Age-Appropriate Money Lessons for Kids

It's a simple question we get from time to time. When should I start teaching my kids about money?

I'm Rob West. The answer, however, isn't always as simple as the question. It all depends on what you're trying to teach your children. Today I'll share some age-appropriate money lessons for kids. 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. While Christian parents are well acquainted with Proverbs 22,6, train up a child in the way he should go.

Even when he is old, he will not depart from it. That training, of course, includes managing money wisely according to God's financial principles. Teaching the practical application of those principles isn't a one-time thing.

It's a process, and it requires teaching certain things at certain times as your child grows and matures. So let's look at some money lessons for kids at various ages. Maybe as early as age three, and certainly by age five, you can introduce the idea that buying things requires money. That's a simple concept, and it's followed by the idea that you have to earn money, and that means work. Then teach that once you have money, you can spend it on things, or you can save it, or you can give it.

You might even give a very young child a small amount to put in the collection plate on Sunday. At this early stage, you can also introduce the concept of needs and wants. Explain that you need to have a place to live, a way to get around, and food to eat, but that many other things are wants.

You don't have to have them, but they're nice. Just about anything a child begs for in the grocery store will fall into the wants column, and that's a teachable moment. You can also introduce the basic concept of budgeting at this early age using the three jars approach.

As children receive money, perhaps from birthday or Christmas gifts, they can divide it among jars for spending, saving, and giving. When children reach nine or ten, they're ready to learn more about earning money and managing it. You can give them opportunities to do that around the house. You could also elect to give them an allowance each week, for which they're expected to perform certain chores without being asked.

If a chore isn't done, the allowance is withheld until it is. From ages 10 to 15, you can expand on the idea of working to earn by giving your kids the chance to earn greater amounts for doing more difficult chores, such as babysitting or mowing the lawn. You can also help them set savings goals. You can even set up a custodial account for them at a bank or use a money app for kids. You can build on the budget concept by setting aside a little from the family's grocery budget. At the store, let the children decide which of their favorites to spend it on.

That's a quick way to drive home the idea that money is always limited, that you always have more choices than money, as Ron Blue likes to say. In this 10 to 15 stage, you can also have children decide on a ministry they'd like to give to. Teach them to tithe to your local church, but let them choose where they'd like to give beyond that. Raising faithful tithers and generous givers?

What more could you want? Now we come to ages 16 to 18. At this stage, children are able to work outside the home to a great extent, and in some states even younger than that.

14 in Georgia, 16 in Wisconsin, for example. This will give them the opportunity to earn a great deal more than they can around the house. Whether that income is constant or varies, help them set up a budget with necessary categories. Emphasize the importance of sticking to that budget so they can meet their goals, which by this time could be things like a car or saving a certain amount for college.

You can also offer to match what they save. Instead of just buying your teenager a car, encourage him or her to save for it by matching what they put in the bank, much like an employer might match contributions to a 401k. This is also a good time to teach the value of investing, again, with a custodial account or on an app. Let teenagers decide which stock or stocks they'd like to buy, probably in fractional shares, and press on your children that you don't automatically sell a stock if it loses value, that the market goes up and down, and that investing is for the long haul. You can also set up Roth IRA accounts for your kids if they have earned income or a 529 education savings plan. And again, let them choose a stock to invest in within those accounts.

You want to teach these money lessons to your kids at the appropriate times so they're ready to take on the responsibility of managing money on their own and doing it wisely. Your calls are next, 800-525-7000. That's 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. All right, let's take your calls and questions today on anything financial. We'd love to hear from you. The number to call is 800-525-7000.

That's 800-525-7000. Coming up a little later in the broadcast, Bob Doll will stop by. He joins us each Monday with his market analysis. The market largely flat this week. We'll get Bob's take on what's happening economically and what we can expect as we head into the summer months related to the economy and the stock market. Of course, the debt ceiling front and center. We'll get Bob's take on that as well.

That and more ahead with Bob Doll a little later in the broadcast. All right, diving into your phone calls today. Again, 800-525-7000 is the number to call. We'd love to hear from you. Lucinda, we'll begin with you. Go ahead.

Hi, thank you so much for taking my call. I have a beneficiary account 401 from my mother and it was split in half between my sister and I. And with the way that it was set up, we have five years to do something with that. Or if we roll it over, we still just have 10 years.

Yes. And I didn't know how much taxes would be taken out if my portion of that was just put into, you know, not rolled over and just given to me. I already have a pension and a 403b, but I'm not even eligible. Yeah, I think we lost that color, but I got the gist of it and hopefully you can hear my explanation.

Lucinda, you're right. Yeah, the 10-year rule for a 401k, if the account owner passes away in 2020 or later, a non-spouse beneficiary has to withdraw all the funds by the end of the 10th year of the owner's passing or there's a pretty hefty 50% penalty on any remaining assets. So you'll want to take that out, of course, in that time frame. Money you withdraw from a 401k at any time, whether it's inherited or not, is going to be counted as regular income and taxed as such. So you'll just want to work with your CPA to determine the best timing on taking that out.

I see here in my notes, it looks like it was about $23,000 was the amount that you have available in that inherited IRA. And so I wouldn't worry about that too much. It doesn't sound like that amount is going to push you up into a higher bracket.

I wouldn't guess on the majority of it, if any of it. So I would probably just take it all in one year. If you have another purpose for it, if you want to leave it in there and let it grow, obviously you can do that to benefit from the market's recovery. I suspect this 401k is going to be a little bit lower than it is right now. So if you have the ability to wait, it probably makes sense for you to wait for the market to recover. And if you don't need it and you want to let it continue to grow, you could certainly do that and maximize this 10-year rule. But if you're looking to take it out, regardless, I'd probably give it a year and let it recover. But from a tax standpoint, it's going to be added to your taxable income.

And given the amount, it's probably not going to have a huge bearing as to when you take it out. Does that make sense, Lucinda? It sounds like you're back with us. Yes, yes, that does make sense. I just didn't know how much it would, you know, the government would take once that was cashed out. Yeah.

So whatever you take in whatever calendar year you take the withdrawal up to the full amount, that amount would just be added to your taxable income for the year and report it on your tax return. All right. Thank you, sir. Okay. Okay. I didn't know how that would work out.

And like last year, we did receive twice payments because she was over a certain age, but I have not as of this year. So I don't know if they're going to make that happen or not or make us take that. So thank you so much. Okay. You're welcome. I'm sorry to hear about your mom's passing, but I'm confident you all will be good stewards of this. And if we can help further along the way, let us know.

God bless you. 800-525-7000 is the number to call. Let's head to Illinois. Hi, Betty. Thanks for calling. Go ahead.

Hi. So I'm a small business owner. I started two years ago. And I wanted to know, I'm starting to endeavor in business credit, but I don't know where to start. I've gone to the bank, but they don't really give me that much information.

I've looked online. I have my business banking account. I have my EIN number. I have my articles in corporation. I have two years of taxes, but there's a lot of businesses out there talking about, hey, like you can get a business credit card or you can get like trade lines, etc. But I don't know where to start.

Yeah. Well, I think the first thing is to be really careful about borrowing with a small business, especially if just because a lender is willing to give you some credit doesn't mean you necessarily should take it. So just always balance that debt service with the revenues that you have and make sure you're being really smart about any borrowing. Try to keep your borrowing to a minimum.

You know, first of all, a lot of folks are going to want to look at you personally, and I would try to avoid that whenever possible, where you're personally guaranteeing any kind of business line. That, of course, is going to rely on your personal credit. With regard to the business credit, it's going to come down to outstanding balances, your payment history as a business, your credit utilization ratio, which is an important ratio for a personal credit score. The same applies for business as well, which just basically has to do with the amount you have outstanding versus the lines or limits that are available to you. And that general rule of thumb of 30% is going to apply here for a business as well.

You're going to want to keep the total amount you borrow under 30% of what's actually been available to you. You want to certainly register your business. Make sure you have an EIN number. It sounds like you do have that. You can apply for a Dun and Bradstreet number as well.

This is referred to as a DUNS, Dun and Bradstreet. You can google that and just learn more about that. That's a rating that a lot of lenders will look at when it comes to a business. You can also open a business credit card.

But again, be very careful with that. Of course, you'll want to pay creditors on time, if not early, and only borrow from lenders that report to credit bureaus. In addition to Dun and Bradstreet, Equifax and Experian all have commercial aspects to their credit bureaus.

And so you'll want to check those files for accuracy. You'll want to upload financial documents. You can even add trade references. So this is a good way to improve your credit score. If you have a positive experience with your vendors and suppliers and always pay them on time, ask them to give you a trade reference on one or all of the credit bureau's websites. And if they don't want to, you can list them as your vendor and as a trade reference for your credit file. But that will help to improve your standing along the way.

So those would probably be the biggest items. Does that all make sense, Betty? So I have applied for the Dun's number. I apply and it's going to arrive in 30 days or so. But my thing is, we have not established any line of credit at all. And so I just want to know where to get started with. So I think the place to get started would be to get a business credit card.

That would be one. Make sure they report to the bureaus. You're also going to want to only do business with people that report to the bureaus with regard to any vendors that you have and add those trade references to your credit file. All of those things in addition to the Dun's number is really going to help you. So that'd be the next step as you continue to grow your business and have more relationships with external vendors.

Make sure they're reporting and then add them yourself to each of those credit bureaus. That's going to go a long way toward you establishing yourself as an on-time payer. Thanks for calling. We'll be right back. Thanks for joining us today on Faith and Finance Live.

I'm Rob West. We've got a few lines open, 800-525-7000. Hey, as we head toward June 30th, that's our fiscal year end, the end of our year here at Faith and Finance. And we are listener supported. And as a listener supported ministry, it's an important time of year for us to finish the year strong financially, which means your support is more important than ever during this season. We have an exciting offer out there for any gift to Faith and Finance between now and June 30th. We're calling it our free to follow package. It includes Michael Blue's great new book that takes you in depth on what the Bible says about money and possessions and really offers a challenge to rid yourself and myself included of any baggage and how we view and use money. Also, our brand new FaithFi phone wallet that affixes to the back of your phone. Those together make up our free to follow package. We'd love for you to request that as our gift to you when you give a gift to the ministry of any amount. It's simple and easy to do. Just head to faithfi.com. That's faithfi.com and click give. Thanks in advance. All right, back to the phones.

We go to Oregon. Hi Sandy, how can I help you? Hey, thank you for considering my question today. I'm calling about a couple that are friends of my family who are a pastor and wife. They paid their taxes quarterly and they've recently gotten a letter from the IRS saying that their taxes were reviewed and that it was determined that they've overpaid their taxes. And form also said you could dispute that within 30 days and that they will be receiving a check. And they have since then received that check.

Now, the wife said, do you think this is real or legit? Well, it came from the IRS and it is a real check. So I just wondered if you'd ever heard of that. Yeah, it does happen. And I would say scammers don't typically send you checks. They prefer that you send them back to them. I'm saying that a little tongue in cheek.

But yeah, absolutely. If you overpay with quarterly payments, which as a self-employed individual is how you typically send in those estimated payments each quarter, the IRS will in fact send you a refund check once the return is processed. Once the actual tax liability is calculated, if they've collected more than you owe, then they will issue that check and it'll come right back to you in one of those checks.

They all look the same and you can absolutely deposit that. So I would say that it probably is legitimate if they received official communication from the IRS and then that was followed up from a check issued by the U.S. Treasury also coming from the IRS. I think it's probably as simple as they overpaid. Yes, they did not do their own taxes. They had, you know, a licensed person do their taxes for them. And I know that the wife said, well, what if they look at it again like in six months and then they want it back and we've already done something with it? I said, well, maybe call and check and see if somebody can tell us. But they don't usually look at it a third time for somebody that makes not a lot of money.

Sure. Well, I would have them, since they did use a tax preparer, I would have them provide that original form that they received in the mail to their tax preparer so that that can be a part of their record in the file that the tax preparer keeps. It should have given a breakdown in that letter before the check or with the check that says, here's what you calculated your tax to be on your return.

Here's what you paid. Here's our number, which may or may not agree with their final calculation. And then here's the justification for why we're sending this back to you.

Are you aware of whether or not it had that breakdown with it? I'm not, because I didn't see the form. But I know that they went in and talked to the person and she said, well, we can't both be right. But she said, I don't think that I are going to come after you.

She said, do what your conscience tells you. And I'm like, sheesh, you prayed your taxes wouldn't be too high this year. And maybe it's just a blessing. So yeah, I said, I said, put it away in a CD for 12 months.

And then after next year's taxes, you'll still enjoy it. That's right. They certainly could do that. Well, I'm a little confused as to why the CPA can't arrive at the final number. I mean, if she disagrees, and there there can be errors, you know, it could be on her end, or it could be on their end.

And either of them are capable of making mistakes. So yeah, I mean, your idea is not a bad one. But I suspect if they've issued this, this final calculation, and it resulted in an overpayment, I don't think they're probably going to hear from them again. At the end of the day, though, I think just based on what you're describing, it's probably not a scam.

So I think they can feel pretty confident about moving forward and even spending that money. Thanks for checking in with us today. Sandy, we appreciate you being on the program.

To Muncie. Hi, Bill. Go ahead, sir. Hi, I wish I had the problem that that last caller had. But I have the exact opposite call problem. All right. My wife's been working as a 1099 employee.

And this year, she didn't put back enough. And it looks like we're gonna end up on the IRS about $30,000. And my question is, do I deal with the normal make the payments deal with the interest and late fees and all that stuff? Or should I, you know, borrow some money somewhere and get that knocked out?

I don't know what their interest rate is yet. Because I don't have everything. I mean, I filed for an extension. So I don't have the number to go in and find out what it would be to make a payment plan. But the only time I've ever heard your friend and mine, Dave Ramsey, say, dip into your 401k is if you owe the IRS money, so I don't know if that's the case.

Yes, goodbye. Yeah, I probably would not go out and borrow on this. I'd probably just set up a payment plan with them.

You know, you would likely want to have somebody help you and negotiate that. Did you use a tax preparer? Or did you do it yourself?

Yeah, we did it with a seat. Last year we did it with I did it myself with TurboTax. And we owed about 25k. This year, we my wife didn't like that number. So we went to a CPA and we owe 32k. So she made more. But yeah, we've done it.

We've used a CPA and that's kind of where we're at right now. Okay, got it. Yeah. So I mean, it's not inexpensive. I mean, it's it's going to be probably the federal short term rate plus two percentage points.

So that's getting up there around 7%. But you're going to spend that to borrow that anyway. So I think the key is go and get that tax return filed, and then get on an installment plan with them. You can even consider an offer in compromise. But it sounds like just given the situation, you're going to need to do the installment plan. They'll be willing to work with you.

I think the key is go ahead and communicate with them file that return and get making progress toward paying that off. Stay on the line. We'll talk a little bit more off the air and we'll be right back.

Stay with us. Great to have you with us today on Faith and Finance Live. I'm Rob West, your host. All right, we're taking your calls and questions. We've got a few lines open. We'd love to hear from you. 800-525-7000 is the number to call. Again, that's 800-525-7000. Let's head to Missouri. Hey, Brian, how can I help you today? Hey, Rob.

Hey, got a question for you, and maybe it's probably an easy one for you. So soon to become a grandfather for the first time and wanting to start some kind of savings other than traditional savings. I think there's probably more vehicles out there. They're more productive for long term, something that I don't have to monitor every month to make additions to something will just grow on its own till maybe child reaches a specific age. I knew there was plans out there like Gerber life plan had planned once upon a time. And I don't know if those things are so or even around anymore. So it's not my first choice, though. And it sounds like Brian, you don't want to limit this for use for educational expenses.

Is that right? You know, Rob, probably anything that they would want that would help them, whatever that time may be, whatever they want to use that for. Okay, yeah. If you said college specifically, I'd use a 529 college savings plan. But if you're not sure, or you want it more widely available for their use, then I would say let's keep it outside of that. The other decision is what type of account. So you can either use a custodial account, which it becomes their asset at the age of majority, it takes it out of your name, and therefore you're not, you know, paying taxes on it personally. But you don't have control over when they get it and how they use it, because it's automatically going to be their asset at the age of majority, regardless of their financial maturity, their spiritual maturity, and so forth. So a lot of folks when they're doing something like this for, you know, little ones, and that's obviously your case here is you're just starting out, you know, they would want to keep it in their name. So let's say you and your wife opened a joint account, you opened it separate from any other accounts, so you earmark it for this purpose, but then you start systematically making contributions to that account.

And you know that it's set aside for this grandchild. So it's your asset technically, but you've earmarked it for them, and then you have complete control over when you'd actually hand it off and under what conditions. In terms of where to invest that, I would probably use one of the robo-advisors.

They tend to be very effective for situations like this. You could use the Schwab Intelligent portfolios, you could use Betterment, but essentially what would happen is you'd answer a series of questions and based on your answers, which would be around your time horizon, your risk tolerance, the purpose of the money, those types of things, it would automatically, using an algorithm, set up a low-cost indexed approach to investing. So it would use exchange traded funds to buy, you know, the market indexes. So you'd have some international exposure, some domestic exposure, some bond exposure, largely stocks, and you would capture the broad moves of the market over time.

The nice part is it's fairly low cost, probably one quarter of one percent a year, and they tend to have no transaction costs, which just means if you're putting in $100 a month, every time $100 hits the account, it's automatically going to be rebalanced among all of those ETFs, and you don't have any transaction costs, which is nice. So it's great for just kind of a sure and steady approach. You're not trying to pick the winners and losers, you're just saying, listen, as the market performs over the next decade or 15 or 18 years, I'm going to capture those broad market moves and I'm going to do it in a low-cost way and I can kind of set it and forget it, which is essentially what you're looking for. And then when the time comes to start thinking about handing this off, you know, you would have hopefully not only your contributions but quite a bit of gains in there.

You would have to pay capital gains along the way because it's not in a retirement account or in a 529 account for college, but I think it would accomplish the purpose you're looking for here. Does that make sense? It does. I guess the days of, you know, taking X amount of dollars and putting that aside in a savings account and letting it accrue, and I know interest rates probably aren't really good on just traditional savings accounts within a credit union or bank or probably anything, but that's kind of a no-brainer. You don't have to think much about it.

It's the way I understood it and I was trying to find out what the differences were. That's not just a very viable option to choose. Well, it certainly is viable and it's more viable today than it was a couple of years ago because we were getting virtually nothing in the way of interest on savings accounts, whereas today you can get four percent on a high-yield savings account at Marcus or Capital One 360. No fees, completely liquid, FDIC insured, and you get, you know, four percent.

The challenge is you're just not going to do as well over time. I mean, we're in an unusual season right now where the Fed funds rate has gone up dramatically as the Fed tries to fight inflation. Their goal is to get those interest rates coming down as inflation comes down. So although it's somewhat attractive today, although it's relative given the inflationary environment we're in, I don't think it is going to be for long. And so, you know, the question is just how much growth do you want in this? Would you rather take a, you know, a guaranteed approach and get your four percent a year and, you know, a couple of years from now let's say that's two percent a year that you're getting, but you're just using it as a savings account? Sure, that's a viable approach.

I think the thing that I'm talking about is given that your time horizon is 15 plus years, why not try to let this money grow by just, you know, owning some high quality stocks and bonds and, you know, see if you can take this systematic contribution you're making and get, you know, over, you know, eight to ten percent a year in growth that compounded over time would add some significant, you know, additional funds to this portfolio. Okay, okay. Rob, you're a blessing for your information, sir. You're very good at what you do and that's why I called. Well, thank you very much. I'm delighted to hear about your new grandchild. Congratulations on that, Brian. That's incredible.

What an amazing season of life you're entering. And again, I think either approach is good. If you wanted a savings route, I'd probably look at Marcus or Capital One 360.

If you want to go with the Robo Advisor and actually put this to work in stocks and bonds, I'd look at the Schwab Intelligent Portfolios or Betterment. Hey, thanks for calling, Brian. God bless you, my friend. Let's see, to Ohio. Hey, Mike, go ahead. Hey, how you doing, Rob? Thank you for taking my call.

Sure. Hey, I'm 56 years old and just got pre-approved for a house for a first-time home buyer and I'm borrowing against my 401k and I'm able to get half, but I don't really need that much of it. I was going to use that as a down payment, but when I, once I get that, is that taxable when I put that towards my down payment?

It's not if you borrow it, but I'm not a fan of that, Mike, because here's why. Number one, you're pulling it out of the account and yeah, you'd pay interest to yourself and I can understand why you might want to do that. The problem is the market's down right now, so that portion you've pulled out for the down payment is now going to miss the recovery of the stock market, number one. Number two, the reason it's in there is to grow it for the future so you have it in retirement.

Number three, if you ever separated from the company, that would all be taxable to you and if you're under 59 and a half, you'd have a penalty on top of it. So my preference would be that you would leave that money there and you just save for that down payment and then get a mortgage for the rest, but give me your thoughts. Well, yeah, I'm kind of in a money pinch. We're kind of being forced to move, so that's kind of like my only ditch effort, so I'm a nice ditch effort. Okay, I get that.

I just think there are some downsides here that you need to weigh and so perhaps it's a season to rent and save if you can, but if you did take it, just understand it could all be taxable to you if you separate from the company or you can't pay it back in five years and that's a pretty big downside. Mike, we appreciate you calling today, my friend. God bless you. We'll be right back.

Stay with us. Thanks for joining us today on Faith and Finance Live. It's Monday, which means Bob Doll stops by.

He joins us each Monday in the final segment to give us his analysis on the markets and the economy as we begin a new week in the stock market. Bob, good to have you with us. Thank you, sir. Happy Monday.

All right. Hey, give us an update. What are you thinking watching this week as we head into a new week in the markets? Well, we're coming to the back part of first quarter earnings and as we've talked about before, Rob, they're coming in reasonably well versus expectations. The complaint is if the company beat, which a lot of them are, you'd think the full year numbers would get raised, but they're not getting raised, which is in effect a cut for the second, third, fourth quarter.

Estimates are still on the high side. We're watching that. We're obviously following the dialogue on the debt situation and the debt ceiling, which has to be raised by around June 1st. My best guess, Rob, as you and I have talked before, is that they'll kick the can and pass the deadline to something like September 30 with a temporary rise and then fight the debt ceiling and the budget at the same time. Yeah.

How is the rhetoric? I mean, is that, you know, likely at this point in terms of how many folks are calling for digging in here versus actually letting this thing get raised in the near term? Yeah. I mean, if they could come to a compromise, it would be great to get it behind us, but I think there's so much posturing and even lack of agreement within the two parties that we have a high probability of solving that.

Now, if the powers that be, the two Senate, two House leaders and the president can have a meeting of the minds and then they sell it to their caucuses, it's possible. I just think that the clock's running pretty fast toward June 1, Rob. Yeah, no question about that. Bob, obviously the market performing, as we've talked about in the past, fairly well this year, all things considered. And I know internationally it's even better. So it's a time to, of course, be cautious and be really well diversified, I guess.

Yes, that's right. I mean, first of all, the market's up seven percent this year, and that's better than a lot of us thought. That's come on the back of better than expected first quarter earnings to repeat myself, but also this belief that the Fed's done raising rates and more importantly going to cut them in the back half of the year. And that's caused market participants to say, I think I better own a few more stocks.

Time will tell. We're in this 3800 to 4200 trading range for the S&P toward the higher end of that. But I don't see us catapulting to the upside.

I think we're going to frustrate the bulls and bears and keep trading in that range, as we have for most of the last 12 months. International stocks have performed a little bit better this year, as they did last year. And underneath your question is this message, in my view, that you need some international diversification. The U.S. has been a great place to be for years. And not that it's going to be bad, it's just the international markets are pretty cheap.

Yeah, no question about it. Bob, obviously last week we had new jobs numbers. You were talking a bit about wage inflation in your deliberations for this week. How does the job market play into everything that's going on economically?

So it is the one outlier. Most of the things are slowly weakening, but the job market remains robust. Both the number of jobs and wages reasonably strong. The Fed is fighting that. They'd like a few less new jobs and wage rates to stop going up at the current pace of roughly five percent per annum.

That would make their job of reining in inflation a little bit easier. So watch those labor markets very carefully. Very good. Bob, we appreciate your insights, as always.

Thanks for stopping by. Thank you, sir. All right, that's Bob Dahl. If you'd like to sign up for his Dahl's deliberations, you can do that on the website crossmarkglobal.com, where he's chief investment officer. All right, back to the phones as we round out the broadcast here today to Kent, Ohio. Jean, go ahead.

How can I help you? Thank you. I appreciate your Christian overview of everything financial, but I hope my question's easy. My husband and I set up a trust about 20 years ago and we recently dug it out of the bookshelf and noticed how many changes we'd like to make in terms of beneficiaries.

Different nieces and nephews have been born in it. Yes. And how formally do we change that? How do we go about it? Yeah, you can do it yourself. I mean, you could find living trust forms online where you could specify the changes. You'd have the amendment notarized and sign it in the presence of a notary. If it's a joint trust with your spouse, you'd make sure both of you sign the amendment and have each other signatures notified. And then you keep the trust document and the amendment together in a safe place.

You don't need a court to enact it because they are completely private. I would, though, just kind of given the fact that when things change, it's probably good to update your legal affairs related to estate planning. I'd probably revisit with the estate attorney that drafted it just to have that individual go through it with you.

They undoubtedly will ask you a few questions that may prompt some other ideas or thinking. They could take care of the updates for you and at the same time make sure that everything else is in order. Do you need to go ahead and update your will at that time? What about living wills and health care surrogates and durable powers of attorney? I mean, those kinds of things are important to have in place so that if you're incapacitated, both health care as well as financial decisions can be made on your behalf. So, although you can do it yourself, I'd probably either revisit with the attorney that did it or find a new attorney if you've moved or something like that. Okay, so it is a more formal thing than I thought. Now, before we can get in to see the person, and I don't even know 20 years later what we're going to find out, if we've just initialed them, that is no good then.

It really isn't. No, you'd need to have the amendment, which you could find again some forms online to kind of get you through until that point just so you feel like you've got your bases covered, but you would need to find an amendment and make those changes and then get that notarized and then have that paired together with the trust documents. So, you could do that fairly simply, but I would go ahead and schedule that visit with perhaps even a new estate attorney. If you don't have one, you could contact a certified kingdom advisor there in Ohio and ask for a referral.

They'd all have a godly estate attorney they work with, and finding a CKA can be done at our site, faithfi.com, and just click find a CKA right there on our website. Gene, I hope that helps you. Yes ma'am, thank you for calling today. To Cleveland. Hey Mike, go ahead sir.

Good afternoon. I would like to ask your opinion as far as opening credit cards that offer like promotional perks or like rewards and like how many of those you can open per year? Yeah, I mean theoretically there's no limit, however card issuers have their own set of rules for this. So, for example Bank of America uses a two, three, four rule where you can only be approved for two cards within the 30-day period, three cards within a 12-month period, and four cards within a 24-month period.

But, I mean theoretically as you string these together, you know, you could open more than that. Now, it's going to start to hurt you because every time you make an inquiry, you know, that is going to hit your credit, so that credit score is going to come down. And then as you add these accounts, you know, although your credit utilization would stay low as you get more and more credit available to you that could be used, eventually you will have, you know, more credit available to you than you have income to support it if you were to go out and charge it all up.

And so, you know, they're going to start to clamp down on you in that regard. Plus, as you open these accounts, obviously it opens up more opportunity for fraud, more accounts that can be compromised. So, we say, you know, you would typically only want one to two cards plus a debit card is generally the rule of thumb. And be careful about, you know, going out and applying for a lot of cards or jumping around, especially if you're looking to go out and, you know, buy a car and you need a loan or you're looking to get a mortgage. And, you know, the fact that you're opening these cards, even if the reduction in your credit score is temporary, it could drop you down into a lower range of scores that would result in, you know, you not realizing as favorable of terms on those loans.

Does that make sense? Yeah, generally I always pay everything in full, so would that have any bearing on, you know? Yeah, I mean that would keep your credit utilization low and so that's good, but every time you apply for one of these accounts, that hard inquiry from the lender going out and checking your credit for the purpose of determining whether to extend that new card to you is going to pull your score down slightly. So, I think that on top of the fact that, you know, you're just gonna have to keep up with all these cards, I would probably maybe once a year do a review of the card you have versus others that are available that might have a better cash reward or a better, you know, if you're looking to get, you know, SkyMiles or something like that.

I'd probably just look at that every 12 months if it were me. If I were to just open the card, use it for a couple months, and then close it to get the perks, would you see anything with as far as doing it that way? Yeah, I mean it just gets somewhat complicated, but you're looking for the bonus that they give you after you spend a certain amount? Exactly, yes. Yeah, no, there's no problem with that technically other than it's just a lot of hassle, but you certainly could do that.

I just think as you open more and more of these accounts, eventually it's going to start to put a drag on your credit score such that you may not get approved for all of them over time. So, I would probably just limit that to once or twice a year if it were me. We appreciate your call today. Thanks for being on the program. Let's see, we are about out of time.

Quickly to Mississippi. Kerry, I've got just about a minute left. Hello, Rob. I recently retired at the end of January, and I had a 401k on my job, and I left my balance in Charles Schwab. Since the marker got jittery, I put in stable value funds. Now, I hang up the phone and listen to you over the radio.

Okay. Yeah, so I'm fine with you staying at Schwab. I'd probably move it to an IRA inside Schwab, and then it's just a matter of how it gets invested. You could reach out to a Certified Kingdom Advisor to help you pick the investments on it. On our website, faithfi.com, that's faithfi.com. Just click find a CKA. You probably do want to be invested.

The question is what percent of stocks versus bonds, just given your age and risk tolerance and your advisor can help you figure that out. Thanks for calling. Faith in Finance Live is a partnership between Moody Radio and FaithFi. Thank you to Ryan, Dan, Amy, and Jim. Couldn't do it without them. Have a great rest of your day, and I hope you'll come back and join us tomorrow. We'll see you there. Bye-bye.