigan. Daniel, thanks for calling today, sir. How can I help you? Rob, thank you so much for taking my call. I love your show. Well, thank you.

My wife and I are in our upper 70s and recently when the market was taking a real downturn, we did something that we shouldn't have done and that is, I think, after listening to you, we've drawn our money out of the market and the market has just steadily gone up quite a bit and we're just wondering, should we get back in the market and if so, when? Yeah. Well, it just depends on whether it's going up or down from here. Do you know which one it is, Daniel? I'm just kidding.

None of us can know and that's the point. So here's the idea. You're right.

If you would have called me prior to getting out, I would have said, let's not do that. Let's wait for it to recover. Whenever we get into these periods like we're in right now, especially following a 12-year raging bull market and then we hit 40-year high inflation because of an easy money policy over a long period of time and we had a pandemic and just a host of other issues and now we're facing the prospect of a recession. But really, it's the runaway inflation that was driving the downside. The reason that has changed is we've seen that even though the Fed has been laser focused on getting inflation under control, which meant interest rates going up rapidly, now that we've seen just in the last several weeks and even this week again that inflation perhaps is beginning to turn the corner, that maybe the Fed can back off and that's where this $2 trillion that was on the sideline has started to rush back into this market, which just gives us some sense of the pent up demand out there for stocks and for capital to be deployed into the equity markets when that time comes. Now, could we retest those lows in the next month, six months, year?

Absolutely. I mean, we still have some real challenges out there and the Fed's attempt to get the inflation down is really going to come down to are they going to be happy with 4%? Are they going to insist on their target of 2% inflation, and if so, they may need to leave these interest rates at this point or even higher for a considerable amount of time and that really could lead us into a recession, even a pretty significant one. And if so, this market will come down.

So the thing we don't want you to do, Daniel, is to kind of get that whiplash where you get out at the bottom, so to speak, or after a significant decline, the market goes up, you jump back in, then the market goes down again, we get out and then we just keep capturing these downside periods. So I think the next step is really to determine what is the right allocation for you all, not over the next six months or a year, but over the next 10 or 20 years, because if the Lord tarries and you're in good health, you may need this money to last for another couple of decades. But the question is, what is the right mix of stocks and bonds and other investment instruments for you at this time? So if you don't mind me asking, what do you have roughly in investable assets and are you pulling an income from it?

Yes, we are taking an income. We have about $700,000. Okay. And how much are you pulling out annually? About $30,000. Okay.

All right. Which is about what I would have expected. I mean, that's a 4% withdrawal rate, just slightly more than that, and that's a pretty good number. If you manage properly, you should be able to offset that. And typically we would say, and this is just typically because that doesn't mean it's exactly right for you, you would have maybe a 30% allocation of stocks in there, 60 to 70% in bonds. Now, even in this market, bonds have taken a real beating as well. They're in a bear market also just because of the rapid rise of the interest rates. But in a typical market, and we would have to wait it out, that would provide more stability to the portfolio, more income, and then the stock portion would give you a growth component. So you could overcome that 4% withdrawal rate and essentially maintain the balance. Now in any given year or two, it may be down, but over the long haul, we would expect that this portfolio would at least stay stable and accommodate your withdrawals or your distributions from these portfolios. So I think the question is, are you going to continue to make these decisions yourself or do you want to turn this over to an advisor who, based on your goals and objectives, would be the one to make the buying and selling decisions? Because the last thing I want you to do is begin to move back into the market. If you're going to get into a situation where you could find yourself pulling it back out, I would rather you stay on the sideline for now if you thought that was a possibility.

What are your thoughts though? Well, my thoughts are I'd probably like to have somebody manage it, talk to somebody and just have them give me some advice here and then follow that. Or even I would suggest hiring an investment advisor who would ultimately make the buying and selling decisions, but with your, again, your goals and interests in mind, open and clear communication, but you want to have a disciplined kind of rules-based strategy where everybody's bought into it that it makes sense and that we can just really trust the long-term plan, even at age 70, and not react to the ebbs and flows of the market because that's just really where it can create some challenges. We really want to stay invested as long as we have the right mix of investments, even in these down periods. I realize that's difficult to do when we see our hard-earned wealth beginning to evaporate. The tendency is to just kind of flee for safety, and as long as we trust the process and stay long-term in our view, then I think we should be able to weather those storms and temper the portfolio so it's not down an inordinate amount. What I'd recommend you do, Daniel, is contact a certified Kingdom advisor there in Grand Rapids.

There's some great ones. Just go to our website, moneywise.org, click Find a CKA. I'd interview two or three and find the one that's the best fit, but I think the key is you and your wife really need to be committed, that once you make that decision and you begin to move back into the market, whether you do it yourself or you hire somebody, that you really are going to stay with your plan no matter what happens in the market, and I think that really will be essential to you having some good long-term success. Good news is you've got quite a bit of assets, plenty to support the income that you need, so you're in good shape.

I think we just need the right investment strategy, and you'll be all set. Thanks for calling today. A quick break and then back to your calls and questions just around the corner. This is MoneyWise Live. Great to have you with us today on MoneyWise Live here on Moody Radio. I'm Rob West, your host. We're taking your calls and questions on anything financial, 800-525-7000. Back to Chicago, Maria. Thank you for calling. Go right ahead. Hi.

Thank you for taking my call, Rob. My husband and I, we had $40,000 in our 401K, and we took that money out about two months ago, and we paid off our mortgage. We did take a big penalty, which was $10,000, and because we paid off our mortgage earlier, we also saved $10,000. So I'm thinking we broke even, but my question is, do we still have to pay taxes on that money, and will that money boost us up to a higher tax bracket? I'm working part-time. I make about $30,000, so would that $40,000 be added to my $30,000?

It would, yes. So you're right. When you take that out, if you do it before 59 and a half, unless there's for some reason that excludes the penalty, you've got that 10% penalty, and then you have that added to your taxable income. Now, you said you took a $40,000 distribution. Is that right? Right. But we're 66 years old, so we took it when we were 66.

And so why did you have a penalty, and even then at 10%, it should have only been about $4,000? Okay. I need to go back and look. I don't know.

Yeah, it could be. Well, you know, we had like 20, we had two different ones. Okay.

We had one for so many thousand, but it added up to $40,000. Yeah, and these came out of a retirement account? Yes. Okay. And you were over 59 and a half, correct? Yes.

Okay. And what happened here, Maria, is that they withheld a portion for the taxes, because you shouldn't have had a penalty on this. Over 59 and a half, you can take money out of a retirement account, as long as that wasn't an annuity and you were paying a penalty to an insurance company.

But if it was like an IRA or a 401k or a 403b, you can pull that money out. There should not have been any penalty, but they may have held back money that was going to be applied to the taxes. So you're going to want to look at that, but yes, whatever amount you took out in the year that you took the distribution, it will be added to your taxable income and absolutely could put you in a higher tax bracket. For instance, the married filing jointly, the 12% tax bracket goes up to $40,525 in adjusted gross income. When you go above that, between $40,000 and about $86,000, that tax goes from 12% to 22%. So there's a big jump there. Now, it doesn't put all of your income up in that next bracket. You pay the appropriate rate for that particular portion of your income, but if you're making right up near that $40,000 for married filing jointly already, then it could be that that whole $40,000 is no longer taxed at the 12% but jumps up to the 22%. So you are going to owe taxes.

The question is, why are you hearing the word penalty because there shouldn't be and let's figure out what was that $10,000 that was withheld and is that money that was either sent to the IRS as a prepayment of what you will owe or is it being held for that purpose? You really need to get to the bottom of that. Okay. Let me double check that. One more question.

Do I have time? Yes, ma'am. Go ahead. Okay. We have several thousand dollars now that we can invest.

Where could we put that? We want to save for our grandkids. We have seven grandkids and we want to save money for them.

Okay. And how much money did you say you had for that purpose? We just have like maybe two or three thousand that now that we don't have our mortgage or any other debt, that's above what we're paying on just our regular money that we owe because we don't have any more debt. So you put in perhaps a couple of hundred dollars a month you'd add to this?

A thousand, some thousand, a couple of thousand dollars. Right. But would you be adding to it on a regular basis or would you just invest this lump sum and not add anything else? Right. We'll be adding to it.

You would be adding. Okay. And do you want to earmark it for college specifically, Maria, or do you want it to be more widely available? Widely.

Not just for college. Okay. Okay. And what do you think is the time horizon on this? I mean, when might you want to start taking a portion of it out to give to some of the grandkids? In the next five years or are you thinking 10 or more? Yeah, 10 or more because we have little grandkids. I see.

Okay, very good. You could probably just use either a high quality mutual fund, and our friends at soundmindinvesting.org can help you with that, or you could use one of the robo-advisors like the Schwab Intelligent Portfolios or Betterment. So that's Schwab Intelligent Portfolios or Betterment.

What I would do is open a joint account in the name of you and your husband, drop this money in, and then set up an automatic transfer from your checking account every time you get your paycheck into this account to be reinvested. And the key with those robo-advisors is it's very low cost, so it might be 20 basis points, so one fifth of one percent, and you're basically going to get a portfolio of indexes, so you're just going to mirror the overall performance of the broad stock and bond market, not trying to pick the winners and losers. And you'll see good growth in that over the long haul, and I think that's the key. And the good news is that with these robo-advisors, they're really set up for an automatic contribution like you want to do, so there's no transaction costs. Every time you make another deposit of a couple hundred dollars per month, let's say, it would automatically be reinvested, and there wouldn't be any additional cost for that. And you could just systematically make those contributions, and then you all would control how that money is then distributed to the kids or grandkids down the road. So I'd check out either the Schwab Intelligent Portfolios or Betterment, open a joint account, make the deposit, and after you answer all the questions, they'll just automatically invest that for you in the way that I described, okay? Excellent.

Thank you so much. And do we have to put this in our will? Divide it up like that in our will? No, you could name a beneficiary on the account, so you would just divide it equally between the grandkids, or you could leave it to your kids and tell them it's for the grandkids, however you want to do that.

But when you name a beneficiary on an investment brokerage account, it passes outside of your estate, and it does not subject to the will. Okay. Oh, thank you so much. That's great.

Great advice. Excellent. Well, thank you for calling, Maria. God bless you. And quickly to Chattanooga, Hey May, how can I help you?

Yes, sir. We have a—thank you for taking our call—we have a home equity line of credit loan taken out on our home. We took it out to get some repairs done, and we owe about $15,410 now. And my question is, would it be a smart thing to take out a different kind of loan and pay this one off so we wouldn't have anything attached to our home? Well, that would be ideal, because I'd rather the home not be collateralized.

The challenge is, with rates where they are, you're probably going to pay a lot more in interest to try to go out and find that non-collateralized loan versus the home equity loan that has a fixed interest rate. You probably got it when rates were lower than they are today. So I'd probably just leave it there and try to make accelerated payments between now and when it's paid off. Keep your spending down. Try to free up as much as you can every month and just pay toward it.

Probably not going to make sense to refinance it. I've got to take a break, but we'll talk a little bit more off the air to see if you have any questions. We'll be right back on MoneyWise Live. Stay with us. Great to have you with us on MoneyWise Live.

I'm Rob West, your host. Before we go back to the phones, it's Friday. That means our good friend Jerry Boyer stops by with his market analysis and commentary. And Jerry, wow, the strength in the stock market as of late on the heels of this, I guess, better than expected inflation data has been phenomenal.

What do you make of it? Well, what I make of it is that the theme continues to be that the most important actor in markets is the central bank, the Fed, and that the Fed really doesn't want to end the party. The Fed really doesn't want to get criticized. They don't want to impose pain. They don't want to cause a recession. They don't want people castigating them at dinner parties and saying, what are you doing to my 401k?

So they want to be nice. You know, they want to keep creating money and putting it into the system. But on the other hand, they've got this mandate that says they have to fight inflation. So if inflation is high, they've got to fight it, which hurts markets and hurts growth. So what happened with the better than expected inflation number is that that gives the Fed the leeway to not be so tough on inflation. And we immediately saw the Fed funds futures, sorry, getting a little technical. The market has an implied set of expectations about what the Fed's going to do in the future. And there was a significant shift when that inflation report came out that said they're going to not raise as much as we used to think. And they're going to reverse course sooner than we think.

Probably early next summer, they're actually going to start cutting again. So basically, it was permission for the Fed to stop with the tough love and maybe lighten up a little bit on fighting inflation and continue to inject money into the system. Which perhaps also says, Jerry, that we're not going to learn our lesson from this one. And if we go back to easy money policies, why wouldn't we expect that inflation is going to continue to be a problem in the days ahead? Yeah. And it's interesting. The real paradox here is the data came out and said inflation is not as high as we expected. And the immediate response was for inflation hedges to rise. So we said, wait, is inflation good or bad? And the answer is, all right, well, we got a little relief.

Let me give you an example. So someone, they step on the scale and they're having trouble losing weight and they step on the scale one week and they're down three pounds. So I guess we can treat ourselves to a little bit of apple pie because our weight's down. So the basic idea is that, hey, we're doing pretty well in fighting inflation. And the market said, OK, what that really means is you're not going to fight inflation so hard anymore, which means we're going to get more inflation. So what we see happen this week, gold rose and the dollar fell and inflation protected bonds, they're called TIPS, those rose as well. So all of the inflation hedges rose except for cryptos and they fell for, I think, for different reasons. Well, to your point about the Fed being the dominant driver of market action, you know, this was during a week where we didn't get the red wave quite the way we thought we would. And to the extent the market was really looking for that, based on the policy outcomes and how that would affect business, you would have thought the market would sell off. Yeah, and it did. The market did sell off after as the as it was becoming clear that you weren't getting the red wave. The market started selling off a little bit on Tuesday and definitely sold off on Wednesday. But here's the here's the interesting thing.

If you look at an experiment, what matters more? Right. Who wins the election or what the central bank's going to do? Well, this week we had both things and the market got what it would see as disappointing news in that the, quote, pro growth party didn't win. And so it went down. But what happened is on Thursday when we found out inflation is lower, therefore the Fed's going to be able to pump money into the system for longer. All of those trades reversed and they reversed so much that the market is actually on net up for the week.

So we got to kind of weigh those two things next to one another. What matters more, Republicans having a red wave or the central bank being easy longer? And the answer is the Fed being easier longer had a bigger impact on markets. It is in some sense that's saying that the Fed is more important for our economic growth and our prosperity than who wins elections.

Clearly. Jerry, before we let you go, just quickly, I'd love your comments on what's going on in the crypto markets. I mean, clearly, the idea behind cryptos that it's attractive because it's not tied to a central bank is part of the problem when these markets have problems, correct? Yeah, it is, because the original idea of a central bank wasn't for it to bail things.

It wasn't for it to, you know, control the money supply and go back and forth between dual mandates. The original idea is it's a lender of last resort when you're in trouble. So if you have a lot of bankruptcies or a lot of banks look like they're going to fail, a national bank steps in and lends for a short period of time to get you through the tough part. Well, the crypto currencies don't have a central bank, which means they can't get bailed out. They don't have FDIC, which means that the deposits aren't guaranteed. You know, the exchanges, this whole system that came about around Bitcoin and then later Ether, all of that financial system and there's borrowing against it and there's leverage, just like with the banking system. But there's no institution to bail it out, which means when you hit a rough spot, then it really collapses in a way that the normal banking system doesn't. So what's the rough spot? Well, partly the rough spot. It got over leveraged.

It just wasn't in a good position. But the other rough spot is the Democrats are seen as more likely to regulate crypto and they have so far. So if you didn't get a red wave, that means you're probably going to have a government regime that is less friendly to crypto. So the election on Tuesday didn't just have implications for regular markets.

It had implications. It's signaling that the regulators, especially the CFTC, is going to be tougher on cryptos than if the Republicans are there kind of standing up for it. So that's why that's why cryptos were the only inflation hedge that went down rather than up, because even though they're supposed to be a hedge against inflation, if they're going to get regulated too heavily and they don't have the bailout, then that put them in trouble. And that's reflecting itself in an ongoing collapse in that sector.

Yeah, and now you've got cryptocurrency exchanges filing for bankruptcy. Fascinating. We'll continue to watch this, Jerry. Always appreciate your comments, my friend. Have a wonderful weekend. Same to you. Bye-bye. All right. God bless. Jerry Boyer, president of Boyer Research.

You'll find his insightful articles at The Christian Post, and we welcome Jerry each Friday afternoon. All right. Back to the phones here in our final moments of the broadcast today, driving through Chicago is David. David, I understand you are a veteran. Is that right, sir? Yes, sir. Well, on this day where we honor men and women who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces, we say thank you for your service to you and all of those listening to the broadcast today. How can I help you, sir?

Well, yeah, my question, first of all, thank you for taking my call. My question was, because I am a veteran, I was looking at the VA loan. We live in an apartment right now, and I was just thinking, could I use a VA loan to get another apartment to pay for another apartment? No, you can't use a VA loan to pay rent for an apartment. You could buy a property like a duplex where you've got two units in one property, and you could rent out part of it as long as you live in the other half as your primary residence. And then after you live in a VA-financed property for a year, you could rent out the property.

But in terms of you just using the VA to be able to rent an apartment, you really can't do that. It really is for a purchase. I see. Okay.

Well, that pretty much answers my question then. Thank you so much. Absolutely. And again, thank you for your service, David. We appreciate it very, very much.

To Antioch, Illinois, Rose. Thanks for calling. Go right ahead. Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I've got a quick question. We had a contractor come by and that he could get us money based on hail damage on our roof.

And he did. We got a $10,000 check, but right now due to an illness and loss of a job, we're waiting on disability. We can't repair the roof right now.

We're looking to possibly or hopefully, fingers crossed, sell next year. With that $10,000 in the bank, where does that stand? Is that something we can go ahead and say, we're giving that $10,000 to the person that's going to buy our house?

Yeah. Well, they were making you whole for the cost of that repair. And if you choose not to do it, that's up to you. But clearly, if you were to sell it, you would need to disclose that there is a problem with the roof and then you could discount the property or perhaps make a concession as a seller for this $10,000 that could be put toward repairs. If there is an active and ongoing issue that's damaging the property further, you at least need to mitigate that problem so it doesn't create more damage. But if it's not really an issue and it's just something that needs to be disclosed to the buyer, then they would typically want you to provide some sort of concession for them to resolve the issue upon their purchase, or they might ask you to do it before you move out. Why is it that the amount that you received was less than the actual cost of the repair? The house is 20 years old and it's just hail damage. We don't have any leaks or anything like that.

So it was just the insurance gave us what they thought the roof was worth minus whatever our deductible was. Okay. All right. Very good.

Yeah. So I mean, I think if there's not any kind of active issue leak or anything that's creating further damage to the property, one option is just to see what the buyer's inspection reveals if there's not really, if it's normal wear and tear on the property. Now they may, after inspection, come back and say, listen, we're seeing the effects of hail over a long period of time. We think this roof needs to be replaced and you could negotiate as a part of the sale, some sort of a seller concession toward the roof. And perhaps you use this money to make that possible. I think the key right now is if you guys want to move out, I'd probably go ahead and list it and just know that this could be an issue that surfaces.

And the good news is, as long as you haven't spent that money, you have the ability to use it for negotiation with the buyer. Perfect. Okay.

That's what I needed to know. Thanks a lot for your help. Okay. Very good. You're welcome. Thanks so much.

Let's see. Kaziah, I see your question there on iBonds. How does the interest work? It's credited when you redeem it. It's a 30 year bond, but you can pull it out anytime after a year. If you take it out in less than five years, you'll have a penalty of three months worth of interest.

But whatever you're entitled to, it's credited on redemption and then you just pay taxes on it. Thanks for calling today. Leah Ricardo, I'd love to get to you next week. We appreciate you being on the program.

MoneyWise Live is a partnership between Moody Radio and MoneyWise Media. Thank you to Clara, Amy, Jim and Chris. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week. Bye bye.