12/7/2022_MWL

Hi, everyone. My name is Emma, and I serve as a producer here at Moody Radio. I want to take a quick second to tell you about our newest podcast, 52 Weeks in the Word. This podcast hosted by Trillia Newbell will walk you through the Bible cover to cover in 52 weeks. Each week, Trillia sits down with a guest for a 10-minute conversation about the weekly reading, Bible reading habits, and spiritual disciplines.

Some of these guests include our very own Chris Brooks, Jen Wilkin, Nancy Guthrie, and many more. If you've ever wanted to read the Bible in a year, now's your chance. Listen to the trailer, follow and subscribe on the Moody Radio app or anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Episode one drops on January 1st. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. Hebrews 13, 6.

I am Rob West. God's Word has a lot to say about being generous, but it also repeatedly cautions us to be wise in our affairs. I'll talk about how you can be both wise and generous today. 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 this is the time of year when many of us are thinking about how we can be more generous to God's kingdom with year-end giving. Despite uncertainties about the economy, it's a time to be thankful for God's provision and to show our gratitude.

Psalm 106-1 tells us, Praise the Lord, O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever. So naturally, we want to show our gratitude with our giving. But this isn't just about writing checks to various ministries with funds we have left over when all the December bills are paid. We must also be wise with our giving.

Proverbs 3-13 teaches, Blessed is the one who finds wisdom, and the one who gets understanding. You see, the first step in becoming a wise giver is taking some time to think and pray about where to give. Your local church should be foremost on your mind, but beyond that, what ministries are you passionate about? Is it supporting missionaries, distributing Bibles, or perhaps helping Christ's pregnancy centers that offer alternatives to abortion?

2 Corinthians 9-7 tells us, Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. Obviously, you are more likely to be a cheerful giver if you are passionate about the ministries and work you are supporting. Now, how do you find ministries that are doing the work you are passionate about?

Well, there are better ways than just Googling and hoping for the best. You want to make sure that the ministries you support are first efficient, meaning that administrative costs are kept to a minimum, and second, that they are effective in actually making a difference. The best way we know of to select efficient and effective ministries to support is by contacting our friends at the National Christian Foundation.

They can guide you through the process and make excellent recommendations. They can also help you set up a giving fund at NCF to maximize your giving and minimize your tax bill. An NCF Giving Fund makes it easy to donate not only cash and checks, but also non-cash gifts like stocks and business interests. At ncfgiving.com, you can browse thousands of charity profile pages. Once you've set up your Giving Fund, which takes just minutes, you can choose ministries that you're passionate about, and NCF sends them money for you right out of your account.

You can spread your giving over several years while enjoying the full tax benefit now. But you may want to do some digging on your own, and a good place to start is with the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability at ECFA.org. It doesn't rate ministries, but rather provides accreditation to those that adhere to standards of responsible stewardship, including doctrinal issues, governance, financial oversight, transparency, even staff salaries and truthfulness. If a ministry has the ECFA seal of financial accountability, you can rest assured that it's on the up-and-up. Sadly, there are some bad actors out there, organizations claiming to be Christian ministries that are fraudulent, so you do have to be careful.

Another good place to check for potential fraudsters is ministrywatch.org. The stated mission of this watchdog organization is to promote transparency, accountability and credibility of Christian ministries. To help donors make wise decisions, MinistryWatch creates profiles for church and parachurch ministries.

It identifies organizations and their leadership that may be engaged in misleading behavior or wasteful spending practices. But MinistryWatch also identifies ministries that operate in good faith and are run efficiently. You may want to do some giving outside of Christian ministries, and you can check out potential charities at Give.org. It's an arm of the Better Business Bureau that evaluates and accredits charities based on various standards, including complaints, donor privacy and conflicts of interest. Give.org also lets you file a complaint against a charity, read and write reviews, and get tips on giving.

So there are any number of places where we can check out potential ministries and charities for our year-end giving so we can be wise givers. This is MoneyWise Live, for a little while anyway. We have a new name coming in January, but we'll talk about that more later. But by any name, it's always biblical wisdom for your financial decisions.

Stick around. Great to have you along with us today on MoneyWise Live. I'm Rob Last, your host. Hey, let's turn the corner and take your calls on anything financial today. We've got some lines open. The number to call is 800-525-7000. That's 800-525-7000, whatever you're thinking about today, financially speaking, whether that's your spending plan and how to reign it in, live in light of this 40-year high inflation, or maybe it's your long-term investments and navigating the volatility on the stock market, which is largely flat today, interestingly, or anything in between. We'd love to hear from you. Again, lines are open.

We'd love to take your call at 800-525-7000. We began today by talking about generosity. This time of year, as we think about the ultimate gift given, Jesus, our Savior born, as we celebrate at Christmas time, it's an opportunity for us to think about our own generosity as we model the generosity of the Lord himself and give to meet those in need, to support the work of ministries literally to the ends of the earth, bringing the gospel to people in the name of Jesus Christ and the people on our path that are really struggling at this season. In my experience counseling clients over many years on financial decision-making, I've found that no matter the income level, people struggle with fear, frustration, and guilt in their financial lives. And I also have experienced that those who are most free from these emotional byproducts of financial decision-making are those who are most generous.

Why? Well, I think it's because of what Randy Alcorn calls the Treasure Principle. Jesus told us in Matthew 6 21, For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. You see, God wants our hearts, not our money. He wants to absorb the fact that the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving God owns every resource, including those entrusted to our care. And when you and I give, and when the people that we encounter give, we open our hands, we loosen our grip on the resources he's given us. We acknowledge his purposes are higher than our own and his provision is more complete than our own. You see, when we give, we put our treasure in his kingdom and free our hearts from the constraints of our own mini-kingdom. It really changes our perspective and it orients our thinking to God's ownership, control, and purposes. And it really frees us from believing that we are ultimately responsible for our own well-being. And it reminds us of the bigger context of our world and our place within it, that the true economy is God's economy. So this is an opportunity at this time of year in particular to think about your generosity so that we can lean into that as an act of worship as we celebrate our newborn King.

And I hope that's an encouragement to you today. All right, let's turn our attention to your phone calls. Again, the number to call today with lines open, 800-525-7000.

We're going to begin in Marshallville, Ohio. Hi, Steve. Thanks for calling.

How can I help? Hi. Thanks for taking my call, first of all. So I'm just kind of curious here. I have kind of gotten to the point in my life where I've paid off most of my debts and really the only remaining thing is my mortgage. I've got a little bit of extra income here and I'm just kind of debating on whether it would make sense to work on taking off my mortgage, invest that some more, or maybe potentially look at real estate or something like that to invest it.

Yeah, great. Well, once you've kept your lifestyle, there's no more reason to put additional resources into the live bucket, if you will. And the O bucket, once you've paid everything off and you have, it sounds like except your mortgage, that one can get eliminated because then the only thing that's left is do I give more or do I eliminate or eradicate my debt completely, including my home, or do I put more in the grow bucket, that which I'm saving for the long term.

Let's start there, Steve. Just tell me how you're feeling with regard to your progress toward your own finish line for retirement. Do you feel like you're on track with that?

Yeah, I do. I have a 401k through work and I have two separate IRAs that we try to max those out every year, actually try to max out all three of those. So I feel like I'm on the right track as far as retirement goes.

Okay, very good. And how many years do you have left toward retirement? Oh, I probably about 30. Okay, so you're you're a young guy, but but diligently saving for the long term. Tell me about your mortgage. What do you what's the house worth? And what do you owe on it today? Then three point I lost you there for a second.

Start that point over and go right ahead. Okay, I'm at right around 200,000 left on it and I have about a 3.2% mortgage rate. Okay, what do you think the home's worth?

Probably about 400,000. All right. And is this a 15 year or 30 year mortgage?

It's a 30 year mortgage. All right. And how many years into it are you? Two. Oh, only two. Okay, great. And so are you all sending anything extra beyond the minimum payment right now?

Yeah, we pay about double what's due every month. Great. And if you were to continue that you believe you have even more surplus that you could put toward let's say a down payment on a rental property or additional investments? I do. Yes.

Okay. And last question, do you all have just a real conviction to be debt free as soon as possible? Or are you willing to kind of stick with this mortgage on the current trajectory where let's say it gets paid off in, you know, maybe 15 to 20 years instead of 30? So I hate the feeling of having debt on top of me. It grinds me, but I would be willing, I guess, to ride with it if I could get a substantial more return with investing. Okay.

Yeah, very good. Well, I think, you know, that's really the operative question because there's these are both good ideas that you'd want to continue to build wealth or you'd want to give more or you'd want to pay off this mortgage in full. I think because this interest rate is so low and because you have good cash flow and because you've already prioritized accelerating the payoff by way of you all doubling that payment every month and that's going to put you on a track to probably cut that in half in terms of the payback.

I would say if you have additional surplus, I would probably be looking to, you know, if you want to be a landlord and that's a desire of yours to have another asset class growing for the future through real estate, I would say that would be a great opportunity in addition to any, you know, further giving that you all want to do. If though you were to say to me, you know what, this really just does weigh on me. I want to be out of debt as soon as possible and it really doesn't concern me how low the interest rate is or what I could do with it apart from that. I just want the peace of mind to know that I'm not encumbered and I've got total flexibility. And although some advisors would say, oh, that's nonsense. I would say, no, lean into that and accept that conviction that you have and let's go full bore after this mortgage and get it paid off. But it sounds like perhaps you're not quite that far in that camp and you'd be willing to live with it if you knew you were doing something productive with it. And I would say that's fine because again, you're on a great track as a young guy.

You're absolutely going to be out of debt well before retirement unless something dramatically changes in your financial life. So there's no reason not to look for additional wealth building opportunities. And I like real estate as a second asset class or additional giving. Does that make sense? That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for explaining all that. I really appreciate that.

Absolutely. Hey, I'd really target as close to you could get as 50 percent down on this property. Let's not take out a big mortgage, although we look to 20 percent as a target for a down payment on a primary residence or just getting started. I'd try to go into this with as much down as you can and then look at it as a way to generate some income.

Of course, have the renter help you pay that off. And as long as you guys are committed to the time and effort that will go into being a landlord, I think that's a great opportunity for you. So thanks for checking in with us, Steve. Sounds like you all are doing a great job at managing God's money.

800-525-7000 is the number to call. We're going to take a quick break, but back with much more just around the corner. Stay with us. Thanks for joining us today on Money Wise Live, biblical wisdom for your financial decisions. As we head toward year end, December 31st, I would invite you to be a supporter of this ministry as we work toward meeting our goal of December 31st of $250,000. We would love to invite you to help us reach that. That will allow us to maintain and expand our outreach. In addition to this radio program and podcast, we're always looking for new ways to meet people where they are in their daily lives, and that's going to include a new name for this program coming January 2nd, My Life of Faith and Finance Live.

It's a better way we believe to express our understanding that really it begins with our faith and that our finances become an expression of our faith and our values and our priorities in service to the Lord. So we would just ask if you've benefited from this program in any way, we'd love to invite you to help us reach this goal of $250,000 by December 31st. We're already well on our way, and you can see an update on that as well as making a tax-deductible gift when you head to MoneyWise.org and click the banner at the top of the home page.

Again, that's MoneyWise.org. Just click the banner at the top of the page, and thanks in advance. 800-525-7000 is the number to call back to the phones. Holland, Michigan. Hey, Joy, thanks for calling. Go right ahead.

Hi. A while back, my husband and I wanted to go on vacation, so we borrowed from our life insurance company, our whole life. And unfortunately, we didn't make payments to pay it back, so now it's a whole lot more. And I was wondering, it'd be better to just let that go, cash back whatever is left, and invest the money I'm paying to them somewhere else, or should we continue holding on to this life insurance policy?

Yeah, the challenge is that, as you said, repayment of a life insurance loan is not required, but it's really typically in your best interest to do so because it eventually will detract from the outstanding death benefit. It will also compound over time, and so the total balance may actually grow larger than your cash value, and if you don't put more into it, it could cause the policy to lapse. What is your cash value today if you were to collapse the policy?

Do you know? I think about 10,000. Okay. And what's the death benefit on it?

So I don't know, maybe about 80,000. Okay. And do you all still have a need for life insurance? If something were to happen to you or your husband, would that create a hardship on the other spouse because of a loss of income? Probably.

We haven't paid off our house yet. Okay. And both of you are working? Yes. Okay.

Very good. Yeah, so you have a need for life insurance, so typically the starting point for that would be 10 times your incomes. You're making 60,000 a year. You'd want 600,000 in coverage, and the idea there is that if something were to happen to you, the Lord calls you home, and that income goes away while the other spouse is still working toward saving for retirement and still having to pay the bills and pay the mortgage and all of that, that 10 times the income would create enough that it could be invested and generate an income stream that would offset the loss of the income from the other spouse. That would be, I think, a starting point, a minimum that you'd want, and then you could add to that, you know, the total debt that you have so the house could be paid off. You could add to that the cost of a college education if you have kids.

I mean, these would be on top of that. And the very best way to make sure you have the proper coverage you need with the least cost possible would be through a term life insurance policy. So what are your and your husband's ages? I'm 61, 58. Okay. And how long do you all plan, based on everything you know today, on continuing to work? As long as I can. I never want to retire early, but I would like to work until about 70 if I can.

Yeah. So what you could look at would be either, you know, getting probably a 10-year life insurance policy, a 10-year term policy. You could go as much as 20 years. It's going to get more expensive, but at a minimum, a 10-year policy for enough that would replace the income that, you know, that spouse is going to earn while you all are still building your retirement assets. And the idea is, Joy, that while you all are building those assets, you've got this life insurance in place, but at some point when you're both retired, you're living on what you've saved through your retirement plans plus your Social Security, so you don't need the life insurance anymore.

If something were, you know, if the Lord were to call one of you home, hopefully the house is paid off or close to it, and you're not depending on that income anymore. So the life insurance expense could go away because you dropped the policy at that point. So if you did that, what I would say is, let's not cancel the whole life if you decided to do that. Let's go ahead and apply for and get a term policy in place for enough coverage on both of you so that the other spouse would be provided for if the other one were to pass away. Once that's in force, then you could collapse the whole life policy, take the cash value, add it to your emergency savings, and, you know, that would be gone.

And then you'd know you'd have enough life insurance coverage to take care of you, you know, until you all retire. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. That would probably be the direction that I would go. And, you know, I think it's better to focus your savings in your retirement plan and your life insurance through a term policy instead of combining them both in a whole life policy.

I think you'll just come out better over the long haul that way. Joy, thanks for your call today. God bless you.

Barrington, Illinois. Hi, Jeannie. How can I help you? Hi. Hi there. I have a question for you. Can you hear me? Go right ahead.

I sure can. Yeah. My question was about the Illinois Secured Choice Retirement Program that our employees have reached out to us.

We have to make a decision by, I think, January 1st. I wondered if you're familiar with the program and what your thoughts were on it. Yeah. I mean, it's basically a Roth IRA, from what I understand. And although it's mandatory for employers that don't have another plan of their own, it's voluntary for workers.

So you can opt out of it. Let's do this. I've got to take a quick break.

When we come back, I'll give you the details on it and weigh in with my thoughts and see if I can help you make a decision as to whether or not this is something you'd want to do. We're going to take a quick break here on MoneyWise Live. By the way, we've got some slides open. If you have a question for us today on any financial topic, 800-525-7000.

Again, 800-525-7000. We'll continue with Jeannie and Robin and Charles coming your way next as well. Stay with us.

We'll be right back after this break. Hey, it's so great to have you with us today on MoneyWise Live. This is where we apply the wisdom from God's Word to your financial decisions and choices.

All the lines are full, so let's take some questions. In fact, just before the break, we were talking to Jeannie and Barrington asking about this new retirement plan in Illinois called Secured Choice. As I was saying Jeannie, essentially, this is for companies that don't otherwise have a retirement program because if they don't have one, they have to offer or facilitate this secure choice. It acts like a Roth IRA. It even has the same contribution limits as other IRAs, so your total can't exceed $6500 in 2023 unless you're over age 50. Now, you can have another IRA alongside it, so you would be able to have both and then you invest it in stocks, bonds, or mutual funds. I like it if you don't have another option because I want you to be able to put as much away for retirement as possible. Between the two, you could put away $13,000 if you were to invest in the Secured Choice plus your own Roth IRA that you were to set up separate.

I'd prefer that you have a retirement plan offered by your employer that's not the Secured Choice because, for instance, if they had a 401k or 403b, you'd be able to put away a lot more money. Usually $13,000 is not going to get you to be able to place where you can put away 10-15% of your income. It may and that's great if it does, but I think apart from another choice, I would certainly take advantage of it.

I like that it's treated like a Roth because that's going to give you tax-free growth even though you don't get the current year tax deduction. Does that make sense? Yes, it does. And if I do have another, are you saying the max you can do if you have another is $13,000 a year? Correct, yeah, because the $6500 would apply to each of them, yeah. Okay, and so in it you're saying that the interest that it earns is when you decide within the Roth IRA to diversify into different stocks? Yeah, so the Roth is the vehicle or in this case the secure choice plus the Roth. That's the tax-deferred vehicle or account that you would put the money into and then inside it you could choose any investment choice you want and I would put it in just a good growth mutual fund that's consistent with your age and objectives just to try to grow that inside the Roth IRA which means it's going to grow tax-free and then when you pull it out in retirement, you don't pay any tax on the return of the amount you put in but you also don't pay tax at that point on any of the gains either. Okay, so once you reach retirement age, the Roth IRA could be converted, you're not paying tax on it and you take it out and use it? Yeah, so typically what would happen is it would grow to some much larger amount because it's compounding over a long time and then you would generally keep that invested although you get more conservative and then you just convert that to an income stream so you might say, okay, this has grown to a couple hundred thousand dollars, I'm going to pull out five hundred a month and that comes out without any tax being paid as you take that and use it to supplement your income in retirement. Okay, so within the retirement requirement? I'm losing you a little bit, you're breaking up there. Why don't you try to move one way or the other and give me that line again?

Unfortunately, I think I heard, yeah, so you would want to open a Roth IRA separately if that's what you were asking and you do that on your own, you could go to a Fidelity or Schwab, open that and then make a systematic contribution yourself. One would come through salary deferral, the other would come as just a self and a contribution that you would make directly and then you get both of those invested and they both grow for the future. Hope that helps you, Jeannie. I'm sorry I couldn't hear the final part of your question there but we appreciate you calling today.

To Lebanon, Indiana. Hi, Robin, thanks for calling. Go ahead. Hi, good afternoon. I was calling with a couple questions. I am in the process of putting my house on the market and I do not owe anything so there's no mortgage to pay off. I'm extremely grateful for that and my husband is wanting to take that money and I will pay, I have a few debts that I need to pay down in the amount of less than $10,000 and then just curious where I should invest that for the best opportunities and how capital gains is going to affect me, how much that will be.

Yeah, very good. So the home that you're selling is not your primary residence? Correct, it used to be it no longer is. So I'm fortunate enough I don't need to keep it and I really don't think I want to be a landlord because it's over an hour away anyhow so I just would rather just be done with it. Did you live there two out of the last five years? Yes, I was in there six years. Okay, so if you live there two out of the last five years, you wouldn't have any capital gains. Are you married filing jointly?

Yes. Okay, so if you're married filing jointly, you live there two out of the last five years, then you could consider that your primary residence would meet the requirement for you all to have no capital gains on the first $500,000 of gains, not the selling price but the gain on the property. Did you have more than $500,000?

Oh no. Okay, so excuse me, so you wouldn't have any capital gains at that point. You can check with your CPA to confirm that you meet the requirements but again two out of the last five years is really the general requirement there.

So that shouldn't be an issue. Then the question is, okay, what do you want to do with that money? Are you looking to roll this into another home or you already have another home?

No, we already have another home. He's looking for me to just put this money aside, put it in my name and have it grow and be there for me and I don't really have a good idea at this point with the way the market's gone in every direction just what would be a good opportunity. It's safe from that. I took $100,000 or $150,000 and said this is just strictly for investing after you know tithing, what would I do?

Sure. Tell me more about why you'd want it in your name only. What is he trying to accomplish there? Well, he's just a very good man. But by putting it in my name, he already oversees his mother's things and a lot of his sister's things because there has been a death in their family. So he already has a lot that he does and I just think he's trying to keep that separate so that there's no issues or you know it's just he wants it to be mine.

It had previously been my home before we married so he just wants to make sure that that's available to me. Got it. Okay. So what I would probably do is you know if you're looking to put this to work and you've got at least a 10-year time horizon, I think this is a great time to begin moving this into the stock market. I mean the bond market has sold off significantly as the interest rates have risen. The stock market is down still considerably although we're well off our lows.

Could we retest them? Yes, especially if we hit a recession, full-blown recession next year. But again, you wouldn't be looking out one or two years. And I would probably, unless you just really have a strong desire to manage this yourself, I'd find an advisor that could make these buying and selling decisions for you based on your goals and objectives. Would you be open to delegating this to an advisor who could build the portfolio and manage it for you? Oh, absolutely. That would be more peace of mind actually.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of wisdom in that. So what I would do is head to our website at MoneyWise.org and click Find a CKA. That stands for Certified Kingdom Advisor.

There's a lot of them in Indiana. I'd interview two or three that are investment advisors. Find the one that's the best fit and then you'd open an account at their custodian, probably Fidelity or Schwab or one of the big firms. And then based on your goals and objectives, they would take over management of that moving forward.

And you'd obviously be able to see in full view everything that's happening, but you'd know that somebody is really giving ownership and direction to that going forward. Thanks for your call today, Robin. We'll be right back on MoneyWise Live. Stay with us. Thanks for joining us today on MoneyWise Live. Let's head right back to the phones.

Waiting patiently in Port St. Lucie, Florida is Charles. Charles, go right ahead, sir. Yes. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my call.

Sure. The reason I'm calling my wife and I, we just recently purchased a new home. We actually we had one built in Port St. Lucie. We sold our primary home that we was in. We lived in it for 30 years and was able to, you know, get a pretty good penny out of it. You know, post about $350,000. We took most of the money and put down on the new home because I wanted to try to keep like a lower monthly payment. The house, the new home value estimated was around about $495,000.

So we put down close to about $295,000 on the home. And the question I wanted to ask, if I wanted to like not pay the taxes and the insurance, just hold that back and just put that money aside, not pay it, you know, in with the mortgage. Is that a good thing to do? Yeah, that's a great question.

Do me a favor and turn down your radio just a little bit. The mortgage servicer is giving you that option, Charles. They're saying you can go either way. Is that right? That's correct. I can go either way. Yeah.

Okay. So there's really no difference. I mean, the one advantage of going ahead and lumping it in is that it's just for savings. So you don't get to the end of the year and you know, you get a big old tax bill or you get a big insurance, homeowners insurance bill and you haven't put the money aside and now all of a sudden you're having to come out of pocket thousands of dollars and the money's not there. Whereas if you just kind of build it into your monthly payment, you know, you know it's there sitting in escrow. Now you could accomplish the same thing by setting up an automatic transfer to a savings account for the same amount. And if you do that with an online bank and now that they're paying two or three percent interest, you could earn a little bit of interest, not a whole lot. But at least, you know, you'd have access to the money if you needed it. But, you know, I think at the end of the day, it doesn't matter as long as it gets paid. I think the key is just would you rather know that you just send the one monthly payment and let the mortgage company handle it and you know the money is going to be there or would you rather control that yourself?

And if so, are you disciplined enough or do you have enough in the way of reserves to make sure that the money is going to be there when that time comes? The only other benefit to doing it yourself is, you know, a lot of times these escrow departments will make mistakes. So they'll want you to have an extra cushion in there. So they'll all of a sudden tell you they want you to send more because, you know, they want to make sure they've got enough in there if the property taxes or insurance go up.

Sometimes, you know, they'll miscalculate it and, you know, so they don't have enough there and then you're having to make it up. So anyway, I know I'm kind of talking out of both sides of my mouth a little bit, but I think it really comes down to are you going to take this on and make sure that you've got the money there? And if so, great, then you can control that. Otherwise, I think it's just kind of easier to let the mortgage company handle it.

But give me your thoughts. Oh, OK. So, yeah, because I had that had that happened to me before with, you know, my primary home, you know, it always was a shortage.

It always was. I had it at at more. So I was thinking on what I could do, because, you know, we we had some money where I am able to put at least six months of my finances, you know, my money finances. I'm able to put at least six months of that away. And then I'm able to also, you know, put in the taxes and insurance and to a savings. And I didn't think about putting into savings, but that's what I wanted to realize, you know, figure out what should I do. And then I have like, you know, maybe thirty or forty thousand dollars that we wanted to invest, you know, because in my five years, I'm hoping to retire.

And so, you know, that's what the other thing. So with the forty thousand that you want to invest, as long as you have a time horizon of at least five years, preferably 10, you could put that to work into the stock market. I mean, the market is down right now from its highs because of, you know, just what we've been experiencing this year with inflation and raising interest rates. So because of that, I think you could certainly get that to work. I'd love for you to do that in a tax deferred environment. So do you all have a company sponsored plan at work that you can take advantage of?

Yes, we do. I do with Fidelity. Okay. And are you putting in what percent of your income? I'm putting in like six percent of my income now.

Okay. So one option would be you could really bump that up and you could go up to fifteen percent. And if that reduced your paycheck such that you didn't have enough to kind of cover the bills and all the things you're doing, you could pull a little bit out of savings each month to essentially trade the money in savings for the money going into the tax deferred retirement plan. Because if that's truly what you're saving for, yeah, you could take this $40,000 and put that in a taxable account. But as you get dividends and interest and distributions and ultimately appreciation with capital gains, you're going to pay taxes on it.

Whereas if you were to just really bump up your contributions in your retirement plan and max out what you could put in there each year, even if that brought your check down lower than you would want it to be, again, you could use the savings to replace that income and essentially systematically move that savings from a taxable environment to the tax deferred environment. Does that make sense? Oh, that definitely makes sense.

So, okay. So also with the six month savings that I wanted. So where should I put that into if we ever need it? Yeah, I would put it in an online bank with FDIC insurance. So I would look at Marcus at Marcus.com or Capital One 360 or Ally Bank, one of those three. You'll be paying right now about two and a half percent or more a year with no fees. And you can link that to your checking account. And if you ever need it, it's not sitting there in the same account that you pay the bills out of, which is a good thing, but you can transfer it electronically for free, you know, within a couple of days.

And that would be the way that I'd go so that you don't have any monthly fees and you're getting a little bit of interest. Gotcha. Okay.

That's what I wanted to know. All right. All right.

Very good question. All right, Charles. God bless you, my friend.

To share it in Indiana. Hey, Judy, thanks for your patience. Go ahead. How are you?

I'm great. I have a quick question and I've learned a lot from you. So thank you. I am 65, bought a life and $10,000 life insurance policy three years ago, I believe. And I'm figuring out that I'm not going to get the thing paid off.

Not the right language, really. Sure. Until I probably already passed away. So I went and paid for my own cremation, my final arrangements. So now I'm thinking, why do I need this life insurance policy? Yeah, yeah, I would completely agree with that. So the only question is, you know, is there somebody depending upon you for your income such that if you were to pass away, it would create a hardship in their life? And I assume the answer to that is no.

Is that right? No, not really. I'm a grandma, so that I have an IRA and a Roth. And with your advice, I have online money market high-yield savings and a couple of CDs. All I have is a mortgage and I'm socking 5% into my work IRA and going to put $250 a pay into the money market high-yield savings. I thought, why am I paying?

I agree. Put that back in your budget and you can use that for maybe buying some extra gifts for those grandbabies or giving it away or saving even more. Because it doesn't sound like there's a need for this policy. You have assets that you can pass on. Nobody's relying on you for your income and you've already covered your funeral expenses by prepaying that. And if there was anything else, you've got assets that would be available for that purpose.

So I would say, let that policy go. Yeah, I think I will. And I once again, I just wanted to run it by you because I've learned a lot from you and I do appreciate your show. Well, I'm grateful, Judy. Thanks for calling.

That was very kind to Cleveland, Ohio. Hey, Deborah, how can I help you? Hi, Rob. Can you hear me? Yes, ma'am. Okay. I just want to be quick. I got a call today from a verified agent from Discover and what they offered was to take the current balance that I have on my Discover card and convert that to zero percent, not only to zero percent for the current balance, but for the future.

And I don't have to do anything different. And I asked them, well, why are you doing this? Because they reached out to me. I didn't reach out to them because I'm trying to pay this card off. They said that it's because of my credit history and my payment history and that there's some kind of review that has been going on about how much people are being charged for interest and that the people are paying religiously on their credit cards, but their balances aren't going down.

And I he's going to call me back tomorrow because I was at work and I wasn't able to talk to him very long. But I thought I said, I'd like to know if you heard anything about this. It's just some kind of regulatory thing that's going on. And they're asking credit card companies to do something about this gouging that they're doing with their percentages.

No, I'm not aware of anything. And that's their business model. So I don't see them changing that. Oh, you made a statement. You said the agent was verified.

How so? I have discover card number in my phone and it actually came through discover cards number. It wasn't like a random number or anything like that. Yeah, I don't think this is legitimate. I could be wrong, but there's a couple of thoughts I have. Number one is they can make the caller ID say anything they want.

Number one. Number two, I think you would have received a notice in writing, not just by phone. Number three, there's plenty of interest rate reduction scams out there. They typically claim to represent a debt reduction company or it may be a variation of that where they're pretending to be discover. Again, I could be wrong, but I wouldn't give them any personal information. I wouldn't talk to anybody who contacts you.

I would call discover and ask them the service rep what this is all about and use that phone number on the back of your car. Don't do anything else from anybody that initiates contact with you and let us know how it turns out, Deborah. Thanks for your call today. God bless you. That's going to do it for us, folks.

Money Wise Live is a partnership between Moody Radio and Money Wise Media. Thank you for a grateful for Jim Henry, Clara Segar, Amy Rios and Dan Anderson making this happen today. Thank you for being here as well. We'll talk to you tomorrow. Come back and join us then. Bye bye.