The Futility of Fear

Former slave ship captain and author of Amazing Grace, John Newton, once said, If the Lord be with us, we have no cause of fear. Hi, I'm Rob West. It's easy to let fear take over when financial circumstances spin out of control, but there's a better way. We'll talk about that today. 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's comforting to remember that the Lord is with us, but do we always live like we believe it? Unfortunately, we still give in to fear from time to time, especially when it comes to money issues.

It's as if the circumstances seem more real than God's presence. What financial fears are you facing today? Maybe sudden life changes are making your finances unstable.

You could be living paycheck to paycheck without any margin. Or perhaps you're afraid of losing your business or your home. For some folks, anxiety about bad financial news causes discouragement or even depression. You may be struggling with feelings of fear right now, but here's the thing. According to God's word, fear is futile. Being afraid accomplishes nothing except high blood pressure and sleepless nights. Jesus put it this way, can any of you by worrying at a single hour to your life?

So what do you do when financial troubles tempt you to be fearful? Well, listen to Romans 8 15, for you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry Abba Father. The truth is you don't have to give in to anxiety and fear because of Christ's death and resurrection. You can give up your fears to our Heavenly Father.

And even when you don't feel God's presence, you still know he's there and he is good and he loves you. By faith, you can trust God's provision and protection, no matter how sticky your circumstances are. If a financial problem is causing you to be anxious or afraid, just remember that faith is the opposite of fear, which is why fear is such an effective tool of Satan. When you stop trusting God and focus on your fear, you're right where the enemy wants you, taking your eyes off the goodness of God and concentrating on your own problems and thoughts instead. Another of the enemy's fear tactics is the question, what if?

Here are some familiar ones. What if the economy gets worse and I can't pay my bills? What if I don't have enough money for retirement? What if we have a medical emergency and our insurance isn't enough? What if my spouse dies?

What if I can't find an affordable car or what if I lose my job? The problem with what if is that it makes us think about what might go wrong in the future. Well, we can't see the truth, of course, but we worry about it anyway, don't we? And then we're right back being fearful again.

Here's the point. In the midst of fear and uncertainty, we can hang on to the truth that God gets the victory. Our Lord conquered death and sin, so in Christ, we can stand firm against the fear tactics of our enemy. Isaiah 54-7 contains a fantastic promise about this.

No weapon formed shall prosper, and every tongue which rises against you in judgment, you shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is from me, says the Lord. You see, as servants of the Lord, we inherit the righteousness of Christ and can trust God to carry us through whatever financial fears and anxieties Satan throws our way. So let's look at a few more passages from God's Word about the futility of fear.

Jesus says in John 16-33, In the world you will have tribulation, but take heart, I have overcome the world. When money worries seem overwhelming, it helps to remember that we can endure any troubles with confidence that God is good. Isaiah 41-13 says, I am the Lord your God, who upholds your right hand, who says, Do not fear, I will help you.

God is in control of all the details, and He will provide what we need at just the right time. 1 Timothy 1-7 says, God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind, so that we can be at peace about our financial circumstances. Finally, fear is just plain bad for you, spiritually, physically, and emotionally. As Proverbs 12-25 says, Anxiety weighs down the heart, but a kind word cheers it up. That's a great thing to remember. When someone you know is struggling with fear, your kind words can make a difference.

In Christ, we can reject the futility of fear, because God gives us the power to walk in faith every day, and the permission to come to our Abba Father for help. Now that's good news. Fear not, your calls are next. The number 800-525-7000.

That's 800-525-7000. I'm Rob West, and we'll be right back. 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. Thanks for joining us today on Faith and Finance Live. I'm Rob West. You know, as we started today by talking about fear and replacing that with faith and trust in the Lord, I want to share a few practical suggestions on where you can go, how you can begin to walk in this as you replace fear with faith. You know, number one, turn down the noise of the world and turn up God's voice. For you, that may mean turning off the 24 hour news cycle, or the financial media that runs in the background, or perhaps even logging into your investment account several times a day and watching every tick. That can cause your anxiety to rise, and it takes you off of ultimately trusting in the Lord, but also it defeats a long-term perspective, especially with investing.

So maybe you need to slow down on your consumption of news and or information about your financial every move. Second, give. Now this might sound counterproductive because you're saying, well, wait a minute, I'm fearful about my financial life, why would I then give it away? Well, it's the ultimate demonstration of trust. You see, here's what happens.

When we give, we're saying, God, you are my provider, and therefore I don't have to hold everything I get with a clenched fist because I trust you, and therefore I can loosen my grip and give money away. It's going to help you replace that fear with faith. Let me mention number three, and we'll come back to the last two after we take some phone calls. Number three is make a plan. Here's what I mean by that. So often when we're gripped by financial fear because we can't pay our bills and we don't know where to go from here, we just discard it. We stop thinking about it. We might take that medical bill and not even open the envelope when it comes in, just stick it in a drawer.

Let me challenge you to face it. Open those envelopes. Write down everything you owe. Make a list of all of the debts that you have, medical and credit cards.

Get them in one place and then create a plan as you begin to contact, let's say, those hospitals and doctors and work on a payment plan, which, by the way, they'll be very willing to work with you on. And here's the thing. Once you know where you stand and you have a payment plan in place and you're making progress toward ultimately paying it off, you will feel so much better. Your anxiety will begin to come down, and then you can renew your mind in Scripture.

These are just some practical ideas, hopefully, that can allow you to lean into this and replace that fear with faith. I'll mention a few more in a moment, but let's take some phone calls today. We've got lines open. We want to hear what you're thinking about in your financial life. The number to call, 800-525-7000. That's 800-525-7000. Give us a call. Let's go to Chicago to begin today.

Andrew, go ahead, sir. Yeah, so I was calling to see what is your advice on if before getting a rental property, what's the appropriate amount of emergency funds or appropriate amount of funds to have before taking that plunge and getting a second property for rental? Yeah, it's a great question. So with regard to your emergency fund, I would want you to have that three to six months expenses personally that's there for the unexpected that you can fall back on if something comes out of left field. Now, beyond that, we then need to have the savings that you're going to use for the down payment on the rental property, and you've got to decide how much. I mean, I'd love for you to have 50 percent going into it.

You may say, well, that's just going to take us, you know, out of the game completely. I certainly wouldn't want you to do it with less than 20 percent down. Here's the key, though, is you need to be really honest and know pretty well what kind of rent this property can generate. And you want to make sure that whatever debt you take on, that the rent is able to cash flow the property, including the debt, putting something aside for maintenance every month. So you've got a maintenance fund there ready to go. Of course, the taxes and the insurance and then any marketing. And that's obviously before anything would come back to you personally as surplus or profit. Now, the key is if it can just cash flow itself and build equity over time and you've got plenty of reserves to maintain it and you have the ability to weather, let's say, a period of time where you're without a renter. And let's say we get into a more challenging environment.

You don't want to be right up to the edge where that's going to really hurt you financially if you had to come out of pocket to make that mortgage because you didn't have a renter for three or four months. So you've got to factor all that in. And obviously, the more you can put down, and that's why I like that 50 percent number, it's going to keep that debt service really low, especially in a high interest rate environment like we're in so that you can take care of everything else. And the goal is, because this is a business, you want to ultimately have something that is over and beyond all of that that can come back to you personally as an income stream.

But give me your thoughts on all that. No, I think that's really good advice. Yeah, it's a home that we got when the interest rate was like at 2.2. I think that's what we got at. And there's another home that my wife and I, we got about 20 percent that we're going to put towards, and we're thinking about renting this other one. So we're just trying to figure out, you know, hey, do we have enough money in our bank account?

I like the 3 to 6 percent of all of it. Another nice thing is, we did the math, and it's about a little over 25 percent of our income per month if we never got a renter. So what are your thoughts on that?

Okay, so say that again. So if you didn't have a renter to cover the debt service and all the expenses, it would take 25 percent of your personal income to keep the property going? That's correct. All right. And what are you spending on your own primary residence? What portion of your budget is that? I'm sorry, it would be for the new primary residence and this other resident that I currently own. It would be 25 percent of our current take-home. Okay, so that includes the property you're living in plus this second property, correct?

Correct. Yeah, so that's great because that's the number I would have given you if you had said, and we hear from folks often saying, how much should we allocate toward the housing portion of our budget? And I'd say, let's make sure for principal interest taxes and insurance, let's not go above 25 percent of your take-home. And then another five percent for utilities and the other household expenses, not including food, of course. So if you're at 25 for your primary residence plus this second property, I think you're in good shape.

Now let's also go to work on figuring out, you know, what kind of cash flow we can throw off because obviously the goal is for it to be rented, not for it to sit vacant. Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you so much. That was helpful. Thank you, guys.

Excellent, Andrew. Thanks for calling today. We appreciate it. 800-525-7000 is the number to call. We've got some lines open today. Looking forward to tackling your questions as we move through the broadcast.

Again, 800-525-7000. Mary, we'll come your way after the break. I want to make sure we give you enough time and I'm close to this break here just around the corner. By the way, Jerry Boyer will stop by in our final segment today. Jerry's going to update us on the markets. You know, we've seen a lot of strength as of late.

Why is that? Why is gold and crypto up? What is that signaling about the markets? What about this latest inflation data we got today as well? And an update on his work with Apple Computer leading up to their shareholder meeting.

Some really exciting developments there. So a lot more to come here today on Faith and Finance Live. You know, one other idea on replacing fear with faith, pray. You know, we often fail to invite God into our financial lives through prayer. We'll pray about everything, but we don't spread the bills across the kitchen table and say, God, I don't know how I'm going to make the next payment.

I need you to intervene in this situation. Let's pray and ask God to take those fears away and help us to trust him implicitly. Hey, more to come on Faith and Finance Live just around the corner. Stick around. Hey, great to have you with us today on Faith and Finance Live.

I'm Rob West. We're taking your calls and questions today with a few lines open, 800-525-7000. You can call right now. Let's head to Cleveland. Hi, Mary. Thanks for your patience.

Go ahead. Hi, thank you for taking my call. I'm not fearful normally of anything, but in our finances, I just lost my job. And so we've lost about $1,750 a month and that really hurt. We do have my credit card bills.

We're going to be able to pay the car payments and the house payment and that, but we're going to be right around $550 short each month and of paying our bills. So at 71, I don't know what to do. It's harder to get a job when you're 71. Making the same that you made. Yes, yes. Well, I certainly understand that. I'm delighted to hear you said, listen, we're not afraid, but we're also facing the reality of this and just trying to figure out where we go from here. One thing I'd like to do, and you stay on the line when we're done here today, I'm going to connect you with one of our certified Christian financial counselors. This will be someone who's been trained to bring really helpful advice from a biblical worldview. And I want that person to help you work on your spending plan and just take a look at this. If you're interested, take a look at your overall financial situation, help to see if there might be areas you've missed that you could cut back on, perhaps bring some new ideas to the table on how to get this budget to balance.

There won't be any cost for that. We're going to cover that, but this will be somebody who just can encourage you and pray with you and help you make a plan. But beyond that, Mary, you know, you obviously lost a job that was paying quite a bit more than you truly need just to make the balance budget, the budget balance.

You said that was $550 a month. What skills do you have? What type of work did you do?

And could you look for something that maybe even is just part-time that would just make up this shortfall? Well, I'm trying to do that. It's a good laugh because I was in accounting. Okay. But, you know, everything doesn't always work as it works on paper.

It doesn't work in real life. You know, my husband is ill, so we can't, he's not able to work. So I'm just doing the best I can.

Like, I thought maybe I could even just go get a job, you know, at one of the big box stores or something. Yeah. Well, I think we need to get creative. Go ahead. You've got a lot on your plate, Mary.

There's no doubt about that. Well, perhaps checking, I mean, I think just kind of working through your network, number one, checking with your church to see if there's, they're aware of any needs that exist. The nice thing about your accounting skills is we're headed into tax season, so that's going to be a lot of folks needing some, to pick up some additional work. And the great thing about that is, you know, more and more, some of that can be done remotely. And so you may be able to stay right there at home, which helps with your care for your husband and, you know, be able to pick up some side income as well. I think your idea that maybe even getting out of the house and doing something completely different, again, given that you have a pretty modest amount that you need to bring in, I mean, we're talking, you know, if you could make $8,000 a year, you know, in the next 12 months, I mean, that would pretty much do it.

Obviously, if you could do more than that, that would help to give you some cushion, and that would be the goal. But I think the combination of, let's trust the Lord, we're going to pray and ask Him to provide, give you wisdom on how to navigate this, number two, we'll get you some help to come alongside you to help you work through the plan, and then let's just see what God does with regard to some additional income, you know, as we ask Him for what's next for your work situation. And in the midst of all that you're doing, Mary, we know that God will provide, and so that's what we hold hope to. Can I pray for you before we let you go? Absolutely.

All right. Father, thank you for Mary, thank you for her husband. Lord, thank you for how you've gifted her.

Thank you that she started by saying, I'm not afraid. Clearly she trusts you, and yet she sees the numbers and realizes there's a shortfall, she's lost her job, so we just pray for your intervention. Lord, would you provide in the way that only you can? Would you even surprise us with how you provide?

Perhaps it's a knock on the door or an unexpected gift. Lord, if there's additional work for her, would you make that really clear and just provide that supernaturally? Lord, we pray for health for she and her husband, she cares for parents. Lord, she's got a lot on her plate, and yet we know that you're near to us in the midst of all this, and Lord, you're on the throne, so we trust you implicitly, and we're most thankful for Jesus today, and we ask this in Christ's name.

Amen. Mary, you hang on the line, we'll get your information, and if you'd like, we'll get somebody in touch with you to work with you one-on-one and see if that'll be of help to you. Thanks for calling today. Let's go to Chicago. Hi Maria, go ahead.

Hi, I have a quick question. I have some money in IRA and also 401k from my previous employer, and IRA advisor said that I should move my 401k to the IRA and keep it all together, but I also spoke with the advisor in PNC Bank, and he said if I want to keep my money more secure, I can take that five-year annuity at five percent that they are offering right now, and that I can also withdraw if I need money maybe five or ten percent a year. Hopefully I won't need anything, but at least my money would be safer.

What would you suggest? Yeah, I'd be a little hesitant just to automatically go into the annuity. I mean, there's a lot of commissions to be paid on that product if you were to go into that. I'm not saying that's the reason the person's suggesting it, but they do have a lot to gain from that. So I think the first question is, you know, what are your needs and goals and objectives?

It sounds like you want to be conservative, protect what you have, grow it modestly. You don't need it now, but you may need it in the future. Do you have a good relationship with your advisor who's handling the IRA? How has that been going? Yeah, I just had virtual meeting once a year.

No, I don't really know him, you know. I know they are from the United Planners based in Arizona or something. Okay, got it. You know what I might do is get another opinion, and I would connect with a certified Kingdom advisor. There's some wonderful CKAs there in Chicago. These will be men and women that have met high experience requirements, character, but also they've been trained to bring a biblical worldview. You can do that on our website at faithfi.com.

Click find a CKA. Stay on the line, let you and I finish off the air, and we'll be right back with much more. Stay with us. Hey, thanks for joining us today on Faith and Finance Live. In the next segment, Jeri Boyer will be by what's going on with the economy and inflation. New data out. Jeri will share that with us. Let's head back to the phones.

To Chicago we go. Hi, Kelly, how can I help? Hi, thanks for taking my call today. Sure.

My question is this. My husband and I are in our late 90s, late 50s, and I'm starting to look at retirement options, and my husband has a pension. If he took it at 60, it would be around $5,000 a month, and if we took the reduced pension where I would receive 100% if he preceded me in death, it would reduce the pension by around $1,000 a month down to around $4,000. We don't have life insurance right now. Our 20-year term plan expired, so the options I was thinking or questioning is should we take the full retirement and give him a large life insurance policy, or should we take the reduced pension that guarantees me a lifetime income and forget about the life insurance? I don't have a crystal ball, so I don't know.

I'm just wondering what your thoughts are. Yeah, so if I understand correct, the $5,000 a month is for his life only, and it goes away when he passes away. Is that right?

Correct. Okay, yeah, and so you're losing $4,000 a month, or $12,000 a year, but that would continue on both of your lives, so regardless of which one passes away first, it continues to pay out so long as the other one lives, correct? Yeah, if we took the reduced pension, which would be about $4,000 a month. Yeah, okay, and so then the question would be, you know, if we take the $5,000 a month, could we get, you know, a life insurance policy that for $1,000 a month or $12,000 a year would guarantee, you know, that we could get the full payout of this thing over the rest of his life or the rest of your life, and so we'd have to run some scenarios, and we could say, you know, let's say you live to age 95, and he passes away at 70, and the question would be, you know, could you get enough life insurance to cover 25 years of that income stream that, you know, would have gone away, which, you know, in that case, it's $5,000 a month, so that's $60,000 a year, and so, you know, at 25 years, I mean, you're looking at a $1.5 million there that you would be giving up between when he passed away, in our example, and you're age 95, and you're age 95, if you live that long, I'm trying to kind of play out some dramatic examples here, and so what would it take to get a million five in coverage? You know, it'd be expensive because as he ages, it would get more and more expensive, so, I mean, you could probably do a deeper dive on this with an advisor who could really crunch some numbers more than I'd be able to here, you know, in just a couple of minutes together, but I would just say, generally speaking, I like the idea of you having income for life.

We know that men, you know, life expectancy is certainly less than women, and so, you know, just based on life expectancy, we would know that we should expect that you will outlive your husband, and therefore, you know, you losing this significant portion of your income, $60,000 a year, you know, is a big loss that you would have to make up, so for me, giving up that, you know, extra thousand a month to know that you're going to have that for the rest of your life, regardless of what happens to your husband, and you don't have to maintain this pretty substantial policy that's going to get more and more expensive as he ages, that just feels better to me. Does that make sense? Yeah, actually, that's kind of the school of thought that, you know, that I was going with as well. Yeah, that answers my question. Thank you very much.

You're welcome. I mean, the only thing I would say, you know, beyond just us here on the back of an envelope kind of thing is to do a deeper dive, and what you would want to do is actually put some real numbers, so you'd say, you know, you'd look at a number of scenarios. What if he passed away right away and you lived to 95? What if he lived for 10 years or 20 years? You could look at that and then actually look at the cost of that insurance that would need to be purchased and actually factor that into the equation to make sure that, you know, that's not a more attractive option. My hypothesis is it's not.

There's too much risk in you relying on an insurance policy that's going to get increasingly expensive to make up for the potential loss of this income, and giving up that thousand a month is going to be the better scenario. But it's, you know, this is a big decision and it's probably worth, you know, you spending some time to actually crunch the numbers to make sure. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely.

Yes, absolutely. Thank you for your advice and thanks for your program. I learn a lot. All right, very good, Kelly. Thanks for your call today. We appreciate it. Let's go to Ocala. Hi, David.

How can I help? Thank you, Rob, for taking my call. I appreciate it.

Sure. My question involves a brokerage account set up with joint trust, with right of survivorship, and I can tell you as a way of background, you probably have a little bit of show notes here, but my wife passed away, unfortunately, about four years ago, had no effect whatsoever on real estate, bank accounts, or anything. I did nothing with my brokerage account even till last year.

I just decided to have my name on it and that was removed. And then, what came into play with the account as set up in joint trust was that the brokerage firms did a step-up basis in all of the holdings. That step-up basis turned a lot of the positive results into, I mean, unrealized gains into negatives. And I'm just wondering overall, was that the right process to consider that an inheritance and was it the right process under that account type, joint trust with right of survivorship, to, you know, go ahead and put a higher cost basis on all of those holdings, which were basically dividend paying stocks? Right.

So, they took 50% of each of these assets and then did a step-up in basis for the portion that was equivalent to that which was allocated to your wife. Is that right? Yes.

All the assets that were in the jointly held brokerage account, which were stocks, they readjusted the cost basis upon the date of her passing. Of death, sure. Yes. Okay, yeah. So, is that typical? It is, yeah. It is, yeah. So, with the joint tenants with right of survivorship, you know, this is an agreement where you share equal ownership of an asset, you have equal rights of use and then if, you know, one passes away, then it automatically transfers to the other spouse.

And you do, and this is where it can get complicated, so I would always trust the advice of a CPA on your specific situation, but typically, yes, you would get a step-up in basis on 50% of each of the assets of the portion that, you know, would have been allocated to your wife that's now yours, enjoys that step-up in basis, which just means you have less in terms of capital gains tax when those assets are liquidated, whether that's stock holdings or real estate. So, that is right and does sound like that was handled properly, David. I appreciate your call today. We have to hit this break, so call back anytime. We'll be right back. Hey, great to have you with us today on Faith and Finance Live. I'm Rob West.

We're going to head back to the phones in a moment, but it's Friday, which means Jerry Boyer's here. And Jerry, word on the street is if you were put in the position of Fed chairman, your first act would be to shut it down. Is that what my producer just told me?

Yes. Well, yeah, she was saying that she hopes that someday I'll be Fed chairman, and I said it's impossible. I can't possibly be Fed chairman because if there may be Fed chairman, I'd shut it down.

There would be nothing for me to be chairman of. So put yourself out of a job pretty quick there, Jerry. Yes, but I put a whole lot of other people in jobs because we'd get rid of this crazy dual mandate where we drive up joblessness, thinking that that fights inflation. So on balance, it would be an increase.

I will gladly give up my Fed chairman job to create maybe 20, 30 million jobs for other people. You're a scholar and a gentleman. We appreciate that.

Jerry, talk to us about inflation. Obviously, the numbers were celebrated, but where do we find ourselves? Yeah. So the numbers were kind of closer to their target zone. So it's interesting the difference between yesterday and today. Yesterday, the GDP came in higher than expected.

That got a little exaggerated, by the way. The GDP growth rate was three point three percent. And I heard I saw headlines that called that blistering or booming. The historic average for GDP growth is three point two. So I'm not sure that three point three is exactly like luge speed at the window. It's not a gold medal.

The Winter Olympics. But I'm glad for it. Honestly, I expected it to be lower. So I'm you know, I'm surprised to the upside.

And so were markets. And, you know, the thing is right now, it's kind of like the American economy and markets are like somebody who's been injured, maybe in luge, for example, like we just talked about. They've broken their leg and they've been injured and they've been on pain meds.

They're feeling pretty good. And then the doctor comes forward and says, oh, we looked at your GDP number. We looked at your numbers and it looks like you don't have a broken leg.

And to which which puts the person in a bad mood, because if I don't have a broken leg, I don't get any more pain meds. So yesterday we found out the economy doesn't have a broken leg. It's growing at a normal speed, which means that maybe the Fed's going to take the pain meds away sooner. And so the market was in a bad mood and it's sold off because in essence, as strange as this is, the easiest way to really think of markets in the economy right now is not to think of it as a machine or a growth mechanism or even an economy is to think of it as an injured person who is addicted to pain medication, is addicted to easy money.

That's the drug of our times. And so it's always reacting not to whether the economy's strong or weak, but to whether the economy's strength or weakness is going to take us off the morphine drip or put us back on the morphine drip. Now, today was, OK, inflation is low.

Maybe we've beaten this already. Maybe we're OK, which means the Fed can probably start pumping money into this system. Hey, morphine drip back on. The markets say probably in May we're going to start injecting pain meds into the economy again. And so that's why markets were up today. So it's really kind of a strange, you know, way that the kind of a dysfunctional way that our economy works right now.

And we have as Christians almost have to kind of forget the biblical view that investment should follow productivity and understand that we're in a distorted world where over the short run, investments are moving along with these with the expectation of whether the Fed is going to pump money in or pump money out. Yeah, because where the rubber meets the road for the consumer is at wages and those haven't been keeping up. And at the grocery store where frozen vegetables are up six percent this year and sugar's up seven. And you know, that's where we're feeling it, right?

Yeah. And, you know, I recommend recommend the frozen vegetables over the sugar, over the sugar. That's good call because we have enough of a sugar high in this economy already. But yes, we're not keeping up. We have not kept up over the past several years with with inflation. We're not producing that much. So if the Fed puts money into the system, if the Fed increases the money supply faster than we produce new goods and services, well, then we get higher prices. I mean, that has to be the case. And that's why the idea we talked about this in the webinar yesterday, the idea that the consumer bails out the economy by spending because the central bank stuffs our pockets with money.

No, they don't. The only thing that can bail out or rescue the economy is productivity, because God created human beings to fill the earth and subdue it. That's what the economy is. You know, getting people to consume things is not the economy.

Everybody wants to consume. That's not the hard part. What getting people to produce is the hard part. And that's where we're not doing so well.

Yeah. Jerry, you and I talked for a moment yesterday on the advisor webinar about the fact that despite this strength in the market as of late, which is still fairly narrow, we could talk about that in terms of it's still concentrated toward these high flying tech growth companies. But we're also seeing increases in gold and crypto, which there's an underlying message there, isn't there?

I think there is, which is those are hedges against disaster. So when markets are up, that could be because things are great or it could be because the central bank is debasing the currency. And when they pump money into the system that drives markets up.

So how do you know which it is? How do you know what the market thinks? The market by gold going up above 2000, 2000 is the new normal now for gold or by crypto being up there in the 40 50s, Bitcoin in particular, up there in that 40 50 zone. That's kind of been a new normal for crypto. That means that the investors know that this is built on easy money, not on genuine productivity, which means they are placing bets outside of the system. Now, some people have placed excessive bets outside the system, but that's still that hedging tells us that everything is not as great as it looks. If you just say, hey, the Dow's up, I looked at my 401k, I looked at my quarterly report and the Dow's up.

That doesn't tell the whole story when disaster hedges are up as much or more than stock markets during the past year. Yeah. Yeah.

Very good. All right, Jerry, let's talk for just a moment about the work you've been doing in the corporate engagement space. A big meeting coming up with one of the biggest companies in the world.

Tell us about that. Yeah, Apple, usually the biggest company in the world. Sometimes it's Microsoft.

Those are the magnificent seven. You kind of referred to that because basically when we say the market's up, it's pretty much all just seven companies. And one of them is we've been in conversation with on behalf of a shareholder who is saying, hey, listen, we noticed that when the Chinese government demands you take down religious material, you obey without apparently fighting against this. And also when activists in the United States demand that you take down, say, Christian material about, say, abortion, for instance, or the traditional, you know, sexual code of Christianity, you also cave into them as well.

And you take down that content. We don't think you ought to be doing that without explaining exactly what benefit that is to shareholder. Why are you violating what appears to be the civil rights of customers of apps and app producers by taking down content, which is not hateful. It's just something that certain people disagree with. And how is this possibly good for shareholders?

Because it's causing a backlash. And so Apple fought against that proposal. The SEC agreed with the shareholder we were working with.

And the Alliance Defending Freedom was part of that. So there's some kind of high powered legal muscle there. And so it's going to be on the ballot on February 28th. So I would urge anyone who owns Apple, look in your 401k or IRA. If you're an owner of Apple, they should be sending you a proxy card in the mail. Maybe they send it to your advisor.

So then ask your advisor about that. That gives you the right not just to vote, voting is important. But you can also take that proxy card has something called a control number.

You take that control number, you can log on the website, it tells you where to log on, you put that in there. And you can ask questions and make comments. I don't thousands and thousands of people are listening to me right now. Hundreds of you probably own Apple. If 50 or 100 of you came to that meeting, it would be an entirely different meeting than they've ever seen before.

If you come to remember, you're logging on, you're not traveling anyplace, you log on, you ask questions, you make statements in support of religious liberty, that would really be heard. Yeah, no question about it. And that's coming up toward the end of February. Is that right?

February 28, noon Eastern. Okay, very good. Well, I'm sure we'll mention that again before that happens. But I love the idea, Jerry, that you're there along with all these other shareholders in the boardroom, engaging in meaningful dialogue, and not asking for anything other than to say, let's respect the values of everybody that's putting apps on the App Store. Let's honor the wishes of the shareholders. And let's stay focused on making really great computers and phones, right? Yeah, we're not telling them to take down satanic apps. I don't like satanic apps. But you know what, what I like shouldn't determine the civil liberties of everyone else.

And by the way, in Jesus versus Satan, Jesus doesn't need the government's help, or Apple's help. We just put, you know, just put the content out there, respect everyone's civil liberties, and let's let the ideas compete for themselves. It's a sign of weakness to censor somebody else's ideas. It means you're afraid of them. And the people who have been censoring Christian content are showing their fear.

But there's no reason the company ought to be kowtowing to that fear. Yeah, very good. All right, Jerry, always appreciate it, my friend. Have a great weekend. We'll talk to you next week. Same to you. God bless. All right, bye-bye.

Let's quickly go to Grand Rapids. Debbie, I know you have a question. I've got just a minute left. So you had a 401k with a company you left. You had the rollover check come out, but you didn't get it deposited in time, is that right? No, I didn't get it rolled over to my IRA. Correct, I'm sorry.

That's okay. So they sent me a check, and after taxes, it's about $4,300. It's money I didn't really want, but it's my mistake. It was the end of the year and a lot going on. So I want to invest it somewhere without being penalized, I guess.

How long has it been? Because you have 60 days to get it back in to either an IRA or your 401k. Oh yeah, it just happened on January 3rd or 4th. Okay, so what I would do, do you have an IRA? I do, through Fidelity. Yeah, so I would call the 401k plan administrator, let them know you didn't intend to receive it as a distribution. You instead want to do it as a rollover, and you're within the 60-day window, and they should be able to tell you how to get that done.

And then once it's in the IRA, you can invest it without any tax consequences. Thanks for your call, Debbie. I'm glad we could sneak you in there.

Faith and Finance Live is a partnership between Moody Radio and Faith Fi. I'm so thankful for my team today. Thank you to Laura, Tahira, Amy, and Jim. We'll see you tomorrow. Bye-bye.