2 Financial Attitudes to Avoid: Greed and Envy

Today's Faith in Finance Live is actually not live, so our phone lines are not open. Hebrews 12, 1 warns us to throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. That includes sinful financial attitudes.

Hi, I'm Rob West. Being entangled by sinful attitudes about your money and possessions can really steal your peace. Today we'll discuss the evils of envy and greed and how to overcome them.

Then we have some great calls lined up, but please don't call in today because we're prerecorded. This is Faith in Finance Live, biblical wisdom for your financial journey. Sin springs from the falling condition of our hearts and separates people from God. Tragically, our world is broken because of this, and the tendency towards evil touches every part of our lives, including our finances.

That's why we need Jesus, right? Well, today we'll focus on envy and greed, both of which are on the list of seven deadly sins drawn up by believers in the fourth century to describe the worst kinds of human desires. Let's start with envy. Envy is that gnawing feeling of jealousy when someone has better things or better opportunities than you. Envy often goes hand in hand with covetousness.

That's a strong desire to possess what someone else has, and it's clearly forbidden in the Ten Commandments. Envy also destroys relationships because it divides people based on how much someone has or doesn't have. As if it weren't bad enough, an envious person lacks peace.

Proverbs 14 30 confirms this. A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones. Envy is a common human emotion, and it's destructive, as you can see.

So how do we overcome our tendency to want what other people have? Well, just as God's Word warns against envy, God's Word provides the cure. Envy is sin, and the first thing to do about sin is to repent. In Christ, we can be sure of God's forgiveness.

First John 1 9 says if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Next, ask God to replace your feelings of envy with patience and kindness. First Corinthians 13 4 reads love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy.

Patience trusts that God will provide for you in His timing. Kindness cancels out envy because it puts the needs of others ahead of your own. Gratitude is another antidote for envy. When we focus on being grateful, there's no need to compare what we have with what someone else has. We're just thankful for what God has provided for us right now, trusting that He knows what's best for us. Hebrews 13 15 says, Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of our lips that confess His name. God has given us so much. He made us.

He loves us unconditionally, and He provides everything that we need to thrive. It doesn't matter what someone else has. When we focus on the Lord, filling our hearts and our minds with truth from His Word, there's no room for envy. Now, what about greed?

Well, that's a second financial attitude to avoid. Just as an envious person is unsatisfied because of comparisons with others, a greedy person is unsatisfied because they never think they have enough. You've read in 1 Timothy 6 10 that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.

Well, there's certainly a lot of sins that can spring from a love of money, especially greed, because it's so selfish. A greedy person wants to accumulate wealth, power, or status for themselves at the expense of others. Greedy desire, if left unchecked, can lead to sins like theft and even murder. Most of us don't consider ourselves to be greedy people, but greed can show up in more subtle ways, including an attitude of entitlement or hoarding, perhaps overspending, cheating, or dishonesty. Most of us have faced these temptations at one time or another. So how can we break the power of selfish desire in our lives? What is the antidote to greed?

Repentance, of course. And then I'd say the answer is generosity. When we give generously, we're breaking out of selfishness and thinking about the needs of others instead of ourselves. When we're being generous, God begins to turn our hearts outwards. Godly generosity brings joy instead of bitterness and satisfaction instead of frustration. My challenge to you is ask God to show you someone you can help with your resources today, whether it's your time, your skills, or your money, and then give willingly and generously.

2 Corinthians 9-7 says, God loves a cheerful giver. I hope that's an encouragement to you today. Well, folks, we're going to head to a break, but let me remind you, we're out of the studio today. Our team is not here, so don't call in, but much more to come just around the corner on Faith and Finance Live.

Stick around. Thanks so much for joining us today on Faith and Finance Live. I'm Rob West, your host. Hey, our team is away from the studio today. We're not here, but we've got some great questions that we lined up in advance.

I know you'll enjoy those a little later in our broadcast. Folks, have you checked out recently our website at faithfi.com? If not, I'd encourage you to do that. You'll find our community there where you can post questions and comments, hear from others that are on the stewardship journey as well. You can also access our content and check out the Faithfi app.

It's at faithfi.com. Before we head to the phones, let me mention, you know, despite fears of inflation, more than two-thirds of middle-aged Americans haven't switched their savings over to higher yielding accounts, despite more than 10 increases in the fed funds rate, which has driven up savings interest rates. The banking group Santander reports that 70% of our middle-agers haven't made the move yet, despite 90% of them saying that inflation is a major concern.

The reasons given for this lack of action include, well, first inertia, that is folks who just don't want to make it happen, getting up off the couch and clicking a few buttons. Also, fear of online banking could be a factor. You know, online banks are where you'll get the very best savings rates these days, nearing four and a half percent for FDIC insured savings. I don't think there's any increased risk there.

In terms of the banks themselves, they have the same backing as long as they're FDIC insured or NCUA insured, if that's a credit union. So you don't have to worry about that. And in terms of doing business online, as long as you follow safety protocols, which you would need to do with your brick and mortar bank anyway, if you're accessing your account electronically, that is no use of public Wi-Fi, using perhaps an encryption service, maybe updating your passwords and using, you know, a new password periodically, but also a string of at least 12 characters, never clicking on links in emails.

I mean, if you're following these best practices, you really are safeguarding yourself to the best of your ability. And you're missing out if you don't make the move on not only the higher yields, as I mentioned, approaching four and a half percent on high yield savings, but also they come fee free in most cases. So this might be a great time for you to switch to an online bank for your savings account. Perhaps you keep your existing relationship with your brick and mortar credit union or bank for your primary operating account, that is your checking account, but just link the savings account electronically to it.

That way you can move money back and forth again fee free within one to two days notice. So consider that you might be missing out if you want to find the very best online savings for you head to bankrate.com. That's where you can search and sort for those online banks offering the best rates and terms. You'll also find bank rates rating system.

It's a five star rating system. Beyond that, I would encourage you to think about banking with somebody who shares your values as well. You know, more and more people are wanting to make sure that the institutions they're working with across the board, and that includes financial services, are values aligned and Christian Community Credit Union could be a great option there.

If you want to check that out, just visit joinChristianCommunity.com. So hopefully that helps you today. All right, let's begin in Minnesota today. Hi Ann, go right ahead.

Hi there, thank you for taking my call. I just have a mortgage question. In the past we used to pay bi-weekly payments with our old mortgage company and now we have the opportunity to do that again. And we already pay an additional principal monthly and I was wondering like how much faster we would pay off our mortgage if we did it bi-weekly versus monthly. And then I'm just wondering if you have like a calculator or some sort of algorithm or something that I could kind of plug in numbers to see how much faster we would pay off our mortgage doing it bi-weekly versus monthly.

Yeah, it's a great question. So here's the thing with the bi-weekly payment. Essentially it's just a way to help you smooth out your cash flow and in the end you're going to send one extra full payment a year. So essentially the way that works is if you pay your mortgage bi-weekly, which just means you send a half a payment every two weeks instead of twice a month, then there's 26 two-week periods in the year which means you're going to send 13 full payments which is one more than you would send if you just send a monthly payment. But the every two weeks often corresponds with how people get paid so it just kind of smooths it out to not have to save and come up with one extra full payment a year or one half payment every six months. You know if you can just kind of set it up automatic you may not even miss it and that's where the bi-weekly payment is really helpful to folks. But there's nothing magic about the bi-weekly. You can accomplish the same thing as long as you figure out a way to send one extra full payment a year.

You would take a 30-year mortgage and typically reduce it to you know 25 or 26 years depending on the rate and terms. So you don't need to do the bi-weekly unless that helps you just from a practical standpoint. But the big idea here Ann is I love you all sending extra toward the principal. That's key and we all should be focused on this regardless of your interest rate trying to accelerate our debt payoff. Now not to the expense of you paying off consumer debt because obviously if you have high interest debt that comes first. Not at the expense of you having a fully funded emergency fund of three to six months expenses that comes first. But if you're on track for retirement you've got your emergency fund you're not carrying a lot of high interest consumer debt then absolutely if you all have some surplus and you can prioritize paying that off whether that's sending that extra half payment or full payment a year just by writing a check or by getting into a bi-weekly payment plan that makes a lot of sense. I'm fully supportive of that. One additional thought and then I'll get your take on all this. As to the calculator we don't have one necessarily just because there's so many out there.

You've got two options there. One you could Google or use your browser of search engine of choice to find a mortgage principal reduction calculator and basically there's hundreds of calculators out there that are free where you could put in your balance, your monthly payment, your interest rate, how much you want to send extra per month. Click the button and it'll tell you exactly you know how quickly you'll pay it off and you can manipulate all of those variables to get exactly what you're looking for.

You can also ask your mortgage servicer to do that as well but you might enjoy doing it with a free calculator just because you'll have more flexibility and you can you know do it in just a few seconds. But I've thrown a lot at you there. Give me your thoughts. Sure, yes I agree with all of that. That sounds really great. You said the name of the calculator was mortgage principal. Yeah I'm just telling you what to search for. So if you just search for you know mortgage calculator or if you want to add mortgage calculator you know principal reduction you'll ensure that you get a calculator that allows that.

Pretty much anyone that you come up with a mortgage calculator is going to give you the the field that you need to add principal but if you add those few extra words to the search you'll ensure that you get one and just find one that gives you the variables you need and you know it may take you hunting for a few minutes but you'll find a good number of them that'll give you exactly what you're looking for. Okay perfect. Thank you I appreciate it.

Awesome yeah happy to do it. Now did I see you had a question here in my notes about escrows? Oh so we our escrow now has decreased like the monthly payment of our escrow decreased so I just wanted to put that money towards their principal. I figured that would make the most sense. Yeah I think that makes sense. Yeah you're gonna have to work and I hear you have a sweet little one out there that maybe you need to attend to but yeah you uh the key would be whether your mortgage company is going to allow you to pull that out. Sometimes they want you to keep a little extra and they're going to have ratios for how much they want you to hang on to but yeah if they're willing to write you a check back and that's extra money putting that toward principal reduction makes a lot of sense and thanks for your call. God bless you and that little one. We'll be right back. You're listening to Faith and Finance Live and you can find us online at faithfi.com however today we are not live so if you hear that phone number please don't call but do stay with us there's lots of good information ahead. You know when it's time to retire you'll probably need to start withdrawing money for living expenses most folks do you might think though it's as simple as cashing out an IRA or pulling money from your savings account but that's not necessarily true setting up retirement withdrawals can be tricky especially if you have different kinds of accounts different buckets of retirement assets if you don't withdraw your money in the right order you could end up with a bigger tax bill than necessary remember traditional IRA withdrawals are taxed as regular income while Roth IRAs usually don't trigger a tax bill and when you cash in non-retirement investments you may pay capital gains and so when we look at the recommendations for retirees on how to pull out your investments typically professionals will tell you that you want to liquidate your non-retirement investments first then use traditional IRA money and finally Roth IRA accounts this gives you the ability to maximize time to accumulate compound interest in those tax deferred retirement accounts I'll expand on that in just a moment because this is a question we get quite often how should I approach withdrawing money in retirement and if I have different types of accounts does one come before the other typically we go non-retirement assets then traditional IRA then Roth but I'll expand on that in just a moment let's see to Texas hi Tom go ahead sir yes hello just I need to know what's the least amount it would take to find a trust and need to know best way to keep it live yes sir so tell me what assets you would be looking to put into that trust what would be the minimum amount would it take more than a million dollars or no no sir yeah there really isn't a minimum you would just want to make sure that you know there's enough there to make it worth your while but really the key is everybody needs an estate plan and you need to decide is the best option for you to carry out your wishes a basic will or a revocable trust but there is no minimum amount for establishing the revocable trust at all you you could create it with nothing in it it really you know doesn't go into effect though until you move you know at least something in there but you don't have to there's there's not a minimum so then we can step back and say okay what are the pros and cons of having a revocable trust versus let's say a will you know the main benefits of the revocable trust is first it avoids probate which can be expensive and time-consuming we've heard from a lot of folks where you know things are tied up in the probate court and it just takes time to get assets like real estate or you know cash things like that to the errors that you want to have them because you have to wait for the probate court to you know process everything so putting it in a revocable living trust means you won't be subject to probate and therefore the trustee could distribute the assets very quickly it protects your privacy so it's not a part of the public record it also allows for assets to be handled in the case of an incapacitation so whereas a will only goes into effect at death with a trust if someone becomes chronically ill or disabled making it difficult to happen you know to act on their own behalf it can result in a guardianship or a conservatorship that takes control of your assets well a revocable living trust allows you to instead select that successor trustee the person you name either an individual or a corporation and they would assume then control of your assets should you become incapacitated and it allows you to outline how those assets should be administered now it's a little more expensive than just writing a basic will you might spend a couple of thousand dollars on a trust whereas a will might be let's say $500 doesn't offer you any tax benefits doesn't protect you from creditors but if you're looking to have a successor trustee handle assets prior to death in your incapacitation or after death meaning you don't want everything distributed right away you'd want it to happen over time based on the trust documents or you don't want to go through probate or you want more privacy that's where a trust could make a lot of sense and again there is no minimum if you don't need those things and those aren't a real concern to you then a basic will would be a little simpler and more cost-effective way at least initially to take care of your estate plans but give me your questions or thoughts on that tom it all sounds interesting and be something good to do i think yeah the amount that they could be drawn out of that from the beneficiary is it limited or is it any amount no sir any amount so it all could be distributed at one time at your death it could be distributed over time if you selected errors that you wanted to receive the proceeds of the trust you know the payout over time you know at certain ages or based on a monthly schedule of income that's distributed as opposed to a lump sum you can do that so you really have complete control it's just a matter of how you want your assets distributed by the trustee either when you're not able to or after your death at some point in the future but you could do it all at once or you can take your time with it so i think your next step tom is to find a godly estate planning attorney if you don't have one already you could reach out to a certified kingdom advisor in your area on our website at faithfi.com that's faithfi.com just click find a cka and you could contact a certified kingdom advisor and ask for a referral to a godly estate planning attorney they'll all have one that they work with and that will allow you to connect with somebody who can explain a bit more about it give you the breakdown on the cost and then once the trust is created then it's a matter of retitling you know whatever assets you want to put inside the trust in the name of the trust and they can talk to you about that as well so this may be exactly what you're looking for sir i hope that helps you and thanks for calling today we appreciate you being on the program well folks before we head to this break let me remind you if you haven't checked out faithfi.com that's faithfi.com i'd love for you to do that you'll find the best content in biblical finance there for you to grow in your understanding of managing money god's way you'll find our community and the money management system it's all there at faithfi.com now again a reminder we're not here today but more of your questions that we lined up after the break so glad to have you with us today on faith and finance live our team is away today so don't call in but we lined up some great questions in advance and we'll be going to those here in just a moment let me also remind you that the advice that i give each day on this program is general in nature we offer principles and ideas that apply at a high level they are not personalized so that's why you should always seek professional financial advice and if you'd like to find a professional who shares your values we of course here at faith and finance live recommend the certified kingdom advisor designation these are men and women who've met high standards and they've been trained to bring a biblical worldview of financial decision making you can find one at faithfi.com let's go to south carolina hi tina go right ahead my question is i have a rollover our a from a previous employer that i've managed for a good many years i have it um set up with some stocks some cds and some mutual funds i'm wondering of late it's not not being contributed to hadn't been for years and it's 50 percent cash um we are very very conservative but i'm wondering if i could should go more to an income portfolio rather than growth and income at this point so that the income could go back into so you know the portfolio yes ma'am i like income generating investments especially in this season of life a lot uh let me just make sure i understand what you've got here is this still inside the 401k or you've already moved it to an ira it's been moved to an ira it has been for years okay very good and are you all selecting the investments yourself or do you have somebody doing that for you i'm doing it okay very good and you said you've got about half of it in stocks and about half of it in cash is that right yeah half of it is in stocks cds and um mutual funds okay very good and so you've got some individual stocks would you say if you look at the mutual funds that you've got plus the stocks you believe that they're more oriented toward growth type stocks is that right pretty much there are some that i've selected that were gross and income okay um yeah and i'm having the income go into cash at this point okay very good yeah i like uh you having an allocation to an income portfolio i think there's also a place for a growth portion of this so you know i always like to start with what is the right uh allocation among asset classes so how much do we want in stocks how much do we want in fixed income type investments meaning bonds typically but also you mentioned cds and that's fine too especially right now do we want anything in the precious metals uh you know we could talk about that but you know typically i would say in this season of life uh what is your age tina if you don't mind me asking uh 59 and looking to retire um in about three and a half to four years all right and would you all start drawing an income from this at retirement or would this be able to just continue to grow i'm hoping that it will be able to continue to grow because when i retire i will have um a retirement from where i work as well as a supplement until i'm 62 um i work for the postal service so um hopefully not but okay very good so typically what i would say at this uh in this season especially since you're not planning to draw from this i'd probably be looking at having maybe 45 in stocks maybe 45 in fixed income type investments and 10 in precious metals you could do all of that with uh you know mutual funds and etfs or you could have in some individual stocks for that portion let's say you did that for that portion that was 45 in stocks i'd like for you to have probably at least uh maybe a third to a half of that in growth-oriented stocks just because you know what we've seen in the last decade is that growth stocks typically outperform and the tech sector is still red hot i mean a lot of the uh artificial intelligence is driving that sector is you know kind of the new era of what used to be dot com is now ai and you know so we're seeing whenever the market has strength um you know we're often seeing depending on the cycle that it's largely driven by those you know high growth uh large mega cap stocks and so i'd hate for you to move out of that entirely which is why i think you have an somewhere between a third and a half of that stock portion that 45 in my example in those growth-oriented stocks would be good but then i'd certainly have the balance in some that lean more toward the dividend paying high you know yield type in income equities whether it's through mutual funds or individual stocks i like you having an allocation to precious metals you could do that through one of the etfs the trackers you could just put a gold tracker in there like gld or one of the others and then i like the balance of it in fixed income keep in mind as we start to see interest rates come down tina bonds are going to do very well because we've already got the high yields and as the interest rates fall and they will probably later this year or certainly next year the prices of those bonds be it corporate or government will increase and that would give you some nice growth so i think just based on what you've got here that would be my best recommendation but what are your thoughts on that oh that sounds good i'm a little leery of the precious metals okay um but um other than that um it sounds good like i say i was just wondering i do have a mixture i generally try and grab those um that are growth and income type stocks to allow for both um and i do have a fair amount of fixed income also i just didn't know if i needed to go ahead and start moving more towards the completely towards of uh you know a fixed income getting more of that yeah i think this is the time to do that absolutely because you know you're you're going to start to see whereas these bonds have been out of favor you're going to see an environment where it's much more favorable in moving forward so hopefully that helps you tina we appreciate your call today thanks for being on the program may the lord bless you to arkansas hi kim how can i help you hello rob thanks for taking my call um my husband and i have an irrevocable trust and i've heard you mention um the revocable trust multiple times but i guess now i'm wondering did we make a mistake having the irrevocable should we switch it over to a revocable trust and why what would be the the benefit yeah well um first thing would be to make sure that you do in fact have an irrevocable trust because they're less commonly used in estate planning than revocable trust because of their inflexibility if you in fact have an irrevocable trust you lose control over those assets so you wouldn't be able to convert it um you know once the assets are placed in the irrevocable trust they're typically used by high net worth people very wealthy folks who are trying to minimize estate taxes and avoid certain creditor claims um you know you would want to consider an irrevocable trust which the very term there irrevocable means it's not able to be taken back but if the value of your assets is higher than the federal estate tax exemption you want to avoid state taxes if you're comfortable giving up the use and control of your assets after you establish the trust and you want to protect yourself from future creditors those would be the reasons um you know that you would want to look at that but i think your first step here kim is to make sure you do in fact have an irrevocable trust you may you know not realize that you have a revocable one you just didn't know it what are your thoughts though well i know for sure it is irrevocable because when you were talking about it i looked okay got it yeah so you wouldn't be able to make that change and so i would just you know talk to your estate planning attorney about why you did that and you know get any additional insights with regard to your plans stay on the line i've got to take a quick break we can talk a bit more off the air we'll be right back thanks for joining us today on faith and finance live here in our final segment of the broadcast today let me remind you our team is not here so don't call in but we lined up some great questions in advance we'll get to those in just a moment before we do let me remind you if you haven't downloaded the faithfi app we'd love for you to check it out it's got three sections in it the first is the money management system based on larry briquette's digital envelope system it helps you manage god's money in a way where you know exactly what's left in each envelope at any point during the month there's also our learn tab where you can access the best content and biblical finance to grow in your understanding of god's way of handling money and our community where you can post questions get comments and ideas from other stewards on the journey so download it today on our website faithfi.com just click app just before the break we were talking to kim about an irrevocable trust there is maybe an exception kim that i would if you wanted to make a change there as long as you would be able to get written consent from the settler and the beneficiaries a court could allow a modification to an irrevocable trust so if there was a reason to try to make that change again it's not simple like it is with an irrevocable trust but there could be the potential for a change if the court gets involved and allows you to do that with everybody kind of signing off on those changes that you'd like to make so you could certainly talk to the estate planning attorney about that whether there's a reason to make that change and pursue a legal course of action to essentially break that trust we appreciate your call though today to louisiana hi violet go right ahead hi i have an eight thousand five hundred dollar annuity that i've had for about 20 years and it's earning three percent interest i'm 75 so i have to take out a little bit each year i have not been contributing to it for the past 10 years so i wondered if i should leave it there or if the if i should transfer to some other investment yeah i mean because of how long you've had it you should be able to pull it out or roll it out if it's a if the money went in pre-tax to an ira um and then do a little better on that i mean you're only getting three percent we could get you know you could get five and a half percent right now in a cd um so i you know i think there's an option there to look at either increasing that and if you wanted to keep it in an insurance product you could look at you know getting a different annuity that you'd roll it into you could roll it out to an ira and then invest it and and use fixed income type investments be it guaranteed investments like a cd or something where you might take a little more risk like with bonds to try to improve your uh your situation just in terms of the overall return but i think it's probably worth looking at just given how low the uh the guaranteed rate is and how long you've had it which means you're beyond the surrender penalties right i am all right so do that it'd be better to put it in a cd than into gold or silver uh you know that's up to you the nice thing about a cd is you actually generate some income with gold there's no income generation and so you're just counting on the overall appreciation of the precious metal and you know gold has run up but it's not really done much as of late and you know gold and silver don't typically perform as well as a as a stock and bond portfolio and have a little more volatility so i like you you know getting something that's income generating whether that's a cd or maybe some high quality government or corporate bonds would probably be my choice uh over taking a hundred percent of this and putting it into precious metals so a high quality government bond you think would be better than a cd yeah a bond portfolio i i think would do well for you here on this amount of money that's it's certainly not guaranteed but as interest rates come down the bond prices are going to go up which is why you know we're coming into an environment here where bonds are going to be pretty favorable okay all right thank you very much i appreciate that you're welcome violet thank you for calling today god bless you uh in a previous segment today i was talking about the order of withdrawing money in retirement often folks enter this season of life having several account types maybe different buckets or baskets if you will of retirement assets some tax deferred some tax free like a roth ira and some uh non-retirement investments where there would be capital gains due upon the sale and i was mentioning we get a lot of questions about the order of withdrawal uh typically you want to try to pull or liquidate non-retirement assets first then use traditional ira money and then finally roth ira money and give those retirement accounts maximum time to accumulate compound interest another suggestion before you retire set up an account in a money market fund with a broker a bank or an investment company and therefore in retirement you can draw a year's worth or less of expenses into the money market fund rather than trying to transfer money from your investments directly to your bank account each time you need it and this is kind of like dollar cost averaging in reverse it just helps you smooth out the effects of the market changes any other income streams like social security can be directed to the money market fund and you can move money easily from the money market fund to your bank account to pay your monthly expenses or even get check writing privileges on the money market itself if you can delay withdrawing from your taxable ira accounts until the required minimum kicks in the rmd and by the way if you're not familiar with this a new law just passed recently that raised this required minimum distribution age from 72 to 75 for people born after 1960 so this would allow your accounts to continue earning interest as long as possible now once you do start taking the rmd you can use it to pay expenses or invest in a taxable account if you don't need your rmd for expenses consider rolling some of your traditional ira money into a roth which isn't subject to rmds or you could use what's called a qualified charitable distribution it's one of my favorite tools in this season of life where essentially after the age of 70 and a half you have the ability to transfer money from a traditional ira directly to your church or ministry or charity through a qualified charitable distribution here's the beautiful part of that it doesn't get added to your taxable income so you don't pay tax on it when it comes out and it satisfies the rmd the required minimum so your church or favorite charity gets the full amount of that qualified charitable distribution you satisfy your rmd and if you didn't need the money anyway why pay tax on it just let it sit in your checking account you could also use it to replace giving you were going to do out of cash out of savings and so then you're not pulling any money out of savings you're getting that money out of the ira without any taxes and you're blessing your your favorite ministry or charity at the same time so i hope that helps you as you think about the order of withdrawing retirement assets all right let's round out the program today heading back to the phones to alabama hi sharon go right ahead hey rob um my house is paid for but i do carry insurance but i wonder what you thought about me dropping my hurricane insurance i have two premiums one for hurricane and one for all other wind and hail and with my hurricane coverage i have a five percent deductible which is ten thousand one hundred seventy five dollars and i'm thinking i could just be self-insured for that i replaced my roof with a fortified roof three years ago and that's about how much it cost and i can't think of what could happen to my house other than having to replace the roof completely so what do you think about me dropping the hurricane coverage yeah how close are you to the water well maybe 30 miles okay yeah i mean i'm always hesitant uh sharon to drop this kind of coverage i realize the deductible is high but you know you unless you can replace the entire house with the money you know that you have i'd be leery to do that i mean i grew up right near the ocean there in south florida and so i've seen what hurricanes can do you know i lived through the the big one that hit in in miami there andrew and and several others and so i just think being able to have this kind of coverage to offset a catastrophic risk like a potential hurricane which could go well beyond a roof i would just be really hesitant to drop that you know folks in florida a lot of them can't even get coverage these days and i think if you've got one even with that high deductible i understand why you're questioning that but the damage could go well beyond that roof and in that case you'd be really glad you had it okay well i'm not in any danger of flood okay yeah but you know i mean depending on what size of hurricane it is and where it hits it could destroy the whole home um so yeah and that's where just having that protection i think will give you some added peace of mind you're very welcome sharon god bless you and we hope a hurricane doesn't come anywhere near you we appreciate you being on the program today fairly frequently okay bye-bye yes ma'am god bless you all right to kentucky hi martha how can i help you today well i was wondering if my husband and i have four cds they're about a hundred thousand dollars apiece and we get about five thousand dollars in retirement each month is there anything wrong with having four cds uh no not at all uh typically we see that with folks doing what's called a cd ladder uh which is where they're stacking cds so let's say you might put one in six months one in a year one in 18 months and one in two years and then every six months you've got one coming due and every time it comes due you can push it out for another two years and get the the higher rate but it creates that ladder effect so i like that a lot i wouldn't have all these in one bank if they're in the same title like if they're all joint jointly titled uh you're only going to get 250 000 in coverage and so you'd probably want to have two of the cds at one bank and two in another unless you were to have different titles like ones or two of them are titled in your name only and then two of them jointly titled then you could get you know 250 000 twice but apart from that i think having four cds especially if you're you're laddering them to maximize the return and smooth out the liquidity i think that can make a lot of sense so i like it martha and this is a great environment you're getting a hopefully a really good yield if you want to look for when one comes due you want to check the yields go to bankrate.com that'll be the way to find the probably online bank that has the very best rate right now thanks for calling today that's going to be what for us today faith and finance live is a partnership between moody radio and faith vie thank you to my amazing broadcast team i couldn't do this without them i hope you have a great rest of your day and we'll see you next time on faith and finance live