Preparing for the Inevitable

Good stewardship requires that we prepare yourIPrudent acts with knowledge. So whether you're a newlywed, single, or celebrating your 50th year of marriage, it's important to plan for the future.

death isn't a matter of if, but when. There are many financial decisions that have to be made following a death, and most of them will be much easier if you and your spouse, if you're married, have updated wills. I can't emphasize this enough.

This is task number one. Legal powers of attorney and healthcare directives are also critical. You'll need an estate attorney to draw these up.

It's an expense, but don't put it off. The goal of estate planning is to assure that your wishes are met after you die, both personally and legally. Your loved ones will appreciate knowing exactly what you want at a time when it can be hard to make decisions. I also recommend that you prepare instructions for your memorial service or funeral, if possible.

Sounds gloomy, but it's actually a very loving way to help your family and friends begin the grieving process. As you're getting your will put together, you'll also need to make two important lists. The first is a list of all your financial accounts. This includes bank accounts, investments, credit cards, mortgages, retirement, outstanding loans and pensions.

It's important to keep this list updated. The second list is everyone who will need to be contacted in the event of your death or that of your spouse, along with phone numbers and addresses. This includes family members and friends, financial institutions, pension and life insurance companies, social security, the IRS and credit bureaus.

You might also include contact information for your college alumni association and other organizations you're involved with. While you're organizing your financial papers and contact list, you should update the beneficiary designations on all your bank, investment and life insurance accounts. By the way, make sure someone you trust knows where all your important documents are located.

If you're married, your spouse needs to know how to get hold of this information. With the help of an estate attorney, arrange for major assets like vehicles and your home to be jointly owned or transferred on death. This will help you avoid probate on these assets and secures them for survivor's use if you're married.

Each state has different rules for property and probate, which is why having professional help is so important. Now, let me speak to those of you who are married for a moment. First, let me stress how important it is that both spouses understand the family finances. Too often, one spouse will handle all of the money matters and if that spouse passes away first, the survivor is completely in the dark. Next, if you use credit cards, it's important that each spouse has one in their own name.

That's because when a card holder dies, the issuer must be notified. At that point, the card will be closed and the surviving spouse can no longer use that card, even if he or she is listed as an authorized user. The third point for married couples to consider ahead of time is what the surviving spouse's income will be. For most people, losing a spouse means losing some or all of your income, which may require significant lifestyle changes. Consider this ahead of time and plan accordingly. If you're retired and on Social Security, know what your benefit will be if your spouse dies.

If you both get Social Security checks, the survivor gets to take the larger monthly payment. Have the documents accessible so you can start the Social Security survivor benefit process immediately when one spouse dies. You know, it's worth emphasizing again the importance of communication in these financial matters. It's so critical to talk about the future with your spouse and, if appropriate, with your children or other family members. That way, everyone knows what to expect. Now, I know this is difficult, but consider the alternative. Not communicating now can lead the surviving spouse in a vulnerable position, making a difficult time even more stressful.

Another reason for clear, honest communication is so that you and your spouse are on the same page about things like charitable giving, guardianship of minor children, and disposal of assets. You and I can't know when the Lord will call us home, but we do know where home is. Philippians 3.20 reminds us that our citizenship is in heaven and from it, we will await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. This is Faith and Finance Live. We'll be back in just a moment. Stick around. 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. Great to have you with us today on Faith and Finance Live. All right, it's time to turn the corner and give the rest of the program to you for your calls and questions.

We want to know what's on your mind today. Financially speaking, you can reach us at 800-525-7000. That's 800-525-7000. The calls will come in quickly and the lines will fill up, so if you've got that burning question you have in your financial life and you'd like somebody to weigh in, helping you look at it through the lens of God's word, I'd be delighted to do that.

Again, the number is 800-525-7000. You know, I've been thinking a lot lately about this passage in Luke 12, the parable of the rich fool, because we just released our brand new, the first, in fact, of our FaithFi studies. It's a four week dive into God's word around some really important money themes. This very first one that we tackled was this really important passage in Luke 12 verses 13 to 21. You know, it begins with this man asking Jesus about an inheritance. And Jesus, of course, refuses to settle the dispute, but he sees the real problem, as he always does.

He knew that an inheritance would be a false solution to a heart problem of the questioner. So he takes the time in this fascinating story in God's word to invite this man and the rest of his followers, who were listening on at the time, into this richer life with God that's available to them by telling this stark story about a futile inheritance of someone who does not know God. And Jesus calls us through this story to step out of that kind of futility and into a new way of life, focusing our hope on a richer, eternal inheritance. In fact, Peter writes about this imperishable inheritance that we have in Christ in 1 Peter 1, 3 through 9.

You'll remember it. It says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, or according to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Now listen to this, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. You know, that imperishable inheritance is what we all want to pursue, and it's the gift that's available to us. But Jesus ends up telling this story to address this heart issue, and this fascinating ending to this parable is right at the end of this passage, where he asks us or questions us about whether or not we're rich toward God through this story of the rich fool. Now, in the parable of the rich fool, he's inviting us into something more than just giving our possessions away. You see, I don't think the answer to being rich toward God is just about being generous. You see, he's calling us to store up treasures in heaven by giving our heart to him and making God our true riches.

Listen to what pastor and author John Piper says about this. He says, rich toward God means moving God as, moving toward God as our riches. Rich toward God means counting God greater riches than anything on earth. Rich toward God means using earthly riches to show how much you value God. You see, Jesus is inviting you and I to make him the desire of our hearts every moment of every day. And so the question we have to ask ourselves is, will we surrender our life, our plans, and our finances to him? Will we make God our ultimate treasure?

Well, if you would like to unpack this a bit more, perhaps you'd like to dive deeply into the parable of the rich fool that we find in Luke 12 and understand the historical context and dig deep into God's word and even confront some of these challenging questions, I'd love for you to pick up a copy of it today. You'll find it on our website at faithfi.com. That's faithfi.com.

You can click on shop at the top of the page and that will take you right into our store where you can purchase a copy. Perhaps you're in a small group study or you're in a men's or women's group that meets a church or in your neighborhood and you're always looking for just great practical but biblical studies that you can unpack with a group of friends together. This would be a great one.

Again, it's called Rich Toward God and you'll find it on our website at faithfi.com. All right, I'm ready to take some questions today. We've got some lines open and perhaps whatever question you've been wrestling with, you're welcome to call right now. That number, 800-525-7000. We've got lines open. We're gonna begin in Twin Lakes today.

That's Wisconsin. Mike, go right ahead. Hi, thanks for taking my call. My wife and I are looking to purchase our first home in about a year and we are a single income family. I work, she stays in home schools, our four children. I'm wondering if it would be a good idea when it's time to get our mortgage to have her listed on the mortgage as well or if it would be better to keep her off. What I don't want is for something to happen to me and then her be responsible for it.

So I just wanted to get your opinion on that. Yeah, well, so you basically are looking to buy a new home. Is that right? You're not talking about the current home that you have? Correct, we currently rent. We've been saving up and we're looking to buy a home next spring.

Okay, very good. Yeah, when you do that, your wife, what I imagine, would want to stay in the home, but in either case, the estate would be responsible whether she's on the mortgage or not to take care of the outstanding balance. So whether she's looking to sell it and move to downsize to something or she wants to continue to live there, if you were to pass away, that mortgage is going to need to be continued on. And typically, it would just automatically, they wouldn't require her to refinance because she's married to you. She would just be able to keep the marital home and continue paying on it. She would naturally be on the deed, I would expect, with the two of you. That would be a good idea so that it would speed up her taking ownership.

You wouldn't have to wait for that process to occur. But it really, I don't think there's a huge advantage one way or the other to her being on the mortgage. Typically, if her income is unnecessary, and in this case, with her being non-working, it wouldn't factor in. Often, she would not be on the mortgage because they're not looking to be able to count any income from her for your qualification. But that wouldn't really cause any problems. Again, the home would be hers.

She'd be responsible for that lien and likely she would just continue those mortgage payments. Okay, perfect. That answers that. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Yeah, no problem. Just one clarification on that. So federal law actually requires this. So the lender is required under federal law to allow her to assume that mortgage. So if you're both on that mortgage, no brainer. If she's not, she would then assume it.

It would become her mortgage to the property that she's already on the deed for and then she would just continue on from there. So you can go either way, Mike, and if it's simpler just to have you on it, that would be no problem if you were to pass away first. Hey, thanks for being on the program today. We appreciate your call. All right, folks, we're gonna take a break. When we come back, more of your questions. Lines are open.

I'm ready for them. 800-525-7000 with whatever's on your mind. Again, 800-525-7000. We'll be right back. Thanks for joining us today on Faith and Finance Live.

I'm Rob West. You know, Julie and I were talking last night about our own spending plan. We were looking at our FaithFi app and looking at our various envelopes and remarking in how quickly those envelopes get depleted even six days into the month as of yesterday and what course corrections we needed to make. And we wouldn't have been able to do that if we didn't have a picture of what's going on in our finances in real time based on the tried and true envelope system. And that's what the FaithFi app will do for you. If you wanna check it out today, I'd love for you to put your own plan together, connect your bank accounts and credit cards and savings accounts, set up your plan, automatically fund your envelopes, and then as your transactions come in, it will allow you to see in real time where each envelope stands so you can make course corrections along the way.

You see, having cushion or margin, something left over at the end of the month is the key to you being able to stay on plan and ultimately fund your goals because that margin is what allows you to pay down debt and save for the future and give more generously. So check it out today. Just go to our website, faithfi.com. That's faithfi.com and click on app, or you can go straight to your app store.

That's might be Google Play, or maybe you use an Apple device, the Apple app store. Just search for FaithFi, faith and finance, and you'll see it. You can get started today. We'd love for you to check it out. All right, we're gonna dive in yet again. We've got, it looks like four lines open at 800-525-7000. You can call with your financial questions right now. Let's go to Cleveland. Hi, John, go ahead, sir. Hey, thanks for taking my call, Rob.

Sure. I, me and my wife are debt-free minus our mortgage, and we're kind of curious what we should be investing in now. Should we try and finish off that mortgage? It's got a 3.6 interest rate, and it's about 136K remaining, or should we just kind of hit our retirement fund and investment strong, so I guess some numbers for that. I'm maxing out my personal Roth IRA.

I don't have a company matched by any means, and then I have 18,000 in an individual investment account that's managed by a financial advisor. It gets between 10 and 15%. We have about 7,000 in a money market account that gets 5% right now, and then we have about 16,000 in a high-yield savings account that's about 4.3, and we're kind of sitting just investing here and there. We just want to know if we should really get after our mortgage or keep the path and keep investing.

Yeah, very good. Tell me about that mortgage again. Did you say the interest rate was 3.6?

Yes. Okay, and what do you owe on it? One, like 136K. Okay, 136,000. What is it worth?

Probably between 350,000 and 400,000 with all our renovations. Okay, got it. Yeah, that's helpful. So, in terms of... Well, and last question. What is your age? I'm 30. Okay, 30 years old. Yeah, so you've got a good bit of time. You know, I think for you guys, I mean, you're not having any trouble making this mortgage payment, right, just based on your spending plan? Yeah, no, not at all.

Okay, all right. Yeah, I mean, so, you know, typically what they say is, you know, by 30, you want one times your salary put aside. And these are just ballparks. One times your salary put aside for retirement. By 40, you'd want three times your salary.

By 50, six times. And then ultimately, you want 10 to 12 times your salary put away. And that plus Social Security, you know, should make up at least 70 to 80% of your pre-retirement income, which is what most people live on. Now, some people may be listening to me right now saying, wait a minute, I'm not 30, I'm 60, and I'm not anywhere close to that. I understand that, and that's okay. You know, so then we make some other approaches to that. We might work longer than we expected to. We might dial back our lifestyle. You know, we may work part-time when we transition to whatever God has for us in that season of life and not, you know, completely step away from paid work.

You know, we were created to be workers, so I'm not even starting with the assumption that we need to transition away at 65, you know, this artificial age that our culture has given to us. But given that, Jon, I think the key for you guys is, with that low interest rate mortgage, you know, what I'd love to see you do, unless you just have an absolute conviction from the Lord, you or your wife, that you need to be out of debt as soon as absolutely possible, apart from that, I'd say let's just keep paying on the mortgage. The interest rate is low. Maybe we send an extra payment a year, maybe not. The goal is to certainly try to have it paid off by the time you retire, but you're, you know, 35 years-plus away from that. And I think your biggest opportunity right now is to just get as much money as you can going into long-term, compounded, you know, growth investments. Now, we'd love to do that as best you can in a tax-deferred environment, so if you've got a Roth yourself, I mean, the second option would be, which would be very easy to do, open a spousal Roth, so now you can double what you're putting away there. And then I think beyond that, we'd want to look for other options. But I think the key is, you know, let's get as much as you can growing for the future, just given the fact that, you know, right now, it sounds like you've got about 18,000, and at 30 years of age, you know, I'd love for you to be a little bit further along than you are. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, it does.

I guess I maybe didn't explain. I have been maxing out a Roth IRA for myself for a couple of years now, and my wife does have also an investment. It's not maxed, but I guess that's a clear path to get those maxed out as well. Yeah, I think that's the next step. So is there any prospect of you having a company-sponsored plan in the future? Currently, not right now. You know, I work for a small business. It's just being the owner, and that's it.

Okay, yeah, no problem. So you guys may want to look at adding a simple IRA. It's, you know, very little overhead, and it might help you attract other employees when that time comes, and it would give you a vehicle that, alongside that Roth, you could put some more money away. You could also use insurance to do that. You know, if you run out of tax-deferred vehicles, that's where whole life insurance is.

That's one of those limited cases that I would like to look at it. But I think the big idea is let's keep money going into investment accounts to grow for your future and not necessarily prioritize the mortgage at this point. Thanks for your call. We'll be right back.

I'm grateful you've tuned in today to Faith in Finance Live. I'm Rob West. We're taking your calls and questions. I've got, let's see, three lines open at 800-525-7000.

Let's head back to the phones to Chicago. Lynn, I understand you have a comment about one of our previous callers related to assuming a mortgage as a spouse who's not on the mortgage when your working spouse passes away. Give us your thoughts. Yeah, I'm in the process of assuming a mortgage actually from my father, and it's been such a tedious process that I feel like if you can avoid it, I would highly recommend that because it's been eight months, and every two months they come back and they request 12 more pieces of documentation, and it's been all of the inheritance kind of on hold because I can't go forward until I assume the mortgage, and it's just been exasperating. So if they have an opportunity to put their spouse on the mortgage, I would not recommend later trying to assume the mortgage because not only I'm trying to, you know, affairs, it's just been very, very frustrating. Yeah. Well, that makes a lot of sense. I appreciate that.

Obviously, you're living it, and so I think you're speaking from firsthand experience. I mean, the reality is there's no reason you wouldn't want your spouse on there because at the very least, it's going to make this process that Lynn's going through easier. There's no reason the lender wouldn't want your spouse on there because that's just one more person that they can go after to make sure they get made whole, and you're going to be responsible for it anyway. So I think to Lynn's point, why not?

Even if you have a non-working spouse who's not bringing income to the table in terms of qualification, still go ahead and put both names on the application and therefore both names on the mortgage. It's just going to make things simpler in the end. And going back to our opening topic today as we talk about preparing for the inevitable, it's really all about just making sure you are prepared and either spouse is prepared, and we want that difficult season to be as simple as possible to take one thing off of your mind. So Lynn, I think it's a great idea, and I appreciate you sharing that firsthand experience that you're going through with our listeners today. Thanks for calling.

Let's see, Chattanooga, Tennessee is where Susan is. Go right ahead. Yes, this is Sue, and I'm an 80-year-old on a fixed income, and I have a home that has a large amount of equity in it between $268,000 and $320,000. My question is, my son, I've been single for the last 11 years, and my son had supplemented my income for a few years until I got over the hump, and I was just wondering if there was a way that I could pay him back. He hasn't asked for it, but I would like to be able to pay him back because he's building his business, and I know he could use it, and it would alleviate. I have three children, and it would alleviate them dividing up everything when I do pass away.

Yeah, yeah, no, I can certainly appreciate that. What was the total amount that he extended to you that you'd be looking to repay, Sue? It's around, it would be around 32,000, and of course, I wanted to give him a little bit of interest, so I was thinking 35,000 maybe. All right, and what kind of surplus do you have on a monthly basis currently? I don't have a lot of surplus on a monthly basis. I have maybe 250, $300.

I am on a really good budget, but that's the only surplus I do have. Yeah, okay, and what would your son say about this? You mentioned that he doesn't know you wanna do this. When you sit down and say, here's what I'm about to do, especially if it involves you borrowing to do it, what do you think he would say about that?

He would probably welcome it, but he would definitely say, mom, don't worry about it. We're gonna take care of you down the road. Yeah, okay. He's a very generous person. Sure, sure. Well, I would say, in terms of where you go from here, I would have that conversation with him first, personally, unless you just are committed to this and you kinda wanna show up for the conversation and say, this is what I've already done, because I don't want you to talk me out of it, but apart from that, I would probably sit down with him and just say, hey, here's my heart. Here's what I'm trying to do. I wanna bless you as you're building this business. I'm so grateful for what you did.

It was so important to me in that season of life. And then thirdly, I wanna minimize the complexity of the wealth transfer when I pass between you and your siblings, and just talk that through and make sure you all are both on the same page before you go through whatever the next step is. In terms of how you would get that equity back, I think a reverse mortgage is probably gonna be the best option. And often we think of a reverse mortgage in terms of a monthly income stream, but it doesn't have to be. You could do a reverse mortgage as a lump sum, a specific dollar amount, so in this case, $35,000, and then you wouldn't make any payments on that unless you wanted to, but it wouldn't become an obligation to you. It would just be 35,000 that's been taken out of your mortgage.

That would grow based on a reasonable interest rate that's consistent with the prevailing rates of the day, plus some minor fees that would be added to that annually. And then whatever that grows to over the rest of your life at your death, it would be settled through your estate. So whatever that 35,000 became when your house is sold before it was distributed to your heirs equally, if that's the way you've divided it, that would be paid back to the reverse mortgage lender, and then the rest would be passed on. So that would be a nice option just because any other borrowing that you do would require that you now have a monthly payment that you have to absorb in your monthly expenses, whereas with the reverse mortgage, you take the money out and you don't pay anything which just helps you not have any additional outgo from your finances. Does that make sense?

It makes a lot of sense. My question would be, so they would get the value of my house minus the 35,000 plus fees, but they would be entitled to an interest, and they would be entitled to the remaining amount. That's right. And if they wanted to keep the house, they'd have to pay it off the mortgage. And if they wanted to sell the house, the house would be sold, the reverse mortgage would be paid back, and then the balance would be available for them as an inheritance.

Okay, here's another question. I have two sons and would they be able to hold the reverse mortgage? I have one because they don't want to sell the house.

They want the house. It would have to be paid back. So what they would do is they would refinance it. So unless they had the ability to pay it off just out of cash, and so let's say you have three children, I don't know that that's the case, but let's say you did and they're each getting a third. If two of them wanted to keep it and one didn't, they would have to pay out the one third, equivalent to his or her portion, and then they'd have to refinance the mortgage, the reverse mortgage with a new conventional loan in their name that pays off the reverse mortgage, and then they'd be responsible for that mortgage, and then they'd have the house. Does that make sense?

Yes, it does. But what would happen if they were the reverse mortgage company themselves personally? Well, they wouldn't be. So the reverse mortgage is a reverse mortgage lender that does reverse mortgages.

So they're going to need to be paid back if you sell the house or die, and that's either going to be cash from the person who inherits the house or cash because they took out their own conventional mortgage and used that money to pay off the reverse mortgage. Let's do this. I've got to take a break, Susan, but you and I will finish up off the air, and then we're back with our final segment after this. Stick around. Grateful to have you with us today on Faith and Finance Live. Hey, before we head back to the phones here in our final segment, let me invite you to become a monthly supporter of the ministry here at Faith and Finance. We bring you this program each day, the stories that you hear, the people's lives that are impacted.

Perhaps you've been impacted by it. Maybe you listen regularly, you've found some encouragement, or you've been able to apply what you hear, and you'd like to make sure this message continues to get out to others like you. Well, becoming a monthly supporter of the ministry would be a great way to do that. It'd be an enormous blessing to us, and it's quick and easy to do when you head to faithfi.com and click Give. That's faithfi.com and click Give. We are a not-for-profit, listener-supported ministry, and so thanks in advance for any gift you make. All right, here in our final segment, we're gonna get to as many calls as we can. Let's quickly go to Tampa, Florida.

Hi, Patricia, go right ahead. Hi, I have a question for you, and this one, I'm in the process of updating my will, and this question relates to my home, how to transfer the home. I have two kids in college right now. They're 20 and 24. They most likely will never live in the house because one's starting to be a missionary abroad, and the other one has plans to live out of state, and I'm trying to figure how best to transfer the home value to them, most likely equally, and I wanted to know if I should put it in a trust or if I should simply change the mortgage, I guess the title of the home to each of their names payable on deck. Yeah, you know, you're not able to do a transfer on death deed there in Florida, so that option is often the simplest, and it's the least, it's the most cost effective, but it's not available in Florida, so you have two options, really, because you don't want to just put their names on the deed through a quitclaim deed, because then they don't inherit the stepped up basis, and not to get too technical, but normally when you sell a home, you subtract the selling price from the original purchase price, and then unless it's been your primary residence for at least two out of five years, you pay capital gains on the gain, going back to the original purchase price, but when you inherit a property, you get a stepped up basis, so that new cost basis for determining capital gains jumps up to the market value as of the date of death, so that means if they turn around and sell it pretty quickly, they're not going to pay any capital gains because they get that stepped up cost basis. They're not going to look at what you paid for it. It's jumped up to the market value as of the date you passed away, so if you put them on the deed, you don't get that benefit, so we don't want to do that, so what's left?

Well, there's two options. One is a will. You just name them in your will to inherit your property and assets, including your home. And so it would go through probate, and the executor would make sure it's listed and sold, and then after the probate court gets involved and there's some fees paid, then eventually they'd get the money. Now, there is some cost and some time involved in probate, which is why other people, and you mentioned this, will use what's called a revocable trust. Revocable just meaning you can change it at any time, but you would retitle the property in the name of the revocable trust, and then it can pass to your sons directly without going through the probate court, and it's going to cost about three times as much as a will. Instead of $500, it might be $1,500 or $2,000, but it's going to make that process a little bit more efficient. It's not going to involve the probate court and the costs associated with it, and it will go directly to your boys in whatever way you designate inside the trust.

Does that make sense? That would absolutely make sense, and that was my extension of the question was, is there any reason I would not want to put it into a trust besides the cost if in the fact that at some point my health is not great and if I needed to sell the house in order to fund some kind of long-term care? No, that would have no bearing on that. You would be subject to the Medicaid spend-down provisions, which just simply says, you know, before Medicaid kicks in, you'd have to spend the money you'd have to spend down your assets below that $2,000 threshold, and that trust would not protect you from that. The trust is basically a vehicle there so that your assets, and in this case, we're talking about your home, could be managed by the trustee if either you pass away or you're incapacitated, and so someone else could make decisions on your behalf with regard to anything in the trust before, during, or after your death if you're unable to do so, and it could affect the transfer of the proceeds of the home or the home itself to your heirs based on your wishes expressed inside the trust documents. So inside the trust document, I caught every single part of that except the $2,000 Medicaid spend-down. I could not meet that threshold of the $2,000 if it's in the trust?

No, what I was saying was it's not gonna protect you from that provision. So there is something called a Medicaid trust that basically shields the assets from that spend-down so that whatever's in that Medicaid trust doesn't apply to that $2,000 threshold before Medicaid would pay. The problem is that's not a revocable trust, that's an irrevocable trust, so you've lost that asset in terms of controlling it, number one, and number two, if you're relying on Medicaid to a Medicaid facility to care for you, you're gonna have to be happy with the Medicaid options which are much different than you might choose if you were making your own decisions with regard to who's providing your care and what nursing home you're in and things like that. So you're probably gonna wanna spend those assets down anyway because you're gonna wanna control your own care and then once you get to that $2,000 limit, if it goes that far, then you'd have to rely on a Medicaid facility. The only way to avoid that is to have long-term care insurance which is a whole nother topic. It can be expensive and the price can increase over time so you need to make sure it fits in your budget but that's the best way to make sure you have the income you need if you can't perform those activities of daily living so that you can pay the high cost of in-home care or assisted living or nursing care, that kind of thing. Okay, and so the revocable trust has no impact on those decisions.

That's correct. The revocable trust is just to efficiently transfer your assets and property to your heirs at your death before or after, if you're incapacitated or if you want the trust to pay them out over time. Again, that's all up to you and that's the only purpose of that trust. It has nothing to do with protecting your assets or Medicaid or long-term care or anything like that. Okay, so there's no reason not to put it in a trust except obviously the cost up front.

That's exactly right and the next step would be to get with a godly, a state attorney who can walk you through all this, help you ask and answer all the questions and then ultimately draft the trust that would be consistent with the laws of the state of Florida and the way you need to do that. Perfect, I appreciate that. Thank you so much. All right, Patricia, God bless you. Thanks for calling today. Let's go to Tennessee. Hi, Kevin, go ahead, sir.

Yeah, hi, Rob. A question about values investing. Before I had this kind of epiphany, I was invested in some index funds and mutual funds which I found out later are invested in some companies I don't agree with, companies that sponsor things I don't agree with. Since I'm not reinvesting in these funds, am I ethically okay keeping the money there if I don't reinvest the dividends or anything like that? Do you understand what I'm trying to say?

Yeah, I do. And I think this is a personal conviction matter. I mean, that's my perspective on it is that this is a Romans 14 issue, let each one be fully convinced in his own mind. So the question at hand is when you're investing, you're investing through the secondary market. So you're buying shares of a company, you're a partial owner and it's different than you walking into name any company and buying their products and services. And there's some believers that have the conviction that, hey, if I'm deploying my capital, meaning I'm a percentage owner of this company, I wanna make sure regardless of what impact my purchase of those shares on the secondary market from somebody else, regardless of what impact that has on the company directly, I just don't wanna be a part of owner of anything that conflicts with my values, either their primary business activity or what they use their corporate profits for. And the good news is you have that option now to invest in faith-based investments that are screening companies out that would be misaligned with Christian values, screening companies in that are particularly promoting human flourishing, even doing corporate engagement where possible, all around the idea of still creating value for the shareholders so that you can get a reasonable rate of return at or better than what you might expect anywhere else. And that's possible today. But I think that decision as to whether or not you would invest in what I'll call a traditional sense, where you just buy based on long-term value creation and not looking necessarily at values alignment versus a specifically stated faith-based investing approach where you're either avoiding or embracing or even engaging companies aligned with your values.

I think that's ultimately a personal conviction issue between you and the Lord. Yeah, and I hear you, but I'm wondering about, and that's the approach I'm gonna take in the future, but I'm wondering about shared, like in the QQQ, they invest in some tech companies which do some things I don't agree with, but since I've already invested the money, am I actually supporting those same causes now? I mean, I realized this after the fact. So like 10 years ago, I invested in the Qs. And so I'm wondering if that money is actually being used to promote abortion and religious intelligence. No, I mean, you holding their shares now that you've already bought them is not doing anything for the company. You're collecting the dividends. So you're the beneficiary of the company's earnings. And so ultimately, again, I would go back to this as a conviction matter. Do you have a conviction that accepting dividends, meaning parts of the profits of this company that's being paid out from a company you disagree with, are you comfortable with that? I'm not saying you should be or you shouldn't be. I think that's between you and the Lord. Is there a direct benefit to the company of you continuing to hold the shares? I can't think of one.

There may be one that I'm not thinking about, but I can't think of one. But as to whether you should continue in that direction, I think that's between you and the Lord. Does that make sense? Absolutely, thanks so much, Rob. All right, God bless you. Hey, thanks for joining us today. Faith and Finance Live is a partnership between Moody Radio and Faithfi. Thank you to Lynn, Tahira, Amy, and Jim, plus the entire team here at Faithfi. We'll see you tomorrow. Bye-bye.