Giving to Children and Grandchildren

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See our impact and learn more about Moody Radio's new initiative at springshare.org. A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children, but the sinner's wealth is laid up for the righteous. Proverbs 13, 22. Hi, I'm Rob West.

That verse seems pretty straightforward, and yet it leaves several questions unanswered. Exactly what should we leave to our kids? How much, and when? Ron Blue joins us today with the answers, then it's on to your calls at 800-525-7000.

That's 800-525-7000. This is faith and financial and it's live biblical wisdom for your financial decisions. Well, our guest financial teacher and author Ron Blue literally wrote the book on this important topic. It's called Splitting Heirs, giving your money and things to your children without ruining their lives. That pretty much says it all. And by the way, if you haven't read the book and you're thinking about this idea of wealth transfer, it's a must read.

Ron, welcome back. Ron, we've had calls from folks who even take out insurance policies just so they can leave something to their children, who in many cases are already grown up and out of the house. Does Proverbs 13, 22 mean we should always leave money to our children and grandchildren? I don't interpret it that way, Rob. I think that leaving money to my children and or grandchildren in many cases may be a bad idea.

And I don't take this as a command. I take this as a principle. You know, when that was written, there were no charitable organizations. So wealth stayed within the family, typically. And what it's saying is, when you accumulate wealth, and you've done a good job at that, your grandchildren are going to end up with it. Which is true, but it doesn't mean that I'm commanded to build wealth for my grandchildren at all. I don't interpret it that way at all.

Yeah. A spiritual inheritance? Absolutely, but not necessarily a financial inheritance. So Ron, when are the times that we shouldn't leave money to our kids? Well, I always tell people that if you believe that God owns it all, then the last decision you make as a steward is who gets his resources. So I think that if you leave financial resources to heirs that you know will waste it or use it in an ungodly way, I would have serious question as to whether you should leave that money to them. And so I counsel people that if you haven't left wisdom to your children and grandchildren, don't leave them money. Because money never creates wisdom, but wisdom creates money. So wisdom first, money second is my counsel.

That's powerful. Ron, you've always been a great question asker. What's a question we can ask ourselves when we're contemplating this decision on leaving money to kids? Well, I think the first question that both Judy and I dealt with, and we spent two years answering the question of how we were going to leave wealth. And the question was, if we left, pick a number, 50,000, 100,000, a million, whatever the number is, to and name the child, what's the worst thing that can happen? And in our particular case, with five children, we had five different answers to that question.

But that's the right question to ask. And then you've got to answer, okay, if that's the worst thing that's going to happen, how likely is it to happen? And what are the consequences of it? So we had one child, we knew if we left money to them, they'd give it away. Well, that's not a bad consequence. But we had another son-in-law that if we had left money to that couple, it would have destroyed his need to provide for his family.

That was a bad consequence. So answering that question, what's the worst thing that can happen is a way to ask a really good question about wealth transfer. You've been speaking, Rob, I share this principle, and I always get a lot of comment, and that is, if you love your children equally, you'll treat them uniquely, because they're unique individuals. And if you think about it, God loves all of us equally, but he doesn't treat us equally in terms of money and possessions and so forth. He's not punishing us, he's just saying that he knows what's best for us. So I think as a parent, I need to think, I love my children equally, and come back to that question, well, am I helping them or hurting them by leaving wealth to them? Or am I using God's resources in a way that I know will be wasted?

That's not a good decision. That's powerful. Ron, that was really well said and great insights. Thanks for stopping by. Well, thank you for having me, Rob. Always a pleasure. All right, your calls are next.

The number to call is 800-525-7000. This is Faith and Finance Live, biblical wisdom for your financial journey. Stick around. So thankful to have you with us today on Faith and Finance Live. I'm Rob West, your host. All right, it's time to take your calls and questions today with whatever might be on your mind. We'd love to hear from you. The number to call is 800-525-7000.

That's 800-525-7000. We'd love to tackle whatever question you've been considering, or maybe you have a testimony. Perhaps you've been for decades applying these principles we talk about from God's Word on this program, and you've seen them bear fruit in your own life, and you'd love to give testimony to that. We'd love to hear it.

800-525-7000 is the number to call. Also, as we prepare for share on Moody Radio next week, we're hearing from listeners about what this incredible ministry means to them. Before we dive into our topic today and take your questions on the air, let me read a few of these.

These are powerful, and we receive these all the time, and we're delighted to share a few of them with you. Here's what Beverly said, she said, I was suicidal in 1989 when my husband had an affair. I had two small children. Moody Radio became a lifeline and helped heal my heart and mind as God healed my marriage. Praise the Lord. Patricia says Moody Radio is a part of my salvation story as it helped to lead me to the Lord in 1979.

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We can't wait for next week. All right, let's dive in. Again, we've got some lines open today at 800-525-7000. That's 800-525-7000. Let's begin in New York. Sunshine, thank you for calling.

How can I help? Hi. I heard Larry Burkett years ago, and I know somebody asked this question, but I can't remember what the answer was. Yeah.

Okay. I get Social Security, and then I have my retirement funds, and they take taxes out of that, and either I have to pay in or I'll get a refund. My question is, I tithe from everything that comes into the house. Now, if I get a refund back from the government, do I have to tithe off of that again?

You would not. So if you're applying the principle of the tithe, Sunshine, and I love this idea that we would be proportionate in our giving using the tithe based on our increase to give a tenth to our local church. If you're tithing on the gross amount that's coming into your household, which is part of your increase from whatever source, then if you're giving a portion of that to the government temporarily to hold onto by sending a little extra through your probably salary deferral, the taxes coming out of your paycheck, and they're holding onto that money, and then they're giving it back to you at the end of the year in the form of a tax refund, that really is money that you've already tithed on. And so that's not a part of your increase.

It was your increase when you should have received it, and instead it was redirected to the government temporarily. So no, you would not tithe on that money. Now, you can never outgive God, and if it's an opportunity with some unexpected funds to say, Lord, where might you be leading me?

That's always a good question to be asking, but if you're applying the principle of the tithe, it would not apply to that money. Now, if you don't mind me asking, Sunshine, how much are you getting back? A little over $6,000.

Wow, yeah, so that's a lot. And so what I would say is, I mean, this might be kind of a forced savings plan for you that you look forward to having. I'd rather you get that in your budget every month. I mean, that's $500 a month that you could have every month in your budget, and you could not just spend it mindlessly, but you could get it into your plan so that it's going where you want it to go to whatever goals and priorities you have on a monthly basis.

Rather than getting this big windfall every year and giving the government an interest-free loan for up to a year on a pretty sizable amount of money. So if you wanted to kind of right-size that, I certainly don't want you to owe anything at the end of the year, but if you wanted to get to a place where you had perhaps just a very small refund, that would be ideal. And updating what's called your W-4, if you're a W-2 employee, your W-4 form, which you can download from IRS.gov, there's a helpful worksheet there that would allow you to put in how much income you expect over a year from all sources, how many dependents you have, any deductions you're expecting beyond the standard deduction.

And when you finish completing the worksheet and then turn that into your employer, it would adjust how much they're withholding so that you don't get so much back and you get more of that in your paycheck every month. So that would be something to consider. In fact, we dedicated the opening topic to this subject yesterday.

And so if you go to moodyradio.org and listen to yesterday's installment of Faith and Finance Live, March the 8th, the opening topic was all about how to fill out your W-4. So I would direct you there. It might be helpful to you. Okay? Yeah, I don't work. I'm retired. Okay. All right.

So you may just want to look. Where is that withholding coming from then? What they're taking out of me, it's coming from, I have my retirement, which is nothing to write home about. You don't get enough money to buy paper products for the month. Then I have my husband's plus I took a chunk out of his 401k and created another annuity. So I'd have another monthly check coming in.

And then I got my Social Security. Okay. Got it. All right. Yeah. So that makes total sense. Very good.

Well, bottom line is going back to your original question. No, you would not apply the principle of the tithe to that money being returned to you as a refund. So I appreciate your generous heart and wanting to honor the Lord with your finances. And also thanks for mentioning the late Larry Burkett. We're all incredibly grateful for the ministry Larry continues to have, even though the Lord took him home in 2003.

God bless you, Sunshine. Thanks for calling today. 800-525-7000. We've got some lines open today. We'd love to hear from you with whatever questions you have on your mind financially speaking. Before we head back to the phone, Stan will be coming your way in West Palm just after the break. Let me tackle an email.

We receive emails every day at askrob.faithfi.com. Bill writes, we have a 401k at my company. We'd like to put money into it, but someone at church told me they're not fond of 401ks. Are there any good reasons not to invest in my 401k? And I would say financially, there really is no reason not to contribute to your 401k. It's an excellent tax deferred vehicle for growing your assets, particularly if your employer offers any matching contributions.

That's free money. Sometimes you can run into problems by limited investment choices that your 401k man may offer. So they have a limited menu of options and you may or may not be fond of the options they're making available, although increasingly 401ks are having more options available. They even will offer in some cases faith-based investments and what they call a brokerage window so you can invest in anything even outside the plan. But if you'd rather have more control over your retirement, you could open an IRA and put in either $6,500 or $7,500 depending on whether you're over or under age 50. And you can invest in anything and you can have one for you and if you're married, one for your spouse.

But apart from that, no reason to be concerned about a 401k. Bill, thanks for your call. We'll be right back on Faith and Finance Live. Stay with us. You know, here at Faith Five, we trust the Lord as you do for our provision. Everything we have comes from Him and we try to use that wisely as we serve God's people to bring you biblically wise counsel, encourage you in your faith journey as it relates to your finances and bring you this radio broadcast and the app and all the resources and content we provide.

And we're a little behind this month on reaching our monthly goal with regard to listener support. So if you count yourself as a part of the Faith Five, Faith and Finance family, we'd certainly appreciate you considering a gift here now more than ever. It would go a long way to helping us continue our work and you can do that quickly and easily on our website to make a tax deductible contribution to this nonprofit ministry. Just head to faithfive.com. That's faithfi.com. Just click the Give button. You'll see three ways to give over the phone, through the mail or over our secure website. Again, faithfive.com.

Just click Give and thanks in advance for considering a one time or perhaps even a monthly gift. We appreciate it. All right, we've got some lines open today. We're taking your calls and questions and even a testimony or two if you've got a story you'd like to share about God's faithfulness in your life financially. The number to call is 800-525-7000. To West Palm Beach, hi Stan, thanks for your patience. Go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much for taking my call. I'm a second career minister and so at this point I'm not looking to leave any inheritance. I have no children. I have some charitable interests, maybe like a charitable remainder trust or a crud or something like that. But I'm trying to figure out how, what's the best way to actually distribute assets to myself so that I can spend down that which I've accumulated.

Yeah. Where are your assets located? Where are you positioned?

I'm a little bit everywhere. I have some in some homes. I own a few homes that are completely paid off. So probably, I don't know, $700,000 worth of homes. I have half a million in deferreds. So that would be 403Bs. And then another half a million or so and just liquid assets cash. Yeah, great.

All right. So I mean, I think the key here is just to be wise in the tax efficiency of your giving. Because if you really don't want to leave a whole lot behind and, you know, as Ron Blue, who was on today and starting our program talking about inheritance is one of the other things he says in his book Splitting Errors about wealth transfer is he says, Do you're giving while you're living so you're knowing where it's going. And I love that idea, which is let's prioritize current giving over giving at death out of my estate.

He says, tongue in cheek, I'm not sure you get credit for it when you give it that way. He's joking when he says that, but the idea I think is a good one. And that is why not right now participate in God's activity and join him where he's at work and do some hilarious giving. And if you could do that in a tax efficient way, that makes a lot of sense, especially since, as you said, you don't have a lot of desires to have a whole lot left. If you could spend that last pity on the day the Lord calls you home, that would be ideal.

Now, because we don't know the time and the place, so we probably going to be difficult to do that. But I think, you know, in all seriousness, spending some time perhaps with an advisor, unless you already know this, quantifying enough, how much is enough to maintain your lifestyle for the rest of your life, given the assets and the income sources that you'll have. And then getting serious about once you define enough for lifestyle and accumulation and you may already be there, determining how much you could begin giving away. Now, a couple of options for you in terms of just charitable desires. You know, if you were to liquidate any of those properties, giving all or a portion of those properties to a donor advised fund, perhaps at the National Christian Foundation prior to the sale would be really helpful because you wouldn't have any capital gains on at least that portion that was given to your donor advised fund. And then when it's liquidated, one hundred percent of whatever percentage of the property you put into your donor advised fund upon the sale would fund that DAF. And then you'd be able to use that as a charitable checking account to give it away as the Lord leads. You could do something similar with those four or three B's when you separate from the company, if you haven't already, by rolling them to an IRA. And then you can do what's called a qualified charitable distribution once you reach age 70 and a half. And I realize that may be down the road a bit. But once you do, you could give up to one hundred thousand dollars a year directly to a ministry without having to pull any of that out on a taxable basis.

And that would also satisfy your required minimum, which is now it's set at age 73. Obviously, the money you have that's taxable, that's liquid in cash, you know, that could be taken care of right away. You mentioned a charitable trust. And, you know, that is obviously where you can receive income from the distribution of the non income producing assets you place in the trust. And then you receive the charitable donation on the present value of the remainder of the assets. And then at the end of the term or death, your chosen ministry receives the rest of the assets. That can be a great way to kind of keep, you know, an income stream coming to you, but ensure that it's, you know, given away at death. So I think those are a few options, but give me your thoughts on what I've shared.

And is there anything else that I didn't mention that you're wondering about? Well, it's kind of news to me that a donor advised fund, I always anticipated just cash to a donor advised fund. I had never anticipated perhaps some of the real estate actually to go. I could see that in a trust, but I didn't know about that in a donor advised fund. Yeah, here's the thing with the donor advised fund is that, you know, the most powerful aspect of the donor advised fund is for non cash giving.

You know, I mean, you can put money in a donor advised fund, just cash. And the only reason you tend to want to do that is if you wanted to do some what's called bunching, where let's say you're sitting on assets like you are, and you're not getting above the standard deduction. So you could put in a couple of years worth of giving or more at one time, get the deduction for that full amount because now you're up above the standard deduction and then give it away over a couple of years if you wanted to. So that is a strategy. But the real power of the DAF is you can put in a business interest, you could put in real estate, you could put in a piece of art, you could put in a farm, you could put in stocks and bonds. So, you know, giving before you sell rather than selling and giving is a really effective way because you basically eliminate the taxes. Right.

And one other scenario is because I am a minister, some are looking at receiving certain income as housing allowance. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And so that's a whole other thing. Let's do this. I've got to take a quick break. I'd be delighted to talk to you about the housing allowance just on the other side if you're able to hold.

If not, I can direct you to an article. But thanks for your call today. We'll be right back. Stay with us. Welcome back to Faith In Finance Live. I'm Rob West. We're taking your calls and questions.

We've got some great ones coming up. 800-525-7000. Hey, by the way, if you'd like control over your finances, perhaps in a way you haven't had before, if you'd like clarity into what's going on in your spending plan and how do you make course corrections throughout the month, well, the Faithfi app offers exactly that with a beautiful, simple smartphone interface for you to take control of your spending. Check it out today when you head to our website, faithfi.com.

That's faithfi.com and just click the app button to learn more about it. All right. Back to the phones we go. We're going to be in Florida in just a moment.

But first, Indiana. Hi, Joanne. Go right ahead.

Joanne, are you with us? Yes. All right. You're up on the program. Go ahead.

Hi. My question is, I received Social Security disability, but I've also worked part-time for about the last 20 years while I was raising our kids. I'm a mom of five. Now that all the kids are out of the house, I've also been received a promotion, and I've been offered a job that would require me to work full-time at a salary that's about triple what I'm making right now. And I just want to be careful there because there have been times that I needed to be off work for a certain period of time, and I've used that Social Security disability, obviously, to help get through those times when I wasn't able to work. But I love my job, and it's something that physically I'm pretty sure that I'm going to be able to do because it's very flexible.

And that's always been the key with me, that I need something that's flexible that allows me to kind of set my own hours as I'm able to do that. So I'm just wondering, in salary negotiations, what amount will be wise? I know there's a risk there.

Sure. Well, at $17,000 a year, you're below the income limit for Social Security disability. The income limit this year for 2023 is $1,470 a month for most disabilities.

It goes up for blindness. So taking the promotion would, of course, make you ineligible for disability benefits. But if you take the job, you'll be making a little more than twice the highest income limit for disability benefits. If you can work, I would say take the job and do the work. If it turns out it's too much for you, you could request that your benefits be reinstated.

In fact, you wouldn't even have to reapply. Social Security Administration will even give you six months of provisional benefits while they reevaluate your situation. So I would say, you know, if it were me, just if you have the ability to do the work, it sounds like you love it. And, you know, the Social Security disability is there when you need it and qualify for it.

And clearly that's been the case in the past. But if you have the ability to do this new work, I'd say go for it. And if you find it is too much based on, you know, whatever's going on health-wise, then you could be reinstated. Okay. All right. Well, that's kind of the way I was leaning and that's kind of what I hoped you would say. So thank you very much.

Well, you're welcome. Tell me what you do. What is the kind of work you're doing? I do corporate training for 10 restaurants.

Oh, nice. So very much worked my way up there and, you know, it's a great job. Yeah, I bet.

Well, the restaurant business has had some challenging times the last few years, especially just finding workers. And I know your line of work is in high demand, I can imagine. So that's great, Joanne. Well, thanks for being a part of the program today.

God bless you. Hey, let's go to Florida. Hi, Gail. You're next on the program. Go ahead. Hi.

Thank you so much for taking my call. My call is in regards to identity theft. Is there a company that you would suggest that would track or monitor credit cards, bank accounts, the credit score? We've heard so much about fraud and I was just wondering what you would suggest to protect us for the future of any potential problems.

Sure, absolutely. Well, you know, my general recommendation is if you haven't had your information compromised, then the best company is the free company. And that's you because you can go to all three credit bureaus, Experian, TransUnion and Equifax. You can freeze your credit for free, which just simply means that if somebody were to try to open an account in your name fraudulently, you know, they wouldn't be able to do so because they wouldn't be able to provide that PIN number.

And so that would stop them in their tracks. And then if you're exercising best practices with regard to your accounts, just, you know, keeping your financial life fairly simple, not having, you know, lots of open accounts that you're not using. And for those that you are using, you're monitoring those statements regularly. You're not clicking on phishing emails with a ph, you know, putting in information on links that you're getting or, you know, giving out your information over the phone if somebody calls you on an unsolicited basis. You know, then I think you're pretty much doing what you need to do to protect yourself, especially if you're keeping your browser and your software updated on your computer and, you know, taking advantage of the security patches and not using public Wi-Fi, you know, to transact business, those kinds of things. Can you pay for a service?

Sure. I mean, lifelock would be one, you know, that you could use. But I think, you know, at the end of the day, you know, most things that, you know, can be done, you can do yourself.

I would add to that list I mentioned before, you know, using a password manager so you can update your passwords regularly and use a really strong string of characters to protect your accounts. And if you do those things, I think you've put yourself in a position to save, you know, maybe $350 a year for one of these services that basically do the things that you can do on your own. Does that make sense? Absolutely. Thank you so much. I appreciate that information.

All right. God bless you, Gail. Thanks for calling today. 800-525-7000 is the number to call quickly. Let's stay in Florida. James, go right ahead.

Hey, Rob. I work a short-term kind of job, construction part of the communications industry. About a dozen or so companies will get assigned a particular city or state, work that project, upgrade.

Latest was 5G, but, you know, other things. So this is the first time a company automatically enrolled me. I found out when I filed my taxes this year, a particular box had a large sum of money.

I was like, hey, what's that for? And they told me it's a 401k. I was like, well, I know of a 401k, but the first name I want to hear is Roth. So in my mind, I was actually paying attention to the word IRA the whole time we were talking 401k by mistake. So I might have accidentally told him to change it to Roth, but when they transferred me, that guy enlightened me saying, well, you know, there's no match. If we go to the Roth IRA and he slowed his speech down enough for me to catch it, I was like, oh, oh, oh, well, free money is always good.

I don't want to miss the match. Right. So my thoughts are this. They got me on a 20 percent vest for, you know, five years, be a hundred. But because it's a short term job, I don't even know if the next or several of the next short term jobs would even have the option to do anything of a rollovers, an option or what options are.

So here's my two parts. Free money beats Roth. Roth beats traditional.

But in this particular case, what thoughts should I do the Roth 401k over the traditional so I can get my match and then roll out or something later? I like the way you're thinking here, James. And you've you've laid it out really well. Let's do this. I've got to take a quick break. If you don't mind holding as soon as we come back on the other side, we'll tackle this question. I'll give you my thoughts. This is Faith and Finance Live. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Delighted to have you with us today on Faith and Finance Live. I'm Rob West. We're taking your calls and questions today here in our final segment.

Just before the break, we were talking to James in Florida. James was interested to discover in the preparation of his taxes that he had a 401k that he didn't know he even had. And this is actually becoming more and more common, James, interestingly, just because more companies are now automatically enrolling workers in 401k plans, which increases the participation rate. Actually, beginning in 2025, auto enrollment will be mandatory for all employers with new 401k and 403b plans.

It's still voluntary right now. Obviously, the younger you are, the more you'll benefit from a Roth IRA and you have more control over it in the sense that you've got unlimited investment options. But I agree with you. I don't want to forgo that matching because you're not going to find that free money in the stock market, that's for sure.

So I would say you're correct in that matching trumps everything. And then beyond that, I'd like for you to get the tax-free growth of the Roth. Even though there's an argument to be made, you know, that we don't know where the tax code is going down the road.

But here's what I would say. I think we're at the perhaps lowest end of that range because these tax rates that we're enjoying right now are going to expire. And, you know, we'll see that happen at the end of the calendar year 2025 when nearly all of the provisions of the 2017 Tax Act affecting individual income taxes are scheduled to expire. And so obviously there'll be a lot of political debate about that, but we can pretty much be certain that if taxes are going one direction or the other, it's going to be higher. So I think there's a case to be made for you to go and pay those taxes now, enjoy that tax-free growth and have all that money there down the road. I think the thing you just need to check on is because of the nature of your job being short term, just make sure that, you know, if you're taking advantage of that matching that you can, in fact, then as soon as you separate from the company, roll that money out.

And if it's in a traditional 401k, you could obviously convert it to Roth at that time, which would then from that point forward allow it to grow tax-free. Does that make sense? Or is there another question there? That makes sense. But keep in mind, out of a handful of companies, I could be working with them, for them again, you know, three projects down the road 18 months from now.

You never know how it's going to end up. Right, right. Are you paid as a 1099 independent contractor?

No, sir. It's a contract position, but they pay your W-2 employee. Yeah, okay. So yeah, then that's how they're doing the salary deferral, obviously. Yeah, I mean, I would just take, I mean, while you're with them, I'd take full advantage of it, you obviously could leave it there. But it's currently not going into a Roth 401k, it's going into a traditional, is that correct?

It's traditional. When I found out, I jumped the gun telling them to put it into Roth because I was intellectually thinking IRA the whole time. And then after the thought, I was like, oh, I might need to call them back because I don't want to miss the match.

And I could do that with an easy phone call. I just wanted to make sure before I had them double change it, or if there was another option that, because I also have a separate, my six months plus emergency savings, I'm good on all those types of things. Okay. And I have a lingering Roth, I haven't touched or seen anything five or six years ago with a major company. And I'm like, that might be a backup plan if I needed to roll out, you know, just all things considered.

Yeah. Well, you know, they can do the Roth 401k matching just as they do with the traditional. Typically the way this has worked, and this is changing, is that the matching contributions go into the traditional 401k rather than the Roth. So your salary deferral goes into the Roth, but they can still match going into the traditional. So that's what I would ask about, because that's typically how that works. Oh, the best of both worlds. Yeah, I'd like that. Yeah. Now they're changing that in the future, just based on some new legislation that's going to allow them to actually do the match straight into the Roth as well. But you shouldn't necessarily have to forego that match. It could just be that they could direct it to the traditional IRA. So obviously with your job situation, it does complicate things a little bit. So I think this is good that you're asking some questions.

I'd go back to your plan administrator, get clarity on that, and don't pass up that free money if at all possible. James, thanks for your call today, sir. God bless you.

Let's head to Washington State, just north of Spokane. Dennis, go right ahead. Hi, Dennis, you're on Faith and Finance Live. Go ahead.

Oh, yeah. Rob, thank you. Hey, that really spoke to my heart, your opening comments, Ron Blues' comments. If you love your children equally, then treat them uniquely. God loves us all equally, but treats us all uniquely. My wife and I are struggling a little with that concept.

We have six children and a dozen grandchildren, great-grandchildren. We've been totally blessed. And what we have been doing is we've been gifting away prior to our demise because as we see needs, but we've struggled with that equality thing. And that just because that just gives you a good biblical foundation for that and sets us free. So I do have a question in here, and it is, we recently, because we have a trust, it's a little messier when you're not doing equal things.

You just have to put more energy and time into it. But what my question was, we recently met with our attorney, and we were concerned about gifting them more than the federal, whatever it is, roughly $60,000 per married couple annually, right? Well, he told us there is a federal exemption and there's no Washington state inheritance tax. So he said there's a federal exemption that is like $12 million that you can fill out some kind of form and you can draw against it. It's a lifetime exemption.

Elaborate on that. I never heard that and I thought that we could give $100,000 away or $200,000 and it wouldn't. You're exactly right, Dennis.

You're discovering all kinds of things today. First of all, let me just comment on your remarks regarding Ron Blue's principle, if you love your children equally, you'll treat them uniquely. You know, this flies in the face of what we often are taught here as Americans. You know, we've got to treat everybody the same and we do in many contexts, but I think when it comes to our kids, we use discernment, right? Just to say each of them are in a different place spiritually and financially. You know, Ron's great example, there was one daughter who was divorced and with a very modest income coming in and another son who was married and making really good money working as a professional.

And, you know, they're both very spiritually mature and one had a greater need than the other. And so they're constantly evaluating how much should we leave to each of our kids? And I think asking the Lord for wisdom in that and, you know, leading with this idea of thinking, what is I hope for my kids with this and what's possible? In fact, what's the worst thing that could happen, as Ron said, and could I rob them of the ability to provide? Might I, you know, for a child who's not as spiritually mature, maybe even making poor lifestyle decisions, could I inadvertently, with a lot of cash dropped in their lap, accelerate their movement away from the Lord? Ultimately, he's in control of that, but I certainly, you know, don't want to do anything that in my own discernment doesn't feel wise. And so I think that gives us the freedom in that to really think through, pray through how we would direct our inheritances and we don't automatically have to approach it just dividing it equally.

And so I think that's Ron's big idea. With regard to this lifetime exemption, you're absolutely right. So this year, 2023, you can gift up to $17,000 per person. And that would be so for you and your wife, 34,000, 17 of you each to one individual. And if you go above that, you just have to fill out an IRS Form 709 that basically says, acknowledges that you've made a gift beyond the 17,000. And for any amount that trips over 17,000, or in the case of a married couple, if you're both given 17 when you go over 34, then that's going to go against the lifetime exemption. And that is set today at $12.06 million. Now, that could change, but anything above that 17 is just eating away at that lifetime exemption. And you're not going to have any gift or inheritance tax unless you get over that. And you've got a long way to go, my friend.

Yes. And that I mean, that is a that that information needs to get out there. I mean, I didn't know that till I sat down with him and I just thought that changes all the rules. You know, it's innocent because our estate is nowhere near that. But we could you know, we could gift away considerable amount and still have our own reserve. We've been totally we don't we don't have any debt whatsoever.

We own our ranch, we own our car, our trucks, our equipment. And I've never I have no 401ks anything of that type. I was a I'm a retired real estate broker. All of my investments are either in needs of trust or or real estate itself or just cash on hands or commodities, gold, silver, that type of stuff. So so I have no needs there, but that that 12 million really rung my bell. And yeah, also the comp your opening comments, Rob, with Ron Blue were so affirming to us. And my wife's in Hawaii right now.

One of the kids homes and I'm I'm batching it here. But it's going to be so exciting for her to hear that, too. And the encouragement on not doing it exactly equally. That's great. So I so appreciate your your program. I listen to it.

It doesn't apply to me in most cases. But this was this was awesome for a senior to hear. Well, I'm delighted, Dennis. You've been a joy to talk to. I'd like to send you a gift, if you don't mind.

I'm going to have you stay on the line and my team's going to get your information. I want to send you that book that we were talking about today. Ron wrote it years and years ago. But today it is the very best book on a biblical approach to wealth transfer, not the tools and strategies necessarily. But the why and the questions that you have to ask and wrestling through really the plan from a biblical perspective. That's really so critical.

It's called Splitting Errors by Ron Blue. And Dennis, we're going to send that to you as our gift today. And you and your wife enjoy reading that. God bless you, my friend. Thank you for listening and calling today. We're grateful. Kathy, sorry I didn't get to your question, but what I see your question here and I don't recommend that consolidation, but I do recommend debt management. So visit with my friends at christiancreditcounselors.org. They can help you. Folks, thanks for being along with us today.

Faith and Finance Live is a partnership between Moody Radio and FaithFi. Thank you to Amy and Jim and Tahira. Come back and join us tomorrow. We'll see you then. Bye bye.