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Christian Financial Perspectives episodes

April 11, 2023 151 – 7 Biblical Financial Guidelines
Click below to listen to Episode 151 – 7 Biblical Financial Guidelines
7 Biblical Financial Guidelines

Check out these Biblical financial guidelines handpicked by Bob and Shawn to help you live a happier life when it comes to finances!

More episodes >>

Bob and Shawn delve deep into some of their favorite Biblical principles when it comes to Christian stewardship and finances, all backed up by Biblical stewardship scriptures. These tips definitely go way beyond just the financial, and they also go into the emotional aspect of trying to live a financially successful life within Biblical guidelines. This includes suggestions like giving to causes greater than yourself – like a local food bank, animal shelter, or homeless shelter.
When we begin to see our money and finances as a tool from God to help others in His name, then the cycle of worry and selfishness can begin to diminish. We hope you enjoy this episode on Biblical financial guidelines as much as we enjoyed making it!

HOSTED BY: Bob Barber, CWS®, CKA®
CO-HOST: Shawn Peters
Mentioned In This Episode

Christian Financial Advisors
Website

Bob Barber, CWS®, CKA®

Shawn Peters
Bible Verses In This Episode
PROVERBS 21:20
In the House of the wise are stores of choice food and oil, but a foolish man devours all he has.
PROVERBS 22:7
The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.
PROVERBS 6:6-8
Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest.
2 CORINTHIANS 9:7
Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
ECCLESIASTES 11:2
Invest in seven ventures, yes, in eight; you do not know what disaster may come upon the land.
PROVERBS 4:6
Do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you; love her, and she will watch over you.
PROVERBS 27:23-24
Be sure you know the condition of your flocks, give careful attention to your herds; for riches do not endure forever, and a crown is not secure for all generations.

Want to ask a question about your specific situation? Schedule a complimentary 15 minute phone call.
SCHEDULE AN APPOINTMENTDid you enjoy this episode? Sign up for email updates and never miss an episode.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Intro:
Welcome to Christian Financial Perspectives, where you’re invited to gain insight, wisdom, and knowledge about how Christians integrate their faith, life, and finances with a biblical worldview. Here’s your Christian Financial Advisor’s host, Bob Barber and his co-host, Shawn Peters.
Shawn:
Welcome to another episode of Christian Financial Perspectives. We’re so glad that you joined us today or tonight, whatever time it happens to be when you’re watching this. If you’d like topics covering finance, but from a Christian perspective, then we’d love for you to hit that subscribe button. Still, we got about 80% of those watching the videos aren’t subscribed, which means you’re missing out on all the awesome updates that we’re putting out. If you like this particular video, be sure to hit that like button as well. Today we’re going to be covering seven biblical financial guidelines, and we hope this will be helpful to you. Bob, you want to give us a little intro on this?
Bob:
You know, what is funny, what you were saying, you can watch this any time of day of the night. I did radio for eight years in Texas. In San Antonio, Austin, Houston, and Corpus Christi, and you had to be there right at that time if you wanted to hear the program. It’s before any of this ever came out. Boy, I love this technology where you can, anytime of the day you can watch this. So Shawn, today we’re going to be talking about seven biblical financial guidelines. There’s just seven and so many of these, this is a lot of common sense, but a lot of wisdom, and this is taken from God’s word. I’m excited to be bringing this to Christian Financial Perspectives. The first one is really a novel idea, especially here in America. So you ready? Let’s do it.
Shawn:
Spend less than you earn.
Bob:
Who would’ve thunk it?
Shawn:
So don’t spend more than you made in income.
Bob:
That’s exactly right. Now that’s not like our government. You can’t just raise the debt ceiling, but yes, spend less than you earn. What’s the scripture?
Shawn:
Proverbs 21:20, “In the house of the wise are stores of choice food and oil, but a foolish man devours all he has.”
Bob:
That’s kind of, pretty tough there, isn’t it? “A foolish man devours all he has.”
Shawn:
Well, you know, Bob, our channel I think is a little different than some of the quote financial gurus out there, because most of the time you have people who are cherry picking certain stocks that they did really well on. They don’t talk about, you know, the other 90% that they did terrible on. Or they’re talking about how if you follow their advice, how wealthy you’re going to be and how many thousands of dollars per day you’re making. It’s always interesting because most of those people make money specifically on selling their courses and the idea that they actually are doing really well. What we’re talking about here with biblical financial guidelines, honestly, is probably a little less flashy, a little less boring, because these are based on scripture It’s based on truth. It’s not based on just hype.
Bob:
There’s no hype here. Spend less than you earn. That’s a simple one.
Shawn:
We’re giving you a little bit of a setup here that you know, again, these are not going to be something that makes you rich in one day. These are things that, they’re biblical financial guidelines and if you follow them, they might not be flashy, but it’ll definitely make a positive impact in your life.
Bob:
They will work over time. They’ve been tried and proven over thousands of years. The second one is control the use of debt. What? Yes. Control the use of debt. You know why? The Bible is very clear on this. It tells us in Proverbs 22:7 that “The rich rule over the poor, (that’s like the banks) and the borrower is slave to the lender.” When we say to control, the use of debt, I know it’s very hard like to buy a home debt free, but I’m hoping that’s the only debt that you have. No other debt at all. As you get older, there’s no reason to borrow money for a car. The cars are so expensive nowadays, but just buy a cheaper car until you can afford more.
Shawn:
Or save up a little bit longer and keep driving the one that you have. This kind of goes back to number one, spend been less than you earn. There’s a difference between buying a home, especially when you’re younger and you don’t have a lot of assets saved up. There’s a difference between using that debt to buy a home and using debt like a credit card to finance going out to eat too often. Just buying stuff that you don’t actually need to live, so be careful with that.
Bob:
Rachel laughs at me because she goes, Bob, you don’t like to spend money on anything unless you know it’s an investment and you’re going to get some money back. I’m kind of like that’s in my nature.
Shawn:
I think that’s a good trait when you’re a financial advisor.
Bob:
I do too.
When you talk about the use of debt in a mortgage instance. You get the tax deduction on the interest and appreciating asset over time. Real estate’s proven to be that.
Shawn:
Not only that Bob, but especially if it’s for your primary residence, you’re going to pay rent or you’re going to pay a mortgage. There isn’t really any other options.
Bob:
My dad was a funny guy, and he said, whether you rent or whether you buy, you pay for the place you occupy.
The third one.
Shawn:
Save consistently and build reserves. Now this scripture is Proverbs 6:6-8, “Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest.”
Bob:
When you were a little kid, did you ever like to watch the ants? They go back and forth and they’re always working. I think it’s interesting that it says, go to the ant you sluggard. I mean, my goodness.
Shawn:
Okay Proverbs settle down now.
Bob:
The fourth one is give the worthy causes because you know what it does when you give the worthy causes, it breaks the chain of selfishness. It is truly more blessed to give than receive. 2 Corinthians 9:7 says, “Each of you should give what you’ve decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” So smile when you’re giving.
Shawn:
I love that, breaking the chain of selfishness because when you give and you give not reluctantly or under compulsion, but you give joyfully.
Bob:
With a purpose.
Shawn:
It makes such an impact on the rest of your life. Not just the financial part, but it just kind of gives you this, this peace that, okay, God, I’m trusting you. You’re asking me to give, you’re asking me to help others. I’m giving out of what I’ve received. It’s like we say, I mean, it’s hard to be selfish when you’re focused on, okay, God, what do you want me to give to?
You’re not holding onto that money so tight and just making that fist.
Bob:
When you hold all that money tight like that it causes tension. So let loose, let loose. God owns it all. Psalms 24, 1 says, “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.” Number five invest wisely and diversify. A scriptural principle behind this was from Solomon, who said, invest in seven ventures, yes in eight; you do not know what disaster may come upon the land.
Shawn:
That was Ecclesiastes 11:2.
Bob:
Did I say a different one?
Shawn:
I don’t think you said the scripture.
Bob:
I’m sorry about that. Ecclesiastes 11:2, exactly. I just said Solomon because I knew he wrote Ecclesiastes. Solomon did not go put all of his money in just stocks. If he were here today, he wouldn’t put them all in stocks, would he? Or all in bonds or all in real estate. Boy, that’s a big one. A lot of people put all their money in real estate. They think that’s the way to go. All your money in gold. No. He diversified his funds amongst many different types of investments, and just think of that; of all the different ways that we can invest today. You know, we go back a few podcasts where we talked about all the sectors. There’s like 11 to 12 different sectors to invest in. You could still invest in stocks, but be very diversified actually in 11 to 12 sectors even.
Shawn:
So number six, manage risk. This is for health, disability, life, auto, home and liability insurance. That really, that’s what you got to remember on the insurance is that it’s about managing your risk. That’s really all it’s for.
Bob:
Another term that I’ve heard for property and casualty insurance, life insurance, all these different types of insurance is risk management.
Shawn:
I think the easiest one, Bob, for people to think about is your life insurance. People think of, oh, life insurance, if something happens to me, my family gets a lot of money because of it’s payout. The reason why life insurance is so important to have, especially when you’re younger; if you get term life insurance when you’re young, it’s not expensive.
Bob:
It’s dirt cheap.
Shawn:
The risk that you’re managing is that if something should happen to you when you’re younger and you haven’t been able to build up any retirement assets, it helps take care of your family. Because it’s term and it’s going to expire after a while, you need to make sure that the other part of this equation is saving and investing wisely, so over time, as the insurance is expiring, you actually have your own hard assets.
Bob:
At my age, I’m going to be 61 in June, life insurance is expensive.
Shawn:
Ooh. I wouldn’t even wanna know how much your premiums would be.
Bob:
It’s a lot. You know what, another thing that you need to be very aware of is managing risk with auto insurance. You’ve heard it, pay for what you need. Well, wait a second. What do you need? You need enough to cover you. To buy auto insurance or home insurance just based on price is foolish. It’s very foolish. You need to base it on coverage because when that time happens, you’re going to wish that you bought adequate coverage. I’ve seen coverage. If you’re just trying to get the coverage to get by, it is not going to cover you. You’ve got all these guys out here in our area, we got the, what we call the 444 guy. He’s an attorney, the local attorney that advertises here and you know, they’re just out suing people left and right. That’s how they’re making their money. If you don’t have a lot of insurance to cover you, they’re going to go after your other assets.
Insurance is there to help you, especially liability insurance. I like liability, like an umbrella policy covering you. This brings us to the last one.
Shawn:
Let’s not forget our scripture though. We do need to read the scripture for managing risk.
Bob:
Yeah, absolutely. This goes with risk.
Shawn:
Proverbs 4:6, “Do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you; love her, and she will watch over you.”
Bob:
That’s saying there, I picked that because I thought, well, that is wisdom to manage risk.
Shawn:
Number seven, know your financial condition. Proverbs 27:23-24, “Be sure you know the condition of your flocks, give careful attention to your herds; for riches do not endure forever, and a crown is not secure for all generations.”
Bob:
That is basically saying, write down all of your assets. Write down all of your liabilities. We call it a balance sheet around here. We’ve gone through the financial planning. I’d invite you to go back and watch the one that we did, the interactive integrative financial plan. I can pull up my financial condition 24-7 with just the, you know, click, and there it is. It’s updating every single day. And I know what my financial condition is. Shawn, you’d be surprised how many people do not know their financial condition. They don’t understand their assets and their liabilities and their net worth. If you’re net worth, if your liabilities are higher than your net worth, this is where you need some help. Most definitely. As we come to the end today of the seven guidelines for biblical financial principles, we want to help make sure that you put these in order, and that you use these biblical financial guidelines. Shawn, I’ve never seen anybody hurt by using these guidelines. You’re going to be prosperous when you do. I’m not speaking prosperity theology. You will be prosperous when you follow these biblical guidelines. You’ll be successful financially.
Shawn:
It always makes me think of the parable of the talents. Each servant was given a different amount, but each could have been prosperous with what they had. It did not mean they’d have the same dollar amount at the end, but they could have been, maybe instead prosperous I think a better word would be successful. Be successful with what you’ve been given. Whatever that ends up being.
Bob:
We could have called this seven biblical financial guidelines for being successful.
Shawn:
There you go.
Bob:
We want to help you be successful and a way that you can get ahold of us, we are Christian Financial Advisors and our phone number during regular business hours, central standard time, you can phone or text that at (830) 609-6986. Or you can go to our website to christianfinancialadvisors.com. Any last word, Shawn?
Shawn:
God bless you all. Thank you again for joining us. It is always weird. Is it evening? Do I say goodnight? Good morning?
Bob:
I know. I’m not sure.
Whatever time your day it is. I hope you have a great day, a great night, a great evening. Whatever time of the day you’re listening to this.
Shawn:
Let’s cover all our bases. Thank you for joining us and until next time, God bless.
[CONCLUSION]
That’s all for now.
We invite you to listen to all of our past episodes covering many financial topics from a Christian Perspective. To make sure you don’t miss any of Bob’s upcoming episodes you can subscribe to Christian Financial Perspectives on iTunes, Google Play Music, Spotify, or Stitcher. To learn more about integrating your faith with your finances, visit ciswealth.com or call 830-609-6986.
[DISCLOSURES]
Investment advisory services offered through Christian Investment Advisors Inc dba Christian Financial Advisors, a registered investment advisor registered with the SEC. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Comments from today’s show are for informational purposes only and not to be considered investment advice or recommendations to buy or sell any company that may have been mentioned or discussed. The opinions expressed are solely those of the hosts, Bob Barber and Shawn Peters, and their guests. Bob and Shawn do not provide tax advice and encourage you to seek guidance from a tax professional. While Christian Financial Advisors believes the information to be accurate and reliable, we do not claim or have responsibility for its completeness, accuracy, or reliability.
16 min
April 03, 2023 150 – What’s Your Financial Freedom Number
Click below to listen to Episode 150 – What’s Your Financial Freedom Number
What’s Your Financial Freedom Number

Figure out how to determine your financial freedom number!

More episodes >>

How much money do you need to retire? It depends on a number of factors including what age you expect to retire and the annual income you want to have available. Even if the number is lower, you’ll probably be surprised at the amount of money that you will need to retire the way you want. This is where your financial freedom number comes into play.
Bob and Shawn show you how to estimate what your financial freedom number might be in order to retire as successfully as possible. Granted, this number can change and there are quite a few factors that go into it. However, having a number to start with allows you to start your journey towards retirement and financial freedom.

HOSTED BY: Bob Barber, CWS®, CKA®
CO-HOST: Shawn Peters
Mentioned In This Episode

Christian Financial Advisors
Website

Bob Barber, CWS®, CKA®

Shawn Peters
Bible Verses In This Episode
PROVERBS 21:5 MSG
Careful planning puts you ahead in the long run; hurry and scurry puts you further behind.

Want to ask a question about your specific situation? Schedule a complimentary 15 minute phone call.
SCHEDULE AN APPOINTMENTDid you enjoy this episode? Sign up for email updates and never miss an episode.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Intro:
Welcome to Christian Financial Perspectives, where you’re invited to gain insight, wisdom, and knowledge about how Christians integrate their faith, life, and finances with a biblical worldview. Here’s your Christian Financial advisor’s host, Bob Barber and his co-host, Shawn Peters.
Shawn:
Welcome to another episode of Christian Financial Perspectives. We’re so glad that you’ve joined us today, whether you’re watching or listening. This is actually really exciting because it’s episode 150. Not for video. We don’t have 150 videos yet, but it is episode 150 between our original audio for the first about 107, and since then we switched to video and audio for the format. If you are watching this and you like content on financial topics and other educational, financial related, but from a Christian perspective, we’d love you to hit that subscribe button, like this video, share it with others. It helps us, it helps others find this kind of content. As of now, Bob, we still have about 80% of those of you watching are not subscribed. So, if you’re watching this, and you like it, please hit subscribe.
Today we have an interesting topic. “What is Your Financial Freedom Number?” Okay, so Bob, most people probably don’t know, what’s a financial freedom number?
Bob:
Well, financial freedom number is when you have, Shawn, enough money that you’ve saved up and invested. Enough money that it can generate enough money to live on. Does that make sense?
Shawn:
It’s self-sustaining, I guess is the way you use that.
Bob:
I’ve heard what people believe is their financial freedom number for many years. I’ve even had some Shawn that have said, well, I’d like to retire and I have $200,000, and I’d like to retire on a $100,000 a year. I’m like, you are a little confused about rates of return and what that can generate. A $200,000 portfolio in our industry, it’s been happening for, I mean, as long as I have been around. The withdrawal rates should be under 5% if you’re under 65. Once you hit about 65, the withdrawal rate can be about 5% for up to about 75, and then you can go to a 6% withdrawal rate. So you got $200,000 and you’re retiring under 65. Let’s say you’re 60.
You’re not retiring on a hundred thousand a year. That will give you, generate safely and not use all that money before you go on to be with the Lord. 8,000 a year. There is a real huge gigantic confusion about the financial freedom number. By the way, I wanted to mention, I just got right into that. It’s just so exciting that it’s our 150 episode. I cannot even think of the thousands of hours I’ve spent coming up with all of these subject matters when it comes to finance, so I’m excited about that. I just had to mention that.
Shawn:
Seeing all the work that you put into this and then I don’t do as much as far as the writing or the script. Then we’ve got Garrett who helps us behind the scenes on the camera, and my wife and your daughter Jenna. She does a lot of our creative direction, and it’s crazy to see how much work this is. Then I see other YouTube creators and think, okay, I have even more respect for you now.
Bob:
I do, I do.
Shawn:
Having been on this side of it now and realized that’s a lot of work.
Bob:
A 15 minute episode is got seven or eight hours behind it, so it is interesting. Shawn, with this financial freedom number I said come up with the scripture this morning. I said, Shawn, look that scripture up about that the plans of the diligent. I asked you to find that scripture in Proverbs 21:5, and you came up with the scripture out of The Message.
Shawn:
I don’t know, I feel like for this program too, I know the message isn’t as direct translation, but I’ve just always liked how more plain English it seems. Like the original intent I guess.
Bob:
This one really hits good.
Shawn:
“Careful planning puts you ahead in the long run; hurry and scurry puts you further behind.”
Bob:
We’re going to point that out later; how the hurry and scurry, and how when you wait for you to start saving for your financial freedom number, it’s hard to catch up. I’ve got my, my trustee
Shawn:
Casio calculator.
Bob:
I’m old fashioned. I know it’s got the big numbers on it and everything, but I like these old calculators. Everybody has a different number, Shawn, and that’s depending on the lifestyle and the wants and your needs. I mean, for some people they can live on $50,000 a year. Others want $80,000 and others want a $100,000 a year. What we’re going to do is we’re going to to pick $75,000 a year for this program. Let’s say we want to find what your financial freedom number would be if you wanted the amount of money that could generate 75,000 a year. Then if you’re retired and you’re in those retirement years, you’re 65 or above and you want to add social security to that, or any pension plans. That’s going to compensate for inflation. That’s the way I look at it.
Shawn:
Really we’re picking 75,000 a year is just, eh, it’s a good number. It’s not a huge amount, it’s not a small amount, but it’s a decent average I would feel for a retirement income. In today’s dollars, if you were retiring today and you wanted to retire on 75,000.
Bob:
Get this ready, okay.
Shawn:
Multiply it by at least 25.
That’s right.
Bob:
I just, somebody just fell off their…
Shawn:
Why didn’t we go with a hundred thousand? Now I feel like that’s a little easier math, right?
Bob:
It is. it is. But I made it more difficult. Somebody just fell off their seat, or they’re on their exercise treadmill while they’re watching us like I do. I watch it too. They’re like, “Huh?” You’re telling me if I want to retire on 75,000, we multiply it times 25, I’m going to need…
Shawn:
Well, to be exact, $1,875,000 or just rounded up to say $1.9 million. If you wanted to retire right now on $75,000 a year, you would need at least 1.9 million to be your financial freedom number in this case. Now Bob, why is that? Can you maybe explain a little bit of where that 25 comes from?
Bob:
It comes back from, if you take anything and you multiply 25 and you have a pullout rate of 4%, that’s where that number comes from.
With $2 million, a pullout number or 4%, which is under 65, you shouldn’t pull more than 4% of the portfolio per year. That’s $80,000 a year. That’s right at that $75,000 mark. Like you said, the real number’s, $1,875,000, but we’re just going to use 1.9 million. We’re going to use that number because, now somebody goes, oh, wow. Well, how do I get to that number?
Shawn:
Most of you are probably, most of you watching are probably not necessarily retiring right now. Again, we wanted to paint this picture as well, imagine if you were retiring right now and you wanted to live on $75,000. That gives us 1.9 million. Now let’s figure out, all right, well, depending on how long you have until you’re potentially retiring. You know, what that plan is. What would it take to get to that 1.9 million?
Bob:
I’ve got all these different numbers and we’ll splash these up on the screen while I’m doing this.
Shawn:
The first thing though, Bob, is we set some ground rules for you guys.
Bob:
Yeah, I think that’s good.
Shawn:
We are talking about how to get to a $1.9 million portfolio, and this is assuming it’s a well diversified growth portfolio. It’s earning an average of say, 8.5% per year.
Bob:
I know that may be a little low, but we had a bear market here.
Shawn:
Yeah, exactly.
Bob:
I love Dave Ramsey. He always says, plan for Murphy’s Law. You know me, I’m a Murphy’s Law kind of guy. If I go on a trip, I’m going to make sure I’ve got plenty of water with me. I got a full gas tank. I don’t let it get below a quarter. I’m not one of these people that goes to the edge. By planning on a lower return, and this is a reasonable return for a growth portfolio over a long period of time. To be using these 10%, 11%, and 12% numbers is not realistic.
Shawn:
Because it’s not always consistent.
Bob:
Exactly. That’s correct.
Shawn:
An 8.5% percent annual return, well diversified growth portfolio over 30 years. You would need to invest about $1,200 a month.
Bob:
A lot people will say, well, how is that possible? Well if you have a 401K and you’re investing $600 in it a month, or $150 a week, let’s break this down. You’re getting a match from your employer or of 3% to 5%, or 6%. Which I see all the time in 401k’s. There you go. You’ve put that together, that’s $1,200 a month. Over 30 years that investment will grow.
Shawn:
To put that into context, over 30 years, $1,200 a month, that ends up being about $420,000. Of that $1.9 million, that would mean that you’ve directly saved about $420,000.
Bob:
The rest of it was growth.
Shawn:
The rest of it was growth. Now over 20 years, if you’re starting just 10 years later,
Just 10 years, it goes to about $3,000 a month.
Bob:
Yes, it does. That’s quite a bit more. Not triple, but it’s 2.5 times that amount.
Shawn:
Now here’s the part that I feel like is crazy here.
Bob:
It’s interesting.
Shawn:
You dropped down just five more years to where, let’s say you have about 15 years until you’re going to retire.
Bob:
Let’s say somebodies 50. Let’s say their 50 years old, they want to retire at 65, they haven’t saved up anything now.
Shawn:
They want to hit that magic $1.9 million. You’re going to have to invest $5,200 a month.
Of that $1.9 million, now you’re having to invest a total of $936,000.
Bob:
Because your money’s not growing for you.
Shawn:
It’s not growing there, it doesn’t have as long to grow.
Bob:
So the longer you wait, you realize the more you’re procrastinating with this.
Shawn:
Now, before we get to that Bob.
Bob:
The worse it gets.
Shawn:
The last one, and this is even crazier. We started at 30 years. If you’ve got 30 years, it’s $1,200 a month. Doable. If you only have 10 years, so let’s say you’re at 55 and you’re like, oh, I really need to get on this. If you’re starting now at 55 and you’ve got 10 years of retirement, and you need to be saving about $10,000 a month.
Bob:
Yeah, that’s a lot.
Shawn:
Now you’re at $1.2 million of the 1.9 directly from savings, investment returns. The effect of compounding interest over time is huge. The sooner you start investing, the better. Starting with just 15 years left, costs you more than double what you’d invest if you’d started with 30 years until retirement.
Bob:
This really shows you can take whatever age you are, maybe you’re a 20 year old and you’re listening to this right now where you say…
Shawn:
Hey, even better if you’ve got 40 years, you don’t need to save $1,200. a month.
Bob:
A lot of people want to retire before 65. Maybe they want to retire at 50. This goes to show you, or if you’re 40 and you say, well, I want to retire at 55. Well, you’ve got 15 years, you better really get with it. You’re going to need to put, you think about the 401k and you can’t even put half of that amount in there. You’ll go over the limits. This really hits people, Shawn. It does. They’re like, I’ve never thought of about that. You’re looking at me and you’re thinking, are you crazy? Well, it’s just math again, like we always say, it’s just math.
Nothing else. I believe we’re talking about a $75,000 a year income for retirement. That’s reasonable. We’re not talking $300,000 a year. If they’re going to take 30 years, they need to start investing at least $600 a month if they have a match on the 401k. If they don’t have a anybody matching them, they need to save $1,200 a month Yeah. The number one reason behind financial failure, we’ve said it many times, what’s the number one reason?
Shawn:
Procrastination.
Bob:
It’s procrastination. You cannot procrastinate on these numbers to get to your financial freedom number. We are here to help you with that. We use a financial planning program. We put all these numbers in. We put the inflation factor in there, and we can play around with these different returns, but we also must be realistic on the returns. If you’re wanting to get a growth return, you have to be willing to go through volatility to get that. The higher the growth rate, the more volatility you need to be able to put up with over time.
Shawn:
Bob, even that 8.5%, we were saying that it was a more conservative growth return.
Even that 8.5%, that’s still going to require some volatility. Where you’re going to have years like 2022 where it was not a bull market. Things were down overall. You can’t just expect that every single year is going to be the 8.5%. That’s the average return. If you’re in it for the long haul, I think the main thing is if you didn’t get anything else from this program, remember two things. One, start as soon as possible. Do not wait. Even 5 or 10 years depending on when that is, can make a huge difference. Then the second thing is, make sure you don’t lose your train of thought. Bob, what was I about to say?
Bob:
I don’t know, Shawn. I’m waiting for you.
Shawn:
I’m sorry. The most, more things just don’t delay. That is the most thing. Well, no, I was going to say the other most important thing was that remember the times 25.
Bob:
You’re having a senior moment here Shawn.
Shawn:
I’m having a senior moment. I’m not even 40 yet. I don’t know what’s going on.
Bob:
What was the second one?
Shawn:
The second one was remember the number. It’s that whatever that number is, you’re wanting to retiring now times 25. That gives you a good idea of your end goal.
Bob:
Multiply it times 25.
Shawn:
Start righ away, multiply your number by 25.
Bob:
You got it. We’re here to help you with this at Christian Financial Advisors. Our phone number, you can call it or you can text it. It is (830) 609-6986, or you can find us on the internet at christianfinancialadvisors.com. There’s a lot of good information on the website. I would invite you to spend 15 or 20 minutes there and kind of go around to all the different pages we have.
Shawn:
If you’d like more videos on these financial topics from a Christian perspective, please hit that subscribe button as well as to see the next time that I mess up live on camera.
Bob:
You drink the water and it goes down the wrong way or whatever. It just goes to show you, we’re just two guys here. Father-in-law and son-in-law coming right at you, and I hope you’re enjoying it. 150th episode. Wow.
Shawn:
God bless. Thanks again for joining us for our 150th episode. Till next time.
[CONCLUSION]
That’s all for now.
We invite you to listen to all of our past episodes covering many financial topics from a Christian Perspective. To make sure you don’t miss any of Bob’s upcoming episodes you can subscribe to Christian Financial Perspectives on iTunes, Google Play Music, Spotify, or Stitcher. To learn more about integrating your faith with your finances, visit ciswealth.com or call 830-609-6986.
[DISCLOSURES]
Investment advisory services offered through Christian Investment Advisors Inc dba Christian Financial Advisors, a registered investment advisor registered with the SEC. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Comments from today’s show are for informational purposes only and not to be considered investment advice or recommendations to buy or sell any company that may have been mentioned or discussed. The opinions expressed are solely those of the hosts, Bob Barber and Shawn Peters, and their guests. Bob and Shawn do not provide tax advice and encourage you to seek guidance from a tax professional. While Christian Financial Advisors believes the information to be accurate and reliable, we do not claim or have responsibility for its completeness, accuracy, or reliability.
16 min
March 27, 2023 149 – 10 Traits of Christian Millionaires
www.natlsunshine.com
Click below to listen to Episode 149 – 10 Traits of Christian Millionaires
10 Traits of Christian Millionaires

Do you have any of these traits commonly seen in Christian millionaires?

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Bob and Shawn discuss the 10 common traits that they often see in their Christian millionaire clients. These traits aren’t what you think! Surprisingly, only about 2-3 directly involve finance and investments. Most of the traits that we see here at Christian Financial Advisors involve deeper characteristics and traits, like consistency in their career and/or exemplify Godly values like integrity and honesty. Above all when it comes to financially successful Christians, Bob and Shawn have noticed that most believe that God owns it all. It is his money to begin with, and we are just His earthly stewards of these blessings.

HOSTED BY: Bob Barber, CWS®, CKA®
CO-HOST: Shawn Peters
Mentioned In This Episode

Christian Financial Advisors
Website

Bob Barber, CWS®, CKA®

Shawn Peters
Bible Verses In This Episode
PROVERBS 13:11
Dishonest money dwindles away, but whoever gathers money little by little makes it grow.
I TIMOTHY 6:10
For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.
PSALM 24:1
The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.
LUKE 16:10
Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.

Want to ask a question about your specific situation? Schedule a complimentary 15 minute phone call.
SCHEDULE AN APPOINTMENTDid you enjoy this episode? Sign up for email updates and never miss an episode.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Intro:
Welcome to Christian Financial Perspectives, where you’re invited to gain insight, wisdom, and knowledge about how Christians integrate their faith, life, and finances with a biblical worldview. Here’s your Christian Financial advisor’s host, Bob Barber and his co-host, Shawn Peters.
Shawn:
Welcome to another episode of Christian Financial Perspectives. So glad that you joined us. If you haven’t subscribed already and you like videos on financial topics, but from a Christian perspective, love for you to hit that subscribe button like this video and share with others. It helps both our channel, but also helps other people like you find this kind of content. So, today we’re going to be covering an interesting subject, the “10 Traits of Christian Millionaires.” Now, this is not a prosperity theology kind of an episode. We are not teaching you how to how to get rich. This is just more of a interesting commentary of, of what we have seen over the years, especially Bob over common traits of people who are Christian and happen to be wealthy. So Bob, why don’t you give us a little more of an introduction.
Bob:
There’s no doubt that this is a tough one to tackle, Shawn. I don’t subscribe to the prosperity theology mindset, but there are things that happen. You do this over the many years and you end up many times becoming a millionaire. I’m not saying this always happens. In my younger years I had a lot of good mentors and I watched them and I noticed there were traits in millionaires versus Christian millionaires, or Christian millionaires versus millionaires that made it from a secular worldview. These Christian millionaires, they really had a biblical worldview towards how they handled their finances, and following that biblical worldview. I want to be careful, I’m not saying it’s not always going to make you a millionaire, but there’s just so many common traits. You know Shawn, being that we’re Christian Financial Advisors, we work with a lot of Christian millionaires that love the Lord. It’s not about the money with them. Which is really interesting how this happened. Very seldom did they become, they didn’t set out to be a millionaire. It just happened by using these biblical principles of giving first and in saving, investing, honesty is a really important thing with Christian millionaires, and a consistent lifestyle that’s not based on materialism.
Shawn:
Or consumerism.
Bob:
Exactly. They don’t care if they’re driving the latest, greatest, most expensive car. They don’t get their self worth from that.
Shawn:
It makes sense. Really it comes down to for a lot of the Christian millionaires that you’ve come across, is that consistency, that honesty, not focusing on the consumerism basically leads to a very God-honoring, frugal lifestyle. Which chances are by the time you get to retirement age is a good chance you might have been able to accumulate a pretty good amount of wealth.
Bob:
It happens slowly. It’s not a get rich quick. They don’t buy lottery tickets.
Shawn:
Which is a great segue, Bob, into our first scripture. Which is Proverbs 13:11, “Dishonest money dwindles away, but whoever gathers money little by little makes it grow.” Then of course, the other one that we’re going to go over is 1 Timothy 6:10, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”
Bob:
We emphasize right, money is not evil in itself.
The love of money. If it’s all about the almighty dollar. As my dad used to say, “Is it all about the almighty dollar?” If it’s all about that, your heart’s in the wrong spot, especially if you want to be a Christian millionaire.
Shawn:
So, first love God, seek him and realize he is the owner of everything, not you.
Bob:
That comes from Psalm 24:1. It says, “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.” Here are the 10 main traits. We’re going to list these out as we go through them that we see. First one: they love the Lord with all their heart and they are faithful to their church, to the T man. I mean, I see this over and over. They’re involved in small group bible study. They’re very faithful to their church. They love other ministries. They go on mission trips. Many of our clients they’ve been to the holy land several times. They’ve been on trips to Africa or Mexico, or even involved in missions in their own town. It’s a wonderful thing.
Shawn:
Again, their focus is on the Lord. In their church and how they serve.
If they happen to acquire more wealth or more money, that was never the goal. That’s never the focus. The next one: they are givers and not all about themselves. I think again that’s if I remember correctly, and I’m sure so if I’m wrong, correct me in the comments, but I remember reading that really the only time that God was ever asked to be tested. Where it’s like, test God in this. Basically came back to the giving.
Bob:
Malachi 3:10 by the way. “Test me in this and see if I will not throw open the flood gates from heaven, you will not have room enough for it. Bring the tide into the storehouse is what that says, so go in and read it. It also says, “I’ll prevent pests from devouring your crops.” Now, maybe we don’t have crops today, but I’ll prevent pests from breaking down your car. Things like that. That’s where giving is. It’s very scriptural and biblical.
Shawn:
Regardless of how much you’ve been given. I mean, it makes me think of the parable of the master and the servants. Each was given a different amount, but each was given something. I think that part of testing God and how he’ll take care of you, and talks about the birds of the field, or the birds of the air and the flowers of the field. Well, obviously how much more does God care about you? Well I think that’s what it comes down to, is whether you have a little, kind of in the middle, you have a lot. It doesn’t really matter because whatever it is that God has entrusted you with, you should be giving. You should trust God. Whatever you end up with is what you end up with.
Bob:
You know what’s interesting? So far we’ve shared two of the 10, and neither one of them has been financial. By the way, out of these 10, there’s only three that are financial.
Shawn:
Directly financial.
Bob:
That gets you to the point of being a Christian millionaire. Isn’t that interesting? The third one is: they have deep roots in their community, they have long-term friends, and their family is around. Very family oriented. Even if they don’t have children, they still have that family at their church. They have that family in small group. That is a strong trait. Do you notice these first three traits? Like I said, nothing financial. Then we get to the fourth one, which is?
Shawn:
They’re careful with how they spend God’s money. Like we already said, it’s whatever God has entrusted to you. They’re careful with what they do with that money.
Bob:
They look at their money, God’s money, like this is your money Lord. I’m a manager of it, and I want to do a good job with it. That’s where that third, I mean that fourth trait comes in. That’s the first one that is financial. Now these next several are nonfinancial, but they are, when you think about it. They have job consistency and they’re faithful hard workers. They don’t hop around a lot. They don’t chase fantasies. I’ve noticed that with every single one of them I’ve come across. Maybe three different career changes in their 35 or 40 years, maybe three. Very seldom do I see anybody that’s four or five or six. They’re not chasing after the wind. There’s a scripture, it talks about that, chasing after the wind. Be careful of doing that.
Shawn:
Well it’s not a scripture, but it makes me think of the, oh, “The grass is always green on the other side.”
Many times I think when things aren’t working out, it’s not so much that, oh, this is just wrong. Maybe you need to look at, well what’s your attitude when it comes to the position? What’s your mindset where you’re coming from? If there’s a problem with how you’re approaching things, moving to a different location means you’re going to have the same problems that are going to follow you.
Bob:
It’s going to follow you. That’s right. Work as if you’re working for the Lord no matter where you are. Work appears in the Bible over 500 times. Now, we have many single Christian millionaires as well. They’ve never been married. The trait that I’ve noticed, but the majority are married, the trait that I notice is with all of them is they have long-term marriages. I mean, they’re married 35, 40 years. Rachel and I are coming on 39 years this year. Next year we’re going to have quite a big blowout. It’s amazing we haven’t killed each other all this time.
Shawn:
Well, she’s a very godly woman. She’s put up with you for 39 years.
Bob:
We love each other, definitely. I’m telling you, the glue that held us together is Jesus Christ and the Lord.
Shawn:
Bob, that’s an interesting one; they have long term marriages. Because some of you may look at that and think, oh, if you haven’t been married a long time, you can’t be wealthy. It’s more than that because for one, I mean even not even looking at it from a biblical perspective, look at it from a secular. Marriages, when they end can be extremely costly financially.
Bob:
You start splitting the assets on.
Shawn:
Even taking out the spiritual and mental and emotional impact that can have on you going through a divorce. Just the actual financial impact can be extremely detrimental if you’re talking about how people are able to actually build an, an acquired wealth over their lifetime. Having that long-term marriage, that’s a good financial win because chances are what you can do together and grow is going to be a lot better than if you had to split everything in half and start over.
Bob:
The next two, so the next two are going to be actual financial: they are savers and they invest wisely. They do not chase after the wind. They don’t try to put it all on one stock, or one piece of real estate, or one company. They diversify and they use that biblical principle of diversification. They look at their investments and their savings differently. Just like what we were talking about yesterday here at, at the office. You have your spending checking account, then you should have your savings account, and then you should have your investment account.
Shawn:
Your investment account should always be focused on long-term. Not, oh, I’ve got money in there, I’ll just pull it out. It’s like, well, no, no, you have to have those different buckets for emergency, or things that, maybe you’re saving up for the new car you need to buy at some point, whatever it is. Then your investments should be for, really typically for most people, your investments accounts are going to be to supply you income in your retirement years.
Bob:
You’re supposed to let that principle grow. Don’t touch that principle ever. Let the principle, increase your interest dividends and long-term gains.
Shawn:
Number eight.
Bob:
Another financial one, and then that would be it for, and then we have two more after that. This is the only other one that’s financial.
Shawn:
They are debt free except for maybe a mortgage.
Bob:
Most, by the time they’re my age, which I’m 60 now, they don’t have that mortgage anymore. Or it’s very, very small if they do, so they use that. Like you’ve heard me say here, an old country boy told me many years ago. You know I’m a country boy too, but it’s so funny how he said it. He said, “Son, I ain’t never seen nobody hurt by being debt free.” In the way he said it with that twang, which I already have a twang, but the way he said it was even more of a twang. That stuck me, that really stuck to me. This was a Christian millionaire that said it.
Shawn:
So number nine: They don’t wear themselves out to get rich.
Bob:
They don’t.
Shawn:
That’s an interesting one, Bob. What do you mean by that one?
Bob:
Well, they have their families. They have their church, they’re involved. They’re not working 15 hour days, and they’re not working all through the weekends.
Shawn:
You mean they’re not doing that because it’s not all about the money.
Bob:
That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right.
Shawn:
They’re actually valuing their family and their church, and their time with God.
Bob:
I want to say this 10th one because this is really one that I think is so strong. They exemplify good values, very good values, like honesty. Honest to the core, Shawn, I mean integrity and faithfulness. They live by a biblical worldview based on absolute truth, not relativism. Which is so different than today. Truth to them and to me is the same way, because I have a biblical truth that was the same a thousand years ago. It’s the same today. It will be the same in a thousand years. It keeps you from being mixed up. When you start making truth relative versus absolute, you get mixed up. They’re not mixed up.
Shawn:
It’s hard to be honest. Have honesty and integrity if truth and how you’re going to respond to a situation is, “Well it depends.” It’s relative. Well it shouldn’t be. It should never be relative. We have a few more scriptures.
Bob:
That’s the 10, and I think these 10 are very, very good.
Shawn:
We’re going to cover 1 Timothy 6:10. I know we said that one earlier. That’s such a good one. “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” First love God, seek him and realize he’s the owner, not you. Then Psalms 24:1,
Bob:
“The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, and all who live in it.” I’ve said that one over and over, so do a good job with what you have and what God’s given you. This scripture emphasizes about doing a good job with the little things first from Luke 16:10. One of my favorites, “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.” The whole point I want today to be is that that Christian millionaires, they don’t associate their net worth with their self worth, but it’s an association with their relationship with Christ. It just happens by following these biblical principles.
Shawn:
It’s a very different mindset than the way of the world. The point of this program, Bob, then, or to summarize what you were saying, is we’re not presenting these traits as this is a way for you to get rich.
For one, if you live this way, it’s definitely a lot more rewarding way to live whether you become a millionaire or not. Again, I think it’s just very interesting to see the common traits of Christians who have been able to gain a lot of wealth.
Become come millionaires.
Bob:
Like I said, they’re large givers. They’re very large givers. Well, I hope this has helped you today. If you would like to give us a call here at Christian Financial Advisors to help give you Christian advice about how to handle the funds that God has given to you. Give us a call or text us at (830) 609-6986, or you can find us on the web at christianfinancialadvisors.com. Any last words, Shawn?
Shawn:
No, I think that’s it. Thank you so much for joining us and God bless.
[CONCLUSION]
We invite you to listen to all of our past episodes covering many financial topics from a Christian Perspective. To make sure you don’t miss any of Bob’s upcoming episodes you can subscribe to Christian Financial Perspectives on iTunes, Google Play Music, Spotify, or Stitcher. To learn more about integrating your faith with your finances, visit ciswealth.com or call 830-609-6986.
[DISCLOSURES]
Investment advisory services offered through Christian Investment Advisors Inc dba Christian Financial Advisors, a registered investment advisor registered with the SEC. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Comments from today’s show are for informational purposes only and not to be considered investment advice or recommendations to buy or sell any company that may have been mentioned or discussed. The opinions expressed are solely those of the hosts, Bob Barber and Shawn Peters, and their guests. Bob and Shawn do not provide tax advice and encourage you to seek guidance from a tax professional. While Christian Financial Advisors believes the information to be accurate and reliable, we do not claim or have responsibility for its completeness, accuracy, or reliability.
17 min
March 20, 2023 148 – Integrative Financial Planning – How It’s Different Today
Click below to listen to Episode 148 – Integrative Financial Planning – How It’s Different Today
Integrative Financial Planning – How It’s Different Today

Learn why integrative financial planning is so unique.

More episodes >>

Integrative financial planning is a huge part of Christian Financial Advisors through primarily a tool called eMoney. We try to make your investment and financial planning as easy as possible through online tools that are easily accessible 24/7. So, what exactly makes eMoney so great? Bob and Shawn go step by step through an eMoney profile to break down exactly how the program is used and how Christian Financial Advisors uses this platform to create and show clients a financial plan.
Whether you are planning on saving college money for kids and grandkids, or you just need a place to start with creating retirement funds, integrative financial planning is a great place to start. We are here to help clear up any confusion or questions surrounding this process!

HOSTED BY: Bob Barber, CWS®, CKA®
CO-HOST: Shawn Peters
Mentioned In This Episode

Christian Financial Advisors
Website

Bob Barber, CWS®, CKA®

Shawn Peters

eMoney
Website

Want to ask a question about your specific situation? Schedule a complimentary 15 minute phone call.
SCHEDULE AN APPOINTMENTDid you enjoy this episode? Sign up for email updates and never miss an episode.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Intro:
Welcome to Christian Financial Perspectives, where you’re invited to gain insight, wisdom, and knowledge about how Christians integrate their faith, life, and finances with a biblical worldview. Here’s your Christian Financial Advisor’s host, Bob Barber and his co-host, Shawn Peters.
Shawn:
Welcome to another episode of Christian Financial Perspectives. We’re so glad you joined us today. If you like content on financial topics from a Christian perspective, we encourage you to hit that subscribe button. As of recording, we still got about 80% of people watching that have not subscribed, but we’d like you to hit that subscribe button, if you don’t mind. It would help us out and it would also help other people who might be looking for this kind of content. Today we’ve got kind of a interesting format. We’re going to be looking at a bunch of stuff on the screen. Bob’s going to be kind of in the driver’s seat, if you will. Going over our client portal system called eMoney. So Bob, you want to give us a little introduction on that?
Bob:
Well, eMoney is our integrative financial planning program that we use. The reason I wanted to do this in the form of a podcast video, and by the way, podcast, you’re not going to get to see the screen, so I would really emphasize that you go to YouTube to see this. Shawn, every time I have an appointment with a client or even a pro prospective client, and when they see this program and how interactive this financial program is, this is interactive financial planning that is best. When they see this, I can just watch the nearly the scales drop from their eyes, and their fears go away because there’s so many unknowns in the financial planning arena and the future. What can we do? Can we retire on this? What about if we want to buy this new car, or we want to do this remodel?
What if we want to have this home on the coast, a second home or something like that? This system can do all that. I’m going to bring, for the next 15 minutes, I’m going to bring a little bit of this system to our audience so that you can see this and you can determine for yourself if you would like some financial planning. Some integrative financial planning. This is unlike the old days of financial planning. Where we used to take the information, we would go put it in a program, spit out a big thick financial plan, put it in a binder, give it to you, and that’s it. Until you redid it completely, that was the plan you went by. It’s not like that at all anymore, so I’m going to show our audience.
Shawn:
So really, I would summarize like this for those of you watching; e-Money, the way we use it here as as a firm allows us to make sense out of all of the craziness and cloudiness, when it comes to finances. Knowing how much you have in your investment accounts or your savings account, that’s really just one piece of the puzzle. There’s a lot more to it than that. This is what we use to help you figure out questions like, “Do I have enough for what I’m wanting to retire on for income?” “Are we on track to hit the numbers that we need to hit?” “Are we okay if we take the family on a cruise?” Maybe you’re going to take your kids and grandkids.
Bob:
On that big cruise or that Hawaii trip.
Shawn:
Exactly, so without further ado, Bob.
Bob:
Here we go. We’re going to pull up the screen here. This is called our eMoney system. It’s a system that a lot of financial advisors use. I’ve been using it for many years. I know it so good it’s from muscle memory. This is an actual client with the name changed, of course, the Frank and Joanna sample. What you’re seeing here on the screen is basically a snapshot of them. This is called our overview. We’re looking at their net worth. We’re looking at what they have in investments. We’re looking at their asset allocation overall. Then you’ll see, on the upper right hand corner, you’ll see their risk number and then what the risk is of the portfolio. That’s how much risk can they tolerate out of a scale from one to a hundred in their portfolio, which is a 68, and their portfolio is actually at a 64 right now.
Shawn:
So Bob, this is pulling in not just their assets under management with our firm, but it’s also bringing in any other held away assets. We’ve got 529 plans. There’s credit union, like money market, there’s, checking account. We’ve got Frank’s 401k from his work retirement account. We’ve got Joanna’s 403B. One of the things that’s that’s great about this is you can use it not just for what we’re managing for someone as a client, but you can also put in all of those other assets, so you can see your full financial picture. Then of course when you’re trying to make those financial planning decisions with an advisor you’re able to do that on the whole thing, not just the little piece of the pie, if you will, that we’re helpful.
Bob:
It’s a blueprint and you can’t build a home from a blueprint when you only have 10% of it, or 25% of it. Frank and Joanna, is that what I named them again? Frank and Joanna, I want to make sure because I changeg the name. A lot of that what’s in their moderate managed account, which is $746,000, a lot of that was inherited. About $400,000 that came from an inheritance a couple years ago. Then Joanna’s IRA rollover, she works for the hospital administration and that came over in the form of a 403 rollover. Then you can see down here Frank’s 401k where he is still working is at $522,000. This is so typical of many of the people I work with. Then they have $75,000 in CD’s, and then about $45,000 in their credit union, and then the kids.
So you see this, how does this look though? How does this look in real life? I’m going to go over to the five year cash flow and this is all the information that we enter into the five year cash flow. You’ll look at the top and the way the five year cash flow is, first it has the investments, and if you look where I’m on the screen and I highlight that in blue, you can see that that’s where the investments are expected to be at the end of 2023. This is their retirement accounts.
Shawn:
You’ve got investments, we’ve got retirement accounts, we’ve got cash accounts. We have if there’s any insurance accounts that have a cash value.
Bob:
You can see year by year that grows a little bit. One of the things with this particular couple is that while Frank makes a very good living over $200,000 a year with bonuses, and then Joanna has a part-time income making $38,000 These plan distributions are for education. If you go down right here, you’ll see this, the $31,703 and the 31,703 it’s coming out. That’s from a withdrawal coming from the 529 plans. Inside of here I’ve got Frank’s salary, his cash flow, living expenses, what’s expected, 529 withdrawals, and then their insurance premiums. What taxes he’s going to have to pay and they also want to buy a new car you can see in 2026. We’ve got that figured in here. You notice this, they’re negative cash flowing.
They went out, when they got that inheritance, they went out and bought a new home on the coast. I’m telling you it’s eating their lunch. Now, they’re okay because they have enough in their investments that the investments are overcoming that negative cash flow. But we’re having to pull that from the investments on a year by year. Now, I’ve got in the system here, their home, we’re going to be selling that beach home that they have in about 25 years. Otherwise, I’m going to show you this on a full cash flow, if you look at this, you see this blue line? This is their money going up and then they retire and this is their money coming down. If that blue line goes away, they’re out of money. Then they come in and they sell their beach home. You can see right here, when they look at cash flow, their beach home’s only valued at about $550,000 today. You can see 25 years down the road is expected to be with a, with a just a three and a half, 4% inflation rate.
Shawn:
Which is pretty reasonable.
Bob:
For about 1.2 and that money’s going to come back in because you can see that their investments were at 2 million. They got all the way down to $898,000. They sell their home, goes right back into it. That’s why when we go up here, we’ll see this move down and then we’ll pop that line back up. They’re still very much on the edge for their lifetime. Now I do have them all the way out to a hundred years old. There’s 98 and 97, it shows them running out of money. If you look right here on this line, when you look out to the far right, you’ll see that they run out of money at that point if they live that long.
Shawn:
Even those last couple years, they’re getting pretty low, pretty quick.
Bob:
Now we have our system, we can go in and ask it and we say, okay, what’s the maximum retirement spending they can do? Really, all they have to do is make a small adjustment here to their retirement spending in today’s dollars.
Shawn:
So that’s only a change of about $3,000 a year.
Bob:
That’s correct. It’s not much
Shawn:
Off of $120,000. Which is not much.
Bob:
Over time, what happens is the expenses, that is net of taxes, and also that compensates for inflation in the program.
Shawn:
Again, it’s a $3,000 change in today’s dollars, but over time, that starts adding a lot.
Bob:
$10,000 or 20,000 in tomorrow’s dollars. We have figured in here, we get back the cash flow and we’re over here for five year cash flow. This is one of the most important pages that someone can look at. You’ll see they have a son right now named Travis. I did change the name of the children too. They have a son named Travis who has two more years of college. He’s going to Texas A&M they’re actually, both their children are going to Texas A&M right now. That’s the cost to go to Texas A&M this year. They have two children in, and you can see that’s why a little bit of negative cash flow in there too. Then it drops off, if you go over here, you can see where Britney’s had her four years. Travis is finished up. You can see their age 59, and I can come up here and I can hit next five years. Next five years will give us where you are going to be. At that point, you’ll notice the kids completely drop off, but then right in here at age 65, you’ll see, it should be social security. See, social security’s starting to kick in right in here. Right off to the far right.
2032. I like to look at this and I like to say I’m going to pop it to where they’re about 65 years old. That’s going to pull up the range right here, and that’s going to show that social security completely kicking in and a few years for both of them. Which is quite a bit. Inside of that, we’ve got their living expenses, their taxes, everything’s in there. It even drops off. There’s your liabilities. That is the loan on their home, and the loan on their beach property. Eventually that drops off. If you pop this out to about 75 and you’re going to notice you won’t see that there anymore. iI will completely go away, and that’s all compensated for in the plan.
Let’s see if they still have some liabilities. Well, they do. They had a 30 year note, but it did go down some. What’s also neat about this is that I have built in here, like when they want to, they want to buy a new car in a couple years. They have a very old Lexus, they want to buy a new one. I have that compensated into the plan for them drawing that out in three or four years. There’s nothing we cannot put into the plan. This is how powerful this is. This is what I really wanted to show people. We got the balance sheet right here. This shows everything. This is updated every single day. As the markets change, as they pull money out, everything is updated.
Shawn:
When we’re looking at things like the five year cash flow, we’re looking at the, all these kinds of projections, there’s a lot of planning ahead where we’ve put in a client’s income, their, like you said, their inflows or cash flows. We put in all the different expenses. We put in the things that are planned may be five or six years from now, that’s whatever the case may be. Then what the system is doing is it’s taking all this information and looking at tax tables. It’s looking at in today’s dollars with assumed average inflation rates. There’s a lot of calculations going into this to make sure that everything is looking at, with it being adjusted. There’s rates of return on your investments, there’s the inflation on the actual expenses. All of it to basically help you answer those big questions of, “Do we have enough?” “Are we saving up enough for when we actually do retire?” What about all these things that come up? Really it all comes down to being open and transparent. If you let us know what it is that you’re planning for, we can put it in the numbers, and we can help you figure out options to meet those goals and needs.
Bob:
Once this is put into the system, all you have to do is tweak it.
Shawn:
So, your income changed a little bit.
Bob:
We can change that. We do it all the time. See right here where you see Frank’s earnings, at $267,000, that’s what it’s expected to be when he’s 63, 64, then he retires. It goes to zero. All that’s compensated for in here, Joanna’s earnings, she wants to retire at the same time that Frank wants to retire, so all that goes to zero at that point. The kids’ college is done with too. At any point they could say, well, we don’t want that beach home anymore. We’re going to go ahead and sell it now. We come back in, we readjust it. Instead of it getting so low before they do sell it.
Shawn:
Well the other part that I really like in eMoney is the decision center.
We can plug in and say, instead of changing the core facts, what we could do is go in and just say, well, what if in this case Frank decided to retire a couple years early? What if he retired a few years later than originally planned? We can quickly put in there and see, well, how much of a change is that going to make? In that chart we saw the money going down over time.
Bob:
Here’s the decision center, and this is where you can see, we can toggle these. There’s the home remodel because they want to do a remodel and I can toggle that switch off. I’m trying to toggle it. There you go. It will toggle that switch off, and you’ll watch, this should raise the number a little bit. Okay, there we go. It will raise or lower the number depending on how I toggle this switch. There’s where they want to buy a new car, and I can toggle that switch to on.
Shawn:
Give it a second.
Bob:
All right. Got it.
Shawn:
You have to give it a second.
Bob:
You can see where that will change the number as well. As we toggle these switches back and forth, we can go into. This is where we manage what we call techniques. Look at this. This is very powerful. We can add any other expense, additional expenses, gifts to charities, gifts to a person.
Shawn:
We can also do some positives, like adding additional income or selling some property. We’ve got changing growth rates or some assumptions on retirement ages. So there’s a lot, which we don’t want to go over this for an hour.
Bob:
We’re pretty much done. We are done for today and showing you how this works. What’s interesting about this too, Shawn. Is people have been amazed at how fast I am. I can do most of this information in just two or three hours, we can get this in. The financial plans nowadays are much cheaper than they used to be.
Shawn:
The added benefit, Bob, of after you’ve gone through this the first time, if someone is working with us as a client, they come back a year or two later, like you said, we’re not starting from scratch. We’re just, let’s confirm a few things. Has your income changed? Have any of your average living expenses changed? Were you going to sell anything? We make a few quick adjustments and now we’re ready to go. So what is it we’re trying to decide?
Bob:
Shawn, I love this thing. Some people are like, man, you are a nerd, Bob, you really love it, but I do. People watch me operate and it is, it’s nearly from muscle memory. I’ve been doing it for over 15 years and it’s just, I’m so fast in it. You can’t throw anything at me that I’m not going to be able to put that in and show you how that’s going to affect your plan.
Shawn:
Well, I’m glad you like it, Bob. I think you’re, I think you’re probably in the right career then.
Bob:
Well, I hope this has helped y’all a lot to see just how innovative and integrated financial planning is today. If you want some help, give us a call. We’d love to come alongside you as Christian Financial Advisors and help you. Our phone number is (830) 609-6986. You can call or text that number during business hours central standard time, or go to our website. A lot of good information on our website about how we do all this. There’s a financial planning page. It goes into all these areas as well. That’s christianfinancialadvisors.com. Anything you want to say before we end, Shawn?
Shawn:
Yeah, I was just going to say, if you’re watching this and you really like this type of a presentation where we kind of dive into something just more real world instead of kind of talking more theoretical. Not showing as much on screen, let us know in the comments. If there’s any other topics or categories similar to this that you’d love to have us cover. Let us know in the comments. Like Bob said, call or text us. Thank you God bless.
[CONCLUSION]
That’s all for now.
We invite you to listen to all of our past episodes covering many financial topics from a Christian Perspective. To make sure you don’t miss any of Bob’s upcoming episodes you can subscribe to Christian Financial Perspectives on iTunes, Google Play Music, Spotify, or Stitcher. To learn more about integrating your faith with your finances, visit ciswealth.com or call 830-609-6986.
[DISCLOSURES]
Investment advisory services offered through Christian Investment Advisors Inc dba Christian Financial Advisors, a registered investment advisor registered with the SEC. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Comments from today’s show are for informational purposes only and not to be considered investment advice or recommendations to buy or sell any company that may have been mentioned or discussed. The opinions expressed are solely those of the hosts, Bob Barber and Shawn Peters, and their guests. Bob and Shawn do not provide tax advice and encourage you to seek guidance from a tax professional. While Christian Financial Advisors believes the information to be accurate and reliable, we do not claim or have responsibility for its completeness, accuracy, or reliability.
20 min
March 13, 2023 147 – Tools Needed In Your Financial Toolbox
Click below to listen to Episode 147 – Tools Needed In Your Financial Toolbox
Tools Needed In Your Financial Toolbox

Learn about the essential tools you should have readily available in your financial toolbox.

More episodes >>

Bob and Shawn cover an array of tools that you should always have readily available in your financial toolbox. Most of you listening probably have the essential tools at home for basic tasks – a hammer, screwdriver, drill, pliers, and a level. Just like there are essential tools that aid in 90% of tasks around the home, we also have essential “tools” that should be readily available when it comes to finances.
Some of your financial toolbox essentials include having a safety net (i.e. savings) in case of emergencies. Other fundamental tools might be having the right life insurance for your family size, lifestyle, and current expenses. All of these and more are covered in this important episode on the tools needed for your financial toolbox.

HOSTED BY: Bob Barber, CWS®, CKA®
CO-HOST: Shawn Peters
Mentioned In This Episode

Christian Financial Advisors
Website

Bob Barber, CWS®, CKA®

Shawn Peters
Bible Verses In This Episode
EPHESIANS 6:13-17 NASB
Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist on the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm therefore, having belted your waist with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having strapped on your feet the preparation of the gospel of peace; in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
PROVERBS 24:3-4 MSG
It takes wisdom to build a house, and understanding to set it on a firm foundation; It takes knowledge to furnish its rooms with fine furniture and beautiful draperies.

Want to ask a question about your specific situation? Schedule a complimentary 15 minute phone call.
SCHEDULE AN APPOINTMENTDid you enjoy this episode? Sign up for email updates and never miss an episode.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[INTRODUCTION]
Welcome to Christian Financial Perspectives, where you’re invited to gain insight, wisdom, and knowledge about how Christians integrate their faith, life, and finances with the biblical Worldview. Here’s your Christian Financial advisor’s host, Bob Barber and his co-host, Shawn Peters.
[EPISODE]
Shawn:
Welcome to another episode of Christian Financial Perspectives. We’re so glad that you joined us today. Whether you’re watching right now or you’re listening to this, thanks for being here. We noticed that about 80% of those watching on YouTube are not subscribed. So, if you do like this video or one of our other videos, I’d love for you to smash that subscribe button and like this video. Today we are going to be covering tools you need in your financial toolbox. If you like things like this as well as other topics related to finance from a Christian perspective, then again, please hit that subscribe button. Bob, what do we got for today?
Bob:
Well, Shawn, the reason I came up with the title, “Tools in Your Financial Toolbox,” was just about a week ago we had this big storm here in Texas and we had an ice storm. It got on one of them and caused those branches to come down, and I had a branch fall off. It hit my water control valve for my sprinkler system and water was shooting up everywhere. I live out in the country. Well thank goodness I had the tools I needed to fix the problem because I couldn’t have gotten a plumber out there. It was 31 degrees outside. It was a mess, but I was able to get that leak stopped and was able to cap the leak. I thought about, I needed those tools right then, and had I not had those tools, I would have been in trouble. Anyway, see we got tools here. We got, we got a tape measure, got a hammer, screwdriver, got a level. As a matter of fact, we were using a level back here and to level things around here, so we had the tools needed. I think about this, do you have the tools that you need for your toolbox? We’re going to think, talk about the tools in the…
Shawn:
The financial toolbox.
Bob:
Got to make sure we put that in there for your financial toolbox. Shawn, I know you were thinking like, okay, Bob, what scriptures would go with this? It was interesting that one that you came up with, so share that scripture since this is Christian Financial Perspectives.
Shawn:
The one that I came up with was Ephesians 6:13-17. This is from the NASB. “Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist on the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm therefore, having belted your waist with truth, and having put on the breast pr breastplate of righteousness, and having strapped on your feet the preparation of the gospel of peace; in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” Now, some of you may be asking, why am I talking about the armor of God when we’re talking about financial toolbox? Well, what came to my mind was that what is true in the physical was first true in the spiritual.
The scripture tells us, that we need to equip ourselves. And there’s a lot of different pieces to the armor of God. It’s not just a shield. It’s not just a helmet. There’s a lot of different pieces to it. Each have their own purpose and function. If that’s true in our spiritual battle, why wouldn’t it also be true in the physical life here? In this case, finance. Just like the spiritual battle in finance, there are certain tools that you need in order to be properly equipped to fight the financial battle, if you will.
Bob:
That shows the word of God is living and active. It can apply in so many different areas of our lives. I had one from Proverbs. You know I’m a big Proverbs guy. In Proverbs 24: 3-4, and I got this from the message. Which I know you like the message Bible. “It takes wisdom to build a house, and understanding, to set it on a firm foundation; It takes knowledge to furnish its rooms with fine furniture and beautiful draperies.” I look at that wisdom and prudence and knowledge is so important to have the right tools. In this case we’re talking about financial tools. Shawn, I came up with what I feel are eight essential tools that you need to have in your financial toolbox.
Shawn:
Well let’s go with the first one then. The first one we have is estate plan. So, Bob, do you have an estate plan?
Bob:
I do. I have a very good estate plan as a matter of fact, and how it’s going to be handed to the next generation with wisdom. Shawn, I’ve updated that estate plan three times in just the last 10 years. It’s very important that your estate plan be updated. We’ve done podcasts on estate plans. If you’ll look through our archives, you’ll find some of the ones that we’ve done. Especially someone with young children like you and Jenna have, who’s going to take care of the children? How are things going to be passed down to the next generation? For Rachel and I who’ve been accumulating wealth for 38 years now, and it has accumulated in quite an amount. I want to be very wise and prudent how I hand that down to the next generation.
Shawn:
Also making sure that you don’t pay to Caesar anymore than you have to pay to Caesar.
Bob:
That is the truth. That’s the truth. At a certain point, he starts taking 30 and 40%, the government does on that estate plan. I think that is a, that’s one of the most important things of the tools. Like a hammer, we know is a very important tool in building a house. That is such an important tool, and Shawn, you know and I know about 80% probably of our listeners do not have an estate plan. Which is absolutely insane. It’s crazy.
Shawn:
Well, we’re going to have some links in the description to give you some resources specifically on that. Nowadays there’s really no reason to not have an estate plan. At the very least, having a basic will and some information, but better yet, actually having some sort of estate plan.
Bob:
We’ll put that link up for the podcast, the actual podcast. We’ve had several of them on estate planning.
Shawn:
We’ll link to some of the podcasts as well as some of the resources for you. Now the next one would be because as we said, there’s eight tools. If all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Our next one is in addition to the estate plan, you have a retirement plan. The estate plan, Bob, I guess you would say is planning for when you’re gone. When you go to be with the Lord. But for the retirement plan is, well either you’re in retirement or hope or you’re getting to retirement. What are you going to do while you’re no longer working, but still here?
Bob:
In preparation, just like with that water leak I had preparation. A retirement plan is not something that you build in just a matter of days or weeks, or even years. It’s many, many years that it takes to build a retirement plan, and putting money into that 401k, that 403b, that thrift savings plan, etc. We’ve spent again, entire episodes on a retirement plan. We’ll find a few of the podcasts we can put up again on the screen. Shawn, this is why it’s so important as we talk about this too, that those that hear us on the podcast, they need to go see us on YouTube too. They’ll get a lot more by seeing those resources.
Shawn:
We’ll have that in the description as well. So the next one, financial plan. So we’ve got financial plan with expected and unexpected expenses built into the plan in the future. For example, automobile, home, primary home repair, college expenses, medical expenses. Why don’t you talk me a little bit about Bob.
Bob:
The financial plans that we do here are really living, active, and breathing just like scripture is. We can put those things into the plan. Like, I want to do a home repair in two years. How’s that going to work within your financial plan? We have college expenses maybe coming up for grandchildren or children in 8 or 10 years or 15 years. They want to go maybe here in Texas. Maybe they want to go to Texas A&M. Well we can actually put that in our system
Shawn:
And see if you’re on track for those things.
Bob:
That’s right. Medical expenses are the same way. Maybe there’s some upcoming medical expenses, and it’s good to be prepared for unexpected medical expenses.
Shawn:
I think a good one for that would be is if you do have, say a higher deductible medical plan. Well, making sure all right, during the year, if we have to actually hit that full deductible before things kick in, how’s that going to affect your savings? How’s that going to affect your actual planning. Are you going to be okay? If not, well then you definitely need to be working on having enough saved up for that.
Bob:
And how you build those cash reserves. Cash reserves are so important for these kinds of unexpected expenses, but maybe even like we have here a primary home repair. Maybe a remodel that’s coming up. How does that fit into your plan? You can’t just go into that in the dark and say, well, we’re just going to take it out of here because everything you do take out of here is going to affect the future.
Shawn:
That’s right.
Bob:
Our financial plan will show that.
Shawn:
Bob, I’ll let you take number four.
Bob:
Risk management insurance plan. This really has to do with your life insurance, health insurance, disability, home, auto, and liability insurance. I’ve seen more times than not inadequate coverage when it comes to these areas.
Shawn:
Especially when it comes to disability. Even if people do have proper insurance and say, life and health and home. Even of course auto. People are usually deficient when it comes to disability, which is bad because the statistical chances of you needing disability insurance versus life. Well, life is going to be one time. The chances of you being unable to work for a period of time is a lot higher than you actually passing away, especially the younger you are.
Bob:
What I see in life insurance too many cases? I’ll see a breadwinner that maybe makes a $100,000 a year and all he has is $250,000 in life insurance. And the family is relying on that breadwinner’s income.
Shawn:
So you’re really looking at two and a half years tops of income.
Bob:
They need at least a million of coverage, and that can be proved with a financial plan. I see auto policies that don’t have enough coverage too. Like, uninsured medical, $5,000, you can push that up to 50 for pennies on the dollar. It doesn’t take a lot. All right, number five.
Shawn:
The balance sheet financial statement: so your assets, liabilities, and you should have something that updates automatically daily. Like for our clients, we use eMoney, which is a software that we have for all of our clients. In addition to the assets that we’re managing for clients, they can put in their bank account, their other 401k retirement accounts.
Bob:
They’re all linked there.
Shawn:
Basically pretty much anything that has an online login you can put in to where it updates every single day. One of the big benefits of that too, especially when it comes into the estate planning and retirement planning, is when you’re looking at making a decision, or something should happen to you. Your family knows exactly what is the value of everything because it’s all updated every day. As opposed to, well, I haven’t updated in three years, so who knows what the value is. So big benefit.
Bob:
By the way, next week we’re going to cover e-Money and we’re going to have a lot as it’s live, and you’re going to see all this living and breathing plan. Which is so neat today, which we used not to have years ago. Number six is having a budget. That’s got to be a part of your financial toolbox.
Shawn:
Again, you should have some sort of software that tracks daily, because otherwise, if it gets out of date, it’s not very useful. It should be a kind of a given right? The next one is a savings and investment strategy.
Bob:
Well, I’ve mentioned that already, but you have to have those strategies for, like we mentioned up earlier for the retirement plan, for your savings plan, for the, unexpected expenses. Let me see, what else? Like a second home maybe if you wanted to buy one, or even a car. Maybe you want to buy a car in three years. You need to be putting that aside. That’s what I mean by savings and investment strategy for now and the future. I said savings and investment, not just investment, not just savings. Then we come down to the eighth tool. We’ve got four tools right here, but you need eight tools in your toolbox, and the eighth tool is…
Shawn:
Fiduciary based financial advisor to guide you through all the financial mine fields and help you with all these financial tools. As we’ve said before on the program in Proverbs: “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisors, they succeed.”
Bob:
Shawn, when I was learning, as you know I had a dad that built homes and my brother built homes, and I learned starting at 14 years old and I started framing homes and trimming out homes. They taught me how to use these tools. The eighth part of this in your toolbox is having that fiduciary fee-based advisor to teach you how these tools work. The tool’s, just a tool. That tool’s just sitting there until you know how it works, right? I mean, I know how a level works, but some people might not know you’re supposed to have the bubble in the middle, you know? You can put it up against the wall this way or this way, or even a 45 degree angle. You can use that tool in different ways, and that’s where what a fiduciary fee-based advisor will help you do.
Shawn:
Using that analogy, if you don’t know how to do anything in plumbing or ac repair or carpentry, and you go out and just spend $2,000 or $3,000 on the works from Home Depot or Lowe’s, and you get this huge toolbox and you get all the tools and you have no idea how to use them, is that going to help you?
Bob:
You’d need to make a lot of mistakes.
Shawn:
You also need to learn how to use the tools. It’s not just about having the tools, but how do you use them correctly.
Bob:
We hope that these eight tools have helped you, and don’t forget to tune in next week as we discuss and show you a presentation on screen of how all these tools fit into an integrated, interactive financial plan using the technology today. That changes as you do daily, monthly, annually. It’s all those life changes. This is what I love about financial planning today. So different when I started. Where it was just, you gathered information, you built the financial plan, you printed it on a printer, put it in a binder, there you go. It wasn’t living and breathing like it is today. So next week will be a really great program. If you haven’t tuned in any, we want you to tune into that one too.
Shawn:
One way you can get a nice little reminder about when that video is published is to hit that subscribe button. If you’re currently watching and you’re not a subscriber, and based on the numbers, that’s basically 8 out of 10 people Then please do hit that subscribe button. It definitely helps us. Helps out other people as well who might be looking for this kind of content, and again, thank you so much for joining us.
Bob:
If you want us to help you with how to use your financial tools, Christian Financial Advisors would love to help. Our phone number during business hours is (830) 609-6986, or you can text that number during business hours as well, 8am to 5pm Central Standard Tme, or you can find us on the [email protected].
Shawn:
Thanks again for joining us. God bless.
[CONCLUSION]
We invite you to listen to all of our past episodes covering many financial topics from a Christian Perspective. To make sure you don’t miss any of Bob’s upcoming episodes you can subscribe to Christian Financial Perspectives on iTunes, Google Play Music, Spotify, or Stitcher. To learn more about integrating your faith with your finances, visit ciswealth.com or call 830-609-6986.
[DISCLOSURES]
Investment advisory services offered through Christian Investment Advisors Inc dba Christian Financial Advisors, a registered investment advisor registered with the SEC. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Comments from today’s show are for informational purposes only and not to be considered investment advice or recommendations to buy or sell any company that may have been mentioned or discussed. The opinions expressed are solely those of the hosts, Bob Barber and Shawn Peters, and their guests. Bob and Shawn do not provide tax advice and encourage you to seek guidance from a tax professional. While Christian Financial Advisors believes the information to be accurate and reliable, we do not claim or have responsibility for its completeness, accuracy, or reliability.
17 min
March 07, 2023 146 – The Different Types Of Financial Advisors
Click below to listen to Episode 146 – The Different Types Of Financial Advisors
146 – The Different Types Of Financial Advisors

Learn about the differences between different types of financial advisors.

More episodes >>

Bob and Shawn discuss the many types of financial advisors that exist in our world today. Not all financial advisors are the same, just like not all doctors are the same. And just like with doctors, financial advisors can be all encompassing (like a general practitioner), or they can focus on one area like a podiatrist would (for example, financial planning). It is important to know the type of financial advisor you are working with, understanding their limitations, knowing their specialties, and finding one that hits all the checkboxes for your financial and investment needs.
Along with being all encompassing or having a more generalized focus, there are also different ways that financial advisors are paid. This is an important feature to consider when choosing an individual or firm that has your financial future in their hands. Bob and Shawn discuss all of the above by breaking it down into a way that is easy to understand.

HOSTED BY: Bob Barber, CWS®, CKA®
CO-HOST: Shawn Peters
Mentioned In This Episode

Christian Financial Advisors
Website

Bob Barber, CWS®, CKA®

Shawn Peters
Bible Verses In This Episode
PROVERBS 12:1G (MSG)
Fools are headstrong and do what they like; wise people take advice.
PROVERBS 14:24 (MSG)
The wise accumulate wisdom; fools get stupider by the day.
PROVERBS 15:12
Know-it-alls don’t like being told what to do; they avoid the company of wise men and women.
PROVERBS 15:22 (MSG)
Refuse good advice and watch your plans fail; take good counsel and watch them succeed.
ECCLESIASTES 7:11 (MSG)
Wisdom is better when it’s paired with money, Especially if you get both while you’re still living. Double protection: wisdom and wealth! Plus this bonus: Wisdom energizes its owner.

Want to ask a question about your specific situation? Schedule a complimentary 15 minute phone call.
SCHEDULE AN APPOINTMENTDid you enjoy this episode? Sign up for email updates and never miss an episode.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Intro:
Welcome to Christian Financial Perspectives, where you’re invited to gain insight, wisdom, and knowledge about how Christians integrate their faith, life, and finances with a biblical worldview. Here’s your Christian Financial advisor’s host, Bob Barber and his co-host, Shawn Peters.
Shawn:
Welcome to another episode of Christian Financial Perspectives. We’re so glad that you joined us today or tonight, depending on what time it is when you’re watching this. If you enjoy videos on financial topics from a Christian perspective with scriptures, we’d love for you to smash that subscribe button, like this video, and maybe share it with your friends. Now, today we’re going to be covering the different types of financial advisors. Bob, can you give us a little overview on this? We’ve kind of covered something like this before, right?
Bob:
Four months ago, actually, nearly to the day we did a program called “21 Questions to Ask a Financial Advisor.” I believe this is goes a little bit deeper because you got the questions down, but what about the different types of financial advisors?
Shawn:
So, a little more explanation of, what are the actual different types? Not from the perspective of here’s the list to bring with you.
Bob:
That that’s right. Different advisors fit… There’s different advisors for different people.
Shawn:
Different needs and wants.
Bob:
Exactly. Now Shawn, I know that you came up with some interesting scriptures from the Message talking about seeking advice. This is my son-in-law that came up with this. These are some pretty tough scriptures, so he’s going to go over them. I think they’re fun though.
Shawn:
I think if scripture is convicting, then maybe there’s something there for it. Maybe there’s something there for it. Now I put these in here from the Message. I know everyone probably has their preferred translation for the Bible, but I personally like the NASB as well as the Message because NASB is a little more of a direct word for word kind of like King James. A little more direct from the original Greek and Hebrew. The Message, I like it because the translation is more of here’s a couple verses together. What was the original intent of the actual original Greek and Hebrew? We have one word for love, but Greek has what, four words for love? Anyway, that’s why I like the Message.
Bob:
Sounds like some of your background when you went to Liberty University, where you found out about this too.
Shawn:
That’s why I like the message. It’s a little more hard-hitting if you will, and to the point.
Bob:
Well we are Christian Financial Advisors.
Shawn:
With that warning here we go. Here’s Proverbs 12:15, “Fools are headstrong and do what they like; wise people take advice.” I think these scriptures on advice and council kind of fit with seeking a financial advisor.
Bob:
I want to be that wise person.
Shawn:
Proverbs 14:24, “The wise accumulate wisdom; fools get stupider by the day.”
Bob:
Wow.
Shawn:
I think probably the NASB or some of the other translations might say, “The wise build wisdom and fools neglect it.” That might be a little more diplomatic way.
Bob:
Fools despise wisdom and knowledge. That’s what it is. I remembered that because I remember the scripture now.
Shawn:
Thats sounds a little more of a nice way of saying it. Proverbs 15:12, “Know-it-alls don’t like being told what to do; they avoid the company of wise men and women.” Then we have, I’ve got two more for you.
Bob:
That’s one of my favorite scriptures, but from the NIV version.
Shawn:
The Proverbs 15:22?
Bob:
Plans fail for lack of counsel, but when good advice succeed.
Shawn:
In the Message, “It’s refuse good advice and watch your plans fail; take good counsel and watch them succeed.”
Bob:
I like success.
Shawn:
The last one, Ecclesiastes 7:11, “Wisdom is better when it’s paired with money, Especially if you get both while you’re still living. Double protection: wisdom and wealth! Plus this bonus: Wisdom energizes its owner.”
Bob:
So, we’re hoping to give wisdom today.
Shawn:
We’re hoping this wisdom will not offend you, but will energize you, and make you more prepared to find the right financial advisor.
Bob:
The average person really doesn’t know there’s all these different types of financial advisors out there. They Google financial advisor, or with us, the way that everyone’s always calling us is they’re searching Christian financial advisor. That’s the name of our company.
Shawn:
Depending on where you’re located, depending on who’s paying for paid ads, people might just see, oh, there’s something I was looking for. It sounds right, but it’s not all the same. Bob, what are some of the options first on how advisors are paid?
Bob:
Well, I wanna say, first of all, Shawn, there’s not necessarily a right or wrong way here. I mean, if one advisor operates this way and another advisor operates either way, that’s just the way they choose to do business.
Shawn:
You would say there’s pros and cons really.
Bob:
There is no matter which one. The first thing I think is important to understand when you’re looking for a financial advisor, and a lot of people are looking today, especially as more and more people retire. We had the bear market last year, there’s a lot of switching that goes on after that. You have a bad year and everybody’s like, I wanna go find a new financial advisor. The first thing is how the advisors are paid. Are they commission based or fee-based only, or are they hybrid? Now, in each one of these, we’re going to point out what Christian Financial Advisors is in these three. The commission based is how they’re paid. Whatever they put you in, they’re paid a commission.
Shawn:
A one time fee, and depending on what the product is, depending on the situation, they’re paid anywhere from say a few percent, 5%, maybe up to 10%.
Bob:
It could be, it could be that high Some of them have what’s called a trail commission that they could get to. Maybe 25, what I say a quarter, or 25 basis points. Nobody else knows what that means, but we do. A quarter percent up to maybe a half or even one. Then there’s the fee-based advisor, and that’s what we are. We’re fee-based, fiduciary only based advisor, and that’s where we are actually paid by the client. We’re not paid by anyone else. Then you have what’s called your hybrid model. A lot of advisors work from the hybrid model, meaning that they handle commission based products and they charge a fee also. That’s what you want to ask when you’re looking for an advisor: Are you commission based? Are you fee-based? Are you a hybrid of the two?
Shawn:
Fee based only, I think would be the idea.
Bob:
Fee based only.
Shawn:
Are you a hybrid where you can sell commissionable products and you offer ongoing financial advice for a percentage fee?
Bob:
A fee based is usually fiduciary based. It is always what’s in the best interest of the client because the client’s the one who’s paying you. You should do what’s in the best interest of the client, not what’s in the best interest of the product that you’re selling.
Shawn:
Fee based only would also typically be associated with the investment management? Because typically it’s related in some form or fashion to the assets that are being managed.
Bob:
The next area, there’s three of these areas too. Some advisors are very product oriented. That’s going to be mostly your commission based advisors. That’s the ones that are going to sell like annuities, life insurance, alternative investments, like a real estate investment trust or maybe an oil and gas investment. They’re going to be financial planning oriented, or investment manage oriented, or they can be both.
Shawn:
Financial planning and investment oriented?
Bob:
That’s what we are Christian Financial Advisors. We’re both financial planning oriented and investment oriented, because we believe the two need to go together.
Shawn:
Our focus here is, investment management is our bread and butter, if you will. That’s our main focus. We do biblically responsible investing, and as part of that, depending on assets under management, we offer different levels of financial planning as a value added services. As an additional, by the hour, you can work with us for financial planning.
Bob:
Just to say this, so everyone will know. If you have under $300,000 of management with our firm, financial planning is by the hour. If you have over 300,000, it’s included. All that is on our website how our feeds are structured. Which by the way, we have a blended fee structure that the more you have with us, the lower the fee goes.
Shawn:
Next we’re going to cover some portfolio styles. This is of course assuming someone is doing investment management. What are our first options, Bob?
Bob:
Well, the first is the buy and hold portfolio style. That’s where most of your advisors fit. They’re going to put you in an asset allocation model. It’s going to be either a growth model, a balance model, or a conservative model. They’re going to put you in that, it’s going to be a buy and hold through thick and thin. Down markets, up markets, et.
Shawn:
Do they usually have some sort of automatic rebalancing where say like, every quarter it will rebalance and the positions don’t change, but it just rebalances regardless of what’s going on?
Bob:
That’s right. We just did the program about a month and a half, two months ago on how to diversify. The next style of a financial
Shawn:
“Diversification 101” for those who wanted to check that out.
Bob:
Oh, is that what it was? It was a three-part series. The next style is what we refer to as a tactical portfolio style. That’s what we use here.
Shawn:
How is that different than the buy and hold?
Bob:
The tactical is going to attempt to sell at highs and buy at low’s.
Shawn:
So we don’t, we wouldn’t automatically rebalance every quarter in a style like that. It would be when needed.
Bob:
Now, as an example of that, in October of 2021, when the market’s were at an all time high, they continued to go higher for a couple months. I got out a little early. I have to admit, but we took our stock exposure overall and nearly cut it in half. You remember when we did that. Then last year when the markets were way, way down.
Shawn:
That was in our moderate balance accounts, we didn’t necessarily go that low in like our aggressive.
Bob:
No. We went down to I think about 75% from 95%. We’ve entered back in and we entered back in when the markets went down. That’s a tactical style of investing.
Shawn:
If I may interject Bob here, I believe I’ve heard you say many times that when you’re deciding whether or not to hold on to the market continuing to grow, when it seems like the momentum is slowing down, the pigs get fat and the hogs get slaughtered.
Bob:
It is. That’s the old style.
Shawn:
I apologize to our vegetarian visitors or our viewers. It’s just an analogy.
Bob:
I’m very Texan, very country boy, and that’s an old saying I’ve always heard. I have kind of a Warren Buffet style when the markets are at all time highs, the emotions chart. We need to show that emotions chart right now, and you’ll see that. When everybody’s wanting to buy, buy, buy, that’s when I’m saying it’s time to sell. When everybody’s wanting to sell, sell, sell, that’s when I wanna buy more.
Shawn:
You never really hit that top full, like the top, top top. You’re never really buying at the absolute bottom, but it’s using that kind of an idea that, contrarian theory helps to try to get near the top and try to get near the bottom is the goal with that.
Bob:
We’re active, that’s a tactical style portfolio that’s very actively managing. It’s not a buy and hold. Then some advisors also, what they’ll do is they’ll hire third party managers to manage.
Shawn:
We got the two different styles. We got buy and hold, we have tactical, and then we have two different ways of how those styles are managed, right? Either a third party. Which would mean someone else is monitoring that either buy and hold or tactical on your behalf, or like what we do here at Christian Financial Advisors, we actually manage that in-house. Bob of course is in charge of our investment management. He’s been doing this for three decades or so for a little bit of experience.
Bob:
Too long nearly, but I hope that I’ll be doing it in another 20 years. That’d pick me up to 50 years wouldn’t it?
Shawn:
Yeah. Keep you active.
Bob:
It sure would. That’s how we do it here. Next the type of advisors are, there’s the independent advisors which is what we are.
Shawn:
We don’t have a big parent company that tells us specific investment strategies or portfolios or types of holdings that we have to use. Then you have your larger captured advisory firm. What do you mean by captured?
Bob:
Well, that’s going to be your well-known names. I’m just going to name some of them. It’s okay I think. Like Wells Fargo advisors, or Merrill Lynch.
Shawn:
Maybe they’re associated with the bank or Edward Jones.
Bob:
Those are what we refer to as captured advisory firms. I’m not saying there’s a right or wrong on either way, but they’re a lot larger and they have to stick by that style.
Shawn:
It’s kind of the difference between an independent local restaurant versus some sort franchise. Which again, nothing wrong, like they both serve food, but just depends on what you’re looking for.
Bob:
That’s correct That’s right.
Shawn:
Then the next one we have what we would say values versus profit only approach.
Bob:
That has to do with investing. We’ve spoke a lot about this. I mean, you can go back into our archives and find a lot of information about Biblically Responsible Investing. That’s our approach here. We strive to stay away from companies that are involved in immoral agendas according to biblical guidelines, and we strive to look for the companies that are doing good.
Shawn:
Even if they’re not Christian, just that they’re making a positive impact on society. Really those are the two options. You have investing in a company regardless of what they may support and being involved in just do the financials look good. Then what we do is we look at, are the financials good? But we also take the approach of what you were saying, both the positive and negative screens to look for companies that are making a positive impact on our world.
Bob:
The majority advisors are not biblically responsible. I mean that would probably, you’d probably say 90 to 95% advisors.
Shawn:
As believers, as Christians, we feel that it’s very important that what you own, what you invest in, how you make money, is just as important as making money in the first in the first place.
Bob:
That’s because of scriptural guidelines from Proverb 24:1. It says, “The Earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.” We feel like that what we’ve taught here is it belongs to God and we’re managers.
Shawn:
Therefore we should be good stewards of what God has entrusted to us. The next thing we have, is the advisor you might wanna hire or work with, are they team-oriented in their approach for clients? Or is it more individually oriented where each advisor is kind of doing their own thing.
Bob:
Anytime that client thinks I need help, they’re going to go to that individual.
Shawn:
Or do they contact the team and the team is set up in a way where maybe you prefer to talk to your advisor, but maybe if they’re not available, one of the other advisors or service team is available.
Bob:
We’re the team approach side of it. Shawn, as you know, I don’t know how to do a form. I haven’t done a form, filled out a form in 30 years.
Shawn:
You probably know how to do it. You’re just a little rusty.
Bob:
I take the team approach and hire experts in things that I don’t like to do and I’m not good at.
Shawn:
It’s called delegation.
Bob:
Plans fail for lack of counsel but with many advisors they succeed. We all have different spiritual gifts, and I like to use those gifts here in the firm. That’s why we have a team approach here at Christian Financial Advisors.
Shawn:
We work off of each other’s strengths and use those strengths to balance each other’s weaknesses.
Bob:
We just have a couple more.
Shawn:
We got the new way or the old way.
Bob:
Well, I think you could go into this first one the new way, because you’re the one behind technology here.
Shawn:
Technology driven approach, or a little more old fashioned paper print style and in-person meetings, filing cabinets. We take the technology driven approach. Whether that includes a lot of things, zoom/video meetings, depending on your preference. Things like DocuSign, electronic signatures, online accounts and portals, texting, email, having an online portal for being able to share files securely. We use a service called eMoney that allows us to do not only that, but also financial planning. Having a smartphone app, etc. I always say that technology shouldn’t replace people. What technology should do is make it more efficient for people to communicate with one another. If there’s something that a human isn’t really adding any value to, but it needs to get done, a computer should do that. Then we have more time one-on-one with people That’s what the point is.
Bob:
Because of technology, it allows us as a Christian firm to serve Christians nationwide. Even in our own hometown now, it’s funny how many people have chosen to go with the Zoom online meeting. I prefer them to come in. I like meeting with people. I’m a people person, but I can see why, especially as busy as San Antonio and Austin are. If they live in San Antonio, they like to do Zoom because they don’t wanna get on 35, and it takes 45 minutes to an hour to get here and to get back. They can just do a zoom meeting in 45 minutes total.
Shawn:
Even if Bob, it only takes 10, 15 minute drive, well round trip, you’re now talking 20, 30 minutes. If someone has an hour for lunch, so they have time, they could jump on the computer, have their meeting maybe while they’re eating lunch, and then they’re right back to it. They didn’t have to spend any time driving. That has definitely happened where people realize it’s not just because you can’t go in person, it’s just more convenient to meet digitally.
Bob:
I never realized how much we use DocuSign. It is amazing. It makes it so much easier.
Shawn:
We got our last one, right?
Bob:
Our last one.
Shawn:
Is it Christian or secular? Which we covered a little bit, but this goes in a little bit more of the advice. Is the advice simply how much money can you make and what are you saving for retirement? Or is it advice based on biblical principles?
Bob:
I got two ways. Advice based on a secular worldview or advice based on a biblical worldview. Here we want our advice, at Christian Financial Advisors to be based on a biblical worldview.
Shawn:
Otherwise known as kingdom building. We want to be focused on how are you building the kingdom? Not just saving for retirement and preparing for that, but how is what you’re doing going to impact after you’re gone, and impact the kingdom of God?
Bob:
Well, there you go. That’s a lot of information to go with. You might wanna watch this a couple of times. Remember I pointed out at the beginning, you might wanna go back to episode 130, which we did three or four months ago. That was on “21 Questions to Ask a Financial Advisor”. Hopefully we’ve helped you to understand all the different types of financial advisors. Then you can go back and look at that and the questions to ask once you choose that financial advisor. Well, that’s going to do it for today.
Shawn:
Thanks again for joining us and as always, you can visit our website, christianfinancialadvisors.com, or you can call or text us at during business hours. (830) 609-6986. God bless you, and again, thanks for joining us.
[CONCLUSION]
We invite you to listen to all of our past episodes covering many financial topics from a Christian Perspective. To make sure you don’t miss any of Bob’s upcoming episodes you can subscribe to Christian Financial Perspectives on iTunes, Google Play Music, Spotify, or Stitcher. To learn more about integrating your faith with your finances, visit ciswealth.com or call 830-609-6986.
[DISCLOSURES]
Investment advisory services offered through Christian Investment Advisors Inc dba Christian Financial Advisors, a registered investment advisor registered with the SEC. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Comments from today’s show are for informational purposes only and not to be considered investment advice or recommendations to buy or sell any company that may have been mentioned or discussed. The opinions expressed are solely those of the hosts, Bob Barber and Shawn Peters, and their guests. Bob and Shawn do not provide tax advice and encourage you to seek guidance from a tax professional. While Christian Financial Advisors believes the information to be accurate and reliable, we do not claim or have responsibility for its completeness, accuracy, or reliability.
21 min
February 28, 2023 145 – Biblically Responsible Investing Part 3
Click below to listen to Episode 145 – BRI Part 3: Why It’s Important
BRI Part 3: Why It’s Important

Learn the reasons why Biblically Responsible Investing is so important.

More episodes >>

Part 3 of our three part series on Biblically Responsible Investing delves into the importance of investing with your values, especially as a Christian. Bob and Shawn present several Bible verses that go hand in hand with Faith Based Investing. If you wouldn’t outright support certain anti-Biblical agendas with your money, then why would you want to support them secondhand through your investments in certain companies?
After all, if you truly believe that “God owns it all”, then investing your money with your Christian values in mind is something that you probably want at the forefront. Using BRI as a way of investing helps make a difference in the marketplace, and it can give Christian investors a peace of mind in that they are supporting the good in the world while avoiding the negative.

HOSTED BY: Bob Barber, CWS®, CKA®
CO-HOST: Shawn Peters
Mentioned In This Episode

Christian Financial Advisors
Website

Bob Barber, CWS®, CKA®

Shawn Peters
Bible Verses In This Episode
PSALM 24:1
The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.
2 CORINTHIANS 6:17
Therefore, “Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.”
EXODUS 20:13-14
You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery.
PSALM 139:13
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
MATTHEW 5:13-16
You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
1 PETER 1:15-16
But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”
EXODUS 20:3
You shall have no other gods before me

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[INTRODUCTION]
Welcome to Christian Financial Perspectives, where you’re invited to gain insight, wisdom, and knowledge about how Christians integrate their faith, life, and finances with a Biblical worldview. Here’s your Christian Financial Advisor’s host, Bob Barber and his co-host, Shawn Peters.
[EPISODE]
Shawn:
Welcome to another episode of Christian Financial Perspectives. Today we’re going to be covering part three of our three part series on Biblically Responsible Investing. Now, if you like videos on finance and investing related topics, but from a Christian perspective using biblical principles, I would encourage you to smash that subscribe button and like this video. Now, I want to do a quick recap. We’re going to be covering part three of course today, but part one, we covered the definition of Biblically Responsible Investing, the history of it, how it’s not ESG, and the many biblical responsible investment choices that we have today. In part two, we actually covered the positive screens that we look for in Biblically Responsible Investing and the negative screens, and the technologies that can be used to actually do these screens with examples. If you haven’t already, we’re going to have links in the descriptions and we should have those videos shown on screen. We definitely encourage you to go watch those, but otherwise, you have been warned. Spoilers ahead for those of you who haven’t watched those two episodes. Bob, what are we covering today?
Bob:
Those are some good episodes. They really cover a lot. Especially with those evaluator and inspire reports that we have.
Shawn:
We’ll wait a second. Go ahead. Go watch those. All right, if you’re still here, you’ve either watched them, or you didn’t listen. Let’s go on to part three.
Bob:
Today we’re going to talk about why Biblically Responsible Investing is so important, especially for a Christian with a biblical worldview. We’re going to go into the scriptural basis and why, what scripture says, and that is so important about being, BRI or biblical responsible.
Shawn:
That’s the B in Biblically Responsible Investing.
Bob:
Hey, there you go. The Bible. That’s exactly right. How BRI makes a difference even in the marketplace. That’s where we want to make a change, a positive change.
Shawn:
We mentioned that a little bit in part two.
Bob:
Why is BRI so important, Shawn?
Shawn:
Well, it sheds light in the middle of the darkness and exposes it.
Bob:
It really does, doesn’t it? When you come into the marketplace and you’re making a difference with how you even invest, and you’re saying , I’m not going to invest in these companies involved in immoral activities, and I’m actually going to look for companies that are abiding by biblical values. It’s just as important as voting for a conservative candidate when it comes to Biblically Responsible Investing. Shawn, you remember we did the podcast on “Voting Right, Investing Ieft.”
Shawn:
Which again, comes down to if voting is important to you, then investing should also be important to you because that is the way you are voting with your dollars, and affecting our society, our culture. The next one is, it’s very scriptural, which we’re about to cover those scriptures.
Bob:
It aligns with a Christian worldview.
Shawn:
Finally, Biblically Responsible Investing is pro-life, pro-family, and pro God. It gives light to darkness.
Bob:
The scriptural bases for BRIs, there’s several that we’ve picked, but there’s literally hundreds that we could pick from.
Shawn:
Can I get dibs on this first one?
Bob:
You sure can.
Shawn:
I love this one. Psalms 24:1, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it;” I almost said that one earlier.
Bob:
You’re getting it memorized because we spend a lot of time on that. I believe that is probably the number one scripture when it comes to stewardship in the Bible. If we do believe that God owns it all, it’s his, and we are managers, this is a true scriptural basis for being biblically responsible.
Shawn:
Biblically Responsible Investing according to the scripture, it’s just one piece of the puzzle. The idea is that if everything, the world and everything in it, and all who live in it belongs to the Lord, then every area of your life is an act of worship. What you do from day to day, your finances, everything.
Bob:
Spiritual decisions for a Christian or financial decision, and vice versa. Financial decisions should be spiritual ones. 2 Corinthians 6:17 is a well-known scripture and it says, “Come out from them…”, from the world, from the, from the secular worldview. “Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.” This is truly what we’re trying to do with Biblically Responsible Investing; by being separate and not participating in the fruitless deeds of darkness.
Shawn:
Exodus 20:13-14, “You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery.” That goes back to a couple of the negative screens and why we say that we shouldn’t be supporting companies, or supporting abortion, or giving to that.
Bob:
Fetal tissue research. Using the parts from babies. Pharmaceutical companies do that. We don’t want to invest in those companies. We steer clear of that. Let’s go find the companies that are doing good. Pharmaceutical companies that are doing good, like cures for schizophrenia, and things like that.
Shawn:
Then the other one, you should not commit adultery. Well, Jesus said if you lust after a woman in your heart, you’ve committed adultery. I’m pretty sure pornography would, maybe pornography the word is not mentioned, but pretty sure that’s covered by that scripture.
Bob:
We showed last week how many companies are involved in a direct or indirect way in the distribution, or production of pornography. I think if you go back and you watch part two, you’ll be very surprised finding which companies these are. Another one is Psalms 139:13, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” This is a pro-life scripture. It’s as pro-life as they come. Biblically Responsible Investing is pro-life. It’s looking for companies that are helping life, not companies that are tearing it apart. It completely, like I say, steers away from companies like Planned Parenthood. If a company’s giving money to Planned Parenthood, we’re not going to be involved in that company.
Shawn:
Matthew 5:13-16, “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”
Bob:
You think about that scripture, right? We are being salt and light when we’re deciding to be biblically responsible with the investments that God owns in the first place. 1 Peter 1:15-16, “But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy.'” Another really strong scripture that backs up being biblically responsible.
Shawn:
Be holy because I’m holy also makes sense because we’re made in God’s image, so should we not try to reflect his nature, his character? Then the last scripture in this group is Exodus 20:3, “You shall have no other gods before me.” I always think of that one as if you don’t give God your finances as well, you’re effectively saying that God is Lord of your life except finance. Finance is Lord of your life in that area.
Bob:
I worry sometimes. I go to a Baptist church where we put them all the way well, you gotta go down into the water and then you come up. Except last year when we were having a drought, I don’t know about that. We had a bad drought here in Texas. I’m just kidding. Anyway sometimes I think people, they’re baptized and they kind of hold the wallet up, and they’re saying, “Well, you get everything God, but not this.” Well, Biblically Responsible Investing is really saying, “God, you get it all, including my investments,” because those investments ultimately belong to you, and I want to honor you with them.
Shawn:
God requires his people to worship, honor and glorify him alone. They are to have no other God, including the God of materialism, net worth, and rate of return.
Bob:
How BRI makes a difference. It makes a difference to me, I’ve seen this over my 27 years in, be involved in BRI Shawn. It makes a difference in my own life and in my soul. It’s taken me into a much deeper relationship with God. I have seen this, Shawn, with clients that have been with us for 20 and 25 years. Their relationship with God. This is another form of worship, like you said. It’s saying, okay, God, this belongs to you. I’ve had many clients that has taken them into a deeper relationship being biblically responsible.
Shawn:
Well it also makes sense too, Bob, because the number one, I think reason for divorce is finance related. If you and your spouse are both thinking of how do we make sure God is Lord of our finance as well? I’m not saying you won’t have problems, but it’s getting that right mindset. I would think it would grow your relationship with God and maybe reduce the chances that you have issues in your relationship.
Bob:
Another place it makes a difference.
Shawn:
To our Father in heaven. You are managing his funds with honor and glory. With His glory in mind.
Bob:
There’s no guilt feelings with being BRI. None at all. Another thing where it makes a difference is companies and Wall Street. They’re noticing. They’re noticing BRI. Shawn we talked about the history in part one and I remember when this started off with just a few thousand dollars. I remember when Art Alley, the founder of the Timothy Plan, he was a laughing stock of Wall Street. They’re like, this is not going to work. You’re crazy.
Shawn:
Who’s going to want to invest like this?
Bob:
Now there’s billions and billions and billions of dollars invested in biblically responsible companies.
Shawn:
I mean how many billion, like when you think of some of the companies that we work with a lot as well. You’ve got Timothy Plan.
Bob:
I could easily say it’s 10 billion.
Shawn:
I mean, Eventide’s got, what are they? $7 billion or so on the, $6 or $7 billion on their own. I mean we’re at least in double digits at this point of billions.
Bob:
That’s right.
Shawn:
That’s just between those three.
Bob:
You start adding it up and it is really, it is making a difference. The difference that it’s making is we’re holding companies accountable to elicit behaviors, and supporting anti-biblical agendas and behaviors. We can actually move their stock price now because BRI is getting big enough that it can move the stock price of the company. We’ve had some very positive things happen with some Fortune 500 companies that they were starting to support some of these illicit behaviors. We said we’re going to sell your stock if you continue to do that, got ahold of the finance department. Robert Nestle from Inspire, did a great program on this. I saw him do a speech on this and how he got this major company. I mean, I’m going to going to mention the company, but it’s big. He got them to stop funding the Gay Pride Parade. Because of that, and they said we didn’t realize that was happening. They pulled back the finance for that. That is a good thing. We have a voice, and if enough Christians will come together through the BRI movement.
Shawn:
I’d like to say one thing on that, Bob. There is a big difference between giving money to support Gay Pride Parade and being on board with treating people with respect especially as a Christian. If someone is part of the LGBT community, do not treat them poorly, do not discriminate against them. For one, that is absolutely against what Jesus told us to do. We’re to go and make disciples of all men.
Bob:
All are welcome in the church.
Shawn:
What did Jesus say? They will know you by your love for one another. There’s a big difference between loving those people and wanting to be available to help them and want them to come to know Christ. That is not the same as, oh, I want to take money, or I want to invest in a company that is taking money off the profits and paying to promote that very thing. Those are two very different things. I just want to make sure people don’t get that confused. They’re not the same. That’s all.
Bob:
If the company makes widgets, they need to be in the business of making widgets. Not supporting agendas that violate biblical principles.
Shawn:
If I had a choice, I would say, you know what, if no companies were very Christian leaning, but they just remain neutral. They just didn’t get involved in either way, that’s fine. Just let the individuals, let those individuals make the choice of what they want to vote for and support. Just stay out of it.
Bob:
Well, I hope this three part series has been very informative to you on Biblically Responsible Investing. If you did not hear part one and part two, I really emphasize that you go back and you watch those or listen to those. We hope that through this faith-based investing, we’ve touched your heart. If you would like to align your Christian faith with how you invest, then we are here to help you do that. You can find out more by giving us a call at (830) 609-6986 or texting that number as well during regular business hours, Central Standard Time. Or you can find out more by going to our website to christianfinancialadvisors.com. Remember, this is the last thing I want to say. Being biblically responsible in your investments is pro-life,
Shawn:
pro-family, and pro-God.
Bob:
It gives light to darkness.
Shawn:
Thank you for joining us and hope you join us next time. God bless.
[DISCLOSURES]
Investment advisory services offered through Christian Investment Advisors Inc dba Christian Financial Advisors, a registered investment advisor registered with the SEC. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Comments from today’s show are for informational purposes only and not to be considered investment advice or recommendations to buy or sell any company that may have been mentioned or discussed. The opinions expressed are solely those of the hosts, Bob Barber and Shawn Peters, and their guests. Bob and Shawn do not provide tax advice and encourage you to seek guidance from a tax professional. While Christian Financial Advisors believes the information to be accurate and reliable, we do not claim or have responsibility for its completeness, accuracy, or reliability.
16 min
February 20, 2023 144 – Biblically Responsible Investing Part 2
Click below to listen to Episode 144 – Biblically Responsible Investing Part 2
Biblically Responsible Investing Part 2

Learn more about screening technologies within BRI.

More episodes >>

We are on to Part 2 of our three part series on Biblically Responsible Investing (BRI) where we discuss screening technologies. BRI is a subset of Values Based Investing that caters to Christian and Biblical beliefs in an investment portfolio. It allows Christians, or whoever is interested, to invest in companies that do not go against Biblical values. It is also known as Faith Based Investing.
So, how is such a unique way of investing completed? Bob and Shawn go over just how a BRI investment portfolio is created through using modern screening technologies. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to creating a well diversified BRI (or Faith Based Investment) portfolio.

HOSTED BY: Bob Barber, CWS®, CKA®
CO-HOST: Shawn Peters
Mentioned In This Episode

Christian Financial Advisors
Website

Bob Barber, CWS®, CKA®

Shawn Peters

eVALUEator
Website

Inspire Insight
Website
Bible Verses In This Episode
PROVERBS 13:11
Dishonest money dwindles away, but he who gathers money little by little makes it grow.
PROVERBS 15:1
The house of the righteous contains great treasure, but the income of the wicked brings trouble.

Want to ask a question about your specific situation? Schedule a complimentary 15 minute phone call.
SCHEDULE AN APPOINTMENTDid you enjoy this episode? Sign up for email updates and never miss an episode.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Intro:
Welcome to Christian Financial Perspectives, where you’re invited to gain insight, wisdom, and knowledge about how Christians integrate their faith, life, and finances with a biblical Worldview. Here’s your Christian Financial advisor’s host, Bob Barber and his co-host, Shawn Peters.
Shawn:
Welcome to another episode of Christian Financial Perspectives. We’re so glad that you decided to join us today. If you’re on YouTube watching this, I would ask that you please subscribe to this channel, especially if you like content that is on finance and from a Christian perspective.
Bob:
If you’re a podcast listener, you’re going to want to go watch the YouTube because we’re going to have these reports that we’re going to show.
Shawn:
If you are listening to this episode you’re welcome to still listen to it on our podcast directories, but it probably would be a little bit better of an episode visually. What we’re going to do real quick is I’m going to go over a recap. This is a part two of our Biblically Responsible Investing series, and is a recap from part one, for those of you who did not get a chance to watch or listen to that. Last time we covered the definition of Biblically Responsible Investing, which is a type of Christian values-based investing that seeks to align in investors holdings with biblical principles. Another term for that could be faith-driven investing. It is aligning your investments with companies that support Christian and Biblical teachings while avoiding companies that do not. BRI is pro-life, pro-family, and pro God.
It gives light to darkness. Then we also covered the history of Biblically Responsible Investing or BRI, and we covered how BRI is not ESG. Finally we covered the many BRI investment choices today. There are over 34 BRI ETFs and mutual funds to choose from, plus hundreds of stocks and bonds. Again, BRI is Biblically Responsible Investing, so we don’t get lost in the acronyms. I would definitely encourage you to go back and review part one if you did not watch or hear it yet. Onto you, Bob.
Bob:
Today we’re going to cover the positive screens for Biblically Responsible Investing, or like we say BRI, the negative screens for BRI, and the technologies we use to screen for Biblically Responsible Investing with actual example. The positives are we seek out above average best what we call in-class companies in the following areas: Number one, we look at their business model. That’s their business products, their services, and operations. How they’re structured in a way that benefits rather than exploits their customers.
Shawn:
Number two, we have product integrity and innovation. Creates the company, creates products and services which are helpful, and create value rather than extract value or harm users.
Bob:
Next we look at how the company is run at their corporate governance like policies and behaviors regarding executive compensation, ethical dealings, board management, etc.
Shawn:
Number four is human capital. This is related to policies and behaviors regarding equitable employee management.
Bob:
Then their social impact, the impact and influence on society as a company and communities in which the company operates.
Shawn:
Number six, supply chain impact, influence on society and communities in which the company operates. kind of similar to the social.
Bob:
Number seven, and we believe this strongly in the environment, if you love God’s creation, you want to take care of the creation. I mean, if you love the creator, you want to take care of the creation. This measures the company’s impact on the environment, including air, water, and land.
Shawn:
Then the final one on the positives is sustainable energy use and production. Measures the company’s use and production of sustainable energy.
Bob:
The negatives, and this is really how Biblically Responsible Investing started out. In beginning it just looked at the negatives. Now we look at the positives too, so that’s why we covered the positives first.
Shawn:
Now we look at the negatives.
Bob:
The negatives, if the company is involved in exposure to any of these areas, we strive to stay away from investing in that company. Number one is pornography. The manufacture, sale, or distribution of pornography/ pornographic content. You will be very surprised to find many of your large Fortune 500 companies are involved in this.
Shawn:
Number two, alcohol manufacturer or sale of alcoholic beverages.
Bob:
Number three, if they produce tobacco in any way, manufacturer, or sell tobacco products.
Shawn:
Gambling, whether the ownership or operation of gambling facilities, either physical or internet based.
Bob:
As an example, we’re not going to own any hotels in Vegas. Number five is bioethics. Involvement in the business or promotion of abortion, including… I never can say that one good.
Shawn:
I think it’s abortifacient.
Bob:
Abortion drugs. Embryonic stem cell research or philanthropy. If they’re giving any money to Planned Parenthood.
Shawn:
Number six is human rights. Known human rights violations such as employing children, slave labor, human trafficking, discrimination, and things like that.
Bob:
That has a lot to do with your international companies. Not here. Number seven, the LGBTQIA+ 27 other genders activism. Corporations that use shareholder dollars to push a social agenda such as this alienating their customers investors with alternative viewpoints. We really believe there’s some good scriptural principles. We’re going to share a lot of that in part three, but 2 Corinthians 6:17 tells us to, “Come out and be separate; touch no unclean thing and I will receive you.” This is very important when it comes to BRI, and why we feel this is a scriptural basis for that.
Shawn:
Then Exodus 20:13-14, “You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery.”
Bob:
That comes under the screening of pro-life. We want to be pro-life and not invest in abortion clinics and adultery.
Shawn:
As well as the pornography.
Like Jesus said, if you even lust after a woman in your heart, you’ve committed adultery.
Bob:
Psalms 139:13 is another very pro-life scripture that we believe goes with investing. “For you created my inmost being you; knit me together in my mother’s womb.” Now we’re going to get to the technologies that we use with Biblically Responsible Investing.
Shawn:
Researching companies on the internet and then verifying them by using things like the evaluator online screening tool. Which is a paid program, and anyone can subscribe to that, but it is a little more expensive. Then there’s also the Inspire Insight tool, which is actually has a free version. You can do a lot of screenings. I’m not sure if there’s actually a limit on the screenings. They’re paid version gives you a little more access to some extra tools, but those are two really great examples. They’re both very stringent on their own.
Bob:
The evaluator is what I call the original. This is what I was using back in like the nineties when I started this. The evaluator really looks at the negative screens, like it says, “come out and be separate, touch no unclean thing.” Then Inspire came along a couple years ago and they’re using Biola University to help them with this. They look for the positive screens as well. We like that because we want to invest in the positive while avoiding the the negative. Let’s look at some of these examples. We’re going to pull this up on the screen.
Shawn:
The first one we’ve got Bob, Vanguard 500 index is very common. Just as a quick cover our bases for compliance purposes. The holdings and funds that we’re going to be showing on screen, none of these are an actual recommendation to purchase. It’s not…
Bob:
to buy our sell.
Shawn:
You need to do your own research or work with your own advisor. This first one, Vanguard 500, Bob, I’ll kind of go through this if you want to just break this down a little bit further.
Bob:
I will because I’ve been using this report for years and years, so you want me to do that?
Shawn:
Yeah, go ahead. I’ll just kind of scroll through for you.
Bob:
What this is saying is when you invest in that Vanguard 500 index fund, it has 48% of the companies in that fund are involved in the abortion industry in some way, form, or fashion. Either giving to the Planned Parenthood or involved in the embryonic stem cell research. Just things like that. Then you look down and you see alcohol, entertainment, gambling, and lifestyle. This shows how 65% of the companies in the S&P 500 index fund and this Vanguard 500 index fund are involved into LGBTQIA+. Like I say 27 other genders. That’s the latest I’ve heard. I don’t know how many genders there are. Makes it easy?
Shawn:
Yeah, I know.
Bob:
Man or wife.
Shawn:
I just say LGBT+ because I can’t keep track of all the acronyms.
Bob:
Then we got pornography. People were real surprised when they see, like, you’ll see down here where it says, you’ll see Apple, or you’ll see like Microsoft. You’re like, how are they involved in pornography? It has to do with the distribution of it over their networks. That’s what we mean by that.
Shawn:
It could be an example of one that in their, say Apple TV or something.
Bob:
Netflix is another example.
Shawn:
Netflix, things like that.
Bob:
Then we have the human rights campaign. This is something that came about later, Shawn. With the international we started looking at that and going, well, this is human slavery. You’re violating human rights.
Shawn:
Not only that, but you have companies who have operations, or manufacturing, or things like that in other countries. me of this would be US companies with overseas operations. They’re following the law of the country over there, even though it wouldn’t pass merit here in the United States.
Bob:
You can see on the screen here, you can see these top companies that we have here, and you’re like, “Wow, I didn’t know that.” Those are well known companies I recognize. There are still a lot of great companies to invest in, so don’t just think about the negative. There’s a still a lot of positive great companies to invest in.
Shawn:
Keep in mind too, whenever you see an evaluated report, the this is the top violating companies. These are not all of the companies within this particular holding. It only shows, I think it’s like top 15 or something like that.
Bob:
Let’s show a positive fund. We pulled up the Timothy Plan high dividend ETF. You notice no violations. If they do find one violation, they will sell that holding almost immediately, Shawn. I mean not almost, they will. The day that they find that out, they’ll turn around, or a lot of times they’ll give the company a chance to stop doing that.
Shawn:
Especially if have a larger exposure to it, because sometimes, and that’s kinda the other part of Biblically Responsible Investing.
Bob:
We’re going to talk about that next week.
Shawn:
The idea of shareholders using their voting rights to try to affect change within a company. If they’ve got that one violation, and especially if it was a more recent change, well yeah, we’ll get into that next week. Sorry.
Bob:
Then we wanted to show the Inspire, so we pop over to another website. The Inspire example of the Vanguard 500, they give us positive or a negative score so you’re looking for a positive score. Something like a plus 10 or a plus five.
Shawn:
Here you can see under environmental, they scored very well, very high on that. It kind of breaks it down into the different areas within environmental. Then if you want to, it’s kind of cool, you can click on some of these links here, and you can see which companies are actually involved within that holding for that. Then on the negative side, you’ve got, okay, what does this mean by social? Well, it’s broken down into LGBT+ philanthropy, legislation support, abortion promotion, LGBT promotion, and pornography. Then you’ve got the abortion drugs and stem cell research. It just kind of breaks all that down.
Bob:
It’s a fantastic program. Then we had the Inspire positive. Let’s look at a positive stock because we talked about some negatives. This is not a recommendation to buy or sell stock.
Shawn:
In this case, Vanguard had a negative 31. Anything that’s a negative number just means overall, hey, probably something you want to avoid from a Biblically Responsible Investing standpoint. Then if you have a company that’s got a positive score for their overall inspire impact, that’s a good potential option. In this case, they didn’t have any negative screenings that came up. They had multiple areas; environmental, social, and governance that came up as positives, positive screens.
Bob:
That was a 60, which is a very, very high score.
Shawn:
Here’s what it looks like on the Evaluator, or what they call their investigate, or investigation side. Again, you’ll see here, hey look…
Bob:
Zero violations.
Shawn:
They didn’t have any violations, so that’s good.
Bob:
Now the company just has to pass what we call, “pass the muster”. They have to pass for their financials. They got to look good financially. That’s why we’re not saying we would buy or sell this company. Once it’s made it through this process for BRI, then we can look at the company, is this a good company to buy or not?
Shawn:
Now it now has to pass the actual financials.
Bob:
All right, that’s going to do it for today as far as part two and how we use technology. Next week we’re going to cover why Biblically Responsible Investing is so extremely important, especially to a Christian. What’s the scriptural basis for being biblically responsible, and how BRI makes a difference in the marketplace. In learning about BRI, if this is stirring your heart, and you’d like to align your Christian faith and your biblical worldview with how you invest, then give us a call or text us at (830) 609-6986 during regular business hours. Or find out more by going to christianfinancialadvisors.com. That’s all for today.
Shawn:
You don’t want to miss part three which should be coming out next week, and we look forward to seeing you then. God bless.
Outro:
We invite you to listen to all of our past episodes, covering many financial topics from a Christian perspective. To make sure you don’t miss any of Bob’s upcoming episodes. You can subscribe to Christian Financial Perspectives on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or Amazon Music to learn more about integrating your faith with your finances. Visit Christianfinancialadvisors.com or call (830) 609-6986. Investment advisory services offered through Christian Investment Advisors, Inc DBA Christian Financial Advisors also known as Christian Financial Advisors Management Group, a registered investment advisor. Comments from today’s show for informational purposes only, and not to be considered investment advice or recommendations to buy or sell any company that may have been mentioned or discussed. The opinions expressed are solely those of the host Bob Barber and his guests. Bob does not provide tax advice and encourages you to seek guidance from a tax professional. While Christian Investment Advisors believes the information to be accurate and reliable, we do not claim or have responsibility for its completeness, accuracy, or reliability.
15 min
February 13, 2023 143 – Biblically Responsible Investing Part 1
Click below to listen to Episode 143 – Biblically Responsible Investing Part 1
Biblically Responsible Investing Part 1

Check out part 1 of 3 of our series on Biblically Responsible Investing.

More episodes >>

In Part 1 of 3 about Biblically Responsible Investing, Bob and Shawn delve into what exactly Biblically Responsible Investing – BRI – encompasses, how it works, and some of the companies that Christian Financial Advisors works with. What exactly is BRI? Well, Biblically Responsible Investing (BRI) falls under the realm of types of Values Based Investing. BRI is the short term phrase for it, and it is something that is the core of Christian Financial Advisors and our investing methodology.
BRI is a great choice of investing for Christian investors, or even regular investors, who want their financial portfolio, mutual funds, and ETFs involved with companies that are supporting the good and filtering out the bad. Learn about how it got started and what makes it different from other values based investing choices.

HOSTED BY: Bob Barber, CWS®, CKA®
CO-HOST: Shawn Peters
Mentioned In This Episode

Christian Financial Advisors
Website

Bob Barber, CWS®, CKA®

Shawn Peters

Timothy Plan
Website

Eventide
Website

Inspire
Website
Bible Verses In This Episode
PROVERBS 13:11
Dishonest money dwindles away, but he who gathers money little by little makes it grow.
PROVERBS 15:1
The house of the righteous contains great treasure, but the income of the wicked brings trouble.

Want to ask a question about your specific situation? Schedule a complimentary 15 minute phone call.
SCHEDULE AN APPOINTMENTDid you enjoy this episode? Sign up for email updates and never miss an episode.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Intro:
Welcome to Christian Financial Perspectives, where you’re invited to gain insight, wisdom, and knowledge about how Christians integrate their faith, life, and finances with the biblical worldview. Here’s your Christian Financial Advisor’s host, Bob Barber and his co-host, Shawn Peters.
Shawn:
Welcome to another episode of Christian Financial Perspectives. We’re so glad you joined us. If you like this type of content where we talk about financial topics, but from a Christian perspective using biblical principles, please make sure you hit that subscribe button and like this video. Today, we are going to be covering part one of three, of something called Biblically Responsible Investing, or BRI. This is something that is very important to us here at Christian Financial Advisors, and Bob has been around since the ye olden days of this, right Bob?
Bob:
I was young when I started doing this kind of like you are Shawn. Now you’re growing this nice beard I see going on here.
Shawn:
Well, unlike you, Bob…
Bob:
That is some gray in it though. It must be the grandkids doing that to you huh?
Shawn:
Well, my kids You’re your grandkids.
Bob:
Okay.
Shawn:
I have to, Bob. See, I don’t have any wisdom hair in the top of my head. I’ve only got it in my sideburns, so I got to look like I know what I’m talking about and have some wisdom.
Bob:
You can go get some gray color and put it up there. So we are going to talk about Biblically Responsible Investing. This is so important. We’re going to do this over a three-part series, or else you’d be here with us for the next hour. We’re going to cut this down into 12, 15 minute segments, and first, we wanna talk about what the definition of Biblically Responsible Investing is. Shawn’s going to let you know what that is.
Shawn:
Biblically Responsible Investing, or BRI for short, is the type of values-based investing that seeks to align in investor’s holdings with biblical principles. Another term for this could be faith-driven investing or faith-based investing. I know those are two terms that, more and more people are looking for.
Bob:
We’ve called it so many different things over the years. It started off with Morally Responsible Investing. Then it was changed to Biblically Responsible Investing, and you hear it referred to as faith-based investing now.
Shawn:
It’s really all the same though. It comes back to the purpose of what we’re talking about here which is aligning an investor’s holdings with biblical principles as a Christian.
Bob:
Exactly.
Shawn:
Another thing with this is that it’s aligning your investments with companies that support Christian and biblical teachings, principles, while avoiding companies that do not. It’s not just about negative screens. It’s negative and positive screens.
Bob:
In the beginning it was just about negative screens, but now it’s about positive screens as well, which is nice. I’m glad it’s evolved over the last 27 years. I’m one of the founders of the Biblically Responsible Investing movement, so I’ve seen this thing really change a lot.
Shawn:
I know when you first got started, it was you and three or four other people that even talked about it.
Bob:
There was basically five of us. I can still name those names. One of them, has already gone to be with the Lord. He got cancer, but we’re still around. We are very excited about what we have seen with Biblically Responsible Investing, and how it’s grown from this tiny, tiny movement into this gigantic movement now.
Shawn:
A lot of that too, I think is really cool with the way technology has changed over time. I think part of the reason really for it being mostly focused on avoiding these companies that are involved in these specific negative areas is that it was just a little easier to find the information on that. Whereas now with as screening technologies and accessibility to information has improved over time. Now you can look for companies that aren’t involved in certain contentious areas that don’t align with our beliefs as Christians, but you can also look for companies that are involved in doing positive things. It doesn’t all necessarily mean that it’s Christian. It’s just more of a someone is doing something that they’re not doing it because they’re a Christian or because they’re a Christian company, but they just think it’s a good thing to do and we can align with that as a Christian.
Bob:
You can align with, even though you may not be even a Christian, you can align still with biblical principles of morality. That’s what we mean by that.
Shawn:
We have two scriptures. I’m going to cover those.
Bob:
Absolutely. This is a very scripturally based type of investing, so it needs to be in there.
Shawn:
Bob, hopefully, what we can do is have you cover a little bit of the history of why the BRI movement started.
Bob:
I can. I sure can.
Shawn:
Proverbs 13:11, “Dishonest money dwindles away, but he who gathers money little by little makes it grow.” We also have Proverbs 15:1, “The house of the righteous contains great treasure, but the income of the wicked brings the trouble.”
Bob:
Some of the scriptures we always use too, is Psalms 24:1, “The Earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.” If you believe that God owns it all, then Biblically Responsible Investing is for you. The history started many, many years ago. Like I said, it was about avoidance, and there was a major company back in the nineties that had special days for the LGBT. I remember the Southern Baptist Convention calling for avoiding, supporting that entertainment part. You notice I’m not mentioning names, trying not to. That is what, how this started, and then we started looking at, there’s a lot of companies that were supporting Planned Parenthood. That was like the abortion industry or using fetal tissue research from abortions, or pharmaceuticals. That’s the history and where it’s evolved into today.
Shawn:
Future Shawn here. Just had to add a quick insert for this episode. Just to clarify something that Bob and I are about to talk about in the video. The SEC has decided to use the term ESG as a generic name to categorize all types of Values-Based Investing, which means they consider Biblically Responsible Investing to be a type of ESG. When we reference ESG in the rest of this episode, we are referring to the specific, decades-old type of investing that screens for Environmental, Social, and Governance values, and NOT the generic term the SEC has decided to use in the investment industry to describe different types of Values-Based Investing. And now, back to the video.
Shawn:
Really the concept, I would kind of step back for a second and say Biblically Responsible Investing, faith-based investing, they’re really, and ESG, not saying they’re all the same, but they would all be considered a type of values-based investing. Where you’re not just looking at the financials, but you’re investing based on what a company is or isn’t involved in. Obviously we’re going to get into the differences between this and ESG. Over the last, I’d say really the last 10 years or so, it seems like the idea of investing based on the financials and based on does this company align with you as an investor.
Bob:
As a Christian and my values.
Shawn:
For us as a Christian, it is important because at the end of the day, we will be held accountable to the Lord for how we acted during this life. We know how we handled the things that were given to us to take responsibility of, so that ownership is important.
Bob:
Like you say, BRI or Biblically Responsible Investing, faith-based investing
Shawn:
Is not ESG.
Bob:
Is not ESG. What does ESG mean?
Shawn:
ESG is the, environmental… you put me on the spot. It’s the Environmental, Social, and Governance. Sometimes they get those mixed up.
Bob:
It’s not that, it’s actually as opposite as you can get from that.
Shawn:
For the most part. For the most part. I would say calling what a BRI investor does, ESG, is somewhat insulting. As for many years, the ESG methodology has been mostly kind of the opposite of what Christian investors seek out. BRI screens out companies that are involved in supporting abortion and the LGBT agendas.
Bob:
Also gambling, alcohol, and tobacco. We look at slavery, human slavery, and other countries. Are they using child labor? Those are the screens that we say, if that company’s involved in that, we’re not going to buy that company.
Shawn:
Whereas on the flip side, ESG has typically been associated with, if a company is involved in heavily supporting these different types of lifestyle choices with the abortion and LGBT, that they are even celebrating those. Not to mention they want invest in them. That to me is a big difference between BRI and ESG. Now, Bob, we have to kind of cover the beginning, so what options really were there 27, almost 30 years ago? What options did you have when you first started doing this?
Bob:
One to two, maybe three, or you could do individual stocks.
Shawn:
You had to do your own research too. A lot of your painstaking research.
Bob:
The programming way, way back, was just starting off, and I remember Scott Fehrenbacher, the founder of that. Then Timothy Plan bought this program called the Evaluator. Now you can go online and you can look at the evaluator, and anybody can subscribe to it. Take away individual stocks. There were very, very few choices. Just one or two, or even three was the max if you wanted to buy a mutual fund or ETF, that was biblically responsible.
Shawn:
What about today?
Bob:
Oh my goodness that’s changed. Today, the Timothy Plan mutual funds that were, Art Alley, is the father of Biblically Responsible Investing in this country. Now there’s 12 mutual funds that they offer plus six ETF’s so that’s 18 choices .
Shawn:
Just from that one fund family.
Bob:
Then, Eventide Funds started behind that, and they offer eight different biblically responsible mutual funds. Now you add that together, you’re getting up there in number. Then a few years back, my good friend Robert Nestle, I remember bringing him here to our headquarters and talking to him and educating him about BRI. He found me on online from research. He said, “I want to go see Bob,” and he took the torch and ran with it.
Shawn:
He got a little bit of that itch for like, I really wanna do more with this.
Bob:
I’m so proud of him because he’s the youngest of all of us in the BRI movement. They have eight ETF’s at inspire where he started. When you add just those three investment managers together, there’s 34 different choices now, of biblically responsible ETF’s and mutual funds. 34 choices! I mean, how many choices do you need? Then we put together our portfolios and overweight or underweight these portfolios depending on that.
Shawn:
Keep in mind, that’s just the fun choices. Obviously if you use Inspire, the ETF’s that you were talking about Robert Nestle. Inspire insight is a tool that someone can use actually for free. They do have a paid subscription, but they do have a free one.
Bob:
For monitoring funds and stocks.
Shawn:
If you just wanted to see for some of your own stock picking, if that was something you wanted to do, you do have options now to screen. Whereas 30 years ago, good luck. You’re going to have to go through all that data manually. So that’s really exciting, but keep in mind, one other thing we want to hit highlight is that, do your research. Not all companies that say that they are biblically responsible, that they do BRI are. A couple of examples that, and I’m sorry if somebody gets mad. I’m stepping on some toes here, but Thrivent and Guidestone are not biblically responsible.
Bob:
Not according to our screens.
Shawn:
Not according to our screens and from the information that they’ve shared and posted themselves. One of them that really frustrated me, because we had somebody that came to us and they were evaluating our firm versus some other firms. I did a little research because I hadn’t even heard that Thrivent was even offering faith-based funds.
Bob:
Well, Thrivent came from the Lutheran.
Shawn:
Yes, but here’s what got me. When, you start looking at the disclosures, if you will, the disclaimers of their faith-based funds, it very clearly says that they don’t do any kind of verification. That their funds are actually following the screens that right above that they just said that they’re screening out for. Then on top of that, like with guidestone who fails the screens that we do. Guidestone is one of multiple fund families that they include within their faith-based portfolio. If you’re not doing anything to actually screen or verify, or use companies that pass those screens. How can you call yourself biblically responsible? I mean, otherwise what you’re doing is you’re saying we’re faith-based because we want Christians to invest with us, but you didn’t actually do anything different. That misses the entire point of Biblically Responsible Investing. It should look different than the rest of the world.
Bob:
So that’s going to do it for today. This is just the first part series on Biblically Responsible Investing. We’re going to do a three part series. Next week we’ll get into part two. That’s going to go deeper, and then part three will sum it all up.
Shawn:
That’s right. Thank you for joining us and God bless.
Outro:
We invite you to listen to all of our past episodes, covering many financial topics from a Christian perspective. To make sure you don’t miss any of Bob’s upcoming episodes. You can subscribe to Christian Financial Perspectives on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or Amazon Music to learn more about integrating your faith with your finances. Visit Christianfinancialadvisors.com or call (830) 609-6986.
Disclosure:
Investment advisory services offered through Christian Investment Advisors, Inc DBA Christian Financial Advisors also known as Christian Financial Advisors Management Group, a registered investment advisor. Comments from today’s show for informational purposes only, and not to be considered investment advice or recommendations to buy or sell any company that may have been mentioned or discussed. The opinions expressed are solely those of the host Bob Barber and his guests. Bob does not provide tax advice and encourages you to seek guidance from a tax professional. While Christian Investment Advisors believes the information to be accurate and reliable, we do not claim or have responsibility for its completeness, accuracy, or reliability.
14 min
February 06, 2023 142 – Budgeting Without Numbers
Click below to listen to Episode 142 – Budgeting Without Numbers
Budgeting Without Numbers

Learn how to create the right mindset when it comes to budgeting.

More episodes >>

Budgeting is a topic that commonly arises, and it is hard for most people to commit to it as budgeting can feel like bondage, not freedom. However, it is the lack of debt and ability to stick to a budget that brings so many of us financial freedom. Nobody likes debt or wants to be in debt. Even if you have the financial ability to buy anything you want, it isn’t always beneficial to you.
There are many ways that you can save on money (and/or decrease your purchases) that don’t have to directly deal with numbers. It just means having the right mindset. Some of the areas that Bob and Shawn cover include waiting before large purchases and methods to keep your emotions at bay when considering purchases.

HOSTED BY: Bob Barber, CWS®, CKA®
CO-HOST: Shawn Peters
Mentioned In This Episode

Christian Financial Advisors
Website

Bob Barber, CWS®, CKA®

Shawn Peters

Simplifying The Money Conversation

Mint By Intuit
Website

Simplifi By Quicken

Monarch Money
Website
Bible Verses In This Episode
PROVERBS 27:24
For riches are not forever, Nor does a crown endure to all generations.
EXODUS 20:17
No lusting after your neighbor’s house—or wife or servant or maid or ox or donkey.

Want to ask a question about your specific situation? Schedule a complimentary 15 minute phone call.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Intro:
Welcome to Christian Financial Perspectives, where you’re invited to gain insight, wisdom, and knowledge about how Christians integrate their faith, life, and finances with a biblical worldview. Here’s your Christian Financial Advisors’ host, Bob Barber and his co-host, Shawn Peters.
Shawn:
Welcome to another episode of Christian Financial Perspectives. We’re so glad you joined us today. If you like content on budgeting, finance related of any kind from a Christian perspective, we’d love it if you would hit that subscribe button. Depending on when you’re watching this, we’re excited that we just hit our hundred-thousand subscribers.
Bob:
Did we really? Hey, I didn’t know that.
Shawn:
At some point, at some point, this will be true when someone’s watching.
Bob:
In the future. Okay. We would love you to subscribe as we grow and get the message out about how to handle money from a Godly perspective.
Shawn:
If you do help us to reach that goal of a hundred thousand, we’ll be really excited.
Bob:
We really thank you.
Shawn:
So Bob…
Bob:
Oh goodness, what a title.
Shawn:
Hopefully, some of you saw our title and it really isn’t clickbait. This really is going to be, “Budgeting Without Numbers,” because budgeting is far more than just numbers.
Bob:
That’s correct. Now there’s going to be a few numbers at the very end. About 80 to 90% of budgeting is not about numbers. You’re like, “How can you say that?”
Shawn:
Now, Bob, your other idea for this episode was to call this, “The Budgeting Mindset,” right?
Bob:
That’s correct.
Shawn:
So, before we get into that, let’s read a couple scriptures because this is Christian Financial Perspectives.
Bob:
These scriptures really do tie into what we’re going to be talking about, Shawn.
Shawn:
All right, well, let’s go with the first one. Proverbs 27:24, “For riches are not forever, nor does a crown endure to all generations.” You want to go with Exodus?
Bob:
I’ll go with Exodus. I took this from The Message. I thought it really was great. “No lusting after your neighbor’s house–or wife or servant or maid or ox or donkey.” Now most of us don’t have an ox or donkey today.
Shawn:
I guess you could replace that with the name of a car brand.
Bob:
Exactly, or his Lexus or boat. Don’t set your heart on anything that is your neighbors, and this is really the foundation for today, Shawn. This is about coveting. This is about wanting what others have, and I think that is a reason that so many people blow their budget.
Shawn:
It’s a long scripture, so we’re not going to read all of that one right now, but it makes me think of the parable of talents, too. Where the master was going to be going away for a while, and what I love about that scripture. I feel like sometimes you just kind of gloss over the beginning, but it wasn’t so much just that one he gave five, one he gave two, one he gave one. But that it specifically says that he gave each to their own ability.
Bob:
That’s true. People often will miss out on that.
Shawn:
Obviously what you can see from that is there were three servants. They were not all given the same number of talents, but it was according to their ability. What we’ve got to always remember, and this definitely ties into the mindset, is that budgeting is about managing what God has entrusted to you. Not worrying about what your neighbors doing, what it looks like they have. Which we’ll get into that too, and sometimes that might just be all a facade. Some people, and let’s just kinda make this clear since we’re talking about budgeting. Some people just flat out don’t make enough money for all of life’s needs.
Bob:
I’ve seen it, Shawn. You make less than $25,000 a year here in the United States, and that’s not enough money to pay all the bills. There’s just not enough there, and I’ve heard them, they’ve come to me before and said, “I need help with budgeting.” I’m like, bless your heart because there’s just really, there’s not any room for anything, for the majority.
Shawn:
For today’s episode, today’s episode is going to be for the majority of the people in the United States that do make enough. They’re not below the poverty line, and when it comes to budgeting, success is not based on the numbers, but on having the right mindset. If you don’t start with the right mindset, it doesn’t matter how creative you get with spreadsheets and budgeting apps or numbers, it’s not going to make a difference. You’ve got to have the right mindset or you are not going to succeed.
Bob:
You’re domed for failure because all the numbers don’t mean anything if you don’t have that right mindset.
Shawn:
I mean, I can come up with numbers all day, but we’ve seen it before, Bob. People ask us, “Hey, I’m trying to reach this goal for retirement.” We say, “Okay, great. We need to open up this kind of account, you need to be putting this much away every month between now and when you’ve estimated that you want to retire,” and it happens over and over. Some people follow the plan and some people don’t. Then when they get to retirement, “Why don’t I have enough money?” Well, I gave you the numbers, but if you can’t have the right mindset and be disciplined and follow the plan, it doesn’t matter what plans you come up with.
Bob:
I’m coming from this folks, people, I’m coming from this with 30, no, it’s coming on 34, 35 years of experience. I’ve seen this over and over. I’ve seen people, they really don’t have a budget, but they have the right mindset. They don’t find themselves in financial trouble because they have that right mindset. I see it every single day throughout the history of how long I’ve been in this business, this financial advisory business. I think it’s first that we got to lay down some foundation. What is your personality trait? Because everyone has a different personality trait. Well, there’s basically four main ones as we know. Are you a saver or are you a spender? Which do you enjoy most? Saving or spending? Now, believe it or not, I actually enjoy saving. I know I’m out there and I’m part of that small percentage, but I enjoy saving. I enjoy watching the value go up of my cash reserves. I feel security in that. My ultimate security is in Jesus Christ and God. It is very important to me to see that I have cash reserves, so that if something bad happens, I’m ready for it. Bad things have happened as life happens. I mean, when Rachael got cancer, life happened, it took me out of the workplace for a while. But we had our cash reserves set up, we had our insurances in place. Some people, they just love that spending. That’s not bad.
Shawn:
If you are the one that says, “Oh, I like to spend.” That doesn’t mean you can’t have the right mindset. It doesn’t mean you can’t be successful, but these personality traits that we’re covering, think of it as you need to know yourself. You need to know yourself so what you need to do in your own life. If you have a spouse, you and your spouse need to be able to hold each other accountable. I would say that between Jenna and I, my wife, she is probably more of the saver than I am, even though I’m a financial advisor.
Bob:
I think Jenna got her dad in her.
Shawn:
We are still, at the end of the day, we both lean more towards we want to focus on the saving first and the spending, that’s kind of a reward, if you will. That is not our focus. The focus is we make sure we handle the being more frugal, more conservative side of things. You got to ask yourself that first question. Are you a saver or a spender? Which one do you tend to enjoy more? Then the next one, does buying things make you happy? We know it doesn’t create joy, but for some people, the act of buying that thing or hitting buy now or add to cart or whatever it is. It does have a little bit of a dopamine hit, and it makes you happy.
Bob:
Without a doubt, what you just said, that dopamine hit.
Shawn:
Some people don’t really care. It doesn’t really matter to them.
Bob:
Well, I knew somebody that was in the family, they’re no longer around, but I mean they’ve gone home to be with the Lord. I could tell they got their significance from shopping. Now, they liked to shop for other people and they loved to buy things for other people. I could tell that gave them their significance and enjoyment.
Shawn:
So the next one, is long-term financial security important to you, or is having a temporary status symbol more important? Which one of those are more important? Again, not trying to get onto people.
Bob:
No, not at all.
Shawn:
But it’s just, again, try to be honest.
Bob:
These are personality traits.
Shawn:
Try to be honest and ask yourself, which one are you?
Bob:
How do you feel about cars? Is driving an old car that works well just fine, or are you always wanting that new one?
I mean, I know some folks that they trade out of cars like every year or two. I’m like, man, you are just getting hit with it, and the car is fine, but they want that new car. They like that new car smell I guess.
Shawn:
I would argue, getting a new car isn’t a bad thing. To be honest, when you’re buying a new car every year, you’re compounding how much money you’re losing, because you’re buying a depreciating asset. So there’s nothing wrong with buying it new, but you’re kind of leaving a lot on the table when you buy something new every year. For sure, every two years minimum. Anyway, ask yourself, “Which one are you?”
Bob:
I know which one, like we were saying, my own daughter, your wife. I don’t know, y’all had that little Subaru now for 7-8 years. I know y’all were going to buy a new one and you plan on keeping it for 10. You keep cars, y’all keep cars a long time.
Shawn:
Oh, we’re keeping the seven or eight year old Subaru, too. We’re actually trading in the newer vehicle.
Bob:
So you have more of a family vehicle. I’m with you.
Shawn:
So the last one is…
Bob:
Oh, isn’t this interesting? This is a good one.
Shawn:
Do you like numbers, or do you despise math?
Numbers, spreadsheets, whatever you want to call it.
Bob:
Here in the office, we’re all a bunch of numbers geeks. We all love spreadsheets and math.
Shawn:
Probably good considering that we work at a financial firm, right?
Bob:
It is. That’s definitely a personality trait I think that we have around here.
Shawn:
There’s good news, right, Bob? If for that last one, you despise math, the good news is that budgeting is mostly a mindset. It’s not based solely on the numbers, so there’s hope for you.
Bob:
So, we’re going to get into lots of different ways to get that mindset right when it comes to budgeting, so you don’t have to worry so much about the numbers. Because I will say this, Shawn, in knowing people, that it’s not a gift. Math is not their thing. I’ve seen a guilt feeling, they want to be able to like those numbers, but first let’s just get into the right mindset, then the numbers will come into play.
Shawn:
Exactly. So the right mindset, what is the right mindset? We’ve got a few statements, we’re going to cover what is the right mindset. Bob, you want to get the first one?
Bob:
Hopefully, you can take this in and you can say, okay. If I can get that mindset, the budget’s automatically going to kinda line up under that. We’re going to share a little bit about numbers, but it really, it’s only going to be about 5% of today’s program, at the very end. The right mindset, first of all, it’s not comparing yourself to anyone else. Not the super rich, Hollywood, or social media. If you start comparing yourself to that, you’re never going to measure up. And advertisements, it’s geared that way, right? You always need better. You always need more.
Shawn:
Well, and there’s so much in social media, too, that is engineered to create a certain kind of image and brand, if you will. Very rarely is it based on real life. It’s not candid. The next one kind of ties into that. The right mindset is not comparing yourself to what other people have. Just like the parable of the talents, each given according to their own ability. Don’t compare yourself to other people. Learn to be content with what you have in all circumstances, just like Paul said. Be content in all situations.
Bob:
We’re coming out with this in the beginning of the year. It reminds me of Christmas time. I was telling you about the Christmas lights, and we get our neighbors. We live in this nice neighborhood, and the neighbors start competing with each other so much for Christmas lights, that they start hiring it out. I’m hearing numbers of $6,000 to $15,000. Now, that right there is the wrong mindset.
Shawn:
Also, your neighborhood has much larger lots, and it’s gated. I mean, there’s not a lot of traffic. In my opinion, it’s not, how dare you spend money on putting Christmas lights up. Sometimes, it’s not safe to get up on the roof, but still, when you’re spending so much money, who’s even going to see it? I mean, I guess it’s great for you and Rachael. They’re like, hey, everybody else is competing. We just have a nice view when we drive in.
Bob:
We’re talking about that guy across the street. He’s got 36 acres, and he decorates about half of it. It’s crazy and nobody sees it but the three of us that live down there on the cul-de-sac.
Shawn:
Maybe he’s making up, if that was one acre lots he’s making up for all the lights that would have been there.
Bob:
He pretty much is. I think this is another mindset that you want to understand, is that those people with the expensive cars and the big homes, many of them are leveraged to the hilt with high debt. It’s not from financial success.
Shawn:
That’s right.
Bob:
It’s all a, what do we call it?
Shawn:
It’s all a facade.
Bob:
It’s all a facade.
Shawn:
Remember that God’s word says, “The borrower is a slave to the lender,” and this does not bring peace. That one is, the right mindset is knowing that many people with expensive cars or homes are leveraged with a whole lot of debt.
Bob:
A lot.
Shawn:
It that does not, just because you see something nice, that does not mean that someone is financially successful.
Bob:
I’ll tell you, Shawn, here we are in 2023, and we know the economy is teetering. With the high interest rates and things and all the leverage, it’s scary. If you don’t have all the leverage level and the interest rates are going up, so what? I mean you’re fine.
Shawn:
So the next one, the right mindset is asking if what you already have is fine before making a large purchase such as a new car, larger home, or a major remodel.
Bob:
I tell you what, you watch HGTV all day long, and you’re going to think I need to remodel my kitchen every three years. Your appliances are working fine, your dishwasher’s working fine, your oven’s working fine, but HGTV convinces you. No, the countertops need to be all white this year.
Shawn:
You need to get the new appliances because they came out with the new matte black, and you have the shiny black. Now you need the matte black.
Bob:
A couple years ago it was stainless steel, right?
Shawn:
Now, they have black stainless steel. Oh, you only have stainless steel? You don’t have black stainless steel yet?
Bob:
You haven’t gotten with it.
Shawn:
Yeah, come on.
Bob:
That’s true, isn’t it? If you watch that stuff all day long, you get into that mindset. Hey, we need to remodel our home. What’s it going to cost to remodel your kitchen? $15,000, $20,000, $25,000? Is it functional right now? Is it working fine?
Shawn:
Depends on how big the kitchen is, I guess.
Bob:
That’s the mindset. You’ve got to be careful of that mindset because the world is always doing that, not Christian mindset, but the worldly, the secular mindset’s trying to do that to you.
Shawn:
The next one, the right mindset is asking if something is a want or is it a real need before buying anything?
Bob:
I think that’s number one, isn’t it? Wouldn’t that be number one? Is it a want or is it a need? Then when it comes down to buying that, we’re going to go over something else here in a minute that is it the right mindset. It’s being content with what you have and not always thinking the grass is going to be greener on the other side.
Shawn:
That’s right. If you haven’t noticed already, there’s a little bit of a trend in what we’re saying. Which a lot of this comes back to that mindset of being content with what you have.
Bob:
Yes.
Shawn:
If you approach your budgeting from that perspective, the numbers are typically going to fall.
Bob:
They’re going to fall right under it. If you don’t approach your budgeting like this, you’ve got it flipped. The foundation has to be built on the right mindset.
Shawn:
It’s kind of like our federal government as a whole. If they were just content with the tax money that they were bringing in and figured out a way to use that instead of, oh, we want to do more, we’ll just borrow it. We’ll produce it from thin air, and pass it down to the next few generations. They’ll figure it out.
Bob:
I like this next one, too. You know what? Your self-worth is not tied to all that material.
Shawn:
That’s right. We say it like this, the right mindset is knowing your net worth is not equal to your self-worth and that happiness is not based on material things.
Bob:
That’s right. Boy, hopefully hearing this just releases you from all this bondage that our world wants to put on you, because materialism is not going to bring true joy and long term happiness. It’s going to bring temporary, short term, but not long term.
Shawn:
The next one. The right mindset is defining limits for large and small purchases.
Bob:
I think that’s so important, isn’t it?
Shawn:
Now, this isn’t for everybody. I know for Jenna and I, we have a certain dollar amount. If it’s a purchase that is anything equal to or greater than a certain dollar amount, we have to at least discuss it.
Bob:
I think that’s great.
Shawn:
It doesn’t need to be thousands of dollars. It’s smaller than that for us, but it’s just good because, if you have your partner and you hold each other accountable, sometimes you might get a little bit excited about it. Then your spouse says, “Yeah, that’s a want. That’s definitely not a need,” and we have other stuff we need this month.
Bob:
For us guys, all right, the large purchase is a boat. The large purchase is a deer lease. That costs a lot of money. By the way, I remember one day pastor Ray, where I go to church here in town, he had a video during deer season and it was so funny because he got up and said, “Now honey, you need to really like this meat because…” and he started adding up with the deer lease cost and the gas to get to it. He said, “You realize we’re paying like, $35 a pound for this meat?” by the time they were done.
Shawn:
Which also to me would say, well, maybe you should hunt a little bit less and go to the grocery store where there’s $5 or $6.
Bob:
But there’s the joy of hunting, I guess. All right. What’s the next one, Shawn?
Shawn:
Number nine. The right mindset is understanding that debt works against you, not for you. I would say that’s even true if someone has real investment property. Whatever it is, if you’ve used debt for something, that debt is always working against you.
Bob:
Yes.
Shawn:
So in the case of even like an investment property, it doesn’t mean you can’t be successful with it, but you have to remember that no matter what happens, even if you’re not renting that property out, that debt is still working against you.
Bob:
Those lenders, though, they want to get you as high in that debt as possible because then you become slave to the lender. They are not fiduciaries in any sense of the word at all, because is that in your best interest to put you in a lot of debt? It’s in their best interest because what do they do when they put you in a lot of debt? They make a lot of interest off of you. That’s how they make a living is by making interest off of you.
Shawn:
That’s right. So the next one, the right mindset is not allowing emotions to make any buying decisions.
Bob:
That’s a big one.
Shawn:
Which kind of goes right into our next one, too.
Bob:
It is.
Shawn:
The right mindset is waiting on unnecessary small purchases for a couple weeks and big ones for at least three to four months. Everyone probably should have experienced at this point if you are an adult. There is definitely an emotional aspect to purchases.
Bob:
Oh, no doubt.
Shawn:
There’s the new car, the new home. There’s the, I’m buying some gadget for the kitchen. It doesn’t always have to be something huge, but there’s that emotional, like you get excited about it. Which again is okay, but waiting a little bit to make sure, okay. Was this just like an impulse? Online shopping in general has just made it so much easier to purchase. Don’t let those emotions dictate your buying decisions. A great way to do that is to give yourself a little bit of padding to say, okay, I’m not going to purchase. Unless it’s an actual necessity like we ran outta toilet paper. Necessity. If it’s not a necessity, wait a little bit of time. See if those emotions fade and you go, oh, well, I guess we don’t really need it.
Bob:
Well, we’ve talked about this in investing many times right here on a Christian Financial Perspectives that emotions and finance mix like oil and water. They should not be put together, ever. That’s so hard because we’re emotional creatures, and the emotions can take over the logic. For somebody like us who us who is very mathematically minded, that math is logic. Left brain is logic. Right brain is emotion. We’ve got to, in this case, for budgeting for you to get the right mindset, you’ve got to realize I cannot allow my emotions to dictate my financial decisions.
Shawn:
To piggyback off of that, Bob, think of it as driving. You don’t want to drive drunk. You don’t want to drive where you’re extremely tired. You don’t want to drive when you’re already really irritable or mad. Just like with budgeting, you don’t want to do these things when you’re frustrated, when you’ve had a lot of anxiety, when you’re stressed from work, or your kid slapped a kid in the face at school. Whatever it is that happened, hypothetically.
Bob:
So the best time to talk with your spouse about budgeting is not when the kids are yelling.
Shawn:
Exactly. If your spouse is not a morning person, do not try to talk to them about it first thing in the morning. Let them have their coffee first or their tea.
Bob:
I’ve learned my lesson there, folks. He’s speaking to me. I don’t know if he knows. You do the same thing? Don’t do that. Make sure it’s the right time of the day and the right time of the hour or all the stars are lined up.
Shawn:
Otherwise you’re making what can already be difficult, you’re making it more difficult, because the right mindset requires your emotions to also be in check.
Bob:
So let’s get into some budgeting wisdom. We have really gone into the right mindset. Like I say, that’s the foundation. There’s some budgeting wisdom here that we’ve talked about on the program for many years. This comes from, what we’re about to mention, comes from Ron Blue from Kingdom Advisors. He’s written a whole workbook on this, and we gave out a lot of them. Shawn, I’m going to let you do that.
Shawn:
Bob, do you remember what that book is called?
Bob:
It’s actually… oh gosh. We have them right here in our library.
Shawn:
We’ll put a link in the description.
Bob:
Remember that? We’ll, let’s do that.
Shawn:
There are only four ways. There are only four ways to spend money. Those four ways should be in the following order for handling money. Number one is LIVE or necessities.
Bob:
Right.
Shawn:
Number two is GIVE or charities. Number three is owe, like O-W-E, or debt and taxes.
Bob:
We’re always going to owe taxes.
Shawn:
Yep. Death and taxes. Number four, GROW, which would be saving and investing. With that in mind, consider cash reserves or your savings. Consider your cash reserves should be a safety net for unexpected expenditures. I think Dave Ramsey, for example, talks about the emergency fund. We always tell people you should have about six months of your expenses saved up. Whatever those expenses are, it varies by household. That cash reserve is for when an emergency happens, something unexpected, like the car breaks down. You got to fix it or else you can’t drive or there’s a health issue that comes up, like you talked about when Rachael got diagnosed with cancer. That was unexpected. Not really part of the plan. Your cash reserve, however, is not a little piggy bank or cash in the bank account to be spent on just anything. It is called the emergency fund because —
Bob:
For a reason.
Shawn:
For a reason, because it should be in emergencies. Not, “Oh, I really want the newest copy of this book,” they’re wanting to read, or I really want to go to the movies this weekend.
Bob:
Shawn, when I heard this for the first time by Ron Blue probably 10 years ago, it really struck me because it was that simple. It’s only four things and you can remember it, and they really just kind of flow. Live, Give, Owe, Grow. That’s all you’ve got to remember. Just put that in your mind. Live, Give, Owe, Grow.
Shawn:
Those are the only four things.
Bob:
Let’s put our little pie chart up that shows it, and that pie, the pie’s only this big. Whatever you spend on “live, give, owe, or grow,” something’s got to give if you spend more in another category. If you’re going to live on more, it’s going to affect your giving and growing.
Shawn:
Same thing with like debt from the OWE. If you take on more debt, by necessity, one of those other three categories has to shrink. Unless your income goes up, then of course the pie just got bigger. It’s going to be divided into those four things. If your income hasn’t changed, anytime you increase one of those categories, something else or multiple things have to go down.
Bob:
It has to add up to 100%.
Shawn:
It’s just math.
Bob:
It’s just math. So, we have talked a lot about this and we’re down to just the last five minutes, five or six minutes of the program, which is where we actually do, yes, we get into some numbers.
Shawn:
A little bit.
Bob:
A little bit of numbers.
Shawn:
We’re not going to tell you a specific dollar amount because it’s going to vary.
Bob:
Numbers do play a little bit in this and they have to, because it is budgeting. I know we talked about budgeting without numbers, but here are a few numbers because this is very necessary. Really, in looking at budgeting for many, many years, it kind of breaks down into what you have as your necessities, your essentials, and your non-essentials.
Shawn:
That’s right. Think of it like this. Again, we’re not technically giving you the specific numbers, but more so breaking down the categories. These seven main essential categories, it’s what you need to live on. These make up the, of the four categories we talked about previously, the LIVE category. That’s how money can be used for live. The first one is groceries. This should not be including your eating out budget. That’s a luxury. You do not have to eat out. It’s something that’s nice to do.
Bob:
I didn’t know that.
Shawn:
Groceries, not eating out.
Bob:
I knew that. I knew that, Shawn.
Shawn:
I’m sorry for all the the restaurant owners that are watching this right now. I’m sorry, but that is true. It’s not a necessity. It’s a luxury. Number two is clothing. Number three, housing, you got to live somewhere.
Bob:
Let me stop you right there. What we’ve just mentioned, food, shelter, and clothing. You’ve always heard that, my whole life. You’ve got to have food, shelter, and clothing.
Shawn:
Now the next part is for that housing, you’ve got to have utilities.
Bob:
Got to have that in the south especially.
Shawn:
Your electric, sewer, garbage, gas, water. Gas if you’ve got gas at the house.
Bob:
Like air conditioning down here, and with the cold winters you;ve got to have the heat up in the north.
Shawn:
Transportation.
Bob:
That’s autos.
Shawn:
Unless you’re working from home, you’ve got to have a car of some kind. Even if you don’t work at an actual office and you’re working from home, well one of you have got to get groceries at some point. Number six, medical. Number seven, insurance. You’ve got your home, auto, life, and we definitely recommend disability if you don’t have it. You’re far more likely to need that than you are to need life insurance.
Bob:
Everything, every essential, falls under just these seven areas.
Shawn:
If they don’t fall underneath there, guess what? Not essential.
Bob:
When you break it down like that, it’s not so complicated. You’re not saying, we’re not saying 25 or 30 things. You’ve seen these huge spreadsheets. There’s subcategories that come under these, but really it all falls under these seven main categories. Then you have your non-essentials and you just decide how much per month are we going to have of those non-essentials.
Shawn:
The non-essentials then, are everything else not falling into one of these categories we just mentioned. Whatever’s left over after “live”, which we just covered. The seven categories LIVE, GIVE, OWE, and GROW is your maximum for the non-essentials. Whatever that math ends up being, for some people it’s going to be a lot more. Some people it’s going to be less, which is okay, but whatever’s left over after that is what you have for non-essentials. If you’re spending money on these or allocating money into these before you’ve allocated to LIVE, GIVE, OWE, and GROW, then you’re setting yourself up for failure. Plain and simple.
Bob:
Here we’ve covered the right mindset. The last very thing that I want to cover, Shawn, and I know you put some more programs here. It has become so easy today to budget because of all the programs out here. Name some of them.
Shawn:
To set reasonable expectations for your essentials and non-essentials, we highly recommend that you use a budgeting program. Many of them are free. My wife and I use Mint by Intuit. That’s one of them. Not an endorsement. Just happens to be what we use. Two other ones that are really good as well is Simplifi by Quicken.
Bob:
That’s what I use.
Shawn:
Then Monarch Money is also a really good one.
Bob:
I haven’t heard of that one.
Shawn:
It’s a little newer than Mint and Simplifi, but it’s highly rated and it’s very pleasing to look at. It works really well. Use one of these because most of them are available in your web browser and smartphone apps to help you track everything daily.
Bob:
It does it for you. Everything’s done for you.
Shawn:
It’s all about, you set it up and if you’ve got the right mindset, and then you start doing a little bit of numbers. It definitely makes it a little easier, too, because as you’re making transactions, as things are coming in, it allows you to very easily categorize those. Then the longer you use it, the better it gets where you know exactly where stuff needs to fall.
Bob:
See, these programs, I think, have been really made for the people that are not like us. We love this math and spreadsheets.
Shawn:
I still use these, too.
Bob:
I still do because it simplifies it so much, but if you’re not that numbers person, which the majority of people aren’t, then this is the way to go. Get the right mindset. Use this program. You’ve got it covered.
Shawn:
There you go. Exactly.
Bob:
Well, I hope this has been very informative for you. You may have to listen to this a couple times because there’s a lot to this to get the right mindset.
Shawn:
Thank you so much for joining us. If you did like this video, hit that like button, and even if you want more content like this, again, we’d love it if you’d hit that subscribe button. Thank you so much for joining us. God Bless.
Outro:
We invite you to listen to all of our past episodes, covering many financial topics from a Christian perspective. To make sure you don’t miss any of Bob’s upcoming episodes. You can subscribe to Christian Financial Perspectives on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or Amazon Music to learn more about integrating your faith with your finances. Visit Christianfinancialadvisors.com or call (830) 609-6986.
Disclosures:
Investment advisory services offered through Christian Investment Advisors, Inc DBA Christian Financial Advisors also known as Christian Financial Advisors Management Group, a registered investment advisor. Comments from today’s show for informational purposes only, and not to be considered investment advice or recommendations to buy or sell any company that may have been mentioned or discussed. The opinions expressed are solely those of the host Bob Barber and his guests. Bob does not provide tax advice and encourages you to seek guidance from a tax professional. While Christian Investment Advisors believes the information to be accurate and reliable, we do not claim or have responsibility for its completeness, accuracy, or reliability.
34 min

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Biblical wisdom for financial decisions and goals. Conversations about managing money according to Christian principles, featuring expert insights on budgeting, investing, giving, and building wealth…