Be Doers of the Word

James 1-22 reads, Maybe it's time to put God's financial principles into practice. I'll tell you how.

And then it's on to your calls at 800-525-7000. This is Faith in Finance Live, biblical wisdom for your financial decisions. So the first step in making financial changes is to take an honest look at yourself and how you're handling money.

What's not right with the way you're doing it? Maybe you worry about the car breaking down and need expensive repairs, or you fear the phone ringing because it might be a bill collector, or you're dealing with the gas or electricity turned off for non-payment. Maybe you argue with your spouse about money, or you've stopped giving to your church because you're afraid you won't have enough. Those are all signs that something needs to change, and you shouldn't fear that change. It might be a little scary at first, but when times are bad, change is good. In this case, it will bring welcome relief from your worrying about money. Isaiah 43 tells us, Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.

I am doing a new thing. I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The next step is accepting that God's Word contains everything you need to transform the way you handle money. Understanding and believing in biblical truth is essential. Hebrews 4-12 reads, For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. The next step is understanding that God owns it all.

In Psalm 24-1 we find, The earth is the Lord's, and all it contains the world, and those who live in it. When you fully embrace this principle, everything else can fall into place. You won't be consumed with thoughts about the way you're handling your money, because it's not yours. Instead, you'll begin to think about managing God's money, because you're simply his steward or manager of the resources he's temporarily entrusted to you. And as his steward, God will not abandon you to fend for yourself. He's always with you as he's promised to provide. Luke 12-24 reads, Consider the ravens, they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, yet God feeds them.

Of how much more value are you than the birds? Once you realize that God will provide, Scripture becomes your guide for changing the way you think and act concerning money. If you've struggled with his financial principles before, now they'll be your guide. The Bible says a lot about spending, saving, investing, and getting out of debt, along with contentment and generosity.

Everything you need to know, so you can put them into practice. And that's the next step. For now, just pick one biblical financial principle for managing money. For example, saving.

Proverbs 21-20 reads, Precious treasure and oil are in a wise man's dwelling, but a foolish man devours it. Pray earnestly about it. Ask God for strength, discipline, and desire to carry it out. Or you could choose paying down debt, or putting more in the collection plate on Sunday. Pick one and stick with it.

Then when it's a part of your life, you can go on to the next, and the next. This is putting principles into practice. You do that with tools and structure, a budget, a will, a long-range financial plan, and so on. If you're not living on a budget or a spending plan, now is the perfect time to draw one up. It's difficult, if not impossible, to save or avoid going into debt without one. And there's no better tool for developing a budget than the FaithFi app. It uses the tried and true envelope budgeting system to plan and track all of your spending.

You can download it wherever you get your apps. Just search for FaithFi, faith and finance. You know, most people will find it difficult to change by themselves. They need someone to encourage them and to hold them accountable. Designate someone to be your accountability partner as you strive to put God's financial principles into practice.

This could be your spouse, a relative, or a friend. Set a weekly check-in. Do this, and your chances of success will rise dramatically. Proverbs 11 14 tells us, Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety.

And Proverbs 27 17, Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another. That's all you need to know to make big changes in your life and stop worrying about money. And I hope and pray you'll get started today. All right, your calls are next.

800-525-7000. We'll be right back. Well, it's great to have you with us today on Faith and Finance Live.

I'm Rob West. We're taking your calls and questions today. The lines are filling quickly, but we have a few lines open. If you have a question today, financially speaking, give us a call.

800-525-7000. Let's dive in today. We're going to begin in Oxford, Nebraska. Hi, Florence. Go right ahead.

Hi, Rob. My question is, my husband and I have term life insurance policies each $100,000. We're in our 70s, and it's not to leave necessarily, I don't know how to say this, I guess. But the question is, would it be wise to drop mine and pay? We are about $100,000 in debt. We have two big loans. And I was wondering if it would be wise to drop mine and use that same amount of money towards one of the loans.

Yeah, it's a great question, Florence. And I think the question is, do you need any life insurance at this point? I mean, the reason we carry car insurance is to make sure we can fix our car, repair it if it were lost or stolen or damaged. And in this case, the question would be, if one of you were to pass away, would it create a hardship on the other one because of a loss of income or some additional expense that would be incurred? And generally speaking, when you're beyond your working years, that's no longer the case. Whatever assets and income sources you have in place, you know, if your husband were to pass away, in many cases, those would remain the same. And this opposite would be true for him.

But let me ask that question. Is there a need for life insurance on either of you at this point? Well, the two loans that I spoke of, one is like $43,000. The other one's about $50,000 that we still owe him.

Yeah. And so you'd like to be able to pay those off. What are your income sources today? Well, he works full-time plus receiving Social Security. I work part-time plus receiving Social Security. We do get some RMDs plus some veterans benefits. Okay.

So I guess your thought is... The month is roughly $7,000 to $8,000 each month. Okay. You're bringing in $7,000 to $8,000 between his full-time and your part-time work or across all of your income sources?

Across all of them. Okay. And what do you have left over in a typical month?

Oh, maybe $2,000 or $3,000. Okay. Yeah. And if his income were to go away, would it be difficult for you to cover the bills just on your part-time income, including servicing those debts? Yes, I think it would be. Okay.

Yeah. So I think that's perhaps getting to what you're saying here, which is in the case where he dies before you, you probably want that life insurance on his life payable to you because you could wipe out those debts and then you could live just based on whatever income would still come to you. Perhaps the veterans benefits, you get a survivor's benefit, you're still working part-time, the debt is paid off, your income is now... The monthly need that you have is lower. That would not necessarily need to be the case if you die before him because you're only working part-time, he'd still have his full income plus the veterans benefits and could probably continue servicing the debt. Do you think that's true? I believe so, yes.

Okay. So in that case, yeah, I think what you could do would be to drop the life insurance that you have on your life payable to him, recoup that $300 a month and start paying that as extra payments toward the debt reduction to try to get that paid off a little bit quicker. The only thing I might do in advance of that before you let that go is just say, do the math and make sure that given his retirement veterans benefits plus his income that it is in fact enough to cover the bills without anything, your social security and your part-time work, even if the debt were still to be around. Because if we drop the life insurance on your life, we're not going to be able to pay off the debt, so we just want to make sure he's got enough income. And what if 10 years from now he's no longer able to work full-time in the debt still hanging around, is that going to put him in a difficult spot? If so, then we'd want to keep both $100,000 policies in place until either the premium jumps up to where it no longer makes sense because it's too expensive, or the debt's paid off.

But if you feel like he's got enough income to service the debt and cover his lifestyle needs after your passing, then absolutely I think you could drop your policy and that would recoup $300 a month and that would give you more to put toward debt eradication. Does that make sense? Well, yes it does. The only thing I had questions about too was my health. I have health issues and if I was to drop this policy and try to get another one, I don't think I could.

Well, right, and that's why you wouldn't want to do that. I mean, at $300 a month, is this a term policy? Yes. And how many years do you have left on the term? Oh, I don't know.

I forgot to look, Rob. Okay. Yeah, that would be important because obviously, you know, especially if you have health issues, you don't want to drop this policy if you still need it. So the first question is, do we still need life insurance on your life, ensuring your life with a death benefit payable to him? If the answer is yes, while this debt is still around, then you'd want to make sure you keep this in force until at least the debt's paid off or the end of the term, whichever comes the end of the term, whichever comes first, because when the end of the term comes, that premium is going to jump or when the debt's paid off, you certainly don't need it anymore. And by really crunching those numbers, you're going to need to decide, is he able to maintain his lifestyle without this death benefit and service the debt, both in, you know, when he's working and when he's no longer working, because that, you know, that time will come at some point. And then I think that will help you decide, do we keep this policy and continue to pay the 300 a month until the end of the term or until the debt's paid off?

Or do we let it go and recoup that $3,600 a year back into our budget, which we could use to pay down debt? Does that make sense? Yes, it does. Okay.

So I think you've got a little bit of homework to figure out, you know, does he have enough income if you pass away to service the debt and maintain his lifestyle and look at how long that term continues. And I think that will give you the information you need. Florence, thank you for your call today. We appreciate it very, very much.

To Chicago. Hi, Michelle. Give us your question and then I'll probably have to answer it on the other side of the break.

How can I help? Okay. Thank you for taking my call.

Sure. I recently increased my company contributions to 10% in a 401k. My company also offers a Roth option. I'm in my mid 50s. Don't plan to retire until I'm about 70.

Just wondering if it would benefit me to put my Roth into like, cut my giving in half and put half of it into the Roth with the company or to take half and put it into something else outside of the company that would give me more options for diversification. Yeah. Good question. You know, we actually just did a pretty thorough look at this topic yesterday with Mark Biller. Go to soundmindinvesting.org.

You'll find an article that addresses this. What he shared with us on this topic was a study that was done recently by some university researchers that determined based on the uncertainties and the changes in the tax code, it's good to have two buckets, both the tax free and the tax deferred environments, the Roth and the traditional. And so you take your age plus 20 and that's what you put in traditional and put the balance in the Roth. So if you're 50 and put 70% into the traditional, 30% into the Roth, check out that article.

I think that'll give you a bit more information and a deeper dive. You'll find it at soundmindinvesting.org. Michelle, thanks for your call today. We'll be right back on Faith and Finance Live. Well, thanks for tuning in today to Faith and Finance Live on Moody radio. I'm Rob West. We're taking your calls and questions. We've got two lines open.

It looks like 800-525-7000. Well, we hit another milestone today and it's not a good one. The 30 year fixed mortgage rate just hit 8% for the first time since mid-2000. So as bond yields soar to levels we haven't seen since 2007, mortgage rates follow loosely on the yield of the 10-year treasury and rates rose sharply this week and last week as investors are still digesting news on the economy.

It was the housing starts which rose in September though not as much as expected. That's an indicator of future construction and then last week retail sales came in far higher than expected creating more uncertainty over the Federal Reserve's long-term plan just in terms of how long they're going to have to leave these rates and perhaps rates even higher than we've seen now in place in order to slow this economy. That's their approach to a fight inflation despite the fact that Jerry Boyer says and we'll have Jerry back on Friday that they've got it all wrong in terms of their whole approach but nevertheless that is their approach and as a result we're seeing mortgage rates continue to climb. 8% is the new rate and that's just creating real challenges.

That combined with the average price of a home in this country is making it really difficult for new home buyers but we'll continue to watch that. We'll also get Jerry's take on it on Friday when he joins us for his market analysis. All right, let's get back to the phones.

We'll go to Aurora, Illinois. Hi Jeremy, go ahead. Hello, how are you?

I'm doing well, thanks. My wife and I are looking to purchase a new home and obviously I know what the rates are super high right now so just wanted to get your advice on when you think we should purchase a home and is there anywhere we could go to try and get that rate lowered? Yeah, I mean you just want to work with a mortgage company that's reputable and then you can trust. I'd check with our friends first at Movement Mortgage, movement.com forward slash faith.

They're great partners of ours here and they're believers and they cover the 50 states but I think the key here Jeremy is yes, rates are high as I just said we just crossed eight percent today. That's not ideal and yet we've certainly been higher. I mean you know this is just above the average interest rate when we look back over a pretty lengthy period of time so we're not in uncharted waters. We just got really accustomed to and enjoyed these low mortgage rates in the twos and threes and we're certainly a good bit from that now. So we just have to go back to the rules of thumb which says you know number one can you get to a 20% down payment? So can you get $40,000 saved on a $200,000 home? And can you keep the resulting mortgage payment including principal interest taxes and insurance in a reasonable range so that you've got enough to cover the rest of your bills and still have some margin so you're not putting unnecessary pressure on your family? And you know that rule of thumb is 25% of your take-home pay for your mortgage payment. So if you can hit those then I'd say yeah you know let's go ahead and and potentially move forward. You know you could try to wait it out in hopes that you know we end the year next year the you know analysis from or the consensus I should say from a lot of economists that will probably be you know in the high fives by the end of next year but that could get delayed if we still see continuing strength in the economy which causes the Fed to have to keep these rates higher for longer you know that could be pushed out into 2025 before we see some relief. And you know here you are sitting on the sideline you know throwing a lot of money at rent. So I think it always comes back to even more than the interest rates the prevailing rates it comes back to your financial readiness and I would use your ability to make a meaningful down payment of ideally 20% or more and your ability to absorb you know that mortgage payment into your budget at no more than 25% of your take-home pay is not you know must-haves but certainly they're pretty important rules of thumb and you know the extent to which you're going to violate either of them I think just says potentially you're not quite ready and maybe you need to delay this and and continue to save.

Does that make sense? It does yeah we we own we own a townhome now so we would ideally put all of everything we have in the green towards our down payment I guess we're just I guess the interest rate is what I guess is giving us caution because you know it is eight percent and you know that's not ideally that's not a good that's not a good number I guess in our mind to purchase our forever home in quotations. Yeah I mean keep in mind you you obviously will have the ability down the road to refinance you don't want to do that a lot and unless you have to because it's expensive it could cost you you know two three four percent of the mortgage value just in fees and expenses but you know if if this is a home you're going to stay in for a while and you can save you know at least a point and a half which you know if rates head back down to where anywhere close to where we have been you'd be able to save far more than that so you could go into this knowing that the the goal is to save but the goal is if you're planning to stay here for a while that you know two to three years from now you're refinancing and hopefully taking advantage of a lower rate at that point.

Okay thank you makes sense. All right thanks for your call today we appreciate it looks like all the lines are full so let's keep moving through our questions here to St. Louis Missouri. Hi George I'm curious about debt consolidation is it worth it you know and and if you have any recommendations you know I've talked to national debt relief and trinity yeah but you know I keep listening to your show and I thought I'd call in today. Yeah thanks George there's three approaches to paying off debt if you're if you're not just going to snowball it yourself one is called debt settlement I don't like that that's where you get behind and then you know stop paying it goes into collections and they try to negotiate a reduced payment don't touch that. Second is debt consolidation where they take out a new loan pay it off and then you have a new loan hopefully at a lower interest rate I wouldn't do that either because usually that's a longer payback.

I like the third option debt management trinity does this our partners here at faith and finance is christiancreditcounselors.org they'll get your interest rates reduced you'll pay one level monthly payment through them and you'll pay it back on average 80% faster because of that level payment and the lower interest rates head to christiancreditcounselors.org thanks for your call we'll be right back. Great to have you with us today on faith and finance live you know we love when you call in and you ask your question on the air but there's another way to get your question in the mix and that's at the moodyradio.org website that's right moodyradio.org slash finance will take you to the web page for this program faith and finance live and right there you'll see an easy form that you can submit your question and have it read on the air and we get to those at a minimum each Wednesday we'll do it here in the next segment of the broadcast my producer Amy Rios will join me and we'll tackle three of your questions today that's coming up in just a bit again if you'd like to submit a question to us feel free to do that moodyradio.org slash finance all right back to the phones we go to Lakeland Florida hi heather go ahead. Hi how are you today? I'm doing great thanks for your call. Good yes sir um my name is Heather I'm sorry I'm nervous and I am on 16 of actually um 914 dollars I'm just being honest with you so you can help me um my bills come to I've been disabled since I was 16 I'm 55 now and um my bills come to um well if I tied 10 percent my bills I won't be able to pay my phone bill have a phone so I I do tie but not 10 percent um because I I have less less than uh let's down here um my income 914 and bills come to 828.24 so should I take something off of here and tithe 10 percent um or I'm a christian and I just want to do the right thing with the Lord yeah I appreciate that and obviously that's your heart's desire and I think the Lord knows that as well uh because he knows our hearts and that's ultimately what it's all about does God need our money no it all belongs to him we're his managers um and you know money is the training ground of the heart and I think giving is one of those opportunities we have to be connected to his work I would say the tithe is a great guideline for our giving maybe a starting point but at the end of the day it's not about checking a box or being legalistic about it it's about ultimately you being able to give cheerfully I was talking to Randy Alcorn this week the author and he was saying that you know when Jesus said is more blessed to give than to receive that word blessed is is better translated happy making it's this idea that it's not a religious activity uh but that the idea that we get to give is happy making that there's actually a physical response the joy that we get in being able to give as unto the Lord so it becomes an act of worship and something we do cheerfully and yes we should do it I think systematically and proportionately to what the Lord has given us and you're in a tight spot and so I realize on a fixed income of less than a thousand dollars a month every dime counts so ultimately what you give unto the Lord I think is between you and the Lord as to what that looks like and so I wouldn't say there's a right or wrong answer there again God is not an accountant what he wants is your heart surrendered to him you giving with the right heart posture the right attitude and the right approach and I think that's one that the giving that God accepts is the one that's done freely and cheerfully so I would just say Heather make that a matter of prayer say Lord what would you have me to do and ultimately wherever you come down if you're giving I think systematically and proportionately no matter what that percentage ultimately is I would just say give something and let's see what God does as he continues to provide for you and hopefully that will come even through the means of others seeing your need and rallying around you you've obviously been living on a little bit for a long time given how long you've been disabled and I know God has been faithful in that and yet I'm sure it's been a struggle and and the Lord knows that so I think at the end of the day it's between you and him and I wouldn't say it's a it's less about a percentage and more about your heart condition in your giving does that make sense oh yes sir it does and yeah that's what I felt but I've had people I've had other people's opinion which really doesn't matter to me but it did get me thinking because I do I pay $25 a month and I support Israel so I've done that for over a year but everybody's against me on that but I I think it's a hard thing as well and I just you know I do it from my heart because I love the Lord so much and I would give him everything I had if I didn't have to pay rent you know but yes it is a heart and it's joyful and joyful at giving that to him so well I think that's what the Lord's looking for so listen I appreciate you being on the program today if we can help further along the way don't hesitate to reach out thanks for your call today let's go to Crystal Lake Illinois hi Bobby go right ahead hi yeah I just want to I just had a CD that matured and they're giving me 10 days you know to change it or roll it over whatever so like you say I went to bankrate.com and I found some incredible rates and I'm just wondering I can lock if it's good to lock into a longer term because I can get a 4.75 three four or five years yeah yeah yeah I mean I like that I think it all comes down to what's the time horizon on this money if this is money you you really don't want to take a lot of risk in very little risk then a CD is a great way to go I mean the other option would be look at at treasuries so US government bills bonds and notes depending on what duration you're looking for and you may need some help in doing that how much money are you talking about about 200,000 okay yeah I mean I think it might be where the only challenge with the the CDs is you know so you lock it up for 4.6 for five years and that's a great rate especially what we've been used to over the last couple of decades but what happens when you get to the end of that five years so I think there there's something to be said about in this environment perhaps building a portfolio of you know bonds so US government bonds and you not only can you get an attractive rate but you can also get some growth in the underlying price of the bonds because as the interest rates fall those bond prices will increase now you are taking some risk because those can move around but we know that you know the Fed is not going to raise the interest rates too far from here they've gone up you know 12 times which you know is almost unprecedented and so you know I think the question is would you like to have an advisor who can help you build a bond portfolio yeah you're taking a little bit more risk but it you could have a longer term approach to this that goes well beyond five years and gives you a little bit more you know overall return or would you rather have essentially a risk-free investment with FDIC insurance and just lock it up for as long as you can which you know in this case is five years you get the 4.6 percent a year or 4.75 and then in five years you just have to take what's available to you which may be something you know considerably lower than what you're getting today does that make sense yeah it does make sense but when I when I went to my bank that has the has held my CD they tried to tell me that if I want someplace else I would get a penalty of some kind if it uh if the rate changed is that true well what kind of penalty I guess I'm confused she said if she said if the rate goes higher you can get a penalty for um you know and I'm like what no I don't yeah yeah that that doesn't make sense to me so what I would do is if you decide you want to go the CD route you could use any of those online banks that you found on bankrate as long as they have FDIC insurance and I'd probably go with one of the ones that's highly rated four or five stars the other option is to connect with a certified kingdom advisor there in Illinois and have somebody work with you to build a very conservative bond portfolio or maybe a combination of CDs and bonds and to do that if you'd want to interview two or three CKAs you do that on our website faithfi.com faithfi.com just click find a CKA and you'll find a bunch of them there in your area Bobby thanks for your call today I hope that helps thanks for listening to the program we'll be right back well it's great to have you with us today on faith and finance live where we answer your questions around finances in light of God's word we do that when you call in and we do that when you email us as well we have a form at moodyradio.org finance and if you want to submit a question we'd love for you to do that it goes right into my producer Amy Rios and on Wednesdays we set aside some time in our final segment to tackle a few of those questions we're going to do that today and that means Amy gets to join me on the air hi Amy hello Rob I'm ready to dive into some good questions today I've got three of them for you today so let's get started okay first of all Andy writes last year government I bonds were the hot investment this year it's high yield online savings accounts we already are hearing that bonds are going to be the way to go next year whatever happened to the buy and hold mentality as we were taught for decades did I miss something oh yeah Andy it's a great question no you didn't miss anything I think buy and hold is the right strategy and that I would say definitely applies to equities so that's stocks when you're buying stocks whether that's directly or through index funds or mutual funds it's not always the best strategy for bonds the last couple of years were terrible for bonds because of record high inflation and interest rates so obviously we don't want to try to time the market I would say those I bonds were a unique investment for a period of time because think about the last couple of decades I mean we've had inflation almost pegged at and even before that two percent which means that those inflation bonds that's where that I comes from are not paying a whole lot so they just weren't very attractive and then we had this kind of 40-year anomaly where we see a spike in inflation up to nine percent well that all of a sudden made these attractive essentially risk-free investments and so there was a window of time where we say I want to take advantage of this it wasn't you know speculative because the government was guaranteeing it but it did present a unique opportunity that came and went as these rates fall so I would say generally buy and hold yes are there going to be some exceptions to that along the way yes there will be and I bonds were one of those okay great thank you for that okay next Brenda says if you retire at 62 how do you go about trying to get the maximum amount or do you have to go to full retirement age at 67 I'll be 62 next year and I'm thinking about retiring if I can't get enough to live on can I work at a job while drawing social security yeah it's a great question so if you take social security at 62 the amount your full retirement benefit that you see on your statement that they send to you or when you log in at ssa.gov to my ssa that's going to be reduced by about 30 because you're taking it early and by the way a majority of americans do that and I don't recommend it so in order to get your full benefit you do need to wait to your full retirement age which is probably somewhere between 66 and 67 now to maximize your benefit you're going to need to wait all the way to age 70 it's going to grow by another eight percent a year beyond full retirement age if you do that you're going to need to collect that for probably 12 years to make up what you didn't take at full retirement age and then you'll be left with a higher check for the rest of your life so in order to wait you you are going to you know not be able to take that when you want to but you'll get more later now can you work if you take it prior to full retirement age your benefits will be reduced for every two dollars you earn above 21 240 so roughly 21 000 for every two dollars you earn above that your benefit will be reduced by a dollar however once you reach full retirement age they will make that up to you in the form of a higher paid higher check until you're fully restored now once you reach full retirement age you can earn as much as you want so bottom line to get your full benefit brenda wait until your full retirement age and then not only will you not give anything up you can earn as much as you want and it won't affect your check whatsoever okay that's great i'm really glad you freshly stated that again even for top of mind for me right now because that's something marty and i are working through right now thinking about his future and retirement that's pretty close so thank you for that absolutely okay finally todd are there any ways to use equity in my property to clear up some bad debt my credit is poor but i have more than enough equity to clear up the bad debt that is causing my credit to suffer thanks yeah you know todd i so appreciate this question you know a lot of folks are staring at all this extra equity they have in their homes because the housing market's been doing so well and wondering is that a place i should go to get some extra cash whether it's for debt reduction or investing i'd probably just try to advise you against that number one it's going to take probably debt that's unsecured and secure it to your house so if something happened you couldn't pay it now your home is at risk uh number two uh you know if you're taking that out right now it's probably through a home equity loan it's going to be expensive money um so i wouldn't do that i would go back to that spending plan i realize this can take some time but i'd look for places to cut back free up margin and cover your debt try to reduce your debt out of current cash flow and let's leave that equity right there in the house okay thank you for your wisdom rob we appreciate it so much absolutely thank you amy for all you do and it's great to tackle these questions by the way again if you want to submit one just send it to us at moody radio.org finance that was amy rios all right let's go back to the phones as we round out the broadcast today to chicago tyler go ahead hi there how's it going thank you so much doing great absolutely would you aggressively pay down student loans or would you count on waiting for student loan forgiveness that's 10 years out working at a non-profit yeah you know so i mean this is ultimately a conviction issue i think tyler uh that you have to wrestle and pray through you know some people will people will come down in different places on this and i don't think it's this is a a command type issue i think it's a conscience matter between you and the lord so i can't tell you the answer i mean some folks will say i don't want to touch student loan forgiveness even if they offer it i'm going to do everything in my power not to take it because i just don't think that's right i don't think the government should be making those decisions and putting that on the back of other tax other taxpayers others will say listen if the government's offering it i'm going to take full advantage and i don't think there's a right or wrong solution there i think that's ultimately something each person needs to provide now i will say just through the pslf the public service loan forgiveness program i mean this is a program that the government put in place not some of this latest stuff that we're seeing by the executive branch this was a well thought out plan to encourage folks to go into non-profit work you know teaching in you know certain uh you know districts that are more challenging that are hard to get teachers to go to and so i would say if you're able to qualify through those 120 on-time payments over 10 years then take full advantage of that in my opinion but again this is a conviction you need to have my perspective would be absolutely if you meet the qualifications of that program you get the 10 years in they're willing to pay it then i just say pay those scheduled monthly payments and when it's time for the the government to forgive it because you met the program's requirements then you go for it but at the end of the day i think this is between you and the lord and i i pray it through does that all make sense yes sir yeah thanks so much okay thanks for your call today we appreciate it to illinois hi cathleen go right ahead um we have a uh joint um uh and i'm sorry i'm trying i i can't believe i got so nervous we have an annuity okay and it's a qualified one so let's pay taxes okay but i can take it out without a penalty right now and it's a variable and it keeps going up and down and then uh when it matures then um you know we only get a i mean i know i'll and never mind what i want to know is can i take that money and put it into make an ira that is designated to a cd yes absolutely so i mean that's the short answer yes if this is a qualified annuity which means pre-tax money went in then you can roll it to an ira that is not a taxable event and then you can put it in anything you want including brokered cds so that would be one of the investment choices inside the ira so i would uh i would roll it to an ira and then uh and then buy some cds with it if that's what you want to do okay okay because um yeah oh just if you could clarify for me when when a when a um annuity matures that is no longer collecting interest correct so that like if i could be yeah you'd like you need to check the specifics on that particular annuity but it could be that you need to roll it into another annuity or get it out of there and again you can do that penalty free and in the case of the qualified annuity you don't want to take a distribution because then it becomes taxable so that's where we roll it into the ira but i think either rolling it over to another annuity or out to an ira is probably your best option all right let's finish in chicago maryland i've got just a minute left go ahead yes that was interesting and knowing information on these uh high yield savings accounts that are mainly online accounts are they really what they proclaim to be yeah they are in the sense that these are banks uh with bank charters and basically the way they're able to pay these high yields maryland is because they don't have to pay the brick and mortar building costs and they don't have big you know staffs across the country staffing these brick and mortar locations so they're able to pass that along in the form of no fees and higher yields so absolutely as long as there's fdic insurance and i'd probably look for one that's higher rated just in terms of the strength of the institution but yeah i don't have any problem with them in fact the interest rates are fairly compelling was there a second part to your question yeah well no it's a different question altogether would it influence your credit score by canceling out credit cards you're not using and or reducing your credit limits uh yes it it absolutely both of those could reduce your credit score and here's why if you're carrying a balance on other cards by eliminating that one card that you cancelled or lowering the limit it's going to make the balances that you're carrying on the other cards a higher percentage of the overall credit that's available to you that's called credit utilization so that could raise your score also removing that card from your credit history if especially if you've had those cards a long time could lower your score the question is will lower it enough if you have really good credit you know well over 720 you know you're not as long as you're not dropping yourself below 720 you're not going to get down and you know have any effect on yourself and if you're not looking to take on new credit buying a house or a car probably doesn't even matter so i just think it through from that perspective thanks for your call today faith and finance live is a partnership between movie radio and faith five thank you to my team amy josie dan and jim couldn't do it without them have a great rest of your day and would you come back and join us tomorrow i hope so see you then you