Emotional Buying and Impulse Spending During the Holidays

Abraham Lincoln said, give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax.

I am Rob West. Wise preparation is one of the keys to any successful effort from tree chopping to gift shopping. Today, we'll talk about preparing your heart and your wallet for holiday spending. Then we'll take your calls at 800-525-7000.

That's 800-525-7000. This is Faith and Finance Live, biblical wisdom for your financial journey. Well, it seems as if retailers start the so-called traditional buying season earlier and earlier every year. There's a lot of pressure to spend money on holiday decor, gifts and experiences starting in the fall and running through December.

Well, if they can start early, so can we. We're going to help you prepare by resisting the temptations of emotional buying and impulse spending. Let's start with emotional buying. Even if you believe you're a rational, practical person, there's no escaping the fact that most of your buying decisions will be emotional. This is especially true during the holidays. You may recognize these emotions that can influence your buying decisions.

Affection. You want the best for your loved ones even if it means overspending. Parents feel the pressure to show their love by buying what the kids want.

This is a very familiar temptation. Guilt is another emotion that drives spending decisions. Maybe you find yourself buying gifts to make up for not spending time with someone or spending extra money to give your family a quote good Christmas when you really can't afford it. Pride can push you into buying more than you should.

You want the latest and greatest products to be like the celebrities you admire or to keep up with what your neighbors have. The emotion of desire is at the heart of many buying decisions. Everyone wants comfort, love and appreciation. Desire makes us believe that material things can meet these needs, which of course is a lie. Fear is a strong emotion when it comes to making purchases.

In social media, it's known as FOMO, or fear of missing out. Fear of not having enough, not giving enough, or not doing enough can push people to buy things. Unfortunately, allowing these emotions to guide your holiday spending can leave you with financial regret when the credit card bills come in January. Proverbs 2528 warns about this.

Like a city whose walls are broken through is a person who lacks self-control. Impulse buying is another temptation that hits at this time of year. It's a close relation to emotional buying because many of the impulses that cause it are emotional. Financially speaking, impulse spending is also very unwise and here's why. First, impulse purchases are hasty decisions. Proverbs 21 5 warns us against being hasty.

The plans of the diligent lead surely to advantage, but everyone who is hasty comes surely to poverty. Next, impulse purchases often result in buyer's remorse. Finally, impulse purchases steal money from better causes. Of course, advertisers know all about the power of emotion and the temptation to buy on impulse, but you don't have to give in. So here's what to do if you want to keep your heart focused on God and your budget under control in the weeks leading up to Christmas. First, know your enemy. Overspending may make you feel good now, but it can destroy your financial peace.

Proverbs 22 3 says the prudent man sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it. Next, make a spending plan and stick to it. Ideally, you should be saving a little each month to pay for things outside your monthly budget. And if you overspent last Christmas season, start saving now so it doesn't happen again. Once you've got a plan, communicate. Get everyone on board with the family's holiday budget. Your kids will learn valuable lessons when they see you planning wisely, setting boundaries, and honoring the Lord.

Finally, focus on others. Shift the focus from getting to giving, and that will go a long way to solving any emotional or impulse buying problems. Find ways to share the good news with those less fortunate this Christmas. So now's the time to sharpen your financial acts, preparing to chop down the tree of holiday spending without toppling your budget. A spending plan can help you avoid emotional buying and impulse spending, so get one started at faithbuy.com or download our Faith Buy app from your mobile app store.

Just search for Faith Buy, Faith and Finances wherever you download apps. All right, your calls are next. The number, 800-525-7000. Call that 24-7, 800-525-7000. I'm Rob West, and this is Faith and Finance Live, biblical wisdom for your financial journey. Stay tuned. The opinions offered during this program represent the personal or professional opinions of the participants given for informational purposes only.

Any information provided is not intended to replace advice from a financial, medical, legal, or other professional who understands your specific situation. So glad to have you with us today on Faith and Finance Live. I'm Rob West. We're taking your calls and questions now on anything financial. We've got some lines open. The number to call, 800-525-7000. Again, that's 800-525-7000.

You can call right now. Also coming up a little later in the broadcast, Jerry Boyer stops by. Jerry will update us on the economy. Some new economic data out this week related to consumer spending and inflation. What did it say and why is the market off over one percent today, at least on the Dow Jones?

Well, Jerry will weigh in on all of it. It's been a tough week in the markets. The Dow Jones down 350 points today, ending that brutal week. Also, the S&P 500 is closing in correction territory.

That's just a technical definition, but all of that equals some more downward pressure in the market. So we'll certainly keep an eye on that and Jerry can fill us in on what we might expect in the days ahead. But of course, between now and then, taking your phone calls today on anything financial, helping you apply the wisdom from God's word to your financial decisions and choices. So give us a call. We've got some lines open. 800-525-7000. All right, let's dive in.

We're going to begin in Indiana. Hi, Donna. Thanks for calling. Go ahead. Hello. Do you want my question? I would be happy to take your question.

Yes, ma'am. I don't know if I should start with that. I have a $79,000 annuity with an insurance company. I have the opportunity to roll this over into my IRA, and I don't know if that's a good idea.

It seems like a good idea. I'm only getting one and a half percent on the $79,000 annuity. This would be four to five percent if I roll it over.

Yeah, very good, Donna. So absolutely, as long as you keep that in a tax-deferred environment, whether that's keeping it in an annuity structure, but no reason to get, you know, just over one percent, even if you were to leave it there, I'd roll it into another annuity paying a much better rate of return. You can get five plus, maybe even six percent in some cases. But rolling it into an IRA is good in the sense that it's a non-taxable event because it's going to take or it's going to remain in that pre-tax environment. The question is, what are you going to do with it to invest it? So are you talking about putting it into CDs once it gets into the IRA? I didn't know I had an option of that. My financial advisor at the bank just made me aware of this opportunity. So when I heard, of course, I was excited about it, but I came home and thought about it and thinking about stressing over it. Oh, yeah.

I just, I was afraid to do anything. I'm 85 and actually the age for this opportunity to roll this over was supposed to be limited to 85. So I will turn 86 in December and I wouldn't need to make this decision now.

Yeah. See, that's the part that's a little confusing to me is I don't know what investment he's recommending because the IRA is just the account type, which just makes sure that the money, the 85,000 stays in a or 79,000, I think you said, stays in a tax deferred environment. So therefore, it's not creating any taxable income for you. But inside that IRA, the 79,000 can be invested in anything. It could be invested in a CD. It could be invested in gold. It could be invested in stocks and bonds.

So do you, are you able to describe what it is that he's going to invest it in once you get it into the IRA? No. Okay. Actually, you didn't tell me that.

I just, when I heard the four to five, I think it's around 5%. I don't, I didn't even realize that I do have an IRA. So it would be the same. Okay.

I would probably get a second opinion at the very least I'd get to her for her to explain a lot more. It does. The other part that doesn't make sense to me is this idea that you have to do something by age 86. You know, inside an IRA. I can't really think of many investments, if any, that where there would be any kind of age requirement like that.

So there's a few things that just aren't adding up. I'm not saying she's doing anything wrong or there's any kind of problem, but I just would want you to understand what you're investing in. And the fact that you can't describe it tells me you're not quite ready to do it because I'd want you to be able to explain it before you go into it. In terms of what type of investment is it, how much risk is involved.

Is there what's called liquidity, meaning UK, she's saying you're going to get somewhere between five and 6%, but is the money locked up for a period of time? What if you needed to access some of it? Could you? And so I'd want you to know those things, Donna, and though there may be, you know, great answers to all of those. I just want you to know what they are before you do anything like this. So I would do a couple of things and ultimately it's up to you. And the last thing we want is for you to be anxious about this whatsoever. So, you know, I want whatever you do to give you a lot of peace of mind, not have you, you know, any kind of concern.

So I'd probably get a second opinion and I'd reach out to one of our Certified Kingdom Advisors there in Indiana. And the easiest way to do that is on our website. If you're comfortable using the internet, you just go to faithfi.com. That's faithfi.com. And then right there at the top of the page, it'll say, FIND A CKA. And that stands for Certified Kingdom Advisor. And this would be a financial professional that has met really high standards and character and competence, but they've had a pastor and client reference and they've signed the statement of faith and all of these high standards really speak to their desire to help you apply biblical wisdom to professional financial advice. And that person could not only evaluate what's being recommended to you by the bank, but they could also maybe give you another opinion on what other options are available that meets your goals and objectives. And that's obviously the key.

You're the steward. And the goal is not to get the best returns possible. The goal is to minimize the risk and invest this in such a way that accomplishes your goals.

So that would be the way that I would go is to go back to the banker and ask her to give you a bit more understanding of what it is that it's going to be invested in and then get a second opinion from a certified kingdom advisor. How does that sound though? Well, that sounds wonderful. And when I didn't look anything at first, I just wanted you to know, I listened to your program every day and I realized pretty much knew the answer, but I do feel comfortable with this advisor that I've had. She's been my advisor for several years. So I knew I needed to talk to her again, but I know she said was to get back to her if I wanted to do it.

And we're at an age limit of 85 and also a minimum amount, I believe. Okay. Well, if you'd like, and I'm not trying to ask you to leave that advisor, if you've got a great relationship, that's great. And then you stay right there. And maybe what you do is you go back to her and say, listen, I like the idea that it's going from the annuity to the IRA, because I understand that means it's not going to be taxable.

There's no taxable event, but what I'm unclear on is what are we going to invest it in that's going to generate the five to 6% and why the age requirement. And I think once you understand those two things that will be helpful. And then if you want to give me a call back next week and just explain to me what it is she's going to do, I'd be happy to give you my opinion on that as well. Okay. Okay. Well, thank you so much. All right, Donna, God bless you. Have a wonderful weekend. Promise me you're not going to be anxious about this. It's going to be fine. Let's just get a few questions answered before you go in, because I want you to be able to explain it to somebody if they ask you about it.

God bless you. Listen, we're going to take a quick break folks. When we come back, we've got some great questions lined up here, but I do have a few lines open. So if you have a financial question today, give us a call 800-525-7000. We'll be right back after this break on Faith and Finance Live right here on Moody Radio.

Great to have you with us today on Faith and Finance Live. I'm Rob Last. We're taking your calls and questions. Lines are filling up quickly, so let's get right back to the phones.

To Aurora, Illinois. Hey Tyler, thanks for calling. Go ahead.

Hey, how's it going? So I just want to ask your thoughts about Financial Peace University, Dave Ramsey's Baby Steps, and also really grateful for him and his ministry. But just curious about your philosophical thoughts, if there's any differences you had, that kind of stuff. Oh yeah, I appreciate the question. No, I mean Dave's a friend, and he's done incredible work. I mean, he's really, you know, taken these principles that we talk about on this program, and he's probably, just because of how massive his platform is, he's, you know, done more to promote, I think, biblical financial principles than probably anybody. You know, I think maybe the, well, I mean, it's just two different styles and approaches, but I wouldn't, you know, have any issue with the baby steps. You know, I like the idea of putting giving first, you know, and really starting with a biblical worldview and understanding your role as a steward, and not that Dave would disagree with that, but we just really try to unpack the big themes in Scripture and really take a concerted approach to look at everything we do through a biblical lens, and, you know, maybe put a little less emphasis on building wealth. Nothing wrong with that, but just in terms of kind of how we think about our use of God's money as a tool to accomplish God's purposes, but kind of central to Dave's message and FPU would be this idea that we ought to get out of debt as quickly as possible and stay there, and there's certainly nothing wrong with that.

I love the idea of being unencumbered, so I think kind of as, you know, at the end of the day, I don't have any problem philosophically with what Dave's doing and his message. Is that helpful? Yes, thank you so much. Appreciate it. All right. All right, Tyler, thanks for calling.

Let's go to Chicago. Israel, thanks for calling. Go ahead. Yeah, hi. Thank you for taking my call.

I have a loan for a car, you know, for five thousand dollars right now, and I have a credit card for five thousand dollars, and I can pay either or, so I don't know, should I pay off my car loan or should I pay my credit card? Yeah, that's what we call a binary trap, Israel. Here's what that means. We're just, we've got two ideas.

Should I do this or do that? Well, maybe there's a third option, so let's explore that for a second. So you got five thousand on credit cards. I assume that's at a pretty high interest rate, is that right?

Yes. Okay, what's the interest rate? Is it 20 plus percent?

I think so. I would say more like 20, 25, 24, something like that. Yeah, the average right now is 22, so it's probably in that ballpark. And then you've got your car loan at what percent interest rate?

12 percent. Okay, and then you have five thousand in savings. Does that include all of your savings or do you have something beyond that that you would consider your emergency? I have like 20, 20 thousand dollars extra. Oh wow, okay.

Yeah. And the 20,000 extra, is that in a liquid savings as well, not in a retirement account? No, it's in my savings account. Okay, and what do you spend on a monthly basis, roughly, in a typical month? I would say around $3,500.

Okay. Yeah, $3,500. Yeah, let's say it's $4,000. So, you know, six months expenses would be $24,000. Five months expenses would be $20,000. So you've got, you know, five months expenses there.

That's great. So here's what I'd probably consider doing. You know, I would at the minimum pay off that credit card in full. Now, make sure though that you're living a normal life.

You know, if you pay off that credit card and you're not living on a budget and you haven't proven to yourself that you can live within your means and, you know, control your spending and when, you know, certain budget categories are depleted during the month, you stop spending in those categories, you know, then I would go ahead and pay that credit card debt off. The key is though, I don't want you to call me six months from now and say, Rob, you know, now the $5,000 and extra savings is gone. It's not going to be enough.

It's not going to be enough. It's going to be the $5,000 and extra savings is gone. And the credit cards are back because you didn't solve the problem.

And the problem was overspending without a budget and a means to control it. So as long as you work on that budget, make it balance, and you've demonstrated to yourself that you can stick to it, then absolutely wipe out that credit card. I would also consider Israel, assuming you've done that first step of getting on the budget and sticking to it. I'd consider paying off the car as well.

Here's why you're going to get a guaranteed return on that money of 12% equal to the interest rate. Um, now the key would be that you, you take the money, what you were sending to the credit cards and what you were sending to the car. And you build that emergency fund back up because I'd like for you to get to 24,000, uh, or six months expenses. Uh, and you know, you'd be at 15,000. If you take the 5,000, pay off the credit cards, you take another five and put it toward the car, but you know, you should be able to get back up to the 20,000 and then ultimately to 24, except now the credit cards are gone.

The car's gone and you're on a budget and you're, you know, you're not putting any money on the credit cards each month. Does that make sense? Oh, completely. Yeah.

That makes, that makes totally sense. Yep. Okay. Great idea. Good.

So you do that. Listen, go and pay off the credit cards right away. Let's wait on paying off the car until you've lived on this budget for a couple of months and demonstrated to yourself that you can live within your means and you're not going to be putting anything on credit cards that you can't pay off in full. And if you can do that, then I'd be willing to, you know, have you take another five from your 20,000 in liquid savings and knock out the car. Now, once you get the, the emergency fund back up to 20,000, or if you want to go all the way to 24, great, then let's start taking what you were sending to the car payment.

Let's put it in a separate account that you can use to replace that car with cash when it's, you know, when the wheels fall off, you know, when it's done with its useful life. Okay. Okay. All right. Sounds like a plan. Hey, listen, you're welcome.

Stay on the line. I'm going to send you a book. I want to send you Howard Dayton's book, Your Money Counts. And I think it'll be a great resource for you, Israel. It'll help you just kind of begin to understand some of these biblical principles we talk about here on this program of managing money, looking at your money management through God's view from the Bible.

And I think it'll give you some really solid foundational principles that you can apply as you're doing all of this. So stay on the line. We'll get your information.

We'll drop that in the mail. It's just our gift to you. Thanks for being on the program today, sir. Well, folks, we're going to take a quick break.

Looks like all the lines are full. We've got some great questions coming up. We'll talk to Anthony and Hugo, and we'll head to Nashville and talk to Maria and perhaps your question as well.

800-525-7000. We'll be right back. Well, it's great to have you with us today on Faith and Finance Live. Hey, before we head back to the phones, let me remind you here in the fourth quarter of the year, this is an important time for us to hear from you with your financial support. If you'd like to consider a gift to the ministry, we'd be grateful.

A gift of any amount would go a long way to helping us reach our year end goal for listener support. And you can just head to faithfi.com. That's faithfi.com and just click give. And you'll find an easy form to use online. It's quick and secure. You'll also find our phone number if you'd like to give over the phone or a physical mailing address if you'd like to send a check. Again, faithfi.com.

Just click give and thanks in advance. All right, back to the phones. We go to Fort Lauderdale. My home, my homeland, I guess you could say, is where I was born and raised. Anthony, great to have you. Go ahead. Hi there.

Thank you for taking my call. I have a question in regards to selling a property. I have a rental property and if I sell it, do I have to, first of all, do I have to pay capital gains? If I do, can I take some of the funds from the sale of the house to pay off my residence, my current home? Yeah, have you already sold the property? No, I'm thinking about selling it in a year and a half to two years. I see.

Okay, very good. Yeah, so the two options you've got here, I mean, if it's not your primary residence, it would be subject to capital gains. So basically, you'd take the selling price minus the original purchase price minus any improvements that you made that stayed with the property and improved the value and what you'd be left with is your capital gain.

And as long as you held it for more than a year, then, you know, for most people, you know, with income, if you're married filing jointly between $80,000 and $450,000, you're going to be in a $15,000 $15,000 capital gains rate. And then, you know, you would pay that capital gains regardless of what you do with the money, whether you stick it in savings, turn around and invest it in stocks and bonds or, you know, use it to pay down your primary mortgage. The only way to avoid that capital gains would be if you either A, give a portion of that property away, like for instance, to a donor advised fund prior to the sale. And you could give a portion of the property wouldn't have to give the whole thing. But if you were going to do some charitable giving out of it, you could give it to the donor advised fund, then sell it. And that portion of the sale would not be subject to capital gains. The other option is to do what's called a 1031 exchange, but that would be where you'd identify a like kind property. So another investment property, and you'd have to declare your intention to roll that money into another property within 45 days, and then close that transaction in 180 days, but you may not be wanting to, you know, buy another piece of property. And if so, then you just pay the capital gains. And then at that point, you're free to do whatever you want with the proceeds. Does that make sense? Oh, absolutely.

It does. So I could subtract the original amount I paid for the house. And you also mentioned any repairs that I did, you know, I had done some extensive renovation. And, but I've already used that as a tax right off of my yearly taxes each time I did renovation.

Okay, yeah. So you'd want to check, you know, with your CPA, to find out, you know, what improvements you could consider there. You know, so it's generally things that are improving, you know, the value. So you put in, you know, new windows, you add a new room, things like that. And so when you do those kinds of improvements, to increase the home's value, you know, it increases your your cost basis.

So what I would do is just based on the tax treatment of those along the way, and the actual renovations and improvements you've done, just talk to your tax preparer about that. And they can make sure that that cost basis is exactly what it should be, you know, no more, no less. And then, you know, you'll just pay the the capital gains on the difference. That makes perfect sense. Just one more question along the same lines. If I sell a property, can I use some of that funds to pay for college for one of my children?

Yeah, absolutely. So the capital gain is on the growth, the gain that you've had in the property has nothing to do with what you do with it after. So you own an asset, you've got a profit in it, because you bought it at one price and you sold it at a price higher.

That capital gain is subject to the capital gains tax. But what's left over, you can do whatever you want with it. You can spend it, you can pay down debt, you can pay for college, you can invest it. It doesn't matter what you do with it. The key is you're paying the capital gain on the profit before you decide what you want to do with it next. Understood.

I just thought if it went to the form of education that there might be a reduction in the 15%, but I guess not. There's not. No, sir. Okay. Well, that's great. I really appreciate your comments and thank you very much. You're welcome, Anthony. Thanks for your call today.

Let's head to Miami. Hi, Hugo. How can I help you? How are you, Rob? I'm doing well. Doing great.

Thank you. How are you today? Pretty good.

Pretty good. I just wanted to know your thoughts on internet banks for what I've seen. They give the highest rates, savings and CDs over 5%, but I just wanted to know your opinion. Yeah, I'm comfortable with you using online banks.

I mean, you're probably already doing business online anyway, so you just want to make sure anytime you're transacting business online, whether it's logging in and making a trade on your 401k to paying a bill through Bill Pay on your bank to opening an online banking account to get a high-yield CD, you always want to use good online practices like not using public Wi-Fi at the coffee shop and making sure you have good strong passwords and you change them regularly, things like that. Now, with regard to the safety of the bank itself, as long as there's FDIC insurance, then if the bank were to fail, they're going to protect the depositors and make sure that you're made whole and that you have liquidity, access to your funds. So that's the most important thing that you'd want to look for with an online bank is the FDIC insurance. Now, beyond that, you could go to another level just for your own peace of mind to determine how effective are they at customer service and how strong is the bank in terms of the size and so forth. But at the end of the day, the safety comes in the form of the FDIC insurance. So I have no problem with online banking.

In fact, it's a great way for you to get a far more attractive yield in this environment with your liquid reserves. Fantastic. Thank you so much. And when I went and saw them in the internet, they do advertise the FDIC, that they're protected by the FDIC. Yes, sir.

Okay, very good. Yeah, that's the most important thing for a bank. It'd be the FDIC for a credit union. It would be the NCUA. But the National Credit Union Association, both of them act essentially the same way.

They're backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. And they will step in and make those depositors whole up to 250,000 per account type or per institution. So you just want to make sure you stay under that limit. Hey, thanks for your call, Hugo. We appreciate you being on the program. Folks, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk to Maria in Nashville, plus perhaps your question.

We've got some lines open, 800-525-7000. We'll also hear from Jerry Boyer. He'll stop by in the next segment as well. Stay with us. Much more to come on Faith & Finance Live, just around the corner. So glad to have you with us today on Faith & Finance Live.

Hey, before we talk to Jerry Boyer, quickly back to the phones to Nashville, Tennessee. Maria, thanks for calling. Go ahead. Yes. Hi.

Thank you, Rob. I wanted to ask you, we have investments in real estate, but also in 401k, IRA accounts, but we don't have any investments in tax-free accounts. I don't know if, I guess there's a way to be able to transfer them slowly, but my husband is a retirement age, but he's planning on retiring soon.

I'm still two years away. But my question is quickly, I guess, some extra money that we have, do you recommend putting it in annuities or putting them in bank accounts like money markets or CDs? Yeah, and it could be a combination of the two. So are you about to sell the properties or where's the funds coming from? Just extra funds that were coming from the investments that we have on the properties that we're accumulating. Okay, so you're going to keep the properties, but it's just throwing off income that you don't need and so it's building up in your savings?

Correct. Okay, and how much do you have in savings right now? About $200,000. Okay, and what kind of surplus do you have on a monthly basis? Oh, probably, let's say about $4,000. Okay, and how much do you have in retirement accounts at this point? In retirement, about $600,000. Okay, and do you know what your ultimate savings goal is? Have you ever done any retirement planning to know kind of how much is enough? No.

Okay. No, we just feel that it's enough what we have. Yeah, well obviously you're throwing out a lot of cash flow and that's great. I mean, cash is a good thing, but I'd love for you all to know kind of what your finish line is. And I'm not saying you're there, you might be, but that's where some real planning comes in just to say, okay, how long do we want to keep working?

What do we think God has for us in this next season of life? Does it continue to involve compensation? If not, what are we going to live on? Obviously, you've got potentially, you know, you'll have social security at some point. You've got these rental properties which are going to continue to throw off cash. At some point, you may want to sell those and then you'd probably want to invest that money just to keep it working for you because if it's sitting in a bank account, it's losing purchasing power just because of the effects of inflation. But at this point, you've got a lot of cash flow. You might be in a position where you determine we've already reached our finish line and so now we could kind of enjoy giving some of this money away out of our current cash flow, as the Lord leads. You may want to, you know, enjoy some of it by building memories with family and friends, things like that. But I think, you know, having a plan is going to answer a lot of those questions and an advisor who shares your values can help you start by saying, hey, what's God doing in our life and what's really most important to us?

What are our values as believers and how can we let those values inform our goals? And then that ultimately results in your day-to-day decisions around how you handle God's money, including what you should do with this two hundred thousand and the four thousand a month that you have being thrown off in surplus. I mean, yeah, of course, a portion of it should stay right there in emergency savings. And, you know, if you've if you're not quite to your savings goal and you're not maxing out, you know, a retirement plan at work while you're still working, well, you could start funding that.

We could give some of it away right now. If you did want to get it into a tax deferred environment and you've exhausted all of your retirement plans, you could use an insurance product to do that. But again, all of that needs to be considered in in light of a well thought out financial plan with an advisor, preferably who shares your values.

So here's what I would do, Maria. There's some wonderful certified kingdom advisors there in Nashville. And if you don't already have an advisor, I'd go to our website at faithfi.com and click find a C.K.A.

and maybe interview two or three of those C.K.A.s there in Nashville. Find one that you feel like is the best fit for you. And the starting place is not to have them manage your money.

The starting place is to do some comprehensive financial planning that's going to help to inform those ultimate decisions that you make with not only the nest egg you have, but the cash flow you're throwing off on a monthly basis. Does that all make sense? OK, yes, yes, it does. OK, I think that's the next step. And then the great thing is that if you find that advisor who can do that planning and maybe he or she does end up managing some of the money, they can also help to hold you accountable in a really helpful way in the sense that, you know, you make decisions, you set finish lines, you set goals, and then periodically they can bring you together as a couple and say, hey, how are we doing?

And kind of ask some questions and help you stay on track with what you feel like God is calling you to do. So anyway, head to our website. I think that'll be a great help to you. And if we can help you further, don't hesitate to call back.

God bless you. Thanks for being on the program today. All right, folks, it's Friday before we round out the broadcast today. We always look forward to Jerry Boyer stopping by with his market update. Jerry, good afternoon. Good afternoon to you. Thanks for being here.

Hey, you and I had a chance to talk this morning. We were talking about just this latest round of economic data, which, you know, here we go again, Jerry, strength in the economy, strength with the consumer. And yet the market is continuing to sell off because that means perhaps the Fed isn't going to be very happy about it.

Yeah, exactly. That's the weird upside down world that we're in under Keynesian economics, which, as we've talked about many times before, is explicitly based in an atheism. And the idea is the economy, instead of the biblical idea, which is we're supposed to fill the earth and subdue it and be economically productive, for Keynes, high economic growth caused inflation.

And so if you got an inflation problem, what do you need to do? Oh, you need to slow down the economy. So since this week, we found out that the third quarter of this year, growth was higher than people expected. That means that markets are looking and saying, well, we think growth is a good thing. But we know the Fed thinks growth is a bad thing. So we think they're going to hit the brake and try to slow down the economy again.

And so markets sold off this week. The other thing is inflation was up. And so it's all at the Fed thinks it's going to use to fight inflation. The Fed admits that it hasn't beaten inflation yet, which is good.

I mean, they're admitting they have a problem, but they have the wrong solution to the problem. The solution to the problem of inflation is not slowing the economy down. So you had two pieces of news this week, both of which were interpreted by the markets as, oh, the Fed's going to be tighter in the money supply. Markets were thinking maybe in six months or so, well, you know, maybe they'll cut.

Now they're showing up as almost zero percent probability, something like maybe two percent probability of a cut in the next year. So basically it is the Fed tighter longer in financial parlance. They call that hawkish. I don't know why.

The other one is called dovish. I don't know why doves would be associated with monetary expansion and hawks would be associated with monetary tightening. I don't get all that. I don't get the bulls and the bears thing either. I don't know why, you know, but bears don't like when the stock market goes up. I mean, there's more honey to eat or whatever.

But but I don't know. I don't know how this language comes about, but they call that hawkish. And hawkish means that that's going to take money out of the economy and slow things down until the markets are off this week for that reason. Yeah. Well, talking about an upside down view of the world, Russia's central bank, I just read today, just raised their interest rates by 200 basis points to 15 percent.

We thought we had it bad. Yeah. So the level of interest rate when they're raising it, it's kind of relative to like the normal.

Right. So in Russia, that's normal. In America, 15 percent interest rate isn't normal.

Why is that? Well, interest rates basically reflect the rule of law. They reflect largely they reflect a lot of things, but the risk of default. Russia has been considered by the world for a long, long, long time to be a risky country. And so if you're going to invest in Russia and you're going to buy rubles, you need to you know, I need a really good yield. I need a really good interest rate to take that chance. And so countries like Russia tend to have high interest rates because they're risky places. So if they go from a 13 percent to a 15 percent, it's really about that two percent difference, not about the double digits, because double digits are normal in a country that says such a heritage of weak rule of law.

And I know Russia is historically kind of influenced by a form of Christianity, but it's always been a sort of top-down, czar power, arbitrary power concept of Christianity, not kind of the more what I would consider the more biblical Christianity that we have in the West. Yeah, very good. That's helpful, Jerry. Hey, let's talk for a second before we wrap up today, just about the latest on the corporate engagement front. I know you've had some recent conversations with some representatives of the largest company in the world, Apple. Tell us what's new there. Yeah, well, what's new there is one of the things that we expressed on behalf of a proponent, someone who owns shares of Apple, is that we really think you ought to be thinking twice before doing what the communist government of China commands you to do.

Now, the issue that we approached them about was that they were shutting down religious apps, a Bible app called Olive Tree and a Quran app. And we don't think they ought to do that. They have a policy of obeying local laws, but they don't have to have that policy. You don't have to obey laws. I mean, Martin Luther King broke the law.

I think he was right to do so. There are times when printing Bibles broke the law. And I think having a Bible app in China, even if it breaks the law, is still the right thing to do. I think that there's almost Faustian.

You remember Faust made a deal with the devil. I think that large American corporations have made a Faustian deal with the Chinese government. And basically the Chinese government says, look, there's 1.5 billion of us. That's a really big market. Just do what we say.

Or if we don't want it to be so highfalutin literary, it's the monkey paw. We're wishing on the monkey paw of the Chinese government. And I think what happened with Yahoo, it's happened with lots of companies, with Uber, they go into China and they're just seeing gold.

They're just saying, oh, we're going to make so much money. And eventually their IP is stolen. So we think that Apple should not be censoring content. This week they censored Jon Stewart, the comedian.

I'm not really crazy about Jon Stewart, but I don't want them censored because dictators demand that he's censored. Yeah, exactly right, Jerry. Well, I know you're going to keep us informed there. I'm grateful you're doing this work. It's important work, Jerry.

It's making a difference. And we appreciate hearing the updates periodically. Hey, have a good weekend, my friend. Thanks for being here. Same to you. God bless. All right.

Faith in Finance Live is a partnership between Moody Radio and FaithFi. Thank you to Dan, Laura, Amy, and Jim. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week. Bye-bye.