When You’re Treated Unfairly

Into your hands I commit my spirit. Redeem me, O Lord. Deliver me from my enemies and from those who pursue me. Psalm 31 5 and 15. I am Rob West. Those are the words of David who suffered severe mistreatment at the hands of Saul.

We're all treated unfairly from time to time. So how should we respond? Well, I'll talk about that today and then it's on to your calls at 800-525-7000.

That's 800-525-7000. This is Faith and Finance Live. Biblical wisdom for your financial journey.

Take the plank out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. If you find that you've treated someone unfairly, repent and make amends because you serve a just God. Proverbs 21 3 says to do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice. Now, what to do when you're treated unfairly? Well, it could be by a family member, a friend, a boss or coworker or someone you're doing business with who may be trying to cheat you. Money is often the issue when we interact with others and it's a powerful motivator to strike back when we feel we're being mistreated. Losing money we feel we deserve to have can make us feel better. But Hebrews 12 15 tells us, see to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God, that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble and by it many become defiled. You see, we live in a fallen world filled with fallen people and we all experience mistreatment at one time or another. It's important to remember that you're one of those fallen people too. Your first instinct might be to lash out against someone who's mistreating you. That is not a biblical response to mistreatment.

Instead, look to Christ as your model. No one suffered more injustice and mistreatment than Jesus. In 1 Peter 2 20 through 22, the apostle tells us how a Christian should respond to mistreatment. It reads, When you do good and suffer for it, you endure. This is a gracious thing in the sight of God.

For to this you have been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin. Neither was deceit found in his mouth.

Now, that's a pretty high bar to reach. But Peter goes on to tell us how to respond like Christ to injustice in verses 23 and 24. They read, When he was reviled, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.

He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. You see, the key to responding like Christ to injustice is trusting God to work for good in all your affairs. Psalm 37 4 through 6 tells us, Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Commit your way to the Lord, trust in him, and he will act. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your justice as the noonday. One of the greatest examples of a Christ-like response to injustice is found in Genesis and the story of Joseph.

He was first sold into slavery by his brothers, then wrongly accused by Potiphar's wife and thrown into prison. Yet Joseph never reacted in an ungodly manner to injustice. He even went on to save his brothers and all of Israel when famine struck.

Joseph trusted God, who eventually used Joseph's mistreatment in a powerful way. And God tests us the same way when we suffer injustice. He expects us to respond like Christ.

Now, this doesn't mean that we must quietly accept every injustice that comes our way. It's not unbiblical to state your case in truth and love, but the result must be left to God. This brings up the question of whether Christians should sue or not. In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul says, If you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church?

Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers? Paul is adamant that this is a terrible witness for Christ. He goes on to say, To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong?

Why not rather be defrauded? But know that Paul is only talking about Christians suing other Christians in civil courts. The civil courts are ordained by God to protect us from injustice.

And nowhere does the Bible say we can't use them when we're wronged outside the church. All right. Your calls are next. 800-525-7000. We'll be right back. Great to have you with us today on Faith and Finance Live.

I'm Rob Last. We're taking your calls and questions now and anything financial with whatever you're thinking about. Give us a call.

Let's tackle it today together. 800-525-7000. At the moment, we've got a few lines open. So this is a great time for you to give us a call and get in line. And we'd love to chat with you again. 800-525-7000. Let's head west, far west to Spokane, Washington.

Hi, Dean. Thanks for calling. Go ahead. Yes. Thank you, Rob, so much for taking my call.

I just had a question. I'm going to retire this year, probably 70. And our home is paid off, and we also have a rental duplex, which is paid off. We've got very good renters, and the unit is well maintained, although I need to paint it this year. But we plan on doing volunteer work after I retire, probably outside the U.S. And the question is, we've never kept the money. We've always donated for charitable causes, and we still want to be able to do that. Would it be better to go ahead, since we're not around, to sell it and finance it so that we could have the principal and interest? Or should we just maybe turn it over to a management company?

I wasn't sure what the tax liability would be. Yeah, very good. Well, those are both great options. First of all, I'm delighted to hear you guys have ordered your finances in such a way that allows you to have the freedom to respond to the leading of the Lord, perhaps doing some volunteer or mission work outside the U.S., and you're debt-free, which gives you ultimate flexibility. As my mentor Ron Blue says, we should be, as believers, in a position to live or die, give or go. And you're doing the go aspect of this, which is great.

I love it. So, yeah, as you consider this, you mentioned something about the principal and the interest in financing something. Tell me a little bit more about what you were thinking there. Well, there are people who have said that if we ever wanted to sell it, they would like to buy it. And so if we financed it ourselves, then we would have maybe more to give.

Yes. So you would do basically owner financing, and you would give them a note, and they would pay you a pretty good interest rate, I would imagine, principal and interest. And because you all don't have to service any debt, you'd have the ability to turn around and reinvest that into the kingdom. Yeah, so that's one option. Option two is to get a property management company. They'd either take a flat fee or charge you somewhere between five and ten percent of the rental income to manage that property. And if you did that, you'd just want to probably choose a local company. They're a boutique or a larger firm. Hopefully somebody with specialized knowledge who's got good references and can help you manage it, since you're going to be not only out of state but out of the country.

You're going to want somebody who can jump in there and keep everything current and maintained and all of that. The downside is, with you all not being there, obviously they would be responsible for replacing that renter if something changed. And despite them being a good tenant for a long time, they had to move out suddenly. The good news is, if you guys are in a financial position to weather that, then you'd continue to keep this asset, let it appreciate into the future.

And the rental income could be something that you could have well into your retirement to continue to fund kingdom causes. But it does add a little more complexity as opposed to you selling it, no longer being responsible for it. And now you're just becoming a lender and that's a function of how good a quality is the credit risk on the current tenant. What risk are you assuming?

What would you do? Are you willing to go through an eviction process if something perhaps even out of their control happens and they're no longer able to pay? And would you be willing to step in and execute your right as the lender to do that? And if you either, A, don't want to take that risk and responsibility or, 2, you don't want the hassle of knowing that you're an absentee landlord, given that we're heading into a recession and we don't know how deep it's going to be, then that third option is more attractive where you say, listen, we're going to go ahead and sell it and if we have any gain on it, we'll pay the capital gains tax. But now we've got an asset, a liquid asset that we could invest in a stock and bond portfolio that's passive that also could generate income that you could use to give to kingdom causes.

So given kind of my analysis of those three, which sounds like it's most aligned with what you and your wife would like to see happen? Well, we just want to have the most possible to give and we weren't sure what the tax liability was if we sold it. Yeah. What is the cost basis on it? Do you know what you purchased it for? Well, we have 200 in it. It's worth 400 now and our net monthly is 1500. Okay. Well, so you'd pay taxes on the income as it comes in, which you're currently doing.

In terms of capital gains, you'd probably have a long-term capital gain rate of 15% and that doesn't have anything to do with the rental income. That has to do with, you said it's worth 400 today. What do you think you paid for it when you first bought it? Well, we paid 165 for it but we've put more money into it. We have around 200 in it total. Okay.

Yeah. So let's say roughly you had about 200,000 in profit, you'd have about 30,000 if you paid a 15% capital gains rate, 30,000 in capital gains taxes that you would have to pay. It could be as low as zero. The income brackets for that are such that you'd have to – if you have over – I believe it's 45,000.

I'll have to check that. But if you have over 45,000 in income, you would have 15% capital gain rate likely. So you're married filing jointly. Actually, it's married filing jointly up to 83,000 in income. Do you have more than 83,000 in total income? Yes, we do.

Okay. So between 83,000 and 517,000, it would put you – well, actually, that's 2022. So for 2023, it's 89,000. But bottom line is between 89,000 and 550,000 married filing jointly, you'd be in that 15% capital gain rate. So let's say about $30,000 in capital gains if you were to sell it and realize that profit. Apart from that, you would just continue to own it and you'd pay tax on the rental income that you receive after your expenses. And as you are now, I assume, deduct your expenses and then pay taxes on the income over that. And the same would be true on the interest income that you'd receive if you do owner financing.

Okay. We really don't pay taxes on it because we just give it all away. Yeah, exactly.

So you guys are in a great spot there. The way that you could also handle this is if you wanted to sell it, what I would probably do, given your charitable desires here, is I'd give the property to your donor advised fund that you would set up or a portion of it. But let's say you gave the whole thing. You'd give a $400,000 asset to your donor advised fund. You'd have no capital gains because you just gave it away. Then you'd sell it. All of the proceeds would go into your donor advised fund and then you could give it away at your leisure over the rest of your life or all at once or over some period of time that you choose. So that would be another way to skip all the capital gains and have 100% of the proceeds of the sale available for charitable giving. So that would be one other option for you to consider. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Is that called donor advised? It's called a donor advised fund and I would work with my friends at the National Christian Foundation, ncfgiving.com.

They call it a giving fund. You stay on the line. Let's finish up off the air, Dean. I've got to take a break, but we'll be right back on Faith and Finance Live. Stay with us. So glad to have you with us today on Faith and Finance Live.

I'm Rob West. You know, each day we gather together in this program not to talk about how we can enrich ourselves or grow bigger barns or anything like that. I mean, yes, we want to be wise stewards of God's money, and that means in part putting God's money to work. But the big idea is to recognize our role as stewards and realize that before even providing for our families, although that's very biblical, we should think about part of our primary role as God's manager of his money in giving, joining the greatest generosity story that's ever been told. It jumps off the Scriptures when you look through God's Word, and we see that really the heart of God is that we live for something bigger than ourselves, and our giving is one way to do that, is to be connected into God's activity. And I love what our previous caller was saying. He said, you know, in this season of life, we don't have any debt, and God's calling us to the mission field, and oh yeah, we've got this rental home, and we'd like to use that as an engine for giving.

How can we do that? Well, we talked off the air, and he's going to connect with my friends at the National Christian Foundation to talk about opening a donor-advised fund, giving the property to that giving fund prior to the sale, paying no tax, and now having, imagine this, $400,000 in a fund, and the only thing he can do with it is give it away to God's kingdom. It's incredible, and it can even be invested while he's deciding where that goes or if he wants to distribute that over the rest of his life. Incredible opportunity, and those are the kinds of things we should be looking for, because here's the reality. You know, 90% of giving is done in the form of cash. Well, the reality is only about 10% of our wealth is held in the form of cash. So, our balance sheet is our greatest opportunity for generosity.

The assets that we have, like a piece of real estate, and if we don't put that in play in our giving plan, well, we're missing a huge opportunity to do some pretty hilarious giving. So, really appreciate Dean's call today. Let's go back to the phones. By the way, a few lines open at 800-525-7000.

Tishomberg, Illinois. Hi, Tori. Go right ahead. Hi, how are you? I'm doing great. Thanks for your call. Okay, good. So, my question was, I have like $13,000, and I was thinking about putting an IRA, and I wanted to know, would that be another avenue that I could take instead of that? Yeah.

Well, so the Roth IRA contribution limit for 2023 is $6,500 unless you're over age 50, and then you can put another $1,000 into it, so you'd get up to $7,500. What is your age? Sixty-five. Okay, great. And are you married?

No. Okay, so if you were, you'd have a spousal IRA too, but in this case, so you could put in up to $7,500 of that $13,000 into a Roth IRA. Now, why would you want to do that? Well, you know, if you have already, you already have your emergency fund, you don't have consumer debt, you're looking to pay off quickly, you've got a surplus, you're maybe continuing to work, or you know, you don't plan to need that money anytime soon, and so therefore you've got at least a five-year time horizon on it for it to continue to grow, preferably 10 or more, then I think that makes a lot of sense, because that money could just sit in there and continue to grow, and then you could use it down the road. But I'd want to make sure that it has at least a five, preferably a 10-year time horizon on it. The other option is, you know, if you're still working and you could use the tax deduction, you could put it in a traditional IRA. The idea there would be you'd think that, well, my income might be lower down the road in retirement, and so I'd rather get the deduction today, and so therefore I'm going to go ahead and put it in a traditional IRA, the same $7,500. I'd take that off of my taxable income for this year, 2023, or even last year, if you haven't filed your return yet, and then I'm going to get that benefit now, and then when I take it out in retirement down the road, then I can pay the tax on it then.

By the way, that made me think of something. You said you had $13,000. If you haven't filed your 2022 return, which I suspect you haven't, most people haven't, then you could actually still make a contribution of, you know, $7,000 for last year, and then turn around and make up to $7,500 for this year. So you actually could put that whole amount to work between the two tax years.

Give me your thoughts on all that, though. Okay, that sounds good, because I'm trying to make sure that I put in something that's going to be profitable and nothing that's going to take the income away, but then I also have a $10,000 deferred comp account that I'm trying to figure out if I should take the buyout or take the payments of 3%. I see. Yeah, what is the lump sum that they would give you on that? It's 1.5% of the buyout, and I'm not sure what the lump sum would be, but then if I continue on, it'll be 3% per year on that amount. Okay, yeah.

I'd need to see a little more detail on that, Tori, before I could advise you which one makes the most sense, but it sounds like you got a lot of pieces kind of working here all at once. I think you could benefit from some time with a financial planner. Do you have an advisor that you work with? I would love to get one.

Okay. I think that would be great, because then he or she could look over your whole financial life and help you determine how do you position your assets? Do you take the deferred comp and the lump sum?

Do you take it over time? Where's the best place to put this $13,000? You'd pay them for a one-time planning engagement or on an hourly basis, and they could help you look over everything, including what about insurance and what about taxes and all of that as well. Just head to our website, faithfi.com. That's faithfi.com, and click Find a CKA. That stands for Certified Kingdom Advisor. I'd interview a couple.

Tell them you're looking not for investment management but for financial planning, specifically retirement planning, and they should be able to assist you. Tori, all the best to you. Thank you so much for calling today, and we appreciate you being a part of the program.

Hey, we're going to take a quick break. We've got some lines open. 800-525-7000 is the number to call. Hey, by the way, our trip with Michael Radelnick to Israel in June is sold out. However, get this, Moody Radio is going to sneak two more people in, so if you want to go to Israel and go along with Michael Radelnick and Dr. Joe Stoll, former president of Moody Bible Institute, June 4th through the 15th, why don't you enter to have the cost of your airfare, hotel, accommodations, and everything else covered.

All the details are online at moodyradio.org slash Israel. You can enter to win today. We'll be right back on Faith and Finance Live.

Stay with us. Thank you for tuning in this afternoon to Faith and Finance Live. I'm Rob West, taking your calls and questions.

A few lines open. 800-525-7000. Hey, if you haven't checked out our brand new website at faithfi.com, we'd love for you to do that. You'll find it at faithfi.com, where you'll be able to check out the Faithfi app. In it is not only the best, in my view, digital money management system out there, but also the Faithfi community, where every day people are posting questions, stewards on the journey, just like you, wanting encouragement, wanting to get questions answered, and other stewards coming alongside them saying, yeah, I've done that before.

Let me tell you my experience. Well, that's happening right there in the Faithfi community. You'll see it on the website and in the app. You'll also see our content, the best videos, articles, podcasts on biblical finance, if you want to grow in your understanding of managing money God's way. It's all there.

Check it out today, faithfi.com, and you can download the Faithfi app in your app store. All right, let's head back to the phones to Tennessee we go. Hi, Rachel. Thanks for calling.

Go ahead. Hi, thanks for having us. So I'm calling because my mom was widowed some years back and she's 70 and my siblings and I are trying to help her out with finances. But the problem comes in that she's living off Social Security and cost of living is so high right now that we're having to slowly but surely chip away at her savings. So my sister's actually in charge of finances and she's given me the numbers and we've tried to hash it out and I even looked into food stamps but you have to be, you know, kind of no savings for that to go through but we hate to wait for that point. So, yeah, we're just looking for ideas advice on how to handle her finances the best way we can to make it stretch the longest.

Yeah, I totally get that Rachel and I appreciate so much you wanting to jump into this. What does she have in assets right now that are liquid? Yeah, so she's got 10 grand in savings. She is about to have three grand in her checking because of having to pay for the house tax but and then she's got 27,000 in annuities and just like one grand in CDs. Okay, and the annuity is that has that been annuitized meaning is it paying out a monthly amount or is it just sitting there and growing? I believe it's from what my sister said sitting there and growing.

Okay, got it. And so how much are you all pulling out of these accounts every month to support her? You know, it varies depending on so sometimes some months, you know, it's just going over on food steadily but she has a high maintenance dog that we just don't have the heart to take out. So I don't know I'd say sometimes she goes a few hundred over and sometimes it could be up to a grand over but then she's going to need a new car in the next few years. She does have her house paid off but like I said, she pays three thousand a year for that and the property taxes.

She's older and we expect, you know, unfortunately medical expenses are popping up here and there. Yeah, but currently the only liquid assets are the savings and checking which is 13,000 and then she's got another 27 on top of that and then the CD when that comes due. So right now you're just pulling from checking and savings every month and, you know, you think the best guess is what maybe 500 a month on average?

Yeah, maybe something like that except when she has those big expenses come up too. Yeah, okay because that's obviously only going to get us a couple of years at the most and then the annuity would, you know, we could begin to tap into that. So, you know, I think the key here is obviously this money doesn't need to be invested.

I mean we're at a low enough level where we just need to keep this protected and, you know, an account that's going to generate as much interest as possible. So probably a high yield savings account online linked to her checking account. I would check on that annuity and just see what kind of guaranteed income she's getting there. Hopefully it's not in a variable account that could lose money because we expect the market to have some challenges this year.

Hopefully that's seeing a guaranteed, you know, return of maybe 4% or more. And so I think the key is just to try to limit her expenses as much as possible and then prepare for that time a few years down the road where this money is gone. And at that point now she is under the limits to be able to get some government assistance. Is there a possibility of selling the home and, you know, having her move in with someone? Well, unfortunately, well not unfortunately, but she is independent enough right now that, you know, she doesn't really want to do that which we understand.

There's just some medical things going on there, but, you know, we're all in this stage of life. We're working and young kids, so it would depend on where she's at at that point. Did you say she owns the home free and clear?

She does, yes. And what do you think it's worth? It's worth quite a bit, but Chattanooga is really blown up right now and it is crazy high interest rates and just the market itself. So we looked at, like, you know, if we could downsize or sell, but it's just not worth it at this point. You mean because it would be too expensive to turn around and buy something?

Yes, sir. Yeah, I mean, keep in mind, though, you get that on both ends, right? So if the market is poor, then you don't maximize the value on the sale, but you should be able to buy in at a discount. If the market's raging, yes, it's going to be expensive to buy something else, but you should be able to get top dollar coming out. So as long as you're staying in the same market in a relatively short timeframe, all that should be a wash. And the idea would be to try to get some equity out and then get her either to move in with somebody or in a much smaller place. The other option is a reverse mortgage where you'd, you know, throughout the rest of her life systematically pull the equity out in either a lump sum or a monthly payment to her that would cover this gap. Have you all considered a reverse mortgage?

We have not. I'm writing that down to talk of her with my sister. Thank you. Yeah, so that would be another option. It's generally not my first choice. I don't like to fund expenses with debt. But essentially she's sitting on, she has one asset, so to speak, and it's her home because these other assets are going to be gone, especially when we look at the true cost of what it takes her every year with maintaining the home, property taxes, homeowners insurance, plus the food and expenses and medical expenses down the road. So the nice thing about a reverse mortgage is if you've decided, yes, she wants to stay there, she does have to keep the property taxes and the insurance paid. But apart from that, she would systematically get a payout, essentially a check every month based on her age, life expectancy and the value of this home, where for the rest of her life she could systematically pull the equity out of the house, use that to fund her expenses and stay right where she is. And then obviously when the home is sold, let's say she needed at some point to move in with one of you or go into long-term care, then at that point that debt would have to be repaid, whatever had come out of it, plus the fees and the interest, out of the proceeds of the home sale, and then the balance would be available to then cover her expenses in a nursing facility or something like that, which is going to be expensive, but hopefully there'd still be some of this home asset left that could at least cover a portion of that.

So I think that might be the next step. If she's not looking to move out and put this money to work, then I think if she wants to stay there, a reverse mortgage is probably your next best option. Of course, you want to try to keep her expenses as low as possible and have that hard conversation with her about the reality of the situation. You know, as you see fed, just to make sure she's fully up to speed on kind of what assets are there and how long they'll last.

But I think the reverse mortgage could be a blessing because you could say, listen, mom, you can stay right here, and we're just going to slowly pull the equity of the house out to make sure your bills are paid and you have what you need, food and everything else. So start with that, Rachel. If you have other questions, give us a call back. Thanks for your call today. And we'll be right back on Faith and Finance Live. Great to have you with us today on Faith and Finance Live.

I'm Rob West. We're taking your calls and questions today. Let's head right back to the phones. We've got a bunch of questions to get through and not a whole lot of time to do it.

So we'll move quickly to Florida we go. Lewis, thanks for calling. Go right ahead. Yes, sir. Rob, thank you for your ministry. My name is Lewis de Souza and I have a question. Actually, my wife is going to ask you a question because she's more worse than I am. OK. Very good. Hi, Carol.

Hi. We have a question about some inheritance my husband received. He got about a hundred thousand from his sale of his parents' property in Portugal. The money is still in Europe. And we would like to invest at least half here in the U.S. And we're wondering where we should look.

We've got things like something from American Express, their cabbage checking, and they give you three percent and some other savings accounts that we've looked at that are over. If you invest over 20, it's about one something percent. Or is there some other low risk investment we can make?

Because we're 62. Sure. So when you say low risk, what do you mean by that? Do you want the principal guaranteed like there's no way to lose money or are you willing to take a little bit of risk, which means that always the possibility of a principal loss in exchange for getting a little bit better rate of return?

Well, I don't want to lose like if I invest 50,000, for example, into something that's a little bit of a risk, I sure wouldn't want to lose half of that or even all of it. I feel like we're too far down the line to recoup that. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I certainly understand that. I think last year would be a great example. Last year was a really tough year in the stock market. And we saw after a 12 year raging bull market where stocks and bonds did very well, we saw a really challenging year last year where the market was down 20 percent plus. Now, the way you'd temper that is you wouldn't have everything in stocks.

You could put a portion in bonds and that typically will make it a little less volatile. Last year was unusual because rates were rising so quickly. So bond prices were falling as well. This year could be another challenging year, although I think a mild recession is priced in.

It could be deeper than that. Here's the reality, though, is Carol, is that number one, you know, even when you hit retirement, you still have, if the Lord tarries and you're in good health, a decades long need for this money to work for you. And so if you're trying to grow it to overcome the effects of inflation, then the key is what level of risk is appropriate, given our age and risk tolerance, so that we realize we have the potential to do not three percent, but maybe five or six percent, maybe a little better rate of return. But with that comes the risk that we could lose some money. But we're taking a long term view. And essentially, you know, when we look at the historical performance of the market, we realize that years like last year are the exception and not the rule. And if you look at it over a 10 or a 20 year period, there's never been a 20 year period where the market didn't, you know, go to higher ground. But there could be bumps along the way.

So I think that's part of what you need to decide. And what I would do if you were going to go that route would be to hire an advisor, because this is a lot of money who could understand you and your husband, your goals and objectives, your risk tolerance, and build a portfolio that gives you the chance to grow this money with as little risk as possible and have the advisor manage it. But at the end of the day, if you're saying, you know what, I don't ever want to open my statement and ever see this down, well, then you don't need to put it at risk because, you know, that is a possibility. And in that case, then we'd only have banking products at our disposal, which are things like high yield savings accounts. Today, you'd get about three and a half percent with an FDIC, meaning backed by the U.S. government savings account or a CD. And let's say you put it into a 15 month CD right now, the best rate you can find around 4.6 percent. So you could get 4.6 percent annualized over the next 15 months, and that would be guaranteed. You wouldn't have the risk of losing any principal. So I think you all need to decide, are we willing to take a little bit of risk, not where we're putting 50 or 100 percent of it at risk, because you wouldn't invest in things that are that speculative that could lose that kind of money. You'd be properly diversified with a very conservative portfolio, with largely bonds, with some stocks. But yes, you could have a 20 percent downside and you'd need to be prepared for that so that you didn't automatically jump out of the market when that happened, because that would not be the time to go to cash.

You'd want to ride that out, you know, if that happened to you. So given all that I just shared, what do you think is the best thing for you guys, just given what you're trying to accomplish? Well, I also did look at CDs, which I didn't mention, but I think that we probably should speak with a financial advisor.

The issue is, who is that? I have friends that have invested with advisors and they've lost tons, and then some others have done okay. It seems like it's just as risky if you don't know one already.

You should try and find them. Well, here at Faithfi, we trust the Certified Kingdom Advisor designation. It's the gold standard industry designation for men and women who have been trained and met high standards to deliver biblically wise professional financial advice. So pastor references, client references, regulatory review, code of ethics, statement of faith, and they've been trained through a rigorous training program in addition to significant industry experience, a minimum of 10 years.

They've also been trained to bring biblically wise advice. So my recommendation would be go to our website, faithfi.com, and then click find a CKA, do a zip code search, and I'd interview two or three and find the one that you feel like is the best fit. You could also ask some friends for recommendations as well. At the end of the day, what I'm most concerned about is that you get with somebody you feel like is a good match for you, is going to communicate the way you want to communicate, and you feel like understands what you're trying to accomplish, and has the experience and the competency to do what you're looking to do. So that would be my suggestion before you go from here.

If you decide to go with CDs or high yield savings, I would go to bankrate.com to find the institution that's offering the best rates and terms right now. Hopefully that's helpful to you, Carol. Thank you to you and Louis for calling today. God bless you.

To Bradenton, Florida. Hi, Earl. How can I help you? Hi, Rob. Thank you for your wonderful wisdom. I appreciate it.

Quick question. My wife just started a new job this year. She's going to be 59.

I'm going to be 54 this year. We're debating on whether to buy a house or to continue renting. We only got about $40,000 in savings, and that doesn't include a three to six months.

Kind of stuck on what do you suggest or think we should do, because we really don't have a lot for retirement. Okay. Okay. Yeah, so you're wondering, is the main question whether to buy a house or not? Yes, but you have the 20% down, and you put your 20% down, then you're left with very minimal for that three to six month cushion, so to speak, or what you said. I totally get that.

Yeah, and I appreciate you referencing that. So you said you have $40,000 basically total liquid savings, including emergency savings and for the down payment, correct? It's $40,000 straight up. We have no debt. We have excellent credit. Everything's perfect right now where we're at.

Perfect. And what do you have saved for retirement apart from this $40,000? Well, my wife has a Roth IRA, and that's been going up and down. It's probably about $70,000 or $80,000 now. I have a 401k I'm in.

It's not very big, but I'm going to try to add to it over the next months, put it more in since she started a new job. Okay, and how long do you all plan on continuing to work based on everything you know today? Oh, I'd like to go until 70. She probably wants to go to, you know, her retirement age, 67. All right, how far away is that for you guys? Well, she'll be 59 this year, and I'll be 54.

Okay, yeah, so you got a good bit of time here. All right, so have you looked at homes? I mean, what would you be looking to spend? Because the rule of thumb is, yeah, I'd like for you to do 20% down, and I'd like for that mortgage payment to be no more than 25% of your take home pay, including the taxes and the insurance, and I know that's, you know, harder to do than ever these days, especially in Florida. So what would you all be looking to spend on a home? Well, that's the problem, because we don't want to be in debt when we are retired.

Right. So, I mean, at the rate you're going with the 20%, so you're talking like $160,000, that doesn't give you a great house. But I'm a handyman, I could fix things and do things like that, which that wouldn't leave very much left out of that $40,000 for, you know. That's the challenge.

Yeah, I think you've got a couple of challenges. Number one is, I'd love for you to have, as you know, three to six months expenses separate from the down payment, which is really going to make you either have a very small down payment, which given where the housing market's going, and the prospect of a recession this year means you could be upside down on that house if housing prices fall. You're going to have private mortgage insurance, which is probably 1% of the balance that you owe, that doesn't do you any good. It's just an extra expense every month.

And now you've depleted your emergency savings. So I think, you know, on top of that, if you guys are looking to be debt-free in the next 10 years, I mean, that mortgage payment would be so sky-high that you probably wouldn't be able to afford it if you had a 10-year mortgage. Or even a 15-year mortgage is going to be a lot more expensive. So now, as you're renting retirement, you're going to be selling that house. So I think you probably need to continue to rent and just try to save as much as you can. Keep your lifestyle at a minimum and try to, you know, continue to funnel money into the emergency savings, and then cap that, and then just try to save like crazy for that down payment on the house. Hopefully, over the next year, we see housing prices come down a bit.

But I think I would at least wait right now and not do anything. I appreciate your call, Earl. God bless you, my friend. Thanks for checking in with us today.

David and Sharon, I apologize. We weren't able to get to you all today. If you want to hold the line, we'll get your information and try to get you first up on the program tomorrow if you're interested in us calling you back. And thanks so much for calling today and for your patience. And we'd love to get you on a future broadcast, hopefully even tomorrow.

Well, folks, that's going to do it for us. We're so thankful for my amazing team that makes all of this happen. Luke Costaldo handling our phones today. Tahira Haynes was our producer today.

Amy Rios, Engineering. Ryan Hansen sitting in and helping out today, along with Jim Henry. Couldn't do it without any of those folks. They're so vital to what we do on this program every day. Faith in Finance Live is a partnership between Moody Radio and FaithFi. Hope you come back and join us tomorrow. Until then, bye-bye.