Moving from Renting to Buying

Anyone trying to buy a home these days knows what it's like to be stuck between a rock and a hard place. Hi, I'm Rob West.

Many factors are making home ownership more difficult, but the big ones are higher interest rates and low inventory. Today, I'll talk with Amei Dodson about overcoming those hurdles, and then it's on to your calls at 800-525-7000. That's 800-525-7000. This is Faith and Finance Live, biblical wisdom for your financial decisions. Well, it's great to have Amei Dodson with us again today.

She's the National Director of Affiliate Relationships at Movement Mortgage, an underwriter of this program. And Amei, it's great to have you back. It's so good to be here and spend some time with you.

Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Amei, a while back, it was actually cheaper to own a home than to rent.

That's no longer the case, is it? Well, it depends. In some markets, we're hearing about the staggering increase in the cost of rent. So it's one of those things that requires a professional look at your picture in alignment with the market conditions to decide which is a better value for you.

Yeah, absolutely. Higher interest rates, of course, are a big part of the challenge these days, but so is low inventory. Why are there relatively so few homes on the market these days? Well, there's a number of reasons contributing to that. Part of it is the fact that there is a continually rising number of what they call new home creations, which are new people needing to buy homes. And the pace of building is not keeping up with that. Plus, the incredibly low rates we experienced a few years ago meant, and people realizing that after COVID, that they could potentially do their jobs remotely. We had a surge in people buying second homes. Those are two of the factors that have impacted the inventory shortage for sure. Yeah, I know millennials are reaching the age where they're having kids as well. They're looking for single-family homes. So a lot of factors coming together all at once. And that's why it's so difficult these days, especially for the first-time home buyer, to buy a home.

Difficult, but not impossible. So what are the best steps that prospective buyers can take? Well, the first thing you've got to do is you've got to know before you owe, which means you've got to talk to someone who can really assess your situation. Because there are a lot of programs out in place that are first-time home buyer programs and down payment assistant programs. A lot of things that can help people get into homes that otherwise might not realize that they could qualify.

So if you talk to a loan officer who can run your credit, talk about your credit profile, discuss your long-term goals and strategies, they can provide you with the marching orders of what you need to do to position yourself to be able to buy a home. It's not impossible. And while the rates are higher than they were statistically over the course of mortgage history, they're not that high. So there is an opportunity to get in now because the way the economists are talking, it's not going to get less expensive. Houses are not going to be losing value because there's going to continue to be a greater demand than supply for some time.

Yeah, I completely concur with that. So how can Movement Mortgage then help a prospective buyer navigate through the home buying process? Well, it's easy. Actually, if you go to movement.com slash faith, you can find a loan officer that is in your geographic area, have that initial consultation, they will help you figure out what steps you need to take.

Talking to that licensed professional, and of course we would love to earn your business at Movement, is the first step. Because then you know what you have to do. And it's different for everybody based on their economic history and their credit score and where they are geographically.

That's so good. There's so many lenders out there in May. What makes Movement different? Well, we are an impact lender. We define that as any lender who gives at least 10% of their profits away. And at Movement, we give almost 50% of our profits away.

So when you do a mortgage with us, it means more. Oh, I love it. I know you're doing work all over the globe, and we'll have to have you back sometime to tell us about that. But so thankful to have this partnership with you, Emma, and thanks for stopping by today. Thank you.

Have a great day. That was Emma Dodson with Movement Mortgage. We're so delighted to have Movement be an underwriter of this program.

Listen to this, folks. Since 2012, Movement has given more than $300 million to the Movement Foundation to uplift people and communities across the globe. We know it's important to you to do business with people who share your values, and that's why we're delighted about this partnership.

To learn more, you can go to movement.com forward slash faith. All right. Your calls are next.

800-525-7000. We'll be right back. This is Faith and Finance Live.

I'm Rob West. We're so glad you're along with us today. Hey, before we dive into your questions today, and by the way, we will be taking your financial questions today.

800-525-7000 with lines open. Let me just say a big thanks to those of you who participated in our 48 hours of impact. What an incredible response of you, the listeners, and the audience.

Thank you so much. A big thanks to those of you who participated in our 48 hours of impact. What an incredible response of you, the listeners of Moody Radio, to this amazing opportunity to fund the tuition-sponsored education of the next generation of pastors that will be on the front line sharing the Gospel and taking God's Word to the ends of the earth through the incredible teaching and training, practical training and deep biblical training at Moody Bible Institute. A big thanks on behalf of our entire team. By the way, if you didn't get an opportunity to participate, you still can. Just head to moodyradio.org and click the banner that says 48 hours of impact.

All right. We're going to take your calls and questions today. We'd love to hear from you at 800-525-7000.

That's 800-525-7000. Let's begin in Chicago. Hi, Lisa. Go right ahead.

Lisa, are you with us? Oh, yes, I am. All right. Very good.

How can I help you? Well, I was just wanting to ask about a large sum of money that we have put away in a Marcus account. And I believe, I don't remember the exact, I don't know if it's ETF or something like that where it's divided into like three different areas.

We're looking for some place to put it conservatively and just wondering if you know anything about that type of account. Okay. Do you think you're referring to an ETF, an Exchange Traded Fund, perhaps? Yes. Okay.

Yeah, very good. Well, an ETF is basically just a basket of investments. So those investments could be, you know, based on the movement of the price of gold. Those investments could be all of the stocks in a particular index. Like you may have heard of the Dow Jones 30, the industrial stocks, the S&P 500, the 500 largest companies in the US. Those are indexes and you can buy those through an ETF that trades like a stock. So it's as long as the stock market's open, you can buy any number of shares of that Exchange Traded Fund. And there really are ETFs that track all kinds of things.

So you can find just about anything you're looking for. They can be as conservative or as aggressive as you want them to be. So an ETF on the conservative end may track a bond index. So, you know, maybe an index of large and small corporate and government bonds. Or a more aggressive ETF might track the tech sector and only buy stocks in the mega cap technology companies. So ETFs are not conservative or aggressive.

It really depends on which ETF you're buying. I think we need to back up perhaps and just say, what has this money been earmarked for, Lisa? What is the time horizon on that?

The plan is for retirement. Okay. All right.

And we're in early 60s. So we definitely wanted to leave it someplace that's not aggressive but not something that's very slow either. And when we've called Marcus and had questions, there is like no financial advisors available. Which kind of is concerning. So I just wonder if that's maybe not a good place to keep it then. Well, they're basically an online bank is what they are. So they're a retail bank which you would use for banking products like a savings account or a CD. Probably not the place you want to go for management of your retirement assets.

So nothing wrong with it. It sounds like what you need. Let me ask a couple of additional questions just so I can have the bigger picture. First of all, this amount that you're talking about for retirement that's currently at Marcus, what's roughly the balance on it? Roughly $150,000.

$150,000. And what other retirement assets do you have like IRAs, 401Ks, things like that? None. Okay. And you said you're in your 60s. How far, just based on everything you know today, how far off is retirement where you'd transition away potentially from paid work?

Well, we're hoping still maybe still to work maybe 15, 20 years. Okay. Yeah.

So you all, and do you both work or just your husband? We both work, yeah. Okay, great. Yeah. So you're planning to work potentially up into your mid-70s or even as late as 80, correct? God willing, yeah. Okay, yeah.

Great. Well, I mean, I'll tell you, the biblical worldview of retirement is much different than the culture. This idea that we would retire and cease all productive work at age 65 just to live a life of leisure does not line up with the biblical worldview. It's a really modern concept that really came around about the time we put Social Security in place and, you know, our calling and service to the Lord to be productive and lean into our calling extends throughout our whole lives until God calls us home.

So I like the direction you're headed. Now, we also recognize there may come a time, and you alluded to this, where you would be unable to work perhaps in the same way you are now physically. And if that's the case, well, that's one of the reasons why we want to save prudently for retirement. So we have something that can supplement Social Security because that was only intended to cover at the most 40% of your pre-retirement income. Most folks live on 75 to 80% of their pre-retirement income in retirement. So that's not going to get it done for most folks, and that's where we save prudently, asking the Lord how much is enough, but then we convert that into an income stream when we get to that season of life.

Now, the good news is you all still have time on your side at the Lord Terry's, and you're in good health. You have the ability for this $150,000 plus whatever you'd add to it to grow for still a good bit of time here. I would say, you know, typically at your age and your, let's say at age 65, what would be an appropriate mix of investments? Well, usually these days, because people are living longer, we use the rule of thumb, and that's all it is. 110, the number 110, minus your age, so minus 65 would give you 45.

What does that mean? Well, that just means that the stock portion of your portfolio would be 45%, which means the balance of it, 55%, would be in fixed income type investments like bonds. Could be corporate bonds, could be government bonds, they're more stable, they pay an income, they're certainly less volatile than the stock market. And we happen to be entering a period where bonds are going to do well because eventually these interest rates that have been moving up 11 times consecutively from the Federal Reserve in the last year or two are going to start coming down. And as they do, bond prices will go up. So out of that 150, that would mean that, you know, you might put 67,000 or so in stocks and the balance of it in high quality bonds.

And you diversify them in those two asset classes. And the idea would be that although you'd have some volatility and you certainly could lose money, over the next 10 or 15 years, you'd have the ability to grow this so that it's not 150 when you retire, maybe it's 200,000. And, you know, that 200,000 then could be converted to an income stream to supplement your Social Security. And at 200,000 with a 4% withdrawal rate, we might pull out $8,000 a year and expect that the principal would remain the same. So that'd be about $650 a month, not a huge amount, but still something that you could count on that you could pull out of it. So I think the next step for you is perhaps to hire an advisor who could not only help you with some retirement planning to drill down deeper into the things I just said around what is your budget going to look like?

How much income do you need when you get to that point where you all are more fully retired away from paid work? And what type of vehicle should you grow that money in? And then finally, which is the reason you called today, how should you invest it?

And how do you deploy it in a properly diversified stock and bond portfolio? I'd recommend a certified Kingdom advisor there in Chicago, Lisa, and you can find a CKA on our website at faithfi.com. I'm going to take a break. We'll be back with much more. Stay around. Thanks for joining us today on Faith and Finance Live. I'm Rob West. We're taking your calls and questions today. Lines are open. 800-525-7000 is the number to call.

That's 800-525-7000. We'd love to hear from you. Let's head to Hoffman Estates, Illinois, WMBI. Hi, Johnson. Go ahead. Hi, Rob. First of all, I want to thank you for your ministry.

I got a question. I have a grandson who is five months old, and I would like to set up or invest some money for his educational expenses for the future. So my question is, what's the best way to invest? Is it a 529 plan or a series-size savings bond? I know you're not a fan of that, but I was asking for any other custodial accounts I could set up. I would like to have the opportunity to invest, like additional investments also, over the years or months.

Yeah, very good. Well, I think the key is let's tackle the education piece first. So anything that you would want to earmark for education, I would put in a 529 college savings plan. I'd go to the website SavingForCollege.com and just run through the questions that they'll ask you, including where you live and so forth in the age of the child. They'll help you determine how much based on your goal you need to put away. But they'll also recommend which 529 plan, meaning which state's 529 plan, because each state sponsors one and they're all different, which one would be the best. Because it's going to look at any potential state income tax savings by using Illinois's 529 versus perhaps better performance in another state's 529.

And you'll be able to make the decision based on the information that's provided. Then once that's open, then you can contribute one time or ongoing. And then that money can be used for qualified educational expenses up to $10,000 for K to 12, but then certainly for college and beyond college as well. The great thing is it's not going to be counted as an asset of the child. So that won't hurt your ability or his parents or her parents ability to qualify for need based aid if they would. And there'll be a menu of investment options inside the plan similar to a 401k that you could choose from for the contributions that are made.

And basically you can put in as much as you want. And then if they get a scholarship or a grant, the child does, that money can be taken out on a pro rata basis. If it doesn't get used, it could roll over to another child or you could eventually convert it to a Roth IRA and just let it keep growing for retirement. Which would be a great thing for that child to have as they're starting out. So that would be a really effective tool, I think, for education money specifically. Any money that you want more widely available for use by the child, I would recommend not using a custodial account because in the case of the custodial account, at the age of majority, the child gets full control of the money regardless of their spiritual and financial maturity.

And so I like for you to have a little bit more control over how and when they get it. And so what I would do is just open a regular brokerage account at like Schwab, perhaps in either your name or the name of you and your wife. But I do a separate account that's earmarked for the child.

Child's name is not listed on the title of the account, but you know that's its purpose. And then you could, again, start contributing a systematic amount. And if you use the robo-advisor there at Schwab, the Schwab Intelligent Portfolios, it'd be a really simple way for you to begin on a low-cost basis to systematically fund that account. Every time you do it, it would automatically be invested in low-cost index funds.

And then it would just capture the broad moves of the market over the next 15 plus years. And you'd have something hopefully significant to be able to bless the child with at the time and place of your choosing. Does all that make sense?

Yeah, it does make sense. I've got one follow-up question for the 529. They live in Missouri. So if I choose like a 529 plan, which is better performing in, say, Tennessee, and I purchase that one. So is that bound to the state or they can go anywhere? Yeah, it can be used for any university you want. It doesn't matter which state the 529 is in, you can take that money and send it to pay tuition for any university across the country.

That would not be the case with the prepaid college, but it is with the college savings. Okay. Thank you so much. All right, Johnson. God bless you, my friend. Thanks for calling today. 800-525-7000 to Aurora, Illinois.

A lot of Illinois questions today. Hey, Jeremy, go ahead. Hello, sir. How are you?

I'm doing well, thanks. I'm trying to set up a 401k. I went on my work website and I have two different options. I have a traditional and a Roth option. I just want to know what you recommended and how much percentages per check I should put in.

Yeah. What is your age? I'll be 37. Yeah, I like the Roth for you, Jeremy. You'd put in after tax dollars so you don't get the deduction today. But you get tax-free growth. So let's say for the next 25 or 30 years, all that money that you're putting in there, it would grow tax-free. And then when you get to retirement sometime beyond age 59 and a half, you'd be able to pull out all the gains and you'd pay zero tax.

And you'd have no required minimum distribution. So you could let it continue to grow as long as you wanted to. So I like that option a lot. More and more employers are making the Roth option available. And I think you should take full advantage of it, somebody your age.

All right, cool. Do like 10 percent, 20 percent, 15 percent, what do you recommend? Yeah, 10 to 15 percent would be a good target.

I mean, especially once you've considered your other priorities, as long as you're giving at the level that you feel like you want to. You've got your emergency fund fully funded, three to six months expenses. You don't have any consumer debt.

So you don't certainly know credit card debt, but no other high interest debt, you know, car loans, things like that. Yeah, if you could get 15 percent going in there of your paycheck every month, you'd be well on your way to having exactly what you need to supplement Social Security in retirement. Awesome. Thank you so much. All right, Jeremy. Hey, God bless you, man. We appreciate you calling. Well, folks, we're going to head to a break here in just a moment. We've got some great questions coming up just around the corner. We're going to talk to Doug in Springfield. He wants to know about investing in a number of companies with regard to his retirement plan. George wants to talk about debt consolidation companies, in my opinion, on that. And then let's see, Louisa wants to talk about iBonds.

That plus perhaps your questions as well. We've got some room for you today. We'd love to hear from you.

800-525-7000. Give us a call. We'll be back with much more on Faith & Finance Live just around the corner. Welcome back to Faith & Finance Live.

I'm Rob West. Hey, the calls are coming in, filling up all the lines. We've got room for maybe one or two more.

800-525-7000. Let's dive in. Hey, by the way, before we do that, Jeri Boyer is going to stop by a little later in the broadcast. Looking forward to hearing from Jeri on the market and the economy, plus a listener question specifically for Jeri. Folks sending questions now for Jeri.

I love that. She wants to know about a class action lawsuit related to ESG practices against BlackRock and Vanguard specifically and whether that should cause her some concern as a Vanguard investor. Jeri will weigh in on that. Also coming up on Monday's edition of the broadcast, my opening topic, are online banks safe? I know many of you are wondering about that.

I'll tackle that head on, give you all the details about the safety of looking to use the online banks, especially in light of these rising interest rates. That's coming up on the broadcast on Monday. All right, back to the phone.

Springfield, Missouri. Hey, Doug. Go right ahead, sir. Hey, thanks for taking my call, Rob.

I just had a quick question. My company just started a 401K last year and it's through Boya, and I know nothing about that company, actually any of it for that matter, but I just want to hear your opinion. Is that a reputable company?

Yeah, it's reputable. It's actually an insurance company, and they act as a plan administrator for retirement plans. The key is, you know, what investment options you're choosing inside the plan.

It doesn't sound like you really have a choice as to which custodian or plan administrator they're using. Have you familiarized yourself, Doug, with the investment options that are inside that retirement plan? No, no, they did tell me. They put me in what they call a 2035 plan.

I don't know what that is, but. Okay, yeah. When do you plan to retire? I mean, just based on what you know today? Probably another 16 years.

Okay. Yeah, so they put you in a 2035, which, you know, basically what that means is they're targeting a retirement date of 2035, which is 12 years from now. It sounds like you may be better suited in a 2040 target date fund, but essentially it takes kind of the guesswork out of investing, because the big idea with our investments is that as we get closer and closer to retirement, we want to get a bit more conservative. Now, we don't want to go completely conservative because even once we hit retirement, let's say you move away from paid work at age 70 and God calls you to something else and you're going to volunteer more or, you know, whatever it might be, you still have a decades-long need for that money if the Lord tarries and you're in good health. So you will always have some allocation to stocks, but you might add more bonds to just lessen the volatility. Well, the idea behind a target date is that if the fund knows your expected retirement date, then as you get closer to that date, the manager of the fund is automatically going to make the investments more conservative. You, by being in a 2035, may be a little more conservative than I would like you to be, so you may be better suited in a 2040, but I don't have any problem with Voya, especially since that's the plan administrator your company's chosen, so you really don't have a choice.

I think the key is just to, you know, limit your lifestyle, be a diligent saver, and if you can, you know, continue to sock away a good bit of money over the next 15 years into this plan, you'll have quite a nest egg to use when you get to that season of life. Okay. All right. That was my answer.

That was my question. I appreciate it. Absolutely, Doug. Listen, I understand you're a truck driver.

Are you out there on the road right now? Yes, sir. All right. What are you hauling today?

Hauling mail for the post office. Okay. Very good. Would it be, you know, the former co-host of this program, whenever we had a trucker on, he loved truckers, he would ask that you would give us a little tune of the horn.

Is that possible? There it is. I love it. I'm going to have to tell Steve Moore that Steve will love that. I've been listening to you guys for years, and I appreciate you guys' advice. That's great. God bless you, Doug. Thanks for what you're doing there to keep our economy functioning the way it should and get in the mail to us. God bless you. That's awesome. Steve will love that. I'll give him a call after the show. All right.

St. Louis, Missouri. Hey, George. Go ahead, sir. Hey, how are you doing today? I'm doing great.

Thanks for calling. You just got a quick question. I've been trying to investigate debt consolidators. Yeah.

And I was curious, you know, and they're all over the board. If you have an opinion about them or anything, you can help to direct me in the right direction. Yeah, I'd be delighted to, George. Now, I want to make sure you're using the word debt consolidation in the way that it actually, in terms of what it actually means. I'm not a fan of debt consolidation, which essentially means taking out a new loan, paying off the old loans and then paying that new loan, you know, at a lower interest rate.

Is that what you're referring to or using that term, which, you know, is a replacement for what's called debt management, where you just try to get the interest rates down, but you'd stay with the existing creditors? Your first illustration was correct. I'm financially ignorant, quite honestly. I mean, I had a lot of... No problem. I went through it all. And that's why I'm here looking at debt consolidators to try to lower my overall monthly outcome plus reduce some interest rates. Got it.

Yep. So the only problem I have with debt consolidation, I understand why you'd want to consider it because you're trying to get the interest rates down and you're trying to, you know, hopefully take some pressure off the budget. The problem is my experience in doing this for a lot of years and answering thousands of questions on this is that when we take that approach, usually I get a call six months or a year later and they say, Rob, guess what? I got this debt consolidation loan. Remember, we talked about that a year ago.

And guess what? The credit card debt's back. And now we've got a debt consolidation and the credit card debt to boot because we treated the symptom and not the problem. The problem is spending beyond our means. And so we've got to do the hard work to right size the budget, have some margin or some cushion in your financial life, living below your means, reining in spending and coupled with what's called debt management, which is different than debt consolidation, where you don't take out a new loan. You don't pay off anything.

You leave it right where it is. But with credit cards, we get those interest rates down. Because if you go through a debt management company like our friends at Christian credit counselors dot org, which is a nonprofit, they've worked with hundreds and hundreds of our listeners. What will happen is through debt management, as long as you pay through them and you'll send them one monthly payment, each of your existing credit card companies has a credit counseling rate. And it's going to be lower than the rate you're paying today. So what happens is we go to work on the budget and they'll help you with this. Get, you know, rain in your spending, get to a comfortable level monthly payment that you can send every month. And that combined with them dropping those interest rates is going to allow you to pay this debt off 80 percent faster. And my experience, George, is that if you take that approach, you'll pay it off and you won't ever have it come back because you'll do the hard work to rein in the spending rather than just taking the pressure off by getting a new loan and paying it off. So my advice would be you call Christian credit counselors or go online Christian credit counselors dot org and they'll walk you through everything. They'll help you work up a new budget. They'll tell you what they can get those interest rates down to based on the creditors you're with. And if it makes sense for you, I think it'll be a great way for you to get out of debt once and for all. Does that make sense? That's fantastic. I mean, that's what I'm trying to do. We're trying to pay off our credit cards. I think exactly. I look at credit cards.

I put the liddie goat. It's incredible. Yeah, especially with these Fed funds rate up where it is. Credit card debt or credit card interest rates have climbed with it.

And it just really makes it challenging to get those things going in the right direction. I think this will really help you, George. Christian credit counselors dot org. Hey, God bless you. Once you pay that off, give us a call back. I'd love to hear from you. Luisa, Roberto, Misty, we're coming your way just around the corner. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hey, thanks for joining us today at Faith and Finance Live.

We'll head back to the phones here in just a moment. But first, it's Friday. That means Jerry Boyer stops by to get our weekend started. Talk about the economy and the markets and to open some mail today.

I mean, what's what's going on, Jerry? They're sending you mail now on this program. I don't know what that's all about. My P.O.

box. Basically, that's what I feel like from my messages. We'll get to the important ones. I need to screen them for me.

They're like, oh, yeah, we're doing that for sure. Well, we'll get to that here in just a moment. But first, you and I were together yesterday doing the quarterly economic Webcast for the Kingdom Advisor Advisors. And you were sharing just some work your team has done as of late, just analyzing this economy and looking at the previous quarter. Give us a high level view of just what you're seeing right now.

Well, for the first half of the year, let's be really high level. Last year, stocks were selling off saying, oh, there might be a recession. First half of this year, stocks were kind of going up saying maybe no recession. By the way, when I say stocks, I don't just mean the S&P 500. I mean, you look carefully at the different kinds of stocks. You can't just look at the S&P 500 and say, if that's going up, it means it means growth. That's only a 42 percent probability correlation. So you kind of have to look at cyclical stocks compared to staples and you have to look at high risk bonds compared to others.

So I'm like simplifying it. So, you know, so basically, you know, the first half of the year was saying, hmm, maybe no recession. But this month or let's say the month we just ended, July, you know, past few weeks, it's been acting more like recessionary risks are rising again. So there's a kind of back and forth, back and forth, and it really comes down to do we think that the Fed, in order to fight inflation, will hike rates so much to slow down the economy where they slow it not down to two percent or three percent, which is what they've done so far, but will they tighten to take it down to zero percent growth? And when we had a good jobs report this morning, then it's like, OK, you know, the Fed thinks that a good jobs report is actually, you know, you know, that that job, that high job growth causes inflation.

So, you know, they kind of switched away. We don't have to fight inflation because we have you know, we have this good jobs report. So, you know, maybe we won't have to hike rates. And so gold went up a little bit and stocks rallied. And then I think people read the report a little bit more closely and that kind of drove them back down again. The other big thing this week was the pitch downgrade of U.S. Treasury. So what is that? You know, you want we you know, we have our FICO score.

Well, guess what? Governments have something like a FICO score, too. And there are these major rating agencies and one of them said the United States credit rating just went down. And that was kind of a downer on markets. And one of the reasons that downer on markets is because there isn't really a plausible solution. If you have a bad economic report, people say, well, the Fed will just print more money.

That'll solve it. But you can't print the you can't solve the problem of too much money printing and borrowing with more money printing and borrowing. The only solution is actual fiscal discipline, which is on nobody's bingo card. And so the markets, I think, are selling off partly because they're starting to discount the genuine risk of serious fiscal problem down the line.

Yeah, interesting. Jerry, unpacking that jobs report, and I know yesterday you commented on just kind of the strength in service versus manufacturing. Will you just give us the lay of the land of the job market at this point? Well, we're in a manufacturing recession by any reasonable measure right now, and that's showing up in the jobs report.

Manufacturing jobs are down. So jobs are really growing, you know, mostly in health care. And health care is an important part of our lives. But generally, health care is a recession haven, a recession edge. So when health care is doing well, health care stocks, the health care sector. Why, you know, why is why is there so much hiring in the health care sector? Well, we're getting old and sick. I mean, that's a basic problem. And there's a shortage of nurses and there's a shortage of doctors.

And so they're coming online. And so some of these things are not necessarily signs of health, no pun intended. If we're having a lot of growth in health care consumption and the need for health care. It's part of the bigger kind of almost like economically the big story of our time, other than the, you know, the Fed incredible money creation and the borrowing is the demographic decline. I mean, that affects every aspect of life.

You know, a family that's young with children is really very different than a family where, you know, it's just a mom and dad and they're the grandparents and they're retired and the kids visit sometime. The economics is different. As you give people economic advice, you're going to say something different to a 20 year old than you're going to say something to an 80 year old. Well, as our society ages, it has all sorts of tremendous economic implications. And you can't solve them with tax cuts and you can't solve them with money hikes or interest rate hikes or money printing. I mean, people do the work. If you don't have enough people, then you don't have all the work getting done. And that's bad for the economy. And we can make things a little better by cutting taxes and cutting spending and deregulating. But the big thing is, you know, just like they said in this wonderful life, a man leaves an awful hole in this world. Well, 70 million people aborted after Roe versus Wade.

That is a gargantuan hole in our economy that we're now really starting to see the bitter fruit of. Yeah. Jerry, well said. All right. Let's get into the Jerry Boyer mailbox here.

This one comes from a listener. She says, I've heard that three companies, including Vanguard and BlackRock, are facing a class action lawsuit related to their involvement in ESG practices. The majority of my investments are with Vanguard. What is this about and what should what effect should it have on my investments?

All right. So ESG stands for Environmental Social Governance Investing. It's an idea that came from the United Nations that has sort of come into finance.

It was a paper written, I think, in 2006 under the sponsorship of the UN. It really got really big in finance, became very trendy a few years ago. Critics say that it's basically politics intruding into business and finance. People can form their own opinions about it.

Christians differ on it. I'm more on the skeptical of ESG side rather than the rah rah side, but I understand that there are Christians on the other side. Well, what's happening is, in some cases, it seems to have hurt returns. In what cases? Well, if you're ESG-ing, if you're E-ing environmental, if you're E-ing out fossil fuels and you get a two year boom in the price of energy and tremendous return in the fossil fuel industry, and your company, for the sake of a social outcome or an environmental outcome, underweighted fossil fuels, then that hurt returns.

Returns are lower if you underweight a sector that's doing higher. And so there is a concern that there's going to be lawsuits, class action lawsuits, in the United States, maybe from some of the red states, against these firms for following ESG. So that's not a lawsuit that's happened yet, but it's something that I know is brewing and I'm moving in these circles a lot.

There's some things I can say that are on the record and, you know, I'll say on the record. I think it's reasonably likely there will be something like that eventually. There is already a lawsuit, a class action lawsuit, from the left, from Australia, against Vanguard on this for what they call greenwashing. So let's say you say, I'm going to have a sustainable fund and we're not going to pollute and we're not going to make the earth, we're not going to make global warming worse, and then you don't screen it out much.

You underweight it a little bit or your portfolio is almost exactly the same as a regular passive portfolio, just charging extra fees for down, you know, for underweighting energy a little bit. That's called greenwashing. You're not really green.

You're just pretending to be green, is what the lawsuit alleges. So they're kind of under attack from the left and the right. My advice to these companies has been if you're under attack from the left and the right, that tells me not necessarily you chose the wrong side, but by choosing to take sides at all, you got into politics. There is a there's no winning scenario for you companies. Once you get into hotly debated political issues, just stay out of them because you can't go left enough to please the left and you can't go right enough to please the right. So I would say avoid it altogether and be a steward who's responsible as a fiduciary responsibility to give investors the best returns they can. Now, if somebody has a conscience issue and they want to screen out fossil fuels or giving to Planned Parenthood or tobacco or alcohol or whatever, based on their conscience, they're making a decision. But that is entirely different than going out there with products, acting like they are fiduciary, acting like this is the best return product for you when you're kind of serving two masters. You're serving return, but you're also serving social and political goals and you can't serve two masters. I have it on high authority. Yes, you do. Jerry, last question.

I know we're getting short on time here. With regard to owning Vanguard products, obviously, Vanguard is voting their proxies and they're doing that with some pretty clear strategies that may require those who own Vanguard shares to take a look at whether or not that's misaligned with their values, right? Yeah, I would say, for instance, if you're concerned about religious freedom, which I am, Vanguard endorsed the Equality Act and that guts the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Vanguard does not appear to have been supporting proposals that are on ballots that I've been involved with to say that you ought to protect the religious liberty of employees or protect the religious liberty of customers.

Like, for instance, Sam Brownback, if he gets his bank account canceled for his religious liberty organization for no discernible business reason, just somebody who doesn't seem to like his politics or whatever. I don't think these lawsuits are going to lead to Vanguard going away, but you really need to think about this. When you invest in a fund, you just gave your vote away. You made life more convenient for yourself, you're buying one fund rather than 100 stocks, but you gave your vote away. So what are they doing with your vote? I can tell you when we run analysis on these big asset managers, they're doing a lot of voting that I would say most evangelical Christians or traditional Roman Catholics would say, that's not how I would vote with my money if I was voting with my money.

So I don't want you voting that way with my money anymore. Yeah, wow. Give this a lot to think about today, Jerry.

And I think that is the big idea that you need to make sure that you're investing, you're doing everything in such a way, including your investments that aligns with your values and priorities as a believer. God bless you, my friend. Have a great weekend. God bless you. Same to you.

All right. That's Jerry Boyer, our resident economist. He stops by each Friday and Jerry and I always get carried away. So Louisa, Roberto and Evelyn, we'd love to get you on a future broadcast. I apologize we didn't get to you. Thank you to Lynn, Amy, Dan and Jim. Faith in Finance Live is a partnership between Moody Radio and Faith Buy. Have a great weekend. See you next time.