The Housing Market: Rent or Buy?

A portion of the following program has been prerecorded. You've heard it said paying rent is throwing your money away. You should buy a house. But is that really true?

Hi, I'm Rob West. Well, it may have been true in the past, but not so much these days. In fact, analysts are saying it actually makes financial sense to rent versus buy a house, at least for now. I've got some numbers to show you that may be true, that it's on to your calls at 800-525-7000.

That's 800-525-7000. This is Faith and Finance Live, biblical wisdom for your financial decisions. Well, there's no question that we're still feeling the impact of the COVID pandemic. It caused massive disruptions in supply chains and huge spikes in building costs. Housing inventories fell, demand rose, and home prices have, well, gone through the roof. Now, also during that time, young adults were trying to move out of their parents' homes and set up house for themselves, so rental rates also rose. In the age-old debate, rent versus buy, things have shifted. You see, paying a landlord now seems like a better deal than paying a mortgage company with sky-high interest rates and stubborn inflation. In fact, according to the real estate investment firm CBRE, it's never made less sense for first-time home buyers to make that leap, and here's why. CBRE's research shows that average new monthly mortgage payments are now, get this, 52% higher than the average rent for an apartment. That difference, 52%, is the highest in the 27 years CBRE has been doing this research. There's no question that many first-time home buyers have been priced out of the market.

According to the National Association of Realtors in 2022, the last year this statistic is available, only 26% of buyers were first-timers. That's the lowest percentage since they began tracking those numbers. Of course, home values are expected to moderate, at least that's what the experts say, but that probably won't mean they'll actually decline much. It's more likely they'll just stop increasing so dramatically.

Some analysts say we've reached peak unaffordability. High mortgage rates are supposed to bring values down, but that hasn't happened because of the continuing low inventory. There just aren't that many houses on the market, and that's keeping prices firm in most places. It's tempting to say that rental rates are a bright spot in this picture, but they really aren't. They're lower now only when compared to average new mortgage payments. Rents also increased a lot in the last few years, just not as dramatically as mortgage payments. For what seemed like decades, Americans heard that buying a home was the smart way to go, and that continuing to rent was just a waste of money because paying rent doesn't build equity while making mortgage payments does.

That's now been flipped around. The new value option, at least for the time being, is to continue paying rent and sit on the sidelines of the home buying game until interest rates come down and inventory goes up. It's interesting to note that analysts aren't sure at this point where the rent versus buy debate is heading. Will rents rise to meet mortgage payments, or will mortgage payments drop to meet rental rates?

If you're one of the many wannabe first-time home buyers, and if you're wondering if you'll ever be able to buy a house, you can take some comfort in this. The free market, when left alone, will always correct itself. If there aren't enough homes, builders will build more. If the cost of materials is too high, competition and increased production will bring them down. If interest rates are too high, the economy will slow. Interest rates will be adjusted downward. If no one buys houses, lowering demand, eventually prices will come down. Those things will happen.

It's just a question of when. In the meantime, you have some work to do. There are three important steps you can take to bring you closer to buying a house while you continue to rent. First, pay off your credit cards and make extra payments on your car loan if you have one. That reduces your debt to income ratio. The less debt you have, the more likely you are to get a loan and at a better rate. Second, make every payment on time.

Check your credit reports for errors and dispute any you find. Bring your credit score up as much as possible. That will also help you get a lower interest rate, which will make your monthly mortgage payments more affordable when you do buy. Finally, save, save, save. Put as much as you can in the bank and liquid savings for the down payment.

We always recommend 20% of the sale price. So basically, follow God's financial principles and see what he will do. Romans 12-12 reads, rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. All right, your calls are next.

800-525-7000. This is Faith and Finance Live. 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. All right, it's time to take your calls and questions today. We're ready to hear from you on any financial topic, whatever you're wrestling with in your financial life. Let's tackle it together.

We've got some lines open. 800-525-7000. That's 800-525-7000. Whether it's living, giving, owing, or growing God's money, we can talk about it together.

Again, 800-525-7000. Before we head to the phones, in the news today, a report from the New York Federal Reserve says total credit card debt grew by 50 billion between October and December of 2023. That's the, of course, the holiday season and it's now at a total of, as of the end of December, 1.13 trillion with a T. That's of the ninth consecutive annual increase. More borrowers are struggling with credit card student and auto loan payments too. In December, roughly three percent of outstanding debt was in some stage of delinquency and that was up a bit from the previous quarter. That's lower though than the 4.7 percent rate that we saw before the COVID-19 pandemic began. The rise in credit card debt is especially interesting because interest rates are such, at such incredible highs right now. The average credit card APR hit a new record of 20.72 percent last week and that's just the average. The previous record was 19 percent in July of 91.

So we're talking 30 or so years ago before we were at this kind of level. So obviously the average American under quite a bit of pressure right now and if we do hit a recession and we see unemployment go up that's only going to get worse but these high interest rates cause us to really want to double down on debt reduction. Listen folks if you have credit card debt you need to get out from under it get a plan don't run from it run to it and our friends at christiancreditcounselors.org can help but just some interesting but also tough information coming from the Federal Reserve today on credit card debt.

All right let's take your phone calls today perhaps you have something a little more light-hearted to talk about 800-525-7000 is the number to call again that's 800-525-7000. Also let me mention that if you haven't checked out the Faithfi app this would be a great time to do it. You know if you're going to get out of debt once and for all you're never going to be able to do it without a spending plan and here's why.

Your ability to live below your means and create some margin or some cushion in your financial life is critical to accomplishing your goals whether that goal be giving more saving more or perhaps as we talked about a moment ago paying off debt you can't do it without margin and so the best way to do that is to put that spending plan together so that you have the ability now to make sure you're giving every dollar a job you know where it's going and you have that cushion that you can then direct toward principal reduction. So check out the Faithfi app if you haven't already it's on our website faithfi.com just click app or you'll find it in your app store. All right we're ready to go let's begin today in Wellington Ohio. Martha thank you for calling go ahead.

Hi thank you so much for taking my call. I have a question about insurance. I have insurance on myself and I had two riders for my children and I was just informed that when my son turns 25 I will no longer have a rider for him and the reason I had it is for possible funeral expenses because I don't have the money saved and I was just wondering I only need funeral expenses so I was wondering what the best way to go about getting that would be. Yeah that's a great question. You know you can get a small burial policy specifically for this purpose and you know I don't think that's a bad idea especially if you don't have the funds saved. I would probably start at NerdWallet it's kind of a silly name but has become quite a reputable site just for honest reviews of everything from you know apps to banking institutions to insurance providers and I'm looking at you know their latest article on the five best burial insurance companies of February 2024 so they update this literally every month and they rate these companies and the key is I think you know you need to look at the eligibility in terms of age and find out which company is going to be the best for you just based on your health status and so forth because one company might be better for one person you know versus another also you'll be able to see you know how they were rated in terms of customer satisfaction number of consumer complaints you know best for instant coverage accessibility I mean all of these different factors that go in to ultimately finding the company that's best for you now if you have your insurance with somebody else your property and casualty you could look at bundling this and you may be able to save some money just by adding it on to an existing you know bundle of policies that you already have but if you're just looking for that straight burial insurance you know I would probably start with nerd wallet and look at some of their reviews oh thank you so much and I just is that word you're saying burial or I wasn't sure what that word is burial insurance yeah is that what you were talking about funeral expenses how do you spell that b-u-r-i-a-l yeah burial uh as in you know burial after death I'm sorry no you're fine no problem yep thank you for calling if we can help further Martha anytime don't hesitate to reach out all right we're going to go to Zealand Michigan hi Julie go ahead hello thank you so much for taking my call I sure appreciate it this is something I've been wrestling with for months oh okay let's try to solve it yeah let's try to solve it so we moved into this a condo that we're in right now and we got a very very good deal on it it was before everything exploded but we still have thirty thirty three thousand dollars yet to pay on it and the interest rate is three point one two five I have forty four thousand in savings that's including the emergency fund this is our only debt where our cars are paid off we don't have credit cards all that we've done the Dave Ramsey thing for many years so our but our income because I um quit my job I retired but our income went from 110k to 80k this year um we have a pension um from my husband's first job and he's also working right now earning about twenty four hundred dollars a month not including summer summer's off because he's a teacher we want to get a trailer slash camper to start tooling the the world and I just I I just want to everyone is saying no no just keep your money in your mortgage it's very low interest rate it's cheap money but inside I'm like oh I want to pay it off but what would be the smart thing okay so let me make sure I understand so you've got forty four thousand in savings including your emergency you mentioned that your income dropped um but you do have the pension and your husband's income uh what's the balance on the mortgage thirty three thousand okay and then what are you looking to spend on the camper probably twenty to twenty five okay good so let's do this um we've got to take a quick break but when we come back uh let's talk about this and see if we can at least get you pointed in the right direction give you maybe some things to think about as you and your husband pray through this uh you stay right there julian we'll come back to you after the break folks we've got some lines open today we'll be taking more of your calls uh just around the corner as well we'll go to kendra in indianapolis and walter is in north port florida much more to come on faith and finance live stay with us great to have you with us today on faith and finance live i'm rob west we're taking your calls and questions just before the break we were talking to julie in michigan uh she just retired her husband's about a year away from retirement they have some pension income plus um he's working bringing in about thirty thousand a year uh well not quite that much maybe um about a little less than thirty thousand working as a teacher and they've got forty four thousand in savings that includes their emergency savings about a hundred thousand in investments and she's wondering with their mortgage that they have which is about thirty three thousand um should they pay that off and then on top of that they have a desire to have a camper to do some traveling and you know julie as i look at this i think the the first question is we need to solve for okay let's say your husband does in fact retire a year from now uh so at that point you know he's uh let's call it 61 uh you're 61 then you know you're you're not eligible for early social security and i'd rather you not take early social security anyway because you're gonna drop that retirement benefit by maybe 30 percent or so eight percent a year for every year you take it before full retirement age and so that's going to permanently lock in that reduction um and i guess the question is you know if he's uh getting 2400 or 24 000 a year or 2400 a month for 10 months and we take that off of the 80 000 and you guys aren't uh collecting social security now you're down at 56 000 which in a sense cuts in half what you had been living on uh before you retired uh you know how do you balance the budget at that point yeah we the thing is we are both go-getters he just finished his master's degree at almost 60 years of age he is very good at communicating so we plan on going on the road and doing some consulting we both consult a little bit here and there but we plan on doing that after yeah okay good so you're not concerned about your ability to generate income you guys know you know i've demonstrated that in the past so uh you're gonna be resourceful i guess my only concern is is the just the limited savings that we have i mean i'd love for you guys to build up a bit more cushion because if we look at right now you're living on 6500 a month and if we were to take that out for six months which is what i'd love for you to keep in liquid savings uh you know that's 40 000 and and we're right there because you've got 44 so if you deplete you know all but 10 000 of this savings i just don't feel like especially given all the transition that's coming up despite your ability to earn income uh you know i just feel like that doesn't need to leave enough liquid uh just given a lot of the changes that are coming and i realize that kind of puts you in a quandary because now you got the mortgage payment and potentially you'd have the you know a loan on top of that for the camper so i think if anything i might let's put those skills to work and start to generate over the next year or two as much income as you can and try to pay off the mortgage out of current cash flow preserving as much of that savings as possible um and then you know once you demonstrate that okay we've got enough savings now the mortgage is gone all right let's go and buy the camper and get out on the road i just don't want you to shortcut any of those processes or steps and get too lean on just your your liquid reserves if that makes sense it really does wow that that helps a lot and appreciate that okay yeah absolutely so i'm not saying you're in bad shape i'm just saying listen we're not sitting on a you know five hundred thousand dollars in retirement assets or you know we're not sitting at a place where we can you know take social security and i'd rather push that off as long as we can so i think anything you all can do to say hey we've got big plans for what we want to do in this next season but the longer we can push that back continue to work pay off all our debt build up some more savings build up some more retirement assets then we'll be in a stronger position to head out on the road for whatever god has for us next so anyway take that think it and pray it through and see what god does next but i appreciate your call today very much uh let's go to um indianapolis hi kendra go ahead hi hi there hello yes ma'am go ahead yes um i was just calling about an idea i heard uh your home and versus rent earlier and it made me think of you know i'm glad i sold my condo i have no more condo fee because the condo fee was just going higher and higher um i lost out on a super low interest rate but um i'm renting now and looking to potentially buy like a duplex i thought that would be a great idea if i could rent one side live in the other you know and then eventually you know i'm thinking since i have family overseas maybe even living overseas and i could rent both sides yeah i i like that a lot i think the only question would just be you know in this high interest rate environment i mean the 30-year mortgage just ticked back up above seven percent you know you're just going to have to be careful on buying something in terms of the affordability and your ability to do that your ability to service the debt with that rental or the the two rentals on the duplex especially with you being an absentee landlord i want to make sure you have plenty of reserves to you know keep it rented it rented and market you know market it sufficiently keep it you know up to date and repaired if there's repairs needed and obviously just these higher home prices on top of high interest rates just are going to squeeze you a little bit there if you have a big mortgage on it so just be careful on that i'm not saying you shouldn't do it but you know just go into that with some caution and perhaps if you were to wait a year you know you may be in a much better position because i think we're going to continue to see housing inventories build and i think we're probably at least most economists think we'll probably be at interest rates in the fives you know early next year if that makes sense yeah that makes sense thank you okay yeah very good but i think it's a great plan and i think i can certainly understand with those rising condo fees how you could be frustrated and say you know what enough is enough i'm gonna i'm gonna go rent for a while and maybe do something different so kendra thanks for being on the program today we appreciate uh you uh calling in uh helena i see your question i've got a quick break coming up here but let me just say you know when your credit score it sounds like your credit score went down and you said i'm using the credit card within the limit and you know there's so many factors there when it comes to using credit cards that move our credit score credit utilization which you're referring to is a big one so when you use that card and you go above with a balance 30 of the limit that's going to pull it down quicker than anything else but there's a whole host of factors if you paid something off it changes your credit history if you get an inquiry uh you know that's going to impact you so there's a variety of factors i would encourage you to pull your credit report and see if anything jumps out of you there thanks for your call a quick break and back with more on faith and finance live stay with us great to have you with us today on faith and finance live i'm rob west your host this is where we apply the wisdom from the bible to your financial decisions and choices we'd love to hear from you today let's head right back to the phones to lake worth florida wrmb hi sandra go right ahead hello can you hear me yes ma'am hi um thank you for taking my call thank you for all the knowledge that you provided i really appreciate that and i do apply some of them that i remember but anyway let me ask my question um i've been selling tax for a while now but this year i found my tax and my tax was rejected they told me because um it showed that i have insurance with the government through obama care which i never do i never apply for any um health insurance through the government um i have insurance through my job i just don't know what to do i've been calling rs but i don't i can't find anybody to talk with so i don't know what else to do i called up the the the insurance place it's called market place they told me that they're going to put in an investigation but that's all they told me i haven't heard anything yet interesting okay uh yeah i would definitely get some uh professional assistance with that um you know i'm a little confused by that i mean normally when we hear about this somebody's surprised by a rejection a lot of times it's because they're saying they've already received a return unfortunately this is on the rise that would be where somebody steals your social security number and files a fraudulent return to receive your refund and then when you try to file e-file it would be rejected um but you know if that's not the case and and there's a another reason why the uh the return is being rejected it's probably because there's a missing form on there uh you know failure to report health coverage uh will result in a rejected return and that might be what's going on here so did you file this yourself or did you have somebody do that for you no i went to professionals um they always saw my text every year they've been i've been following with them for like five years now okay and that's the first time this happened and she asked me do i have health insurance with the government not totally no yeah so that's one of the benefits of using somebody to file on your behalf is that you can chase down these problems and let them do the work for you and find out why it was rejected and what the issue is and i would just wait for her to get the information for you and she should be able to help you rectify the situation that's why i call you guys because she told me she can't i'm the one i have to do the the research so okay thank you guys answered me but well i appreciate it unfortunately i'm not a cpa and i don't wouldn't uh be able to to do this digging for you you really need somebody who can take the rejection information and help you understand exactly why it was rejected and if there's an something that's incorrect with regard to why the government is saying they can't why the irs is saying they can't accept it uh what you need to do to rectify it unfortunately that's not something we can do over the radio that really requires a tax professional so i would kick this back to them and say listen this is why i'm paying you i need you to help me resolve this where do i go from here to be able to prove you know whether or not this rejection is appropriate and and get this rectified if you need a second opinion you can reach out to a certified kingdom advisor in your area and you can find one on our website at faithfi.com i'm sorry though sandra i know this is frustrating and hopefully with some help of a competent professional you can get to the bottom of it we appreciate your call today let's head to chicago hi debbie go right ahead hi i had a question um if you're gonna buy a car is it better to borrow money out of your like 401k or uh when you can like take a lot out and that way you're paying back interest to yourself or is it best to let that money keep working for you towards your retirement and just get a car loan yeah you know even though rates are up right now on loans i still like the idea of you borrowing for the car purchase as little as you possibly can paying it off as quick as you can but but not taking it from the 401k i understand why that might sound appealing because as you said you're taking your own money out you can put it back in through paying it back and you're paying interest to yourself the problem is the whole idea of putting it in there is so that it can be growing for the future so you're missing out on that compounded growth while the money's out not only that but right now you're pulling it out during a time when the market's down and we don't know when it's going to recover but you want that money in there so that it can recover when the market does even though it will likely go down more before it goes up and then thirdly if for some reason for any reason you separated for the company now all of a sudden that's all taxable to you plus a penalty if you're less than 59 and a half so i think for those reasons as much as i don't like to pay any interest you know i would borrow the money collateralized by the car itself and then just try to pay it back as quick as you can okay thank you very much appreciate it all right very good we appreciate your call to zephyr hills florida hi nancy go right ahead hi rob i'm calling because i have a question regarding retirement and uh social security i work for the federal government and because of the windfall tax profit they take my social security at a rate of i think two-thirds yeah and um i've talked to people and they get like twelve hundred dollars a month social security and i was giving two dollars a month so i'm like something's not right here and i went to the social security office they reviewed my case they said oh well you can't have two pensions from the government and because i'm getting a retirement pension they say i can't pursue the social security allotment yeah so unfortunately well no the the only way that you could uh have this reversed is if you are un you are not eligible for another pension but if you are eligible for another pension then unfortunately that windfall elimination provision is going to apply usually cutting the benefits in half or perhaps even more and it comes from working for the federal government or another state or local government where you are eligible for another pension and they then limit your ability to earn social security because of that so if in fact you do have that other pension then there's not going to be another way around this unfortunately even though i paid into the system 40 quarters working outside of the government as well yeah i don't understand you know yeah somebody who didn't work with the federal government they're doing their full social security amount and they have their 40 quarters in but because i worked for the federal government they take it you take two thirds of my uh social security right right and it's because yeah this other pension that's available through the work that you did and i understand the frustration there but they're only going to give you one or the other unfortunately so um i think you know if you feel like you know something's not right you can obviously go in and see if you could get somebody face to face and try to understand a bit more but unfortunately if that other pension is available they're not going to give you both as much as i wish i had better information for you i'm so sorry to hear your situation nancy we do appreciate you being on the program today and may god bless you in the days ahead yeah before we head to our break you know as i read scripture i see this big idea jumping off the page around contentment you know i think as we consider our role as stewards of god's money we need to foster this attitude that the apostle paul talked about and that is contentment remember he said that it's learned i've learned to be content he was in a time of plenty and in a time of need and he learned to be content in either of those contentment it's a choice and when we increase our contentment well then we can focus on what god has given us and not on what he's given others i hope that's an encouragement to you today just around the corner we have some more questions to tackle i know you're going to enjoy the calls we have coming up stay with us we'll be right back hey great to have you with us today on faith and finance live i'm rob west all right let's head right back to the phones we'll get to as many questions as we can here in this final segment to new york we go hi judy go right ahead yes hi rob i listen to your program every day please continue the good work that god has called you to yes i would like to um for you to guide me i have one daughter and i figure i'll make it simple for her so i did a quick deed claim and put her name on the deed and i put her the beneficiary for all my bank accounts and my life insurances just to make it simple for her um then i by listening to you i heard i should have done a trust fund for her so that she didn't have to pay taxes on the condo am i right yeah and so you've already done the quit claim deed is that right that's right yeah uh yeah the challenge with that is then she is going to inherit your cost basis uh which basically just means once she goes to sell the property either after your life or you all decide to sell it together but let's say she holds on to it and somewhere down the road after you've gone home to be with the lord she sells it uh the the capital gains is going to be determined based on your original purchase price if you would have passed it to her as a through an inheritance whether that's through a trust or just a basic will or a transfer on death deed then she gets the stepped up basis so the cost basis for determining capital gains would be stepped up to the market value as of the date of your death so unfortunately when you when you do that quit claim deed that's going to mean that she inherits your cost basis so she'll just have some additional taxes to pay um when she sells it that's the reason why we typically don't want to do that um but if that's already done then that's kind of behind us and i think from this point forward you just as you've been doing just make sure all your your will is current your beneficiaries are current and then you know you're ready whenever the lord takes you home uh you know you'll efficiently pass the rest of your assets to her great i was avoiding the will but from talking to you i'm going to do a will yeah okay yeah unfortunately i'm not sure you could talk to a real estate attorney and see if there's any way to unwind that but i'm i'm afraid that you've since you've already quit claim deeded this property over to her she's now a 50 owner or whatever percent you gave her and again that inherits your original cost basis but for any of these types of issues as you make your wealth transfer plans always good to get the counsel of an attorney so hopefully that helps you we appreciate your call judy thanks for your kind remarks and for listening to the program every day we appreciate it uh to ohio marianne go right ahead hi i have income checks coming to me about fifteen thousand dollars and i wanted to know what would be the best way to um make more money off of it i don't know about cds or mutual funds or thoughts or bonds or anything like that sure so uh do you already have marianne what i call an emergency fund a liquid savings account of three to six months expenses no sir but i've heard you talk about it okay i think that's probably the place to start which means i wouldn't invest this money meaning i wouldn't put it in stocks and bonds and try to grow it because with that you've gotta you really only want to do that if you have a long time horizon and uh you know if we don't have an emergency fund that's the place to begin now this is good news that you've got this money coming to you uh and it'd be a great way to get that emergency fund started so what i would do is when it comes in i'd go ahead and open a high yield savings account probably with an online bank you could use marcus or capital one 360 or if you wanted a bank that aligned with your christian values you could use the christian community credit union at joinchristiancommunity.com but you would link that to your checking account and then go ahead and move this over let's call this your the beginning of your emergency fund with a goal of getting this to three to six months expenses and then when the unexpected comes this is what you use you know to fall back on so you don't have to borrow anything and if this isn't equal to three to six months expenses you could keep you know building this up with additional funds that's where you'd want to invest where you've got truly a minimum of a 10-year time horizon i'd probably start with a company-sponsored retirement plan if you don't have one you could use a roth ira but that's that's how i would would approach this 15 000 does that make sense yes um with the with the roth ira what do they use a yield they they don't yield anything so the roth ira is just simply the type of account so you have a joint account with you and a spouse you'd have an individual account and then a roth ira is an account category that's a retirement account and it basically allows for you to put in after tax dollars up to sixty five hundred dollars a year under age six under age 50 and then invest that inside the roth so you put in cash and then once it's in there you can choose whatever investments you want cds stocks bonds mutual funds exchange traded funds and as those investments grow inside the roth ira then they're not affected by the taxes and then when you pull the money out including all the gains it's tax-free as long as you do it after age 59 and a half and as long as the account's been open for at least five years so the roth doesn't have a yield again that's just the account type it really has to do with what investments you put inside of it all right um are there any certified kingdom advisors in this area there probably are i would say though if you're just getting started you're probably not going to be able to work with a certified kingdom advisor just because their typical minimums are a little higher than for someone who's just getting started so what i would probably do is check with our friends at soundmindinvesting.org they can help you with some investment strategies make some mutual fund selections that would be helpful to you again sound mind investing dot o-r-g the other thing i would mention to you marianne is if if all of this money is coming as a tax refund and you're getting fifteen thousand dollars back that's an interest-free loan that you made to the government for a year with a lot of money and i'd much prefer to see you get that into your monthly paycheck and get that refund down as close to zero as possible and that means you need to update your w4 form and there's a formula on the form that'll tell you how to fill it out but there's no sense in letting the government hold on hold on to that money to you i'd rather that be in your check every month so you can use it to fund your long-term investments or your savings things like that hopefully that helps you we appreciate your call today let's head to lainey in chicago go right ahead oh yes i have a question oh yes i have a question i live on north side i'm 65 and i paid into an insurance life insurance first was term and then went to uh hold and that insurance company went out of business without letting me know i never got any policy or my book back or payment i was just switched back and forth and i had that ever since i was 14 i'm 65 but no way to be buried yeah and so the you're wondering what to do about the policy is that right um i don't have any any um the person took everything the policy the books and they just went out of business i contacted the attorney general's office they said that they don't deal with individual uh cases as normally businesses they recommend that i get a private attorney which i'm on a fixed income and i have no other income okay so again i'm a little confused as to what's what's happened here so was this a whole life policy uh that had some cash value that built up in it it was a term life when i was 14 i paid until i was 26 and then it went in whole life and now i'm 65 they took my money all the way up to i would say now and now they went out of business and i was told they went out in 2016 just finding this out and i have no no way of contacting anyone they went into another under another name the agent told me that there was nothing i could do it was like bragging you know that did you talk so policies are insured by the state guarantee association fund in the state of illinois that's going to be the ihiga it's the illinois life and health insurance guarantee association is that who you contacted hello hello yes ma'am can you hear me um i didn't get the other part okay been guaranteed yeah so visit this website to learn more and perhaps this could give you some next steps it's i h i g a dot org that's i h i g a dot o-r-g that's the guarantee association there in the state of illinois that guarantees these policies and it should be insured up to 300,000 in death benefits although that's not an issue here but also up to a hundred thousand dollars in cash surrender or withdrawal values so again that's i h i g a dot org lainey i know this is frustrating i hope that can help you get some answers we appreciate your call today uh let's see to jupiter florida hi diane go ahead hi i'm good researching possible life insurance policies to pay off my mortgage uh for my children at the time of my death i refinanced it a couple years ago i have 153,000 on it but i just turned 74 a couple weeks ago so everyone that's been quoting me prices for a 10 year it of course is going to be pricey because i'm older so 240 to 300 a month would it be wiser for me to take that money because in a couple of months i'm getting a small inheritance which i'm going to wipe out all my credit cards would it be better to use that money instead of using for insurance company use it and put it down on the principal on the house absolutely yes uh there's not a reason for insurance here the reason we have life insurance is to offset a risk a loss of income or a hardship that would be placed on our loved ones at our death that's not going to be the case here you know if your kids inherit the house and there's still a mortgage on it they'll sell the house and use the proceeds to pay off the mortgage and then they can split the rest so you paying an exorbitant amount for life insurance at your age for a death benefit to cover a mortgage that already has some equity in it there's really not a benefit to do that i think you take this money and put it towards shoring up your own financial foundation i completely agree diane thanks for your call today god bless you that's going to do it for us we're so thankful you're with us today faith and finance live is a partnership between moody and radio and faith by we'll see you tomorrow god bless you