What’s Your Relationship Status with God?

Most people would say their most important relationship is with their spouse or children or perhaps a friend, and they'd be wrong.

I am Rob West. Those relationships are important. We need them. But they don't carry eternal significance like your relationship with God. Today I'll give some practical ways to strengthen that relationship. Then it's on to your calls at 800-525-7000.

That's 800-525-7000. This is Faith & Finance Live, biblical wisdom for your financial journey. So this is a program about money, and you may be wondering what money has to do with our relationship with God.

That's a fair question, and the answer is, a lot. And the Bible gives us three dots to make that connection. First, God created everything, and therefore He owns everything. Colossians 1-16 says, For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through Him and for Him. Second, God gave us everything we possess. Deuteronomy 10-14 reads, So God owns everything. But He's given us resources to use temporarily as His stewards. And last, God is not distant and detached.

He wants a close relationship with you. James 4-8 tells us, We draw near to God by being obedient and following His law. With over 2,300 verses in Scripture about money and possessions, God has made His desire quite clear. He wants us to manage money according to His principles. Our friend Howard Dayton points out that wisely managing money and the other resources God blesses us with deepens our fellowship with Christ. Having a close relationship with Jesus is another way to describe what the Bible calls true riches. In Luke 16-11, Jesus indicates that God uses money as a test. He says, Jesus is saying that how you handle money affects your spiritual life. If you manage it well, according to biblical principles, you'll naturally grow closer to Him.

If not, your fellowship with Him suffers. So biblical money management is a very practical way to improve your spiritual life. But sometimes things get in the way of that. There are two kinds of disobedience that keep us from handling money God's way and growing closer to Him.

The first is passive. It's just laziness. Some people don't want to take the time to organize their finances, make a budget, and track their spending. Doing those things might only take a few hours a month. Still, it's just too much to bother with.

Worse, that same person will spend more time than that watching TV every night. As a result, intimacy with God suffers. Now, if you don't have a spending plan, we urge you to download the Faithfi app.

It has three options for setting up a budget quickly and easily and then tracking your spending. You can get it at faithfi.com or wherever you get your apps. So that's the first form of disobedience, passive. Another person has a different obstacle to growing closer to God.

It's an active or willful disobedience. For that person, money and possessions compete with Christ. Jesus tells us in no uncertain terms how that will turn out. In Matthew 6 24 he says, You see, often that person thinks he can surrender every part of his life to Christ, except money. He might be good at making money, paying bills on time, saving and investing, but he refuses to give Christ lordship over his finances. Maybe he stumbles over tithing or other giving to God's kingdom.

He has the resources, but he just doesn't want to give. Again, his intimacy with Christ suffers. Finally, there's another person who's not following biblical financial principles, but thinks her relationship with the Lord is just fine. To her we might say, what you don't know will hurt you.

What are you missing out on? You might think finances aren't interfering with your relationship with God, but how would you know? If any of these people sound like you, I suggest you commit your finances to the Lord in earnest prayer, and then follow through managing your money and possessions His way. Again, you'll find what you need to get started by downloading the Faithfi app.

It will not only help you set up your budget, the Faithfi app gives you access to the best Christian financial content out there to help you grow closer to God by following His principles. All right, your calls are next, 800-525-7000. Stick around, we'll be right back. Glad to have you with us today on Faith and Finance Live.

I'm Rob West. All right, it's time to take your calls and questions today. We've got some lines open. We'd love to hear from you on a Friday with whatever you're thinking about financially. The number to call is 800-525-7000.

Again, that's 800-525-7000. We've got lines open, and we're ready to take your calls today. In fact, let's dive in. We're going to start in Georgia today. Delores, she'll be our first caller. Go right ahead.

Sir, I appreciate your program. I have some gold coins, and would you like to know if this would be a good time to sell those? And also, if it would be, how I would do that. And I also have some funds, up to 250,000, and a credit union. Are the credit unions stable enough right now? I see, yeah, very good.

So let's tackle those one at a time. With regard to the gold coins, you know, there's just a number of factors there as to whether or not it makes sense for you to hold on to that. Most notably, kind of how this gold that you own fits into your overall investment portfolio. What percent is it? What are you looking for from it?

Is this something you'll need to tap into now or in the future for income? Or is it something you're really just holding to see the appreciation? Gold coins in particular are given nominal face values, but they're usually worth considerably more in terms of their fine gold content. So unless a gold bullion coin is of rare historical significance, the real value is better determined by multiplying its pure gold content by the gold spot price.

And, you know, again, unless you've got a rare coin. Right now, the gold spot price is around $1,945 an ounce. That's near the 10-year high, so it may in fact be a great time to sell gold coins. A lot of folks are wondering why it's not doing better, just given all the uncertainty around us. But keep in mind, as we head into a recession, people will buy less gold, even though it is certainly a store of value and it's intended to be a fear trade. You know, it tends to go up when things are uncertain, but this looming recession, you know, is probably not going to allow gold to go out too much beyond where it is now.

So you've got a couple of options if you decided to sell. You could of course go to a local jewelry or coin shop to get an idea of the coin's value or online. And you could check out a couple of the national services to find a reputable appraiser. The professional coin grading service would be one place to go PCGS.com.

There's also the numismatic guarantee corporation at NGC coin.com, numismatic guarantee corporation. Either of those could be a great starting place to find a reputable appraiser and ultimately a dealer. But right now you need to figure out what do you actually have, what is it worth, and then decide whether or not you want to go ahead and sell it and redeploy those assets in some other way in terms of investments. Or whether you want to hold on to it.

So given all of that, Dolores, what are your thoughts? Well, I think I would like to go ahead and cash them in right now. That's probably what I'll do. Yeah.

Okay. Well, I think the starting place is to kind of figure out what you're sitting on, what do you have, and then you need to find somebody that could give you a reasonable price to sell that or to buy it from you. And then you could at that point deploy that money yourself, depending on what your objective is. If you want to be ultimately safe with it, you could put it in a CDE.

Or if you want to shore up your emergency fund, a high-yield savings, or if you wanted to invest it for five years or more and you had probably more than $100,000 or so in total, you could connect with a certified Kingdom advisor on our website. There's something else we can help you with along the way. Don't hesitate to give us a call. God bless you.

To Chicago. Hi, Carol. Go right ahead. Hello? Hi.

Yes, sir. That's a question concerning capital gains. I have a 40-acre farm that I bought 50 years ago, paid $40,000 for it, still live there.

It's worth $600,000, $700,000. And if I was to sell it on the open market, there would be a lot of capital gains. If my children would inherit, if I understand right, then capital gains wouldn't be as great. But the question is, if I, in my will, if I had, when I pass the farmers to be sold and given equally between my children, would they have to pay capital gains in that situation? Yes.

Yeah, very good. Well, first of all, if you were to sell it, and this is your primary residence, meaning you've lived there two out of the last five years as your primary residence, then as a single person, you could deduct $250,000 in profit away from capital gains, not paying capital gains on it. As a married person, half a million dollars in gains could be excluded.

Again, you'd have to live there two out of the last five years. A principal residence can be located on a farm and be sold and replaced with another primary residence. So you would have to get the guidance of probably a farm realtor to establish, you know, just the cost basis on it and the sale. In terms of the inheritance, you know, if they were to inherit this property from you at your death, either by way of a trust or through your will, well, at that point, the cost basis would be stepped up to the market value as of the date of death. And so that's one of the benefits of inheriting the property as opposed to receiving it prior to death by way of a gift or a quick claim to eat or something like that. So if you're planning on them inheriting this property, they won't have any capital gains at all if they were to turn around and sell it because of that stepped up cost basis. But my question is if they said I should decide how to dispose of it, and so I put in my will, well, I'll have them have the administrator to sell it and then they get the recipient, but that would maybe come under complete capital gains for them then. No, as long as you've passed away and they stand to inherit it, then they would enjoy that stepped up basis. You know, it'd probably be easier just to, yeah, I would just give them the property and then let them turn around and sell it at that point. You could also put it in a trust, which would accomplish the same thing, and the trustee could dispose of the asset in the way and with the timing that you specify in the trust documents.

So either one would be fine. I'd visit with your estate planning attorney. Do you have somebody that drew up your will? Yes, yes.

Okay, yeah. I would give that person a call and just let him or her know what it is you're trying to accomplish. Make sure that everything you have is in fact up to date. There's nothing that needs to be updated or changed. You could review what you're intending to accomplish with the passing on of your estate, your wealth transfer. And it's never a bad idea to, you know, every few years or when something major changes in your life to have those documents reviewed and updated. But bottom line is you can absolutely do what you're trying to accomplish here, Carol, without them having any capital gains tax.

But as to how you go about that and which documents you need to use, whether it's a trust or a will or both, I would talk to your estate planning attorney just to make sure you are well planned and everything is in proper order. Thanks for your call, sir. God bless you. We're going to take a quick break when we come back. We've got just three lines open, 800-525-7000. A lot more questions just around the corner.

Stick around. Great to have you with us today on Faith and Finance Live. I'm Rob West. We're taking your calls and questions today. 800-525-7000. That's 800-525-7000. Back to the phones. We go to Tampa, Florida. Hi, Mike.

How can I help you? Hi, I got two questions about the rule of 55. One is, do you have to, is it the year you turn 55 or do you literally have to have your birthday and then at some point after that before you could take advantage? And also, as long as it remains in the 401K, can you continue to make future withdrawals until you turn 59? Is, can you continue to make future withdrawals until you turn 59 and a half and then it's not necessary anymore?

Yeah, that's right. So to the first question, you can begin to withdraw those funds without that 10% penalty, assuming you leave that job in or after the year you turn 55, not the actual day. So as long as you separate from that employer in or after the year you turn 55, then it would apply.

Of course, you'd pay tax on it, just not the penalty. As to the schedule of that withdrawal, it's pretty flexible. As long as you meet the requirements, you can take as much or as little as you want from the 401K without committing to a set schedule. Now, it's only from your current employer's 401K, you couldn't reach back to an old 401K or an IRA.

But yeah, as long as it's your current employer, you separate in or after the year you turn 55, then you have some pretty good flexibility there to get that money out without penalty. Perfect. Thank you so much. You got a great show. Thanks, Mike. I appreciate that. To Jolene in Omaha.

Hi, go right ahead. Hi, yeah, I live on a disability and I don't have a lot more coming in due to cancer stuff, so I'm not able to like go work at all and I'm taking care of the child on my own. So how do you keep afloat?

Yeah, you know, this is really challenging, Jolene. I've counseled with hundreds and hundreds of single parents who know how challenging this really can be, especially on a fixed income. You're a single mom, you've got, you know, probably more expenses than you have resources available. And so it's really just a matter of first doing the best you can with what God has provided. And that's always going to come back to limiting your lifestyle, having a spending plan, really thinking about carefully every expense, looking to keep lifestyle modest. So to the best of your ability, you can live within your means, because that's really the beginning point of everything.

And I realize that's easier said than done. Then when you have additional money coming in through a gift of somebody that identifies your need and wants to help, you know, try to keep your lifestyle in check so you can build up that emergency fund over time. That's really going to be key to you being able to deal with the unexpected. You know, I would love to have one of our certified Christian financial counselors reach out to you and wouldn't be any cost to you for this, we'll pay for the cost. But, you know, just getting a fresh set of eyes on this, Jolene, somebody who can look at your situation, help you analyze your budget, make sure there's not anything you're missing there. You know, there's not any kind of secret sauce here with regard to how you go about this.

It's going to be challenging. But bottom line is, you know, this is also where the body of Christ comes in. And hopefully there are people on your path that will see the needs that you have along the way. And this is, you know, one of the ways God provides is hopefully people being generous with you and for you. And that means, you know, being willing to accept that assistance as it's provided as well. But at the end of the day, the only two things you can do are reduce your expenses or increase your income.

And once, you know, both of those are done fully exhausted, then it's just a matter of trying to create a plan that allows you to live within your means to the best of your ability. It's not going to be easy. And, you know, that's why hopefully people will come alongside you to encourage and support you along the way. So would you be open to having one of our counselors reach out to you?

Yeah, that'd be such a blessing. Awesome. We'd love to do it. All right, so you hang on the line, Jolene. We'll get your information.

We'll have one of our CERT CFCs give you a call and over the phone and maybe through a video conference when you have some time, they can help you take a look at that budget and maybe give you some counsel in your specific situation. Thanks for being on the program. May the Lord bless you.

Let's see, to Chicago. Hi, Tiffany. You go right ahead.

Hi, I am calling because I do listen to your program on a regular basis. And I have pretty much shot myself in the foot. I have used shopping as a means of creating some happiness in my life after my children went off to college.

They all went off last year together. And I started spending money. And now I am in some credit card debt. And I just want to know, is there a certain somebody that I can call that would help me with this kind of coping mechanism, the addiction I have now to shopping?

Sure. Well, I'm so sorry to hear you're in this situation. And we certainly want to help you move forward from here.

And so you can honor the Lord as a steward of these resources. You know, I think the first step is really just to it's going to be important to know whether your shopping habits, you know, have become extreme and certainly may constitute a behavioral issue, a true addiction beyond just occasional leisure shopping. And that is a very real thing. And, you know, often will take a mental health provider to help you recognize this, it sounds like you already have and then deal with this as a behavioral challenge and help you, you know, create healthy habits moving forward so that you can get beyond this. I think, you know, reaching out perhaps to, you know, first your primary care physician, just to ask to a referral for a therapist, you could certainly check with your local church as well. We'd be happy to provide somebody that would help you look at the financial side and help you get on a plan to deal with the finances, but money issues are hard issues.

And if there really is something going on underneath the surface that really has, you know, taken a shopping habit and turned it into a true addiction, then obviously that needs to be dealt with. And depending upon the severity of it, you know, they'll work with you and create a plan to help you get beyond it because we need to help you find more healthy coping strategies to move forward. So let's do this.

We want to get your information, get somebody in touch with you, and I'd love for you to reach out and get some help as well from a mental health counselor. Stay on the line. We'll be right back. We're thrilled to have you with us today on Faith and Finance Live.

I'm Rob West. We've got a few lines open today, 800-525-7000 coming up a little later in the broadcast. In our final segment, Jerry Boyer will stop by. A big week in the markets and the economy with the Fed's rate hike. We've got some better than expected inflation data.

The market continues to have some strength as of late. We'll get Jerry's take on all of it. That's coming up just a little later in the broadcast. All right, back to the phones we go to Cleveland, Ohio. Emma, thank you for calling.

How can I help? Hi, I'm calling because I'm 62 years old and I have a 401k plan from my previous employer and I now have another job. And so my question is, is it more advantageous to roll it over to a traditional IRA or roll it over into my current employer's 401k plan?

Yeah, it's a good question. I like you moving it out of that old employer's plan. The question is to a traditional IRA or your current company. And you know, I think just for simplicity sake, I like your going into your current 401k. We give you one less account. You could have a unified investment strategy there and then at some point you could roll it out to that IRA and not have another option. Now, how much do you have in that 401k roughly?

Do you know? About $450. Okay, so there's a significant sum of money there. Do you have an advisor that you would work with to manage this if you were to roll it to an IRA?

Well, that's just it. I have where it's currently at. They want me to, I think, and that's why I'm not a little concerned because I'm not sure if they're advising me because they want to manage the book of business or if it's better to roll it over into my company's IRA 401k plan. But yes, they have.

So I'm currently the place that has it. I've been in contact with them. And then my current employer, they are also the investment firm that they use. They have been in contact with them as well.

And it seems like they're both kind of encouraging it to roll into a traditional. Yeah, because they'd like to manage it. Yeah, I think with that significant sum of money, Emma, I mean, this is not just a modest amount. I mean, that's a lot that you built up in that portfolio. I think it makes sense to go ahead and go to an IRA. The reason is it's going to give you a lot more flexibility or whoever manages it a lot more flexibility in terms of the investments that are selected for you.

Because inside the 401k, there's that limited investment universe, the IRA, essentially, you can invest in anything. If it was 20 or 30 or 40,000, I might say let's just roll it in and keep it all in one place. But I think given that you've got nearly a half a million, what I would do, I mean, certainly you're welcome to talk to either of these folks that are with the firms that your plan administrator is with. But we prefer the certified kingdom advisor designation here at Faith and Finance, which is a financial professional and investment advisor who's met high standards and character and competence and signed a statement of faith and been trained to bring a biblical worldview and pastor and client references. I mean, there's a whole host of requirements, but you could look for a CK there in Cleveland.

I know there's some wonderful ones. And I'd interview two or three, find the one that's the best fit. And I would wait if this is the direction you're going until you select that advisor before you do anything with that old 401k, because he or she will custody their assets at one particular brokerage firm. In some cases, it may be more than one. But let's say they're with Fidelity, then they'll open that account for you there. And then you just request the surrender paperwork and transfer that over. And that would, of course, not be a taxable event. And then at that point, based on the discovery they'd done with you and, you know, at length talking about your goals and objectives and risk tolerance, then they could deploy an investment strategy.

But I think just given what you've got, that's probably my best advice. Okay. And what was the name again? Yeah, just go to our website at faithfi.com. That's faithfi.com. And just click Find a CKA, Certified Kingdom Advisor. That'll be right at the top of the page.

And then you could search there in Cleveland, get a list of CKAs, and then I'd schedule two or three appointments, find the one that's the best fit. Excellent. Thank you so much.

All right, Emma, God bless you. Thanks for calling today. We appreciate it. We've got, let's see, two lines open here on a Friday, 800-525-7000.

We'd love to hear from you. I don't have time in this segment to get to another caller. So Chris, Angie, James, you all stay right there and we'll come to you right on the other side of this break.

Plus Jerry Boyer will be coming up in just a minute as well. A quick email. This comes to us from Danielle.

She wrote to us at askrob at faithfi.com. She says, I'm getting a bonus at work that I'm considering putting into a CD at 4%. I have my six months emergency fund set aside, or should I put the bonus toward my 2.625% mortgage? Well, going strictly by the math, I'd go with the CD and of course get a higher return and then you would by paying down the mortgage at a very low rate. However, if you have a real conviction, Danielle, to be completely debt free, including your house, and you'd like to accelerate, you know, that payoff and get yourself a little bit closer, then I don't have any problem with that at all.

In fact, I think that'd be a great idea. I don't think I've ever had someone regret paying off or paying down their mortgage early. So again, I think that's completely up to you. There's more than just the financial side of that equation.

You've got the financial side, but then you also have to consider the, you know, the non-financial side of that as well, which is why I would consider doing that. So hopefully that helps you. By the way, if you have a question, send it along.

Ask Rob at faithfi.com. All right, let's head back to the phones to Ohio. Hi, Chris.

How can I help? Hi. Yes. What is the difference between a trust and a will? Yes. Yeah, it really just depends on what you're trying to accomplish.

One is not better or worse. A will is a little simpler in that a will will basically just direct how you want your assets and personal items to be passed at your death. And so a will will go through probate, which is the probate court.

There will be some costs associated with that. It will also take a little bit of time, but ultimately at your death, your personal representative would distribute your assets and personal items according to your wishes. A trust is a legal arrangement made with a trustee, and your wishes will be carried out without going through a probate. So it happens outside of the probate court, and a trust can go into effect prior to your death or after your death. So one of the benefits is of a trust versus a will. A will only takes place at death. But a trust, if you were incapacitated and you want your trustee to be able to manage your affairs prior to your death, that could be done.

It could also happen after your death. So let's say you had small children or you had dependent children that you wanted to get an inheritance over time at ages 30 and 35 and 40, or you wanted them to get an income stream instead of a lump sum. That could all be done through a trust, and the trustee, whether an individual trustee, a person, or a corporation, would manage your estate according to the trust documents. So you have a lot more flexibility with a trust, and you have the anonymity because it's not a part of the public record, and you have more efficiency because it's not going through the probate court. It is going to be more expensive. It's probably $1,500 or $2,000 versus a will, which might be around $500. So I think it's ultimately about what is going to meet your needs the best. Not everyone needs a trust, but it can be a very effective planning tool.

So I'd connect with a godly estate planning attorney in your area and talk through this for your situation. Thanks for your call. We'll be right back. Great to have you with us today on Faith and Finance Live.

I'm Rob West. Well, every Friday, our good friend Jerry Boyer stops by to weigh in on the markets and the economy, and Jerry, here we go again. The third week in a row, the S&P is closing higher, nearly 1% higher on, I guess, this softening inflation data. And perhaps the fact that the Fed is done hiking, although that remains to be seen, huh?

Yeah, but it's a little more seen now than it was when I talked to you this morning. The markets had basically concluded the Fed was going to hike one more time, and they did this week. But I think I mentioned to you, you look at those probability curves, I won't get into all the math, but markets thought, well, we think they're done, but if there's a change, the change will probably be up rather than down. So maybe there'll be, probably not, but maybe there'll be another hike to fight inflation. But what happened today is data came in, which said that inflation is low, lower than expected and lower than it's been. And it's the consumer price inflation, which is the one they look at. The PCE is what they call it, Personal Consumption Expenditure.

I'm sorry, I tried to avoid an acronym. And that's the one that kind of looks at what you actually buy. And so that's the one they like, and they want it to be about 2.5%, and it's 3%. So that's getting pretty close to what they wanted. Oh, and also good news, wage growth is down.

They want that. They want wage growth to be down. That's the distorted economics. We don't want wage growth because they think wage growth leads to inflation. And I mean, that's not the biblical approach.

I mean, the biblical approach is for humans to flourish. When your wages go up, but the prices of goods and services don't, that's growing prosperity. That's what you want. You want wages to rise, but prices not to rise.

Well, how is that possible? Well, because you become more efficient. As people become more productive, as we have over the thousands of years, and especially over the past couple of hundred years, for most of the past 200 years, before the central bank went to fiat money, wages were rising, and prices were falling, and we were getting more prosperous. Well, now, I mean, that's, to me, that's the biblical ideal, is it's a prosperous and, you know, God's the most important thing, but God loves us, right?

And he likes for his children to flourish. So that's the Keynesian economics sees that as a problem because they think that rising wages leads to inflation. So they looked at the fact that wages aren't going up, and they thought, oh, that's good. So I guess we don't have to fight inflation anymore because the wages are falling like we wanted them to. And so all that amounts to the Fed is even less likely to hike than people thought, which means interest rate sensitive stocks like the NASDAQ, like the tech stocks, went up 2% today. Whereas, say, the Dow went up half a percent today. So everything that doesn't want interest rates to go up did better today than everything that does, you know, is less dependent on interest rates.

Yeah, interesting. Jerry, what about just the state of corporate finances here and some of the data that's been coming out with these quarterly reports? I mean, is it stronger than you expected it to be? Are businesses holding up more resiliently?

They are. It's stronger than I expected it to be. Well, I don't know. I don't forecast earnings, so I didn't have an expectation. But still, when I read the headlines, I thought, that's a little better than I would have expected, given the fact that they raised interest rates so much and that that can be kind of hard on business. And people were saying, well, when the Fed raises interest rates, that's bad for banks because the bank borrows money. Well, hold on. The bank also lends money.

So I'm sorry. No, it's not as simple as that. So they're paying more, you know, when they borrow, but they're also getting more when they lend. So the inflation has been a little bit good for retailers.

So how does that work? Well, if they bought something when it was cheaper and then they turn around and sell it a year later when it's more expensive, they kind of get a free gain just on the inflation. You know, apart from just the gain of profitability, just having pricing power. So what I would say is earnings growth has been pretty strong and that's a good thing. But take that with a little bit of a grain of salt in that some of it has to do with distortions that occur when you have an inflationary environment. And like I said, inflation is just starting to come down now, but that's new. So inflation has been elevated for a couple of years and that kind of works its way through the inventory system in ways that are really hard to predict. Like my friend Steve Forbes says that inflation is like a virus in your computer. Everything just is a little more confusing.

What's this pop up thing? I didn't know. I didn't open this. What's going on? Hey, why did that just all of the signals get a little bit more garbled and confused, which means that in an inflationary environment, you can't take everything at face value because the unit of measurement is fluctuating. See, we don't have a fluctuating pound. We don't have a fluctuating inch or a fluctuating yard. Most of our units of measure, they stay the same, but we have a fluctuating unit of value right now, which means any data that is financial in nature or economic in nature is kind of like there's a rubber yardstick and it's all a little bit confusing. So what I would say is I'm really happy for the earnings growth for investors, but some of that is probably distortion from the fact that the yardstick is changing. It's a rubber yardstick.

The dollar is fluctuating in value. Yeah, that's really helpful, Jerry. That makes a lot of sense. But let's pivot just for a moment before we wrap up today, just as you continue to do the work that you do in corporate engagement. I know you've been talking to even some treasures of states as of late. What are some of the highlights that you're seeing in that space?

The highlights are that a lot of your treasures and chief financial officers and people that you don't know their name, you don't know who they are as citizens. Turns out they know who you are and they've been looking out for your interests and they've been fighting against politicizing corporations. They've especially been fighting against, say, using the corporate proxy voting process to promote, say, abortion politics or other things that are non-core politics or one side in a culture war. And it's having a real impact.

I just watched a briefing that was put together by a group that is the clearinghouse for a lot of these proposals. And they were in a bad mood. They were in a bad mood because their pro-abortion proposals are actually doing really badly. And actually almost all of their proposals are doing more badly because what's happened is, especially for the red state treasurers and others and even asset managers, they kind of woke up and they said, wait a minute, something was happening while we were asleep and somebody crept in and kind of changed the agenda of these corporations.

And all of a sudden my beer company is telling me that they think that the way to sell beer to me is to show me a man that dresses like a woman. Now, look, whatever you think about these issues, I think I have an idea what most people right now think about these issues. That's to be debated in the public sphere. That's why you have laws, you have talk shows, you have places like that. It's not a marketing thing. It's not a corporation thing. It's not the job of Bud Light to change our culture and to push the envelope of the social revolution. It's their job to sell beer.

And when you lose that, it's a destruction of value. And what's happening now is our side is waking up and the other side is, well, they had a bad year, frankly. And, you know, I'm kind of glad they had a bad year because they never should have been using the process of corporate engagement, proxy voting, annual meetings to pull corporations into a culture war. And by the way, they're saying that we're causing a culture war. They started a culture war.

We're just responding. It takes two sides to have a culture war. So if they say get out of states that have pro-life legislation, that's the beginning of a culture war. If we say no, don't, make a business decision instead.

Don't decide where your corporate headquarters is going to be based on a heartbeat bill. It doesn't become a culture war then. It was already one.

It just becomes one in which both sides are engaged. Yeah. And perhaps your responsibility to shareholders is to focus on the core business, maybe.

Absolutely. And you know what? A lot of states that have pro-life laws have pro-business climates and growing workforces. People are moving from New York to North Carolina. They're moving to the south. They're moving to the Midwest. So for these groups to be suggesting it's bad business to, you know, to be doing business in Texas because they restrict reproductive freedom. I'm sorry.

Excuse me. Texas economy is growing faster than the rest of the country and the workforce is growing. People are moving from the states that are pushing abortion to the states that are protecting the unborn. So maybe the business risk runs in the other direction.

Maybe they ought to be divesting from the pro-abortion states because those are the ones that seem to be hemorrhaging population and wealth. Yeah. Well, this is not going away anytime soon, Jerry. So we appreciate the update. We'll, of course, continue to check in with you along the way.

Thanks for stopping by today. My pleasure. Take care. All right. Have a great weekend. That's Jerry Boyer, our resident economist. He joins us each Friday. Quickly to the phones to Chicago. Angie, I appreciate your patience. How can I help?

Oh, hi, Rob. I'm in a situation where I'm handling my mom's bills. I find out she's 89.

I find out she has had an insurance policy on me since I was in college. It's decreasing in value. I'm thinking we should just dump it right now.

The payout. If I was to drop dead today, it would be only 8,000 and it's losing, you know, $500 a year. I think we just need to dump it. I just want to make sure ethically this is okay since she is the one who took it out. But I think financially she's fine.

Yeah, I have no dependents whatsoever. And this is such a small amount. It's silly to just keep sending these people money, I think.

I totally agree. Does it have any cash value in it if you were to cancel it? Yes, it is.

It is $1,244. Absolutely. I would absolutely do that. There's no reason to continue, in my view, to continue this policy. It's not really not serving any purpose and it's going to continue just to erode that amount that's available as you continue to pay on this thing. So I would absolutely let it go. Okay. And there's no there's no better option like to roll it to something else or whatever.

There really isn't. I'd pull the cash out and put that to work in a Roth IRA and don't look back. Thank you so much. I appreciate you confirming this thought to me. All right, Angie, we appreciate it. And Andy, I don't have time to get to your call, but I do want to give you a gift because I see here in my notes you made some bad investments.

You want to know how to become successful in investing. I want to help even though we can't get you on today. So you hang on the line. Tahira will pick up the line and we're going to send you a copy of the Soundmind Investing Handbook. And again, I apologize. We weren't able to get you on the air. Kevin, let's see if we can get you on next week. Well, folks, that's going to do it for us today. What an incredible week being able to serve you and hear your stories and your questions. I couldn't do without my amazing team, Courtney, Tahira, Jim and all the rest that make this possible every day to be able to bring you God's wisdom as it relates to your financial decisions. We'll see you next time. Have a great weekend. Bye bye.