Eat In, Save Big

By some estimates, the average household spends an astonishing 40% of its food budget eating out. That's a lot to digest.

Hi, I'm Rob West. After housing and transportation, food is probably the next biggest item in the budget. It's also a place where you can easily make changes that will save you a lot of money. 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 decisions. Okay, obviously I'm talking about cutting back on eating out and preparing more of your meals at home. I know that a lot of families have two working parents, or maybe mom or dad's busy driving vans full of kids to soccer or baseball practice, and that it's difficult to avoid the convenience of fast food.

But there's always a cost for that convenience, and not just with money. Fast food tends to pack on the pounds, and when you eat out, you have less control over nutrition. So those are all good reasons to eat in more often, and it starts with planning. In this case, menu planning.

How many times have you looked at something in the cupboard and thought, why did I buy that? You can avoid that by planning out your meals for the week, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks, before you go to the store. This also allows you to choose healthier options like fruits, vegetables, and nuts. When you're making up your menu plan, choose meals that you can make ahead of time, over the weekend. It takes the guesswork out of what to eat during the week and all that last minute scrambling. Once you have your menu plan, you can list all the items you need to make those meals. Then take an inventory of your fridge and cupboards, crossing off stuff you already have. What's left is your shopping list, and when you go to the store, stick to your list and you'll start saving money right away.

That can be hard to do, especially if your stomach is grumbling from all that meal planning. So maybe have a snack or eat a meal before you head out to the grocery store. That's one way to prevent impulse buying.

Here's another one. Try to avoid the middle sections of your grocery store. That's where they put things like cookies, candy, and chips. If you're shopping after work with a low energy level, it's hard to resist those things. But if you concentrate on the outer sections of the store, you'll be able to pick up a lot of the items you need for your menu plan. Things like meats, vegetables, fruits, and yogurt.

Obviously, you'll have to duck into the middle for certain items, but do a quick surgical strike and get back to the safe outer zone. You'll also want to stock up on staples when you can get them at a good price. Cereals, rice, cornmeal, and oatmeal are often sold in bulk at bigger stores. You also want to choose lower price options for protein in your meal planning. Hamburger costs less than steak. Chicken costs less than hamburger. And working a meat free dinner into your weekly menu plan will also save you some hard earned money. And it almost goes without saying, making coffee at home and taking it to work is a lot cheaper than buying designer coffee.

The same goes for water. Bring a bottle from home instead of buying it out. Another great idea is to take advantage of the free pick up option that many larger grocery chains offer now.

There may be a minimum order required, but it's not difficult to meet. Just go to the store's website, sign up for curbside pick up, and check the items you need. That way you're not tempted to buy unnecessary items while pushing a cart around the store. And you can keep a running total of what you're spending, making it easier to stay on budget.

Curbside pick up is also a great option if you usually have little ones hanging on the cart yelling, buy me this. Here are some other ways you can avoid overspending on groceries. Be careful where you shop because prices vary. Generally, the bigger the store or chain, the lower the prices. The service may not be as great in warehouse stores, for example, but you can make up for that with savings. Of course, some of the big box grocery stores have membership fees, so that's an added cost. But if you shop there even once a month, it's probably worth it. One thing to consider though, the packages at those stores tend to be gigantic, so make sure you can use up the item before the expiration date and that you have room in the fridge for that two gallon jar of pickles. Now there's one more way to save on your grocery shopping and that's by not leaving home at all. You can buy a lot of household necessities online from sites like Amazon and other online merchants, so try to take advantage of offers for free shipping.

Those are some things that can help you eat more of your meals at home, saving you a ton of your hard-earned money in the process. All right, your calls are next 800-525-7000. I'm Rob West and this is Faith and Finance Live. We'll be right back. Great to have you with us today on Faith and Finance Live.

I'm Rob West. This is the program where we want to love God and not money. That's right. We see in the Bible that Jesus was very clear the love of money is the root of all evil, not money itself, the love of money. So how should we then respond? Well, we want to live simply and we want to save prudently. We want to give generously and when we do that, we can align our hearts with God's best for us and really pursue his kingdom first and foremost and let those financial decisions then fall out of that identity we find rooted in Christ.

But we also want to look to God's Word for principles that we can apply to the practical decisions and choices we're making every day. Let's do that together here on this program. If you have a question or maybe even a testimony today, give us a call at 800-525-7000.

Let's begin in Rockford, Illinois. Let's see, Verna Lee, is that right? Right.

How can I help you? You pronounce it right. I've been giving tithes, but the last a lot of years I've been doing it from my net income, but when I attended one church, they mentioned about gross income. So since then, I've been giving the gross from the gross income. So what is usually from the net or from the gross when you give tithes?

Yes, that's a great question. I would just say simply, I would give out of your increase the first and the best, which is right off the top. So I would say if we're going to apply the principle of the tithe, let's go ahead and give right off the top. I think that would be the appropriate way to apply that Old Testament principle. Now, how should we as those living not under the law of Moses but under the law of Christ approach our giving?

Well, I think that's a great starting point. In the Old Testament, we saw three tithes actually that amounted to twenty-three and a third percent. Two of them were every year, one was every third year, and then they did additional giving even beyond that in proportion to the size of their harvest at various times. Now, we're under the law of Christ. We've seen what Jesus did for us on the cross. We see he took it to an even higher level and showed us a different way of giving. He demonstrated whole life generosity by giving his life as the ultimate sacrifice.

When he talked about money vernally, he talked about to whom much is given, much is required, and that we should give as we've been blessed. So I love that systematic giving that you're doing with the tithe, and I think if we apply that, we give a tenth right off the top, so that would be the gross amount. But then we ought to look to give beyond that, perhaps even sacrificially as the Lord leads. That's something that's between us and the Lord.

We don't want to be legalistic about it and try to check a box or do it because, you know, we're going to get credit for it or praise for it. We want to do it in such a way that it allows us to draw our hearts more closely to him and as a way of participating in his activity, which is a great privilege that he gives us. But going back to your original question, I think with regard to our giving, the systematic giving that we're doing, a tithe is a great starting point, and I would say it's a tenth right off the top.

Is that helpful? Yes, and I just want—I have been proven already, and I've been so blessed that my mom taught me, and I observed her when I was a child. I always gave love offerings, tithes, other offerings, and so I got that—not a habit, but a love to give. And it's really proven that we cannot out-give God, so I give as much as I can. I love that, and I love that that was modeled for you by your mom, Verna Lee.

That's, you know, not everybody can say that, and that's powerful that you had that modeled for you as a child, and I think that probably has a lot to do with how you approach giving today. Well, listen, all the best to you, Verna Lee. Thank you for calling to the program and for your testimony today as well as your question.

God bless you. To Palm Beach, Florida—hi, Alice, go right ahead. Hi. I was calling because I needed your thoughts on possibly getting a second car. We had two cars.

One just died. I'm recently retired and now staying at home. I'm 67, getting Social Security. My husband is working.

He's 62. As far as debt, I owe $3,000 in credit card at low interest. He makes $2,000 a month. I own my house. My association fee is $5.53.

We have $7,000 savings and $12,000 in 401K. Okay. Excellent. What is your question today?

If I should wait, if I should concentrate on being completely debt-free before I even take on the purchase of a used car. I see. Yeah.

It's a great question, Alice. Can you all get by with one car just kind of given where you're at right now? We're kind of doing that because he works different schedules and he has a second job and it's right next to me. So when he comes home from job one on those days or when he just works one job, I could have the car at 2, 3 or 4 o'clock. Yeah.

Very good. Well, I realize it can be an inconvenience. So I think you could look at it a couple of ways. One approach would be to say, since you're no longer working, you have a chance to save a bit of money and perhaps pay down or pay off this credit card debt that you have by reallocating the money that would be going to a car payment while you all are kind of making do with one car. It would also allow you to build up your savings. I'd love for you to get that up to a full six months' worth of expenses. The other thing that's going to do if you were to delay that purchase, and again, you all are going to have to determine what that means for your quality of life and just the flexibility to be able to have transportation.

I realize that's not insignificant just to encourage you to share. But we do see used car prices coming down. So for instance, in the month of December, the average price of a used car dropped by $1,600 and that's continued this year.

Not quite at that pace, but they are still coming down. The reason being is with the higher interest rates, it's making cars more expensive to finance and therefore that's limiting demand. We're also seeing an increase in the supply of critical parts like computer chips, which is pushing down prices because inventories are increasing with regard to new cars. And so all of that has continued to put pressure on used car prices to bring them down, which is a good thing. And we're not going to be back to pre-pandemic levels on car inventories until probably later this year or into next year.

So I think we'll continue to see them fall. So if we were to see later this year lower interest rates and certainly lower used car prices, what you could do is take this opportunity to refocus that money on building up your emergency fund, paying down debt, and then maybe think about buying that next car this summer or something like that. But if you said, you know what, we just really don't want to live without another car, then I would say, okay, take advantage of prices that are certainly lower today than they were three or four months ago and go ahead and make that purchase. But you really need to count the cost, look at your budget, especially with higher interest rates, and make sure you're not stretching beyond your means because I don't want you to get into a situation where you're taking on a big car payment that you really can't afford that's going to put unnecessary pressure on you guys. So that may be the other reason to wait just so you can save to put a bigger down payment down toward the car. Does that all make sense? A loan at the car dealer.

I'm sorry? A bank loan or a loan at the car dealer. Oh, I see.

Yeah, I would check both options. I would look to use a dealership to make the purchase even on their used car lot, not an independent lot, and a lot of times they have a lot of great incentives and you'll be better off getting the loan right from them. Hey, thanks for your call today. We'll be right back on Faith and Finance Live.

Stay with us. Great to have you with us today on Faith and Finance Live. I'm Rob West, your host, taking your calls and questions today. We have a few lines open, 800-525-7000.

By the way, if you have a testimony, we'd love to hear that as well. Let's head back to the phones to Chicago, WMBI. Hi, Tammy. Go right ahead. Hi, how are you? I'm doing great. Thanks for calling.

Good. My question is, I refinanced a year ago, so from a 30 to a 20. My interest rate now is three from five.

It was 3.77. I was going to come into some extra money because my income went up and I was wondering, is it better to put a lump sum towards the principal on the mortgage, or should I just add that extra payment every year? Yeah, just whatever allows you to make the extra payment is the key. I mean, all things being equal, if you had the option to do both, you'd want to go ahead and put that money down now because the sooner you pay it down, the faster you're going to reduce the principal amount of the balance, and that means less interest paid because the interest is calculated against the principal balance. So if you reduce it at the first of the year, you're going to pay less interest because that interest going forward at the start of the year is no longer calculated against that principal that you paid down, whereas if you take that same amount and divide it into 12 payments and just send it over the 12 following months, then you're still going to help yourself because you're reducing that principal, but you're going to end up paying more interest because you didn't actually reduce it by that full amount until the end of the year. Does that make sense? Yeah, so shoot more like for each. So what if I did it now, this month?

Would that be okay? Yeah, I mean, the sooner you have money to reduce that principal, the better you're going to be. Now, a lot of folks just don't have money sitting around unless it's in their emergency fund and they don't want to put that toward their house because then it's no longer available. So if you're doing this out of surplus income because you got a raise, typically that would be available every month as money's left over.

And if that's the way it is, then that's great. But if you're sitting on a lump sum that's just sitting in savings, it's not earmarked for your emergency fund, you haven't allocated it to some other planned expense down the road and you have this available to pay down your mortgage, then by all means go ahead and do it because that's going to reduce the principal balance right now. And then as they calculate the interest moving forward on the remaining balance, obviously that balance is lower and therefore the total interest paid will be lower. Okay, this is because of a raise. Okay, so that money probably is going to be available to you as a surplus every month, right? It's not sitting in a bank account somewhere? Exactly.

Yeah. Okay, so in that case, yeah, I would just say go ahead and send it as you have it. Don't try to accrue it and then pay it at one time a year from now. Let's go ahead and send that as an extra portion over and above your monthly payment every month. Whatever you have as surplus, go ahead and send it to your mortgage. Make sure they're applying it to the principal. They should, but it's always good to double check.

But I would say if that money you have to reduce your mortgage is in the form of a higher monthly paycheck and therefore it's increase in surplus every month, then just go ahead and send it every month as you have it. Wonderful. Okay, thank you so much. Absolutely, Tammy. Thanks for your call. God bless you. To Oklahoma. Hey, Anne, thanks for calling.

Go right ahead. I'm a widow in my 80s, and probably eight or nine years ago, a family member was in ill health and out of work and needed some help. So that person pretty well lived off of my credit card and my name. And although the person had good intentions of paying me back, that hasn't happened. And now I'm faced with approximately 40, $45,000 in credit card debt. And it's not all mine. Most of it's that other person's, but it's in my name. When the other person's health is deteriorated, probably never will be able to pay it back. So that's a huge amount for me. I've heard of those things that you call in and this company or that will reduce, put it all into one monthly payment or that kind of thing. Is that a good plan for me?

Yes, it is. And I'm so sorry to hear about what the situation that you're in. Out of your gracious heart and desire to help, you've allowed this person to run up this debt. Unfortunately, what you saw play out is what we typically see play out, that in 40 to 50% of the cases when you co-sign for someone or help someone out in this way, even if they have the best intentions of repaying, 40 to 50% of the time they don't. And you're then at a position where you have to step in and keep it current, otherwise it's going to damage your credit.

And obviously you don't want that to happen. Who's paying the minimum payments on all of this credit card debt right now, Ann? I am. Okay. So you're paying somewhere between one and 3% of the balance.

What is that? Is it about $12,000, $1,200 a month? Something close to that, yes. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, I think the key right now is if there's the ability to sit down with this person and have a hard conversation just to say, listen, I need you to do what you can and try to get them to pay, even perhaps involving a third party, you have to navigate that. And I suspect you don't want to damage the relationship and yet I don't want to discourage you from tackling this head on. Obviously, given the health situation, you may not feel comfortable with that, but I think I would at least give some prayerful consideration to how you might approach that conversation to at least get this person to actually help offset the cost as they're able to. But in terms of how to approach it, I'd use a debt management program. So this is where you'd use what's called credit counseling. Our friends at christiancreditcounselors.org would help you. Basically, they're going to get all the interest rates reduced. There's pre-negotiated lower interest rates available for what's called credit counseling. You've got to get to these programs through an agency like Christian Credit Counselors. But when you do, they calculate one monthly payment that you'd send to them and then they'd send it on to all your creditors.

But given that payment doesn't change its level and with the lower interest rates, what you'll find is you'll pay it off 80% faster and save a ton of money in interest. So that's going to be my next step for you is contact christiancreditcounselors.org. They're wonderful, godly people. I think it'll be a big help. Stay on the line. We'll talk a bit more off the air and we'll be right back.

Stay with us. So great to have you with us today with your questions, your comments, your testimonies of God's faithfulness in your life. This is Faith and Finance Live.

I'm Rob West. Hey, before we head back to the phones, let me encourage you, if you're a part of our community here at Faith and Finance, you rely on this ministry, maybe you found something helpful or you tune in with regularity, we'd like to invite you to be a financial partner of ours here at the ministry. Everything we do is listener supported. We're a not-for-profit ministry and you can give online securely and quickly at faithfi.com. That's faithfi.com. Just click the give button and that will go a long way toward helping us continue our outreach. Thanks in advance. Again, faithfi.com.

Just click give. All right, back to the phones we go to Colorado Springs, Colorado. Hi Samuel, go right ahead, sir.

Yes, thank you for taking my call, Rob. My question is, I have my two daughters who will be going to college and what my reason of calling is, I need some information on scholarship, I mean a website and other things where I can go and see how to fund scholarship for them. Yes. What is the age of your daughter? Well, my daughter, she's 21, and I have an older daughter that also wants to go by the school. She's like 30 already, so. She's 30? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, I would typically say go to the high school where a child is at and check with the counseling department. That's always a great place to start just because they're going to have a lot of local scholarship opportunities in addition to national scholarships.

But if you've got a one-year-old and a 30-year-old, obviously you don't have anybody who has access to the college and career counseling department. So what I would say is a great website would be savingforcollege.com. That's savingforcollege.com.

A couple of others if you've got a pen handy or if not, you can come back and listen to this broadcast later today. But Fastweb is one. Peterson's would be another. Scholarships.com would be another. And then you can always go on Amazon.com as well. And there's a bunch of great books out there. You want to review the reviews on the book to make sure that it's a comprehensive guide that's well-recommended. But what you will find is that whether it's through a book or just searching on the internet with some of these websites and others, there are a ton of resources out there. And I think the time that you put into applying for scholarships and grants will really pay off, especially if you're applying for things that really relate to the specific niche, either the work pathway that they're pursuing or things that relate to just uniquenesses of that individual student. So make sure you really do some research and some digging to find all the options available.

But hopefully those websites will be of some help to you. And we appreciate your call today very much, Samuel. God bless you.

To Chosen in Chicago. Go right ahead. Good afternoon, Brother West. I'm so grateful for your ministry. May God continue to bless you.

Thank you. I have a question about my pension. So they sent me a letter that I can take a lump sum on my pension payment, right? And I want to know if I can put it into home life insurance or I can put it into Roth IRA. And then I have a question on the, they sent me a 1099 because I got some money from the government. Yes.

Okay. Well, first of all, you can avoid paying taxes on your pension if you roll it into a traditional IRA. You would not be able to put it into a Roth IRA because a pension is pre-tax.

So you would have to go into the pre-tax IRA, which is the traditional, which you could do. What you're first going to want to do is just determine whether the lump sum makes sense or whether the monthly payout is going to be a better option. Have they told you what those two numbers will be, the lump sum and the monthly payout? So the lump sum will be 32,716.29 dollars. And the life annuity, it will be like a 98.99, which is going to be like 169.97 for 120 payments. So I thought that's not that much. No.

Yeah. I mean, if you were to take that 37,000 and invest it in a conservative portfolio with a little bit of growth and maybe some primarily fixed income, you know, you should be able to pull out about $1,500 a year without the balance ever declining 4% a year, which would be about 120 a month. And that's where you'd still have ongoing access to the principal if you needed to tap into a larger portion or you wanted to leave it as an inheritance, whereas the pension would stop at your death typically unless there's survivor's benefits. So I like the option of the lump sum. I think probably what makes sense for you, given that the season of life you're heading into would be to connect with an advisor to do some financial planning, some retirement planning to look at your options on this pension.

Also talk about if you were to roll it out to a traditional IRA, where you'd put it and how it would be managed. I think that could give you some peace of mind here as you think through all of it, including the taxes that 1099INT will be taxable and added to your 1040 this year. But I think it sounds like just based on what you're telling me, the lump sum makes more sense. And, you know, but I would recommend you do some planning at this point. Okay, may I ask you one more question?

And I'll get off because I know you have other people. I have a traditional IRA with TIAA Quest, but I have taken out of it because I didn't I wasn't working. So I needed money to pay my rent. So if I put this pension money in the traditional, am I going to also pay the 20% because I'm over 60? Am I going to pay the 20% when I need to get into the money, the pension? Well, anytime you take money out of an IRA, it's going to be added to your taxable income for the year. So depending upon how much taxable income you have for the year is going to determine the percentage that you're having to pay in taxes. When you pull money out of a 401k, a lot of times they'll withhold just an automatic 20%. With an IRA, you typically don't have that you would just, you know, normally you'd be responsible for paying whatever taxes are due. And that's ultimately going to determine what your total combined income is, including withdrawals from, you know, tax deferred retirement accounts like an IRA. Okay, because I've already paid taxes.

Am I going to pay more taxes? Because they said if you turn 59 and a half, you don't have to pay the 10% to IRAs. If you already paid the 20% to the traditional IRA. No, yeah, but I thought you're talking about new money that's coming from the pension into the IRA. That's different than the money you've already taken out, right? I want to put into the IRA. But if I do, when I need to use it, am I going to pay taxes?

You will. Because it's already pre-taxed. Yeah. Yeah, you would pay the tax if it's in a pension today, and it's rolling to an IRA. If you're over 59 and a half, you won't pay a penalty when you take it out.

But you will pay taxes on it as it comes out. I hope that's helpful to you chosen. I do recommend you get some financial planning just to cover all of these things.

Look at your insurance and your retirement savings and your taxes just to make sure everything is done the way that it should be and you're really well planned for the future. Thanks for calling today. We appreciate you being a part of the program.

Hey, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, Jerry Boyer will join us today with his market commentary and then back to your calls. We have some more great questions lined up. This is Faith in Finance Live, where we apply the wisdom from God's word to your financial decisions. Stay with us.

Much more to come just around the corner. Thankful to have you with us today on Faith in Finance Live. I'm Rob West, your host. Hey, if you haven't downloaded the FaithFi app, you can do that at our website, faithfi.com.

Just click the app button. All right, back to—well, before we head to the phones, actually it's Friday, which means here in our last segment of the broadcast, our good friend Jerry Boyer stops by. Jerry's our resident economist. He's the opinion—he's a contributor.

That's the word I'm looking for at World Opinions. And he's an author and regular guest on our program. Jerry, good afternoon to you, sir.

Good afternoon to you as well, my friend. It's good to hear your voice. Hey, Jerry, hot inflation reading this week, I guess is what's primarily had pressure on the markets, huh? Yeah, two hot inflation readings.

The CPI, which the C is consumer, and the PPI, that's producer, so basically it's what consumers pay and then it's wholesale prices. And both of them came in hot, hotter than the month before and hotter than expected. So the illusion that the Fed had beaten inflation and could take a victory lap, I mean, that took a bruising this week. And of course, since the Fed thinks that it's its job to slow down the economy to fight inflation, then markets immediately reacted by saying, well, if we still have high inflation, it's not as high as it used to be, right? Like last year, it had gotten up to 9 or 10 percent by some measures. It's come down, but coming down to 5 or 6 percent is still high. That's not normal inflation.

That's still bad. So markets said, OK, well, the Fed's going to continue to basically suck money out of the credit markets, pull them out of the markets. And with the Fed is unlike any other investor in the world in that if I want to go out and buy stocks or bonds, I have to have money to do it.

I go out and buy them. But the Fed can create money and then go out and buy them. So when the Fed goes out there and pushes down interest rates, it's not just pushing them down with its savings. It's actually creating money out of thin air. That's why it leads to inflation. And when the Fed pulls that money out, it actually destroys it.

It removes the entry. And that tends to be deflationary. So that's what the Fed's doing.

Sometimes people call that hawk or dove. By the way, that's called open market operations for anyone who wants to get a little bit more advanced. They go out there in the market and they buy and sell investments just like the rest of us, only they do it with newly created money. And the markets looked at the hotter inflation this week and they said, oh, OK, the Fed's going to have to keep pulling money out of the system.

It's going to have to it's given their way of thinking about the world. They're going to have to try to slow down the economy in order to fight inflation. And that showed up in the futures market.

It shows up sort of in the bond yields and it showed up in the stock market when stocks and bonds both go down the same week. That usually means, OK, this is the central bank pulling money out of the whole financial system. Yeah. And, Jerry, this approach that we see playing out before our eyes right now is not how it was originally when the founding fathers put all this together, right?

No. And when the founding fathers put all this together, they they had a currency backed by gold and silver. That was at the urging of John Witherspoon, who was a theologian and founding father, one of the original founding fathers of the Constitution and I think the only theologian to sign the Declaration of Independence and his two great contributions to American public life as a theologian were one. He told the American colonies that they're not violating Romans 13, you know, about disobeying government if they pull away from the crown, from the United Kingdom, because the king was actually the one violating the authority.

He's known for that. But, you know, maybe almost as important as he convinced the founders to back the money as opposed to having fiat. By the way, they didn't create a central bank. So the idea was, who's going to set who's going to set interest rates? You know, we don't have a central bank answer.

You and I will. If we're savers, interest rates will go down. Doesn't that make sense? If there's more money and savings, that makes credit more abundant. If we're not savers, if we spend too much and don't save, what what happens? Interest rates go up. And the beautiful part of God's plan is, well, if interest rates go up, it gets harder and harder for us to borrow and spend. And so we borrow and spend less.

So there's a natural balance in the equilibrium when interest rates are set by our own behavior. But when the when the central bank comes in and essentially directly mandates that, then it creates a distortion. And we were living through the second stage of that distortion. First stage is inflation. Second stage is deflation and recession to fight the inflation. That distortion is it's a distorted world view.

And that distorted world view is what we're living through right now every time we go to the grocery store. And it strikes me that if we're the ones setting the interest rates, as you described, then it's actually an accurate barometer of the risk that's in the system as opposed to an artificially manipulated barometer, huh? It is because if we're savers, if we're not all into consumption right now, that shows up in a lower interest rate. And people have pointed this out, you know, going back thousands of years, a generally a healthy civilization, one informed by biblical principles will tend to be a lower interest rate civilization.

Why? Because we'll tend to be savers rather than hyperspenders, because we'll be covenant keepers rather than people who default and interest rates have to be higher if you think someone's going to default because you're a bad credit risk and will tend to have sound money because and then you won't have an inflation premium. Interest rates have to be higher if I think I'm going to lose some of my purchasing power. So generally it's a sign of the collapse of a civilization when interest rates go up. But it's almost like with the central bank, you know, when we look at our interest rates, we're looking in the mirror.

What kind of people are we? But the Fed gives us like a skinny mirror. When you saw those really low interest rates, we looked like covenant keepers who are savers and not spenders. But in fact, that was false. It was a distorted picture. And that's the thing. When the when the central bank sets interest rates, it distorts every aspect of the economy, not just directly the credit markets, but all buying, all selling.

Every aspect of the economy is distorted by that. Interesting. Well, really helpful, Jerry. I'll tell you, I appreciate the history lesson, because when we look at what the founding fathers designed and then we lay that on top of a biblical worldview and creator God and his intention, we see how things are supposed to be. And then we can measure whether we're adhering to biblical principles or not. And that should give us some indication as to where we're headed in the future, right?

Yes, it does. And this is I mean, in some sense, we've created an almost divine institution in the in the Latin Bible. When God created things, he said, fiat fiat looks, let there be light fiat is to say, let there be fiat money is almost like giving the government the power that only God has to create something out of nothing. The problem is God can create real something out of nothing. The government can just create money out of nothing. It doesn't create wealth.

And when you create money without creating wealth, what you're really creating is inflation. Yeah, yeah. And we're certainly seeing that play out right now. All right, Jerry, appreciate your insights, my friend. Have a wonderful weekend. And we'll talk to you next week. Talk to you next week. God bless you, Jerry Boyer, our resident economist. He's a contributor to world opinions.

You can read his book, The Maker versus the Takers, what Jesus really said about social justice and economics wherever you buy books. All right, back to the phones and our remaining moments today to Buffalo. Hi, Shahera. Thank you for calling. Go ahead.

Yes. Thank you for taking my call. How are you today? Doing great. Thanks. Thank you. Okay.

Here's what I have. I've got some cash. And I recently took it out of the stock market because I felt like I had too much in the stock market. So I've got some cash and it's not really doing anything.

And I want to turn it into some income. So I'm considering buying an established bed and breakfast. I know the people who own the bed and breakfast.

They're good friends. And they have owned this for about 30 years. So they have all of the history. It's established. And that's what I'm considering doing as opposed to keeping cash.

Yes. Well, I think you've got a leg up in the sense that you've got that history there. I mean, that would have been my big concern is if you're going into something without the due diligence, without an understanding of the business you're getting into, and you're kind of having to learn on the job, so to speak. You obviously, in this case, you've got the history there.

You've got the relationship. You've got the data from 30 years. The question is just evaluating whether this is something you want to do, whether you'd find enjoyment in it. And you've got the financial means to do it if for some reason we were to get into a deeper recession than we expected. And maybe they're looking at times over at least the last decade that were much stronger than they might be in the months ahead. And so just making sure you have the staying power to kind of weather the different economic cycles. You've already pulled the money out of the market, so the opportunity to recover that, you've missed some of that already. And so I think the question is just how does this fit in terms of your financial readiness, your understanding of this space, your desire to kind of put in the work that's going to go into this, because this is certainly not a passive investment. And then what kind of income can you pull off of it after you cover your expenses and so forth, and any debt service that you might have. Then I think you just need to go in with your eyes wide open with a conservative business plan, really pour over all that data that you can get on this business before you make a decision, make it a matter of prayer, certainly.

And then at the end of the day, I love real estate and I think you being a landlord and a bed and breakfast might be something that gives you a lot of enjoyment. And if it works for you financially, then I'd be all for it. Well, thank you. That's what I've been thinking and I've been praying about it and I have it made that decision.

So I was interested in your opinion. Well, I appreciate it. Shehera, let us know how it turns out and all the best to you in the days ahead. God bless you.

Quickly to Illinois. Samson, I understand you have a question about building your credit. I've just got about 45 seconds. Go ahead. Absolutely.

Hey, thank you for having me on the call. And my question is, I'm an international student and I'm trying to understand how or what is the best way to want to do my savings. And my question is, build my credit score. Would you advise in me having on doing some investments and doing investments, would that affect my tax say?

Yeah. So a couple of thoughts. Number one is I would start by building your savings, have at least three to six months expenses in an online savings account. In terms of building your credit score, I'd look at opening a secured credit card. You'll put a $300 to $500 on deposit at a bank. They'll issue a credit card against it. Just put one budgeted purchase on it a month and pay it off in full.

That's going to be reported to your report and then allow you to build your credit over time. With regard to investing, I'd open an IRA, a Roth and just contribute to it systematically. Perhaps look at the Schwab Intelligent Portfolios or soundmindinvesting.org. Thanks for your call today. Faith in Finance Live is a partnership between Moody Radio and FaithFi. Thankful for our team today, Amy, Dan and Jim. Thankful for you as well. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next time. God bless you. Bye bye.