12/9/2022_MWL

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Episode one drops on January 1st. Are you looking for a place to park your emergency fund or other liquid savings that honors God and increases your generosity? I am Rob West. There are 10,000 banks and credit unions these days where you can open an account, but not many allow you to directly serve the kingdom with your savings. I'll talk about one that does today with Aaron Cade, and 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 it's a pleasure to have Aaron Cade with us today. He's the Chief Marketing Officer at Christian Community Credit Union, an underwriter of this program, and in his role at CCCU, Aaron is able to align his faith with years of financial services, experience, and Aaron it's a delight to welcome you to the program.

Hi Rob, thank you for having me on. I'm really excited to be here today with you to share with you and your listeners the great things going on at Christian Community Credit Union. Well we are as well, and I know CCCU has been around for a long time, but still some listeners may not be familiar with the organization, so perhaps you could begin by just sharing a brief history and even the mission of Christian Community Credit Union. Sure you're correct Rob, the credit union has a long history.

In fact we just celebrated 65 years of service this past March. Christian Community Credit Union was established in 1957 by a small group of American Baptist ministers in Southern California. They had found it difficult to get financing for church projects because secular banks just didn't understand ministry.

They didn't even know how to read a giving statement. They realized that if they pooled their resources, they could provide financing to help other churches grow. Since then, membership has grown nationwide to serve churches, ministries, their staff, and their members. We also serve Christian schools, colleges, seminaries, and other ministries. Today Christian Community Credit Union is one of the largest faith-based credit unions in the country. Our mission is to serve Christ followers to live and give more abundantly. I love that, and we need partners in financial services, including banking partners that really are helping us to align our values with our faith, and CCCU certainly does that. I know it's really based on God's word. Where in scripture do you go as you think about the work of CCCU? Our company values are rooted in scripture, and the two most important company values at the credit union are we love God and we strive to serve and love others like Christ. These are based on Matthew chapter 22 verses 37 through 38. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.

And the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. It's a blessing to be able to come alongside our members to serve their financial needs. Whether it's a church that needs financing for a new building, a couple buying their first home, or a student opening their first checking account, we're here to help members and ministries manage their money wisely. Yeah, that sounds great. And you've mentioned obviously just now several of those services you offer. I'd love to unpack that just a bit more here before the break. Maybe we could start with the personal side just in terms of what you all provide to your members.

Sure. At Christian Community Credit Union, we offer Christians banking products such as mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, savings accounts, and free checking accounts. CCCU has better rates and lower fees than the big banks. And we're part of the Co-op Network, the largest branch network in the country with 5,600 shared branches and over 30,000 surcharge free ATMs across all 50 states.

Very good. And what about businesses? Well, partnering with businesses to create a better financial future through the bond of faith, community, and shared financial resources is what we do best. We offer a suite of financial products and services designed to help your business thrive. From managing your day-to-day business expenses to helping you tap into the funds you need to build your business, CCCU supports your kingdom calling.

Yeah. And then finally ministries? Well, as ministry experts, we're committed to helping your ministry grow and serve more fruitfully. Our banking and lending solutions are designed to help you at all life stages in your ministry. From the church planter all the way to the church expanding to multiple campuses, we have the right financial solutions for you.

Yeah, that's great. So the big idea here is that no matter where somebody finds themselves, whether it's dealing with their personal finances or running a business or a ministry, they can have a trusted partner who shares their values and can give competitive services but do it with God's word at the center and really a heart toward aligning your values with your financial decisions. We're talking today with our good friend Aaron Cade, Chief Marketing Officer at Christian Community Credit Union and underwriter of this program. When we come back, we'll continue to talk more about Christian Community Credit Union just around the corner.

Stay with us. Great to have you with us today on MoneyWise Live. Joining me today, Aaron Cade, Chief Marketing Officer at Christian Community Credit Union and underwriter of this program. And just before the break, Aaron, we were talking about the many ways that a credit union who is operated based on God's word can really align with you and help you serve God's kingdom but also meet your banking needs.

And you were sharing several of the ways that you do that. Being a not-for-profit organization, CCCU's business model is especially helping with ministry financing. I'd love for you to perhaps share a story with us about a ministry you've been able to help in this way.

Sure. I'd love to talk to you about Calvary Chapel South Orange County. They're in San Clemente, California, not too far from the headquarters of the credit union. And we were recently blessed by the opportunity to be able to work with them. And I'll tell you, theirs is a story of God's faithfulness. During California's restrictive lockdown, and it was restrictive during the pandemic, many churches had to move to online services or no services at all. This church instead began to gather outdoors in the parking lot of a local mall. Folks from all around Southern California who were hungry for fellowship and hungry to hear God's word traveled for miles to worship. God blessed their ministry and the church found itself needing a larger building to accommodate the growing flock. When they reached out to us with their need, we listened, we understood their goals, and we helped them with financing.

As a result, Calvary Chapel South Orange County was able to purchase a large property nearby. The church continues to grow and is bringing thousands of souls to Christ in the local community. That's just one of the many stories where CCCU was able to help a church expand its ministry and advance God's kingdom.

Yeah, I love that. What a practical example of how these two things come together to advance the kingdom. And you've mentioned that several times that really by engaging with CCCU, you are in fact serving God's kingdom. What does that look like, Aaron, with just a basic checking or savings account? We are a faith-based, not-for-profit, member-owned financial cooperative. We don't exist to earn money for shareholders. We are owned by our members and we exist to serve our members. So not only are our products designed to help our members thrive financially, but we also give back to Christian missions and causes that our members care about, such as ministries that spread the gospel, combat human trafficking, and protect vulnerable children.

To date, we've given back almost $6 million. So when you do business with Christian Community Credit Union, not only can you feel good knowing that profits are coming back to you in the form of better rates and lower fees, but they're also going to support Christian causes that you care about. Yeah, that's really encouraging. You've mentioned the word member several times. I know that's really key to a credit union. So is membership open to anyone? And how does one join the Christian Community Credit Union? You can join the credit union family in three different ways. One is through your affiliation with a Christian church, ministry, or school. Two, you can join by joining our charity partner, American Alliance for Orphans. Or you can join through a family member who is already part of the credit union.

That's helpful, Aaron. Give us a sense of how someone actually signs up to become a member through one of those avenues you just described. So when you are going through the membership application, you can choose to join by virtue of being an employee, a member, or a regular attendee of a Christian church. You just list the church and the location, and we ask that you read and affirm our statement of faith, which will be familiar to most Protestants. Or you can join by virtue of being on staff or a member of a Christian ministry or a school or a Christian university.

And it's the same way. You just indicate what your affiliation is, read and agree with our statement of faith, and you're on your way. Very good. I know we were talking off the air a bit, Aaron, just about your passion for the work that you have the opportunity to do at CCCU and really the why behind the ministry. I'd love for you to unpack a bit more about that related to the needs of Christians and really the opportunity you all have to give and support some incredible ministries around the globe.

Yeah, thank you, Rob. We recently, and by recently, I mean earlier this year, we took the time to meet with members, with prospective members, both individuals and ministries, to really understand what they were looking for from the credit union, what role we are serving in their lives today and what role we can serve in their lives tomorrow that we may not be doing right now. And what we learned was so encouraging, that Christians are looking to an organization that aligns with their faith and values, that they know exactly how their money is being used, and it's going to help grow God's kingdom.

It's going to help build churches, to expand ministries, and that it's being given back to the Christian community. And we work with some great ministry partners that our members' generosity has been able to support over the years. One of them is Mission Aviation Fellowship, who is spreading the gospel to the most remote parts of the world. Another is Christian Alliance for Orphans, who's supporting families, supporting orphans across the globe, but also playing a big role in the United States in the foster care community, helping families in crisis stay together, helping kids in the foster care system, helping them all experience God's love.

And another partner we've been working with is Olive Crest. They're primarily on the West Coast, but they're playing a huge role in serving the needs of families in crisis, of children in the foster care system, in Southern California and up the West Coast. And just the need is so great in LA County alone, and the role they're playing is just helping keep families together, but if that's not possible, to help find a forever home for kids who are in the foster care system. That's really exciting work, Aaron. Well, in our final moments here together, let's get really practical, just about the needs of Christians in the banking space.

Obviously, we're in a really unusual time. Interest rates have been climbing, banking products perhaps are slightly more attractive, although being offset by runaway inflation. But just talk about what you're hearing from Christians and the opportunity that exists at CCCU for their banking products. Well, yeah, we've got great products to help both individuals and ministries to park their rainy day funds and earn a really great rate of interest.

We've got a welcome CD. It's several percentage points higher than what you could earn with a secular bank. And you only have to keep your money with the credit union for seven months, but you can put up to $250,000, which is a great place for a ministry, especially as we enter this season of giving, to be able to put this money and let it grow and put it to work for the future. We've also got a full range of lending products, and we don't encourage the accumulation of debt, but we've got a credit card that is a great tool.

Credit cards can be a great tool for making online purchases, for living your life. And if you're going to use this tool, why not use one that gives back to the Christian community? We have the card that gives to missions and every dollar you spend, a portion of it goes back to ministries such as Mission Aviation Fellowship.

I love that. Well, how can listeners get more information, Aaron? Well, we have a special page we created just for MoneyWise listeners.

Go to joinchristiancommunity.com. Very good. Aaron, we appreciate you stopping by. Great to meet you, my friend. Thank you, Rob. It was great to meet you as well. Blessings to you all.

Thank you. Aaron Cade has been our guest today. He's chief marketing officer at Christian Community Credit Union, an underwriter of this program.

That website again, joinchristiancommunity.com. We'll be right back. Hey, great to have you with us today on MoneyWise Live.

I'm Rob West. Let's turn the corner and answer your questions on anything financial. The number to call is 800-525-7000. That's 800-525-7000. We'd love to hear from you today. Let's begin in Indianapolis. Peter, thanks for your patience.

How can I help you? Yes. I want to know if you have a massive amount of money, like so many millions, and you want to keep it in a safe place, is the credit union a good place? If you had millions of dollars, would you put it there? Or can you only put $250,000 there? Where would be a good place to put a massive amount of money where it's safe?

Because everything's going digital, I don't understand, and we'll lose it all. Well, there's a lot in that question that you just asked there, Peter. First of all, regardless of how much we have, we need to be prepared to follow and understand God's principles of managing money, which is to hold it loosely and give it generously and understand God's the owner, and we're charged with being found faithful.

Now, part of that is exactly what you're asking. How are we wise in managing God's money, whatever he entrusts to us, whether it's a little or a lot, and a lot would certainly include someone who comes into millions of dollars. You're probably referring to the FDIC insurance or the equivalent insurance for a credit union, and it is up to a $250,000 limit. Now, there are ways for folks who have quite a bit more than that to use a brokerage firm who can basically in one sweep account can access multiple banks and make sure that it's parsed out in such a way that there's not any more than $250,000 with one institution. So if you were talking about somebody who had millions of dollars, I would probably go to one of the big large national brokerage firms and use one of their sweep accounts and let them manage that for you. And again, the idea there is for somebody who has a significant sum of money, they wouldn't have to go around opening multiple bank or credit union accounts and then managing all of those accounts.

You do it with one institution, and then they would actually go out and place that money for you to ensure that you've got the FDIC insurance coverage on the whole amount. Now, you mentioned, I think it's essentially all coming crashing down. I would disagree with you on that point. Certainly, we have our challenges in this country, and we'll talk a little bit later in the broadcast to our friend Jerry Boyer. He just wrote an article in World Magazine, which you could find on the World Magazine's digital platform as well, just talking about the challenges we have with the aging of the population and the debt levels that we have in this country, and they're real and we're going to have to get on top of them. But if we're grading the US against every other nation in the world, we're still far and away the strongest in terms of just the soundness of our economy, even though we have to, I think, get this thing going back in the right direction if we don't want to repeat what we saw in the 70s or even worse. But I think the backing of the full faith and credit of the United States government, which is what you get with FDIC insurance, is still very sound and, I would say, very low risk.

So if it were me and I had access to that kind of money that I was responsible for managing, I would be making sure that a portion of it is invested properly and that a portion of it was in safe instruments, and I would put banking instruments with government backing on the most conservative end of the risk spectrum, even given everything we're facing today. So hopefully that's helpful to you, Peter. We appreciate you calling us, sir. 800-525-7000.

It looks like we have four lines open at the moment. We'd love to hear from you. Let's head to Charleston, South Carolina. Hi, Mary. You're next on the program.

Go ahead. Hi, Rob. You're my afternoon company when I'm in the kitchen every day. Oh, I'm delighted to hear that. Are you cooking something, Mary, or just relaxing?

Well, I'm 81, so my cooking is minimal, but I'm in the kitchen. So sometimes when I'm making too much noise, I miss things here and there. A while back, you mentioned to someone that it might be a smart move to invest in something that I think had to do with treasuries, as long as this inflation is where it is, but I miss it. And here's the deal. When everybody was losing money, we lost a little bit of money in CDs and such things like that, investments. We quit chasing CDs and interest, put our money with our main savings with annuities with Knights of Columbus, and some of them have guaranteed interest of 3.5%, not both of them, but one of them. And then we purchased some gold and some silver, and I think we probably purchased too much in proportion to other assets. And we also have a money market, which is kind of like a working savings if we need house repairs or work done in the car, that kind of thing. That's where we get the money.

That has no interest. So here's my question. Do you think it would be wise to get rid of some of the gold and silver or give me a percentage of how much I should have without having too much?

Because you can't go in the store and buy a loaf of bread with it. Yeah, that's exactly right. What percent, Mary, would you say is in gold and silver right now? Well, it's just 15 of each, 15,000 each, but I haven't figured a percentage because I'm not sure what the percentage needs to be figured on. Do you figure like your house?

No. I would look at it in light of what I would call your investable assets. So that could be, you know, stocks, bonds, anything beyond your emergency fund, the emergency reserve you have in cash. But it would include, you know, a real estate investment, not your primary residence, but if you had a rental property or something like that.

Well, then it sounds like we're back to the annuities, the coins, and the money market. Okay. What you think roughly is how much all in.

Let's see. Say 250. I'm not sure it's quite that much, but about 250. Okay. Yeah.

So what I would do is I would say, let's typically look at about 5% in the precious metals. It sounds like you've got about 30,000 of the 250. Is that right? Yes. Yes. Okay. And so you're at 12%.

I would love for you to be at five. I think close enough would be, you know, if you just kept one of those. So perhaps you keep the gold, which would be 15,000 and maybe you sell the silver. But I think you're right.

I mean, it doesn't produce an income and it is hard to use as it's not divisible. Grateful to have you with us today on MoneyWise Live. We're listener supported. If you'd like to help us reach our year end goal by December 31st, you can head to our website at moneywise.org. There at the top of the page, you'll see the progress we've made on our way to a goal for the end of the year of $250,000 in listener support. We're well on our way, but still have a ways to go and perhaps your gift could help. If you'd consider a gift, we'd be grateful moneywise.org. Just click give now at the top of the page. Thanks in advance.

Just before the break, we were talking to Mary who listens to the program regularly from her kitchen in South Carolina. Mary, you were saying that you have some annuities, you've got some money in the money market, not really earning much of anything and you've got some gold and silver. You've got about 12% in the precious metals.

I'd love for that to be not really more than five. As you said, it's not divisible, very hard to use. If you want to buy, as you said, a loaf of bread, you've got the storage, you've got the markup on the buy and the sell. It doesn't produce any income and the long-term performance is not as good as a properly diversified stock and bond portfolio. If you were to take that allocation down to just the gold holding, that would basically cut that in half and put you at 6%, which is pretty close to my target of five. Then the question would be outside of the annuities, if you were to stick with that for the guaranteed portion, what would you have left if we had 15 roughly from the silver and then what do you have in the money market and anything else besides the annuities? The money market is about 50 and those three things, that's it. Okay, so that would be about 65. Do you want to keep that 65 in really more guaranteed type instruments or would you be interested in putting a portion of that to work, let's say, with a small stock and bond allocation?

Well, that's kind of where my question was. I didn't remember what you mentioned to someone about, I thought you said it had to do with treasury or with bonds. Yeah, I was talking about the I bonds, probably the inflation bonds, which are paying 6.8% right now.

You and your husband could put in up to 10,000 each in the I bonds this year and then you could turn around and do that again next year after the first of the year. So that could put up to 40,000 in and that's paying a great rate right now. You'd lock in 6.8% for the next six months and then for the next six months, you'll know what that rate will be when it changes and they publish it again in May. And it's going to be based on the consumer price index, which clearly because of what the Fed's doing with interest rates is coming down because they're with their gloves off, they're trying to fight inflation with all that they have. But I still think it'll be a fairly attractive rate for the next year and that's the minimum amount of time you'd have to leave that money in is 12 months.

Right, right. Well, that sounds like a start to make up the coin and then that leaves them if we should do anything different with the money market. Yeah, I think with the money market, I'd be looking at the very least at a high yield savings account, like an online savings account. Marcus, for instance, right now, which is the retail operation of Goldman Sachs, they're paying 3% on their high yield savings, no fees, FDIC insured.

And it's available online. If you're comfortable opening up an online savings account, you could link it to your checking and move money back and forth electronically. So that would be fee free and you'd get 3% a year. So I like that with FDIC insurance more than the money market essentially paying nothing. And then the iBonds you would access at treasurydirect.gov.

That's the only place you can buy the electronic iBonds is directly from the U.S. Treasury. Okay, that sounds like a good beginning. I really appreciate it, Rob, and I'm about to finish it.

That's great. And next time in I'm in South Carolina, we need to have a cup of coffee, you and your husband. Hey, God bless you, Mary. Thanks for being a part of the program today to upstate New York. Hi, Esther. How can I help you? Hi, Rob.

My name is Esther. Thank you so much for your program. Just gratitude. I find that I got to pay off my student loan.

It was like over $120,000. I'm very grateful for all the advice, how to budget, being number one and then living below your means. Very, very grateful.

Too much insight on this program. Thank you so much. Esther, I am so delighted to hear that. Now, wait a minute.

We've got to back up here for a second. This is incredible. So you paid off your student loans. How much did you owe in student loans? $120,000?

Yes. That's incredible. How did you do it? What changes did you make and how did you do that and over what period of time, Esther? So over a five-year period, I wrote out all my loans that I have and I was like, where can I cut so that I reach this maximum I want to pay every month? And then when COVID hit, they took away the interest.

So any spare money. Yes, ma'am. Wow.

And you applied the principles from God's word that you heard on this program. Is that right? Yes. Yes.

Very, very helpful. I didn't know because when you're in school, you have no clue that he's going to pay back the money sometime. So when you open like all the money you're paying goes towards interest. And you're like, OK, I need to work harder and I understand how I can pay this down. And I graduated from the University of Minnesota.

So with both a master's and a bachelor's, very expensive. But I'm glad it's finally over. Well, Esther, I am so proud of you and I'm so delighted that you called to share that good news with us. How does it feel to know that that one hundred and twenty thousand dollars worth of debt has been paid in full? It's so much really.

And I know that. Everything is possible, like when when I look back, I was like, I'll never pay this down. But and the beauty of it is the more you give that saying you get like not holding onto the money and then you get like the peace of mind. Hey, this is doable. Keep giving and staying down.

It's going to be OK. Oh, that's incredible. Now, let me just talk about that portion for a second. So you continued your giving even while you were paying back the debt. Is that right? Yes. Yes. Oh, wow.

And now you're able to do even more because you don't have this enormous payment to repay your student loans each month. Yeah, that's great. Well, listen, God bless you. I'm so excited for you. And I'm so grateful that you took a moment to call in today. What an encouragement to folks who are out there listening right now, Esther, that are where you were five years ago thinking, I have no idea how I'm going to do this without God's help. And but I'm just going to roll up my sleeves and go to work and cut back on my spending and stay diligent. And you did it. And you're a testimony to all of those people that it can be done and that you can continue giving in the midst of it and that there's freedom on the other side of it.

And that real joy comes from being connected to God's activity through your generosity as you return a portion of what he's entrusted to you back to him. Listen, God bless you, Esther, and thank you so much for calling today. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. You stay on the line. I want to get your information and we'll send you a gift today, something to encourage you. And I'm actually going to send you the Stewardship Bible, which is a beautiful Bible that has all of the passages around money highlighted in green. And as you meditate on God's word and continue reading all these passages and understand the heart of God as it relates to your money, I think it'll be an even further encouragement to you.

So you stay on the line. Our team will get your information and we'll get that Stewardship Bible out to you today. And thanks for calling. What an amazing testimony from Esther today.

I hope that's an encouragement to you. Well, folks, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, more of your financial questions. We've got some lines open. Also, Jerry Boyer will stop by in the next segment as well. 800-525-7000 is the number to call.

That's 800-525-7000. Stay right there and we'll be right back. Eternal principles and revelation in the Bible that's thousands of years old, but we're still focusing on the weekly news cycle. This article was something that the editor there, Andrew Walker, asked me for. Kind of like, Jerry, can you tell us where we are in the U.S. economy in the context of history?

And my answer was, well, there is a parallel. The 1970s, bag inflation. That's when the word stagflation was created, was coined.

The existence of stagnation, low growth in and out of recession. There were just these small recession, then a weak recovery, then another small recession and high inflation throughout the 1970s. And like I said, there was inflation as well. And that's basically what we have now. We had a small recession first half of the year, probably have another recession next year and inflation is high.

So that's what's similar. What's different is that Ronald Reagan could come in and he and Paul Volcker could kind of work together to fix that. Volcker tightened the money supply to fight inflation and Reagan cut taxes and deregulated in order to get growth going. And we came out of the 70s into the 80s and 90s, which we had more than two decades of really strong growth.

So can we have that now? My answer is we have so much more debt now than we had when Reagan was president. And we don't have a pro-growth policy environment. So we have a Volcker kind of inflation fighting, but we don't have a Reagan kind of, and by the way, I don't want to be partisan because JFK was pro-growth and in many ways, Bill Clinton was.

We don't have that pro-growth kind of consensus in our politics. And in addition, you know, when Reagan took office that the GDP ratio was about 20%. So it's like someone earning $100,000 a year and they're $20,000 in debt. Well, now it's 125%.

And that's a lot higher. And we're a much older society and we're getting older quickly and the labor force is dropping because people are aging out of the system and retiring. So we can't just change policy and get into boom territory. We've got some long-term structural problems that have to do with Roe versus Wade and they have to do with decades of profligacy that there's no easy fix for that we have to reconcile ourselves with. We should get better policy, but we're up against something tougher than they were up against in the 1970s. Well, you summed it up all at the end, Jerry, by saying, and I'll read your last sentence, actually two sentences, Christians need to relearn our pro-fertility, pro-thrift, pro-work heritage, and then reteach it to America.

It won't be easy and it won't be quick. And I think that really is your feeling moving forward. Yeah, I don't see any way out without a genuine cultural renewal, which starts with the spiritual revival and reformation. And if we become people who have babies, then we are workers.

But if we are people who abort babies, then there won't be. And if we become people who take early retirement because work is seen as bad rather than one of the ways to glorify it, then again, we're going to have work problems. And if we just continue to be spenders without thinking about the long term, unless there's a genuine cultural shift that's grounded in a spiritual shift, then we can cut taxes and that would be great. And we can have a better monetary policy and that would be great.

But those things won't overcome a culture that is in need of renewal. Yeah, yeah, no doubt about that. Jerry, finally, just to bring this more current, what we're experiencing right now is that continued tug of war where bad news is good.

Good news is bad. This week, it seems like, you know, we're perhaps seeing that inflation is not going anywhere anytime soon, huh? Yeah, yeah. Inflation was higher than expected.

Inflation was higher than, you know, historically. By the way, I'm sitting in the Wal-Mart parking lot here, but not product placement. My wife and I just stopped. You know, we went on a trip and we stopped off to do shopping on the way back. And I suppose they've got to get out to the car.

Yeah. You know, Rob West interview, face it. What is the faith and finance live interview coming up? And I can tell you, having just walked out of there, inflation ain't beat. We just we're just shopping for beef. And then we have not broken the back of inflation. Well, we have a situation where the Fed the Fed has this dual mandate.

And what's happened is and they're contradictory markets. And that's developed into two factions of the Fed because the Fed's a committee like a little Congress in charge of money. So there's a kind of pro inflation faction there. You know, they're like, oh, inflation's not so bad. What we really need to watch out for is a recession. And there's a recession faction, which is saying, no, we're going to we're going to have to cause a recession in order to beat, you know, beat back inflation.

And those two camps war with one another. This week was a good week for the recession faction because there was some strong economic data. And this is the good news is bad news. And inflation, wholesale inflation, which was announced today, was high. Both of these of those things gave ammo to the pro recession faction.

So they had the whip hand this week. And what what that means is monetary policy is going to be tighter and it's likely to cause a recession and it's going to slow down the economy. And markets responded accordingly. They said, OK, that's what the Fed signals is going to do.

Then we we should go down. We were going to reprice based on the higher likelihood of recession. And by the way, it's not just markets going down in general.

The growth sensitive parts like the NASDAQ went down more than the same value or even the S&P and cyclicals went down more than then, you know, things like, well, regular consumer. Right. There's discretionary and their staples like we just bought food. Right. You buy food no matter what.

You don't buy a boat no matter what. So the things that are growth sensitive are what I would hope not. The things that are growth sensitive are going down more quickly than the things that aren't growth sensitive.

All of that is saying the Fed is more likely to trigger a recession in its fight against inflation. Very good. Well, it makes sense, Jerry. And we always appreciate your perspective both on the current as well as the bigger picture macro perspective, even the historical perspective, but always rooted in God's word.

You get back to your Wal-Mart shopping, safe travels and tell Susan hello, OK? Well, God bless you. All right. Thanks, Jerry. That was Jerry Boyer, president of Boyer Research.

You'll find his articles at the World magazine, but also at The Christian Post. All right. Let's finish with some phone calls today.

Greensburg, Indiana. Hi, Leah. Thank you for your patience. Go ahead.

Thank you for taking my call. About a year ago, I heard on your station about I bonds. And so I invested ten thousand dollars. What happens to this? It was for a year. So do they send it? It's actually a 20 year bond that renews for an additional 10 years. So it's a 30 year bond.

What you were probably referencing and you heard is that the minimum amount of time you can leave it in there is a year. So any time after a year, you can go to Treasury direct dove and just tell them that you want to redeem the bond. And at the moment you redeem it, it will become it will be available to you and they will credit the interest to you at that point. Now, any time you redeem it in less than five years, they're going to take back as a penalty three months worth of interest. So they'll credit you a year's worth of interest minus three months. So you get, you know, nine months worth of interest or nine twelfths of whatever the rate you were being paid. And then that money will be available to transfer out to your checking or savings account.

But if you do nothing, it will continue. The interest will continue to grow for the next 30 years. Well, at ninety one, 30 years doesn't sound too interesting. That's what caught my attention was I thought it was for one year.

Yeah. Well, a minimum of one year. So you could treat it as if it's a one year bond if you want.

And you'll just go into your account on the one year anniversary and do a redemption. And then you could pull that money out and put it wherever you want. But if you decided to leave it for another year and another and another, it will just continue to earn interest up to 30 years.

OK. Yeah, I guess I didn't listen carefully enough. But keep in mind there's there's no just because it will continue to grow for 30 years doesn't mean you have to leave it there for 30 years. So, again, one day after your one year anniversary, you could take that money out and put it wherever you want. You could cash it in and put it in the bank, put it in savings or checking, or you can leave it there.

So for all intents and purposes, Leah, you can do exactly what you were expecting to have happen. And that is you can treat this as if it's a one year bond. And the way you would do that is you would just redeem it as soon as you get to your one year anniversary. You just don't have to. It's not automatically going to go to cash.

It will just continue to sit there and earn interest unless you tell them that you want to redeem it. So I don't think you need to treat it any differently than you thought, other than to say, if you want to leave it there, you have that option. And that's a good thing. Hey, thanks for listening and calling today. God bless you, folks. Thanks for being along with us today. We're grateful for Deb Solomon, Amy Rios, Clara Seagard and Jim Henry.

Couldn't do it without them. Thank you for being here as well. Money Wise Live is a partnership between Moody Radio and Money Wise Media.

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