Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Financial Issues, where we join reality with truth,
helping you make the most of your money by honoring
God with your investments. Now listen in as we give
you the practical tools and advice you need to become
a biblically responsible investor.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome to Financial Issues. We're so glad that you tuned
in today.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
If you're tuning in for the first time, you have
found a ministry whose calling is to equip, educate, and
edify the church in the ways of stewardship. So we
talk about and teach you the practical application of stewardship principles,
specifically for us, that is in how we manage money
(00:49):
in a biblically responsible way. And if you're a partner,
you know all about that. If not, you can go
to our website financial issues dot org and learn more
about that. Also on the program, as part of our calling,
we encourage you to not only defund darkness they're biblically
responsible investing, but to fund the light that is, to
be a joyful, generous, and obedient giver. On today's show,
(01:12):
we're gonna get caught up and answer some of the
questions that you guys have been sending in. We're also
going to have Jason McDowell on to to discuss some
updates on Doze and some of the other things that
have sort of been flying under the radar in mainstream
media regarding Trumponomics two point zero. We'll also get encouragement
(01:33):
from the scriptures, which we'll just go ahead and do
right now. Our scripture of the day comes from Proverbs
fourteen sixteen. A wise man fears and departs from evil,
but a fool rages and is self confident.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Seth, what do you think?
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Well, you know, Shanna, considering what you and Jason are
going to discuss a little bit later on concerning Doze,
it brought to mind, you know, the reason why Doge
was put in there in the first place was in
some ways as a solution to reckless spending, and so
the idea of recklessness here really came to mind. You know.
The ESV actually uses the word reckless to describe what
this version I believe this is new King James says
(02:10):
when it says a fool rages and is self confident,
it's describing the fool self confidence. And this is clearly
not referring to a noble confidence that we should exhibit
a confidence that's rooted in God and who He's created
us to be. This is a foolish, prideful attitude where
basically we think we can do no wrong. We like
in ourselves to be like God, we like in ourselves
to be better than we really are, and it always
(02:32):
ends up disastrous for us. So I do hope our
listeners will take this tart and be wise and avoid
evil for God's glory.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Yeah, as I pondered the scripture, and especially here and
you say that just now, I realized that I had
recently seen a real life display of this reckless self confidence,
this raging against the wise and the loving commands of God.
I was watching part of a Charlie Kirk event on
a college campus where a you know, they walk up
(03:00):
and they challenge and with different topics, usually about abortion,
but this one was about abortion too, and the challenger
was trying to prove that abortion before six weeks was
not wrong. And you know, through a series of questions
and back and forth, it led her to admit that
her line of reasoning led her to assert that eugenics
(03:20):
was morally permissible.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
When she realized that she.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Was kind of forced into that corner and had to
admit that, based on the logical chain of events that
she was following, she must have had a little bit
of Holy Spirit in her or just her quote unquote
conscience led her to say, wait, wait, wait, that's not right.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
I don't mean that that's not good.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
So my point is is that she had her own
standard of morality when it came to abortion, and her
sense of morality on abortion was much different from the
biblical standard for the same topic, and it led her
to a really dark place. This is what happens when
we don't accept the whole counsel of the Word of
(04:01):
God and we choose to lean rather on our own understanding.
So let us not be self confident, but let us
be confident that the word of God is true, the
word of God is relevant, the Word of God is wise,
and the Word of God can be trusted to God
our every decision, even if we don't think we totally
(04:24):
agree one hundred percent with what's being said, or we
don't quite understand what that means for us, but we
can trust it. And as we dig deeper into the
Word of God, he will guide us and lead us
into truth.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
And when we.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Come out on the other side, when we get the
real life opportunities to apply the word of God to
the things that are happening to and around us, we
will see it proved true time and again that God
is all knowing, he's all powerful, and he's all good.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
That's great, Shanna love that. We'll get some questions, shall we?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Let's do it all right.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
Let's start with Rick rick is sixty nine. He says,
how does a REP work? He's especially thinking of R
thirty four by recommendation on the by list. Can I
have a red in a traditional IRA? I'm investing for income?
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Yep, So I'll answer the second part of that question first,
So yes, you can have it in a traditional IRA.
You can own a rate in any of the investment
accounts that you might have that we're familiar with, just
a regular investment taxable investment account in a WRATH or
in a traditional IRA. And Rick mentions here that he
(05:41):
is investing for income. So that leads me to believe
that this is probably the reason that he is interested
in reads because most of the ones on our list,
there are occasionally some that are a little bit more
growth oriented than income oriented, but for the most part,
people who are in in getting income from an investment
(06:02):
are very interested in reads because here's how they work.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
A RED is a company that buys.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Real estate, or it could buy mortgage mortgage backed securities,
and it collects rent if it owns real estate, it
collects interest if it owns mortgage backed securities, and it
handles the administration of owning those things, and it passes
along ninety percent of the net profit onto shareholders. And
(06:30):
so if you think about you know, if you if
you're if you're out shopping school shopping, like what was
last weekend, and you see this big huge mall or
this big huge shopping center, and you think, and you
see how busy it is, and you see how many
people are seeing in the line, and you think, you know, wow,
I bet, I bet that's a good investment.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
But you know what, I don't have.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Millions and millions and millions of dollars to go out
and purchase something like that in order to collect all
of the rent on that. So you know, that's where
you have the opportunity to purchase a RED. You can
do it in much smaller amounts. You know, almost any
investor can as an entry point into a real Estate
Investment Trust. So it's that whole idea of investing in
(07:13):
real estate without having to have the capital that's needed
to go into something like that. So specifically, he asked
about ore E thirty four. R E thirty four is
a mortgage rate. So instead of owning buildings like I
just described, whether it's commercial or residential, r E thirty
four invest in mortgage backed securities that's mostly generated by
(07:40):
organizations like Fannie May and Freddie Mac. This means that
it earns income from the interests as people pay on
their home loans and they borrow money, usually at a
shorter term rate, and they try to leverage on the
difference between what they can buy the loans for and
what the interest is and in that they make from
(08:01):
those and they profit from that spread.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
So that's great, Thank you, Shanna. That's good stuffs. Next
one up here is Brandon Brandon's twenty four. He says,
in light of the recent partner commentary, I've rebalanced my
portfolio and I now have about five percent of it
sitting in cash. As a younger person, I tend to
be pretty risk on and keep my cash to a minimum.
With your view on the current state of the markets.
Would you recommend deploying this five percent back into equities
(08:26):
or just keep it out for the time being.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Okay, So I'll really put a key in here that
Brandon is twenty four years old. That tells me that
he has a really long investment time horizon. So you know,
we're we're not trying to time the market at all
at any time. So the comments that we made to
the partners about caution about the markets being at high
(08:51):
levels and different things like that is just really a
reminder to stick to. If you've kind of taken a
hands off approach and just let your investment grow to
a certain extent, you may be pretty unbalanced right now.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
So it's just a reminder to do that.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
And I would also say it depends on you know,
I can't really answer the question about whether or not
five percent in cash is good or if he should
go back down on that, because it depends on the
size of the portfolio. Because he's twenty four years old.
I'm going to assume that it's a small portfolio and
that he's contributing regularly to it. So what happens maybe
you have a ten percent position in a company, because
(09:28):
not because you invested ten percent of your money in it,
but because of it grew to that amount. But if
you're putting money in on a regular basis, that means
the base of what you're comparing, you're holding to is growing,
so that the percentage in that particular investment is going
to be shrinking over time. So if you're you know,
if you're that young and you're contributing to a portfolio,
(09:53):
you know, there's nothing wrong with staying fully invested.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
You just have to keep in mind.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
That hard times do come, and sometimes they last a
lot longer than a month or six months like we've
been used to. And being that young, you probably haven't
seen any real uh down market for a sustained period
of time, but just know that those things can come,
and maybe you want to have a little bit of
dry powder available. If we do get those pullbacks, especially
(10:22):
if they're.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Prolonged, that's great.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
Shanna, Thank you, all.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Right, I think we I think we're stuck there, right,
I think so coming up on a break, yep, Jason's
coming up. My friend and college Jason mcdalll's going to
be back and we're going to be talking about some
of those doge things. Deregulations some of the We're not
going to talk about tariffs really as much. We're going
to be talking about the other things that can help
to offset some of the downside that that tariffs could
(10:50):
potentially be bringing to the economy. So stick around. I'm
your host, Shannonbert. We'll be back right after this break.
Speaker 5 (11:02):
Security is offered through GA Repel and Company, a registered
broker Dealer and Investment Advisor member FINRA and SIPC. Opinions
expressed by Shanna or Hers alone and are for informational
purposes only and do not necessarily represent those of GA
Repel or the outlet on what you are listening. You
should consider how the information applies to your situation prior
to personally implementing it, and consult any financial professional you
(11:26):
work with to make sure it's applicable to your financial plan.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Welcome back to financial issues.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Thanks for sticking with us over the break there. I
do have my friend in collegen, Jason McDowell back here
to talk about some things that are important, some headlines
that are happening in the news, and you know, we
do our very best to relate that on how does
that influence your own personal financial issues. Mainstream media and
(11:59):
the mar have seemed to be intently focused on all
of the tariff developments that have been going on lately.
I'm interested in that, but it almost feels a little
futile at this point to follow the debate because it
changes so often. It's like once you finally think that
(12:20):
you understand, oh here's what's going to happen with India,
you know, come back and now there's something different, and
you know, I don't have a voice in what's happening there.
I don't get to influence any of the decisions that
are made. So I am a bit more interested though
in's still what is still happening, but what is sort
(12:40):
of flying under the radar, maybe not as discussed as
much in mainstream media. And since Elon Musk has left Doze,
that topic has sort of fallen out of the mainstream
news cycle to a large degree. But I've said many
times that there are a lot of moving parts to
trump andomics two point zero. So welcome Jason, welcome back,
(13:04):
Thanks for being with us today. Let's pick up on
that train of thought there. Let's talk about the work
that that Doge has continued to do. That we're not
hearing a whole lot about absolutely.
Speaker 6 (13:19):
So we are currently sitting at about two hundred billion
in cuts that the DOGE dot of website receipts are showing.
And this is the djusted amount of about two hundred
and thirty six dollars per tax pair. And although HR
one might have sabotaged a little bit of you know,
potential trillions and savings into a vacuum sealed package of
(13:40):
nine point one billion, and this is just the first
year that DOGE is actually working, and they are continuing
to work in the background. It's actually almost better that
the media isn't really covering it. It's even possible that
DOGE could continue past the administration's goal of July of
twenty twenty six. I know Elon talked a lot about that,
but I hope they stay around for the entire administration.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
So right now, the leading.
Speaker 6 (14:04):
Agency cuts the top three are the Human Department of
Human Services, the General Services Administration, and the OPM or
the Office of Personnel Management. Those are all people agencies essentially,
And this might have showed up in the recent job numbers,
but out of the three million civilians that are employed
by our government to date, the only ones that have
(14:25):
been cut are about eight hundred or eighty four thousand total. Now,
the departments that I just mentioned announced two hundred and
ninety two thousand personnel to be cut, but right now
it's being sort of suspended through the legality, So the
people side isn't worthy where I was concentrating as much
and what I was looking at. So the goal was
(14:47):
about two hundred billion in total wages to be cut
from that total number of two hundred ninety two thousand.
So right now, if all of those are actually cut,
once the legality and the severance packages have pretty much
dried up and pop we have moved on, that will
ultimately be about a ten percent cut.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
Of federal workforce. So that kind of shows us there.
Speaker 6 (15:06):
That's in addition to the AI help and the tech
sector and also retail sectors of you know, AI actually
really taking over and people sort of moving out of
those positions there. So what I've really been waiting on
is the regulatory cuts, and that finally is coming to
fruition here post HR one.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Yeah, so cutting waste, fraud and abuse is one thing,
and it's a very very good thing.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
I think it needs to continue to happen.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
And you know, if it wouldn't become part of corrupt government,
I'd say make DOGE permanent. Then you have the risk
of it really deviating from its mission, as probably most
government organizations do. But DOGE is also, you know, as
you mentioned, is using AI to help on the deregulation front.
(15:54):
So Jason, bring us the receipts on what DOGE is
doing with deregulation.
Speaker 6 (16:00):
Absolutely, the last week I talked about hopefully DOGE in
these deregulations might help the housing market. That might actually happen.
So the regulatory burden right now is so large that
it could be the fourth largest GDP in the world
if you actually took that amount of money. So doge
dot gov right now, on the regulatory side, is showing
estimated savings of a little over thirty billion in just
(16:22):
the regulatory nonsense. Or that's one point nine million words deleted,
And I thought that was funny. It's actually measured in
words in the regulatories. It's not actually dealing with people.
So from a regulations and internal guidance, this is required
for word count reduction so that the repeal process can
go to Trump's desk essentially, So Doge built an AI
(16:44):
tool that analyzed over two hundred thousand federal regulations and
they found to find what was illegal.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
Or expired law.
Speaker 6 (16:53):
So there's laws that were there and then are now expired,
but they're still being followed, still operating. So they found
that half were illegal. So that's one hundred thousand rules
that they found.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Hang on, hang on, hang on, stop right there. I
want you to say that again. Say it's slower and
let this sink in. So AI found what two.
Speaker 6 (17:14):
Hundred thousand federal regulations, with half one hundred thousand rules
were illegal.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
So here's why that matters, folks.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
It's because when the government comes in and puts all
of these regulations out, companies who want to do the
right thing and to follow the law and to avoid
the funds that might come with breaking the law have
to hire people and create whole new departments and spend
a lot of money on complying with these rules. And
so now we're learning that half of these rules are useless,
(17:48):
illegal or expired. That is just plain insanity and that
you know that is going to help translate to the
bottom line of companies. And I've got a quick little
my own a personal real life example here. So we
have a rental property that is we have a renterer
that is in that's being assisted by HUD and it
(18:09):
seems like every six months they're there to do an inspection. Well,
we just got an emergency fail for the last inspection.
That happened because they changed a regulation and our smoke
detectors have batteries they're not hardwired in, so they emergency
failed the whole inspection because they want us to go
(18:31):
out and hardwire in smoke detectors instead of just making
sure that they're functioning properly with batteries. So, I mean,
I'm at the point of right now, you know what,
I don't I don't even I don't even want the
government involved in my rental property at all.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Now.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
I'm not going to kick my renter out because she's
a good renter. But it's like this is getting ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Every six months there's something new that they want us
to do, and it's just absolutely ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
But keep going.
Speaker 6 (19:03):
Yeah, So, the National Association of home Builders estimated that
regulations add ninety four thousand to the cost of a
new home.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
So that's a new build, right, new construction.
Speaker 6 (19:12):
So if they were to eliminate that, Oh this is
good for me, this would actually only bring the price
back to to twenty nineteen twenty twenty median new home
or new construction build of roughly around three fifty depending
on where you're looking, of course. So that's how much
is added already into the cause here without that inflation
and everything else.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
I believe that I live on the coast, and I
know what all of the hurricane regulations are, and you
know all of those hoops that you have to jump through.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
It does it changes the cost? Go ahead?
Speaker 6 (19:41):
So DOJ's AI has what it actually has done already
to date renown since they just started, is they rewrote
over one thousand rules at HUD or the Department of
Housing in Urban Development. So that's what they're starting with first.
So here's the process. AI finds an inappropriate regulation, rewrites it,
hands it to a human review, and then it can
(20:01):
go to Trump's desk for the final repeal.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
So that's that's important.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
That's important, hands it to a human That's why not
all a all jobs are not going to be replaced
by AI, because I'm used.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
I've dabbled with AI.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
And you know, you can find it really useful for
some things, but it needs a trained eye to uh,
you know, to proofread it. And you know, the good
thing about I think I don't think they're working with
the version of chat GPT that the Joe public has.
But you know, they can put in real things. They
(20:36):
can put in things like our constitution. They can put
in you know, they can put in the actual laws
as they're written, and they can say, you know, compare
this to this. Then it takes it. You know, it
doesn't become a subjective thing. It becomes an objective thing.
It's like, these are our standards for what's right and wrong,
for what's legal and illegal, and you go find the
(20:56):
things that are in violation of that and bring them
to our attention because there's just so much out there.
Speaker 6 (21:01):
Keep going, Jason, So deregulation, So we talked about a
little bit of a housing area where I have been
excited and hopeful and very positive to the most carrying
more weight than just the people headcount reduction for the
government is deregulating in the energy sector. So with that,
of course, you know, making companies be able to work
without the involvement of the government obviously saves money. But
(21:21):
also time and efficiency, so easing permitting processes for drilling
or liquid natural gas export terminals, accelerating project timelines, you know,
increasing that energy production that Trump's goal was to be
energy you know dominant, so accelerating through the deregulation like
the recent EU trade deal. If tariff negotiations lead to
(21:43):
a favorable trade deal like the zero tariffs on exports
to the EU. For also the EU to buy up
seven hundred and fifty billion of US energy, I see
that very good for the energy sector. Also, they are
required in this trade deal to invest six hundred billion
into the US, which is most likely going to be
towards the domestic energy and manufacturing all by twenty twenty eight.
(22:07):
So this makes me excited for the FISM partners in
the fact that our investment models cover favorable sectors in
deals like this.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
So this is where I'm most hopeful.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Yeah, I'm glad you said that, because that's the tie in. Really.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
You know, what we try to do is we try
to talk about the things that are happening in the world,
the things that are moving the markets, to help you
understand trends and things like that. But we also have
a team that goes through and we know what the
trends are.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
You know, we.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Come to conclusions about what's going to be the leading
trends in the future, AI energy, dominance, all of those
kind of things, and then we structure our asset allocation
models around those things. So if you are a partner,
there's a little bit of snippet into you know, behind
the curtain there and why we may have some sectors
(23:03):
more waiting in some sectors than in others. If you're
not a partner, we invite you to become one. It's
just one hundred and thirty two dollars a year, and
you can find out more information and sign up right
online at Financial Issues dot org. Well, folks, if you
are listening on an outlet that only carries the short
version of the show, we wish you a farewell and
a good day. If you're sticking around for us, there
(23:25):
is more Financial Issues to come after our upcoming break.
Make sure that you find us on all of the
social media outlets that we're on, and we stream on
demand on your favorite podcast and on our phone app
and our website, so you can go back and catch
all the episodes that you may have missed.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Stay tuned though. We've got more financial issues coming right up.
Speaker 4 (24:05):
Welcome back everyone to Financial Issues be taking you the
rest of the way here. Thank you to Shanna and
Jason this great segment there. I appreciate their insights so
very much, folks. I do hope you'll sign our petition
right now. By the way, we do have a petition
active for Tesla. We want to make Tesla aware that
we're not pleased with how they've been using the shareholder
(24:26):
dollars that they've been given, and so we issued a
sell alert for Tesla about a week or so ago,
and then we issued this petition as well that we're
trying to get as many signatures as we can. We've
not sent the petition over to them yet, we will
once we have the appropriate amount of signatures. We have
over three hundred as of this morning, which is excellent. Well,
let's keep that rolling, folks. I'd love to get five
hundred or even a thousand by the end of today.
(24:48):
I think that would be awesome. So go ahead and
sign that if you haven't yet. The way to get
to it is financial issues dot org. If you go
to financial issues dot org, just click the so there's
like a little pop up that comes up there. It's
a petition pop up. You just click on that that
takes you right to it. I'm also going to put
the link for the petition in the chat though, so
just dropped it into the chat there for you, so
(25:09):
you can follow that as well.
Speaker 5 (25:10):
And I'd say once you sign it, don't stop there.
Share it with your friends. Try to get as many
people as you know to sign disolutely.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
Share it with your church, share with your friends, social
media accounts, emails. We want as many people as we
can on this. This is not just for partners, folks.
You don't have to be a partner of Financial Issues
to sign it, so make sure you do that today.
We want to use the megaphone of financial Issues well, Sam,
As we talk about often, the Lord's given us this
megaphone to steward well, and so we want to steward
it well.
Speaker 5 (25:36):
In fact, another way you can get to the petition
is by clicking the little megaphone.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Button right on the website. Absolutely there's a tie in there. Yep, yep, megaphones. Yeah,
good stuff. Thank you for that, Sam. Let's go to
the markets here, folks. How they finished last week, so
they were looking to close the week strong. The major
indices rose Friday in the midst of the ongoing tariff
related headlines that we've been seeing really on and off
for the last probably four months. Now. By midday, the
tech heavy Nasdaq was leading the way, same with the
(26:01):
late afternoon, and that's how the markets ended. The Nasdaq
finished just under a full percent positive, the S and
P five hundred was just over three quarters of a
percent positive, and the Dow Jones finished just under half
a percent positive, So good finish for the markets and
a good week overall as well. The Dow Jones ended
up one point three percent positive for the week ending
August eighth. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq rose about four percent and
(26:23):
the SMP rose about two and a half percent, So
strong week for the markets, and they're looking to continue that.
They were up this morning before the bell, as the
opening bell just occurred about six minutes or so ago.
The Nasdaq is right now slightly negative and the Dow
Jones slightly positive, and the S and P five hundred
is right at the flat line. So that's what the
(26:45):
markets are looking like this morning. All right, Sam, let's
take a look at this headline. I found this one
rather fascinating, as student loan delinquency has been a topic
of conversation among the talking heads in the financial space.
What can you tell us about this, Sam, It's been
hitting some pretty high numbers.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (26:57):
This comes as Shanna had talked about how household debt
is reaching all times high in the United States on Friday.
She also talked about this briefly, but I wanted to
dive into these numbers because they're quite disturbing. Actually, so.
New Federal Reserve data shows student loan delinquency rates are
now at their highest levels in twenty years. In fact,
it's twenty one years now that the COVID nineteen grace
(27:18):
period has officially ended. The share of student loan debt
that it's at least ninety days late jumped nearly thirteen
percent at the end of June. That's up from eight
percent in March. Now, the average federal student loan debt
held of March this year is around thirty nine thousand dollars,
So each person is holding roughly thirty nine thousand dollars
(27:40):
in debt, with a total loan amount equaling one point
eight one trillion dollars across the United States now most
of that's being held by millennials and maybe some Gen xers,
but even individuals in their sixties are holding up to
one hundred and twenty five billion dollars. And by the way,
about sixty percent of those who make student loan payments
(28:00):
are making them up to three hundred dollars a month.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
Wow. Brutal stuff there, you know, It's just that's a
tough spot, especially for those in their old age. Sam,
I had no idea folks in their sixties you don't
think about that as much. The question I have is
what what are they doing with student loans still in
their sixties.
Speaker 5 (28:18):
Now.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
I'm sure some of them might be postgraduate loans. Perhaps
they're perhaps they have a you know, a doctoral degree
or something like that. But boy, that's really really tough.
That's yeah.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
The only thing I could really think of that might
justify it. I mean, of course, life circumstances, not mentioning those,
but would be let's say you went to college later
in life, which I've known some people do do that.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
Yep, yep, absolutely, so, you know, it might not be
the best to retroactively play quarterback for this. There's not
much that you know, the folks in these situation can
do except you know, get these big honkins student loans
paid off as soon as possible. You know, folks, this
is a good reminder. We we couch our debt conversation
a lot on this show because there are a lot
of talking heads out there who will say things like
(28:58):
all debt is evil, all debt is bad, and we
want to take a biblical approach to this and say,
you know, no, there actually can be some good uses
of debt. But the reality is debt is very dangerous,
very dangerous. And I would say that there is an
inherent danger with all kinds of debt, even the good ones.
So even as you're about to enter into, for example,
a mortgage debt, which is a very good debt and
(29:21):
can be because it's you know, on an appreciating asset,
different things like that, you still have to be careful, folks,
You really do. This is a great lesson, I think. Also,
the only wise way I can think of, and Sam,
you can tell me if you disagree with this, the
only wise way I can think of to utilize student debt,
which I personally think is one of the more foolish
kinds of debt, is if you're earning potential for your
(29:42):
degree vastly outnumbers the amount of money you're borrowing, then
I think I might be okay with it. I'm still
not a fan of student debt at all. I'd rather
you either go for a job where you don't need
to go to college at all, or if you need
to go to college, figure out a way to pay
for it, or have people in your life who can
pay for it. We have to be prudent about these things, Sammy.
Hear the horror stories the time of the right, right right.
You know, the person who goes to you know, a
(30:03):
four year degree, they get, for example, a teaching certification,
and they'll start, they'll start around fifty thousand dollars a
year and they exit with one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars of student debt. It's ridiculous. You know, you really
do have to measure, okay, the degree that I'm going
for and the possibility of a higher income, how does
that compare to how much money I'm pulling out right now?
Speaker 5 (30:22):
Like if you're going to be a surgeon or something
along those lines, and that's also a type of career
where you actually do need to be taught the technicalities.
Part of the problem with the whole student loan conversation
is why are so many people going to colleges. Well,
I don't just blame people getting stupid degrees, which is
part of the problem, and colleges promising that people are
going to make money when they don't. I also blame
(30:43):
it on businesses, because now that so many people are
going to colleges, you have businesses requiring college degrees for
things that never ever ever required them before. I think
of journalism as a great example. That used to be
a working man's job where you knew how to write,
you were intelligent, but you didn't have enough money to
go to college, so you got this kind of intellectual job.
(31:04):
But it was also a working man's job. But now
that it requires college degrees, it's turned it into this
elite status job. And I just think so many jobs
would become like that, and it's unfortunate for the working class,
it's unfortunate for debt, and it's also just made the
country worse because it's made people feel more important than
they are with these traditional jobs.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
It's well said, man could be a good lesson out
there for anyone who's a business owner. You know, what
are you looking for in an employee? Are you looking
for that degree, are you looking for that certification, or
are you looking for someone who actually has skills that
you can offer, that they can offer to be able
to make money for the company. I think it's really good.
That's something Sam that you know. I'm so I'm talking
with Megan right now. We're trying to figure out, Okay,
how do we how do we figure this out with
(31:45):
our kids. We still have several years to go. We
got some time to figure it out. But right now,
I'm not feeling so confident about encouraging them to go
to college. I'm not saying that I won't, but boy,
the trade school's looking a whole lot sweeter right about now.
Let's just put it that, you.
Speaker 5 (32:00):
Know, everyone's talking about trade schools that you know, I
envy people in them, But at the same time, there's
no way I'd go to a trade school. I'm just
not that kind of right guy.
Speaker 4 (32:07):
I'm not handy.
Speaker 5 (32:08):
So that's the thing you're hearing for gen z Ers
and Millennials go to trade schools. But I'm thinking I'm
not going to be a welder or a plumber. That's
just not who I am, so you know, so that's
not always the best track for everyone either.
Speaker 4 (32:19):
Exactly, you need to figure out how the Lord is
blessed you, and that's that's a good thing if you're
in our situation. You've got, you know, younger kids like
that is to be able to encourage them and the
skills that they know and then figure out the next step.
Speaker 5 (32:29):
I do think parents need to have conversations with their
kids when they are taking out student loans to actually
explain to them how much money they're actually taking out,
because I think so many eighteen nineteen year olds are
completely in the dark.
Speaker 4 (32:40):
Of actually what they're getting into and they just assume,
you know what, I'll have the money to pay this
off later. And yeah, that's that folks. That's why we
have to be so careful when you're getting into any
kind of debt. It's important there, Sam, Thanks for sharing
that brother real quickly here, folks. Before the ag we
got upcoming this week, we got some inflation datas the
NFIB Optimism indecks as well as other inflation data breaks
TUESDAYPI breaks Thursday. We also get retail sales coming out
(33:03):
on Friday, earning season, not a whole lot, truthfully, this
has a bit of a down week. We get deer,
we get Cisco and not much else. Here comes Craig
Halgrian with the agg and then we'll be back with more.
Speaker 7 (33:12):
This is Craig Holguard with your financial issues. AG update
for August eleventh. Corn chapter on on Friday and end
of the session slightly lower as the forecast continues to
look for non threatening weather. The trade is also anxiously
of waiting tomorrow's USDA report. Now, the August USDA report
is a very popular one for yield changes. In fact,
over the past twenty years we haven't seen a single
(33:33):
August report where they kept the corn yield unchanged. Friday
saw December corn finished the day at penn and a
half lower at four or five and a half. And soybeans,
the big news is that we still have not seen
China buy any US new crops soybeans. Now, Brazil's not
going to have any beans available to meet that Chinese
demand from about November through January. And the question on
everybody's mind now is how long China can keep avoiding
(33:55):
buying US beans until we see China starting to buy
beans from US, We're going to have a very nervis trade.
That was reflected on Friday, with November being six and
a quarter cents lower and nine eighty seven and a half.
We just struggling near five year lows as major international
producers like Europe and the Black Sea region continue to
increase their production estimates. As a result of Minneapolis, September
(34:16):
weight actually was a little better. We up two and
three quarters there at five seventy six and three quarters.
Kansas City, on the other hand, was three and a
quarter cents lower at five eighteen in a quarter in
Chicago dropped by three and three quarter cents to close
at five fourteen and a half. Cotton futures continue to
be mired in the doldrums. December futures ended Friday session
seventeen points higher at sixty six sixty. Lifestyle futures had
(34:39):
a pretty disastrous close to the week. October live cattle
were six dollars and twenty five cents lower of two
hunred and twenty five dollars ninety two and a half cents.
Speaker 4 (34:47):
Per one hundred to week.
Speaker 7 (34:48):
September feeder cattle dropped by nine dollars and twenty five cents,
ending the session at three undred and forty dollars thirty
seven and a half cents per one hundred. October, Leenho
had futures with twenty five cents lower and ninety dollars
sixty seven.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
And a half cents per one hundredweight.
Speaker 7 (35:01):
US see No Future saw their string of higher closes
come to an end the closing bell on Friday. We
have September futures twelve points lower, ending this session at
eighteen sixty two. This has been Craig Holguard with your
financial issues Egg update. We'll be right back with more
financial issues after this.
Speaker 5 (35:27):
The opinions and recommendations expressed on this program do not
necessarily represent the opinions of the station or any of
the program's sponsors. Additionally, all products or services offered by
the program sponsors may not be known by the program.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
Thanks so much for joining us this morning, folks. I
appreciate you all on the chat chiming in here today.
George from North Carolina stand as long as colleges and
universities continue being the indoctrination centers that they are, the
government will never have a problem with it. George. I
think that's a huge issue here and I think you're
exactly right that until colleges can be upended to become
what they were supposed to be. I mean, folks don't
(36:06):
realize this, but most of the well established universities in
the Western world were founded as Christian institutions that somewhere
during the nineteenth century, maybe a little later, they converted
to liberalism. Basically they you know, apostatized. It's funny to think, Sam,
but all these Ivy League schools were once Christian schools.
They had theology program.
Speaker 5 (36:25):
Exactly, and it was supposed to teach you beyond just theology,
was to teach you about all the good Western traditions.
That's where the liberal arts came from. Was the idea
that maybe this wasn't going to be used per se
for a career, but it was going to teach you
how to be the kind of person that could live
well and to have a good career, regardless.
Speaker 4 (36:45):
Of what it is.
Speaker 5 (36:45):
And you know, that's just not what the effect is anymore. Arguably,
it makes people worse. It makes them more entitled and
spoiled and thinking they're on a four year vacation and
learning ideology that has no application in real life.
Speaker 4 (36:58):
Exactly right. And folks, please don't hear us say that
we're down on college as a whole. Sam and vers
talking hearing the break. We both went to college, we
both have bachelor's degrees, and we learned a lot of
good things from it. We're just trying to take a
really a true view of what this thing is, and
you know, understand that there's some good, there's some bad,
and we just have to figure that out.
Speaker 5 (37:16):
You know, if we could get back to what college
was supposed to be, it'd be a wonderful want thing.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
It would be a wonderful thing. Absolutely. We got Jason
from Oklahoma. Hi Jason, good to see you, brother, Nelson
from Louisiana. And we've got John and Alabama. Good to
see you. Daryl in Texas. Good to have you, brother.
We've got who else do we have here? Brian and Kara.
Hello Brian and Karen. Nice to see you guys this morning.
Let's see who.
Speaker 5 (37:41):
Else Lisa, And it is not a pre record, Lisa.
Speaker 4 (37:46):
I'm proving to you this isn't a pre recording because
I'm literally reading your comments as they're coming in right now.
So yeah, Lisa, good to see you. Nathan, seeing you
there as well. Happy to have you all this morning,
delighted to be here. Hey, Sam, let's tackle this interesting
question that we saw. So Sam does some really great
research work for us folks, and Sam will scour the
depths of the Internet to find interesting things that we
(38:09):
can talk about.
Speaker 5 (38:09):
That's a fancy way for describing scrolling social media and
wasting my time and occasionally finding something interesting.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
You dig for some gold and you and you find
it here. Brother. So we found this comment on Reddit
that I thought was real interesting. Sam, you go to
read this for us. Yeah, it's a bit longer one.
Speaker 5 (38:26):
I'll try to abridge it where I can, but I
think it's just something good for us to think about
as we're in the business of making money. And he's
kind of calling it out for Christians, but in a
way that's measured and I think actually kind of thought provoking.
So I thought we'd get your thoughts seth. He says,
I'm becoming increasingly disillusioned with right wing ideology superseding the
teachings of Christ and other New Testament theologians. I think
(38:48):
Jesus's instructions on where to lay up your treasures you
cannot serve two masters, the story of the rich young ruler,
Camel through the eye of a needle, et cetera. Are
all quite clear on the subject of wealth. But I
see I'm in time again. The rich men favored by
God in the Old Testament held up by Christians as
an example of why it's okay, maybe even ideal, to
(39:08):
be filthy rich. What is the truth on this matter?
I know a rich convert can be saved through God
anything as possible, But can a Christian really pursue tens
or hundreds of millions of dollars in earthly treasure and
still have his heart in the right place? All to many,
mostly poor or middle class Christians seem to think this
is perfectly fine, so long as a small percentage of
(39:30):
that wealth is donated. What do the theologians say, Well, it's.
Speaker 4 (39:34):
A good question. I may not be that expert theologian,
but I'll take stab at this one. Sam, what do
you say? I believe the answer is pretty simple, and
it seems to me like this guy's heart is in
the right place. I think he's trying to come to
the right understanding of how Christians should think about wealth.
Here's the deal, folks, Jesus does not actually care as
(39:54):
much about the amount of money you have as he
does about the condition of your heart. Cares far more
about the condition of your heart than he does the
size of your bank account. The reason I can say
that with such confidence is because I believe that people
who were rich in this life and people who were
poor in this life are in heaven. Because it does
not matter how rich you are or how poor you are.
(40:15):
What matters is does your heart belong to Christ? The
reason Jesus spoke so often about where to lay up
your treasures with the two Masters Paul's teaching on the
dangers of wealth. The other verses that this guy mentions
here is because there is a danger that comes with
the love of wealth. It's a temptation that faces all
of us, and I would argue that it perhaps faces
those who have more of it even more than it
(40:37):
faces those who have less.
Speaker 5 (40:39):
So I think what he's asking, then, is he's not
arguing I think that you can't be a Christian and
be wealthy or even pursue wealth. He's just asking, doesn't
pursuing wealth A lot of wealth, especially in the millions
of dollars, mean that your heart is not on christ
it's on the wealth.
Speaker 4 (40:56):
Yeah, So I can think of Sam, and I'm sure
you probably can't too, and maybe those in the chain also.
I can think of Christians in my life who have
a lot in Christians who have a little. The interesting
thing that I've found Sam, to be honest with you,
is I can think of potentially more people in my
life who are more generous and they have more. I
(41:18):
can think of a lot of wealthy people who are generous.
Now I can also think of some who are not
as wealthy who are generous too. But it's interesting to
think about that. I've also met rich people who've made
their wealth their God and poor people who love Christ.
Can the Christian pursue tens of millions of dollars a
true Christian pursue it and still have his heart in
the right place. I think absolutely he can. The question
you have to ask is why is he pursuing it?
(41:38):
That's really the important question. Why are we pursuing this?
If he's looking for stability and comfort with his money,
I think his heart's in the wrong place. His heart
belongs to his money, or it's tempted to belong to
his money. If he's a true Christian, but he's experiencing
that temptation the old man fighting with him. That I
think sam would be the case with the rich young ruler. Now,
the rich young ruler, I don't know where his heart was.
(42:00):
According to that story, that's the last we ever hear
of him. So you have to wonder if his heart
actually truly did belong to Christ.
Speaker 5 (42:05):
Or there is a tradition that it's John Mark, although
we don't actually know that, but that is something to
think about.
Speaker 4 (42:11):
So if it was something like that, in the final analysis,
he did eventually come to Christ. But I think that's
an interesting one there. So you know the quest, it's
a speculative.
Speaker 5 (42:18):
There's a little bit to back it up, but you're right,
ultimately we have no.
Speaker 4 (42:21):
Idea exactly exactly. The question I would wonder is, is
the rich man who is a Christian looking to build
legacy for his descendants. That's a biblical concept, by the way,
as well as a stockpile of wealth, not for himself,
that's very important, Not for himself, but a stockpile that
can be used like a weapon for the glory of God. Folks,
(42:41):
money is a powerful thing. Money can be used for
tremendous good, and it can be used for great evil.
And if you have a lot of it, that's a
really potent weapon, really powerful weapon, whether it's through generous
donations in life tithing, or if it's the gift bequeathed
that death so important. I think the Christian man who
(43:03):
is wealthy, the Christian person who's wealthy, Christian man woman whoever,
understands that he's taking none of it with him. So
he's raising up as much of it as he can,
earning as much as he can to be utilized while
he's got breath in his body. Listen, Sam, here's the deal.
Throughout the history of the Church, God has raised up
very many wealthy individuals to use their resources as a
(43:24):
gift for the Church. I would argue, at least humanly speaking,
the church would not survive. The early Church would not
have survived without the wealthy people that God sovereignly put
in its path.
Speaker 5 (43:35):
Exactly, you have all the patrons, all the wealthy, particularly
women who were like supporting the church. And part of
the problem there was that then you would have the
Church treating these wealthy people different. So you see the
New Testament condemning the difference of treatment for these people,
but not for the fact that they're wealthy.
Speaker 4 (43:51):
Exactly right, exactly right, folks. The wise man who is
wealthy knows that when he dies, his net worth will
be zero. That's a good thing for us to keep
on the forefront of our hearts. When you die, your
net worth goes to zero. No matter how you may
be a multimillionaire right now, someday your net worth will
(44:11):
be zero, And all that's gonna matter is did your
heart belong to Christ? So the wise man understands that
while there's still breath in his body, while he still
has that net worth, he is using that for as
much good as possible to bring glory to God. Let
me say one more thing about this, Sam I think
we have got to get the point of the rich
young ruler story right. This passage gets abused so many times.
(44:33):
Here's how it gets abused. Jesus said what he said.
He said, go and sell all your possessions, give to
the poor to come and follow me. He said that
to one guy. He did not say that to his disciples.
He didn't say that to the rest of the believers.
He said it to this guy. I'm not discounting Jesus's
teachings on the dangers of wealth by saying that I'm
saying what Jesus actually said that verse that is misquoted
by so many people. He said it to one guy.
It was this guy here, And the lesson was not
(44:54):
even about the guy's money. The lesson was about the
guy thinking that he was good enough to get to
heaven because his wealth, as the Pharisees believed. And there's
a good chance this guy might have been one if
he wasn't John Mark, there's a chance that he was
a Pharisee as well. They believed that their wealth, because
they were wealthy people, was the result of their inherent goodness.
(45:15):
Because I am good, God is required to make me wealthy.
They were the first prosperity preachers.
Speaker 5 (45:20):
It goes back to Job's friends when he's losing all
his wealth. They're saying, well, it's because something bad.
Speaker 4 (45:25):
You must have done something wrong. Job, it's your fault.
This guy believed that, and so Jesus's lesson he's teaching
him is not your money is evil. He's teaching him,
you're not good enough to get to heaven. It's harder
for a rich man to enter into heaven than it
is for a camel to enter through the eye of
a needle, because it's harder for anyone who thinks they're
good enough to get into heaven to get there. We
(45:48):
can't get in, folks. We need the grace of Christ.
That's the lesson. That's the lesson that Jesus was teaching.
The money issue was really just a pathway to the
justification by Christ alone issue that this guy didn't get.
He thought, my goodness is enough to get me there.
That's the lesson. That's the lesson. So to bring it
all back, what do we do with this? It's simple.
(46:08):
The Christians should build wealth for the glory of God.
They should. I believe that absolutely. We need to understand
the dangers of wealth, and we certainly need to not
put our hearts into our wealth. But we should use
money as a tool for the glory of God. We
don't hold it with closed hands. It's open handed because
we know it all belongs to God anyway. So we
build it, we steward it. We know it's not ours,
we know it belongs to God for the purpose the
(46:30):
specific purpose of leaving a legacy that includes providing for
our family, that includes providing for our spiritual family, for
our church, for organizations around us who love Christ, and
ultimately to make much of the name of Jesus. If
Christians understood that, folks, boy, we could make such an
impact for the kingdom. And I praise God that so
many of you and the financial lichies audience understand that,
and you're building wealth for that very purpose, to make
(46:53):
much of Jesus Christ's name. That's our hope, folks. I
hope it made some sense. I appreciate you joining us
from show today. God willing, we'll do it again tomorrow.
Until then, remember all of it, it's all his. Let's
be found good and faithful students, with all it godless.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
If we ever forget that we're one nation under God,
then we will be a nation gone under
Welcome to Financial Issues, where we join reality with truth,
helping you make the most of your money by honoring
God with your investments. Now listen in as we give
you the practical tools and advice you need to become
a biblically responsible investor.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome to Financial Issues. We're so glad that you tuned
in today.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
If you're tuning in for the first time, you have
found a ministry whose calling is to equip, educate, and
edify the church in the ways of stewardship. So we
talk about and teach you the practical application of stewardship principles,
specifically for us, that is in how we manage money
(00:49):
in a biblically responsible way. And if you're a partner,
you know all about that. If not, you can go
to our website financial issues dot org and learn more
about that. Also on the program, as part of our calling,
we encourage you to not only defund darkness they're biblically
responsible investing, but to fund the light that is, to
be a joyful, generous, and obedient giver. On today's show,
(01:12):
we're gonna get caught up and answer some of the
questions that you guys have been sending in. We're also
going to have Jason McDowell on to to discuss some
updates on Doze and some of the other things that
have sort of been flying under the radar in mainstream
media regarding Trumponomics two point zero. We'll also get encouragement
(01:33):
from the scriptures, which we'll just go ahead and do
right now. Our scripture of the day comes from Proverbs
fourteen sixteen. A wise man fears and departs from evil,
but a fool rages and is self confident.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Seth, what do you think?
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Well, you know, Shanna, considering what you and Jason are
going to discuss a little bit later on concerning Doze,
it brought to mind, you know, the reason why Doge
was put in there in the first place was in
some ways as a solution to reckless spending, and so
the idea of recklessness here really came to mind. You know.
The ESV actually uses the word reckless to describe what
this version I believe this is new King James says
(02:10):
when it says a fool rages and is self confident,
it's describing the fool self confidence. And this is clearly
not referring to a noble confidence that we should exhibit
a confidence that's rooted in God and who He's created
us to be. This is a foolish, prideful attitude where
basically we think we can do no wrong. We like
in ourselves to be like God, we like in ourselves
to be better than we really are, and it always
(02:32):
ends up disastrous for us. So I do hope our
listeners will take this tart and be wise and avoid
evil for God's glory.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Yeah, as I pondered the scripture, and especially here and
you say that just now, I realized that I had
recently seen a real life display of this reckless self confidence,
this raging against the wise and the loving commands of God.
I was watching part of a Charlie Kirk event on
a college campus where a you know, they walk up
(03:00):
and they challenge and with different topics, usually about abortion,
but this one was about abortion too, and the challenger
was trying to prove that abortion before six weeks was
not wrong. And you know, through a series of questions
and back and forth, it led her to admit that
her line of reasoning led her to assert that eugenics
(03:20):
was morally permissible.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
When she realized that she.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Was kind of forced into that corner and had to
admit that, based on the logical chain of events that
she was following, she must have had a little bit
of Holy Spirit in her or just her quote unquote
conscience led her to say, wait, wait, wait, that's not right.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
I don't mean that that's not good.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
So my point is is that she had her own
standard of morality when it came to abortion, and her
sense of morality on abortion was much different from the
biblical standard for the same topic, and it led her
to a really dark place. This is what happens when
we don't accept the whole counsel of the Word of
(04:01):
God and we choose to lean rather on our own understanding.
So let us not be self confident, but let us
be confident that the word of God is true, the
word of God is relevant, the Word of God is wise,
and the Word of God can be trusted to God
our every decision, even if we don't think we totally
(04:24):
agree one hundred percent with what's being said, or we
don't quite understand what that means for us, but we
can trust it. And as we dig deeper into the
Word of God, he will guide us and lead us
into truth.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
And when we.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Come out on the other side, when we get the
real life opportunities to apply the word of God to
the things that are happening to and around us, we
will see it proved true time and again that God
is all knowing, he's all powerful, and he's all good.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
That's great, Shanna love that. We'll get some questions, shall we?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Let's do it all right.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
Let's start with Rick rick is sixty nine. He says,
how does a REP work? He's especially thinking of R
thirty four by recommendation on the by list. Can I
have a red in a traditional IRA? I'm investing for income?
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Yep, So I'll answer the second part of that question first,
So yes, you can have it in a traditional IRA.
You can own a rate in any of the investment
accounts that you might have that we're familiar with, just
a regular investment taxable investment account in a WRATH or
in a traditional IRA. And Rick mentions here that he
(05:41):
is investing for income. So that leads me to believe
that this is probably the reason that he is interested
in reads because most of the ones on our list,
there are occasionally some that are a little bit more
growth oriented than income oriented, but for the most part,
people who are in in getting income from an investment
(06:02):
are very interested in reads because here's how they work.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
A RED is a company that buys.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Real estate, or it could buy mortgage mortgage backed securities,
and it collects rent if it owns real estate, it
collects interest if it owns mortgage backed securities, and it
handles the administration of owning those things, and it passes
along ninety percent of the net profit onto shareholders. And
(06:30):
so if you think about you know, if you if
you're if you're out shopping school shopping, like what was
last weekend, and you see this big huge mall or
this big huge shopping center, and you think, and you
see how busy it is, and you see how many
people are seeing in the line, and you think, you know, wow,
I bet, I bet that's a good investment.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
But you know what, I don't have.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Millions and millions and millions of dollars to go out
and purchase something like that in order to collect all
of the rent on that. So you know, that's where
you have the opportunity to purchase a RED. You can
do it in much smaller amounts. You know, almost any
investor can as an entry point into a real Estate
Investment Trust. So it's that whole idea of investing in
(07:13):
real estate without having to have the capital that's needed
to go into something like that. So specifically, he asked
about ore E thirty four. R E thirty four is
a mortgage rate. So instead of owning buildings like I
just described, whether it's commercial or residential, r E thirty
four invest in mortgage backed securities that's mostly generated by
(07:40):
organizations like Fannie May and Freddie Mac. This means that
it earns income from the interests as people pay on
their home loans and they borrow money, usually at a
shorter term rate, and they try to leverage on the
difference between what they can buy the loans for and
what the interest is and in that they make from
(08:01):
those and they profit from that spread.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
So that's great, Thank you, Shanna. That's good stuffs. Next
one up here is Brandon Brandon's twenty four. He says,
in light of the recent partner commentary, I've rebalanced my
portfolio and I now have about five percent of it
sitting in cash. As a younger person, I tend to
be pretty risk on and keep my cash to a minimum.
With your view on the current state of the markets.
Would you recommend deploying this five percent back into equities
(08:26):
or just keep it out for the time being.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Okay, So I'll really put a key in here that
Brandon is twenty four years old. That tells me that
he has a really long investment time horizon. So you know,
we're we're not trying to time the market at all
at any time. So the comments that we made to
the partners about caution about the markets being at high
(08:51):
levels and different things like that is just really a
reminder to stick to. If you've kind of taken a
hands off approach and just let your investment grow to
a certain extent, you may be pretty unbalanced right now.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
So it's just a reminder to do that.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
And I would also say it depends on you know,
I can't really answer the question about whether or not
five percent in cash is good or if he should
go back down on that, because it depends on the
size of the portfolio. Because he's twenty four years old.
I'm going to assume that it's a small portfolio and
that he's contributing regularly to it. So what happens maybe
you have a ten percent position in a company, because
(09:28):
not because you invested ten percent of your money in it,
but because of it grew to that amount. But if
you're putting money in on a regular basis, that means
the base of what you're comparing, you're holding to is growing,
so that the percentage in that particular investment is going
to be shrinking over time. So if you're you know,
if you're that young and you're contributing to a portfolio,
(09:53):
you know, there's nothing wrong with staying fully invested.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
You just have to keep in mind.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
That hard times do come, and sometimes they last a
lot longer than a month or six months like we've
been used to. And being that young, you probably haven't
seen any real uh down market for a sustained period
of time, but just know that those things can come,
and maybe you want to have a little bit of
dry powder available. If we do get those pullbacks, especially
(10:22):
if they're.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Prolonged, that's great.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
Shanna, Thank you, all.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Right, I think we I think we're stuck there, right,
I think so coming up on a break, yep, Jason's
coming up. My friend and college Jason mcdalll's going to
be back and we're going to be talking about some
of those doge things. Deregulations some of the We're not
going to talk about tariffs really as much. We're going
to be talking about the other things that can help
to offset some of the downside that that tariffs could
(10:50):
potentially be bringing to the economy. So stick around. I'm
your host, Shannonbert. We'll be back right after this break.
Speaker 5 (11:02):
Security is offered through GA Repel and Company, a registered
broker Dealer and Investment Advisor member FINRA and SIPC. Opinions
expressed by Shanna or Hers alone and are for informational
purposes only and do not necessarily represent those of GA
Repel or the outlet on what you are listening. You
should consider how the information applies to your situation prior
to personally implementing it, and consult any financial professional you
(11:26):
work with to make sure it's applicable to your financial plan.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Welcome back to financial issues.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Thanks for sticking with us over the break there. I
do have my friend in collegen, Jason McDowell back here
to talk about some things that are important, some headlines
that are happening in the news, and you know, we
do our very best to relate that on how does
that influence your own personal financial issues. Mainstream media and
(11:59):
the mar have seemed to be intently focused on all
of the tariff developments that have been going on lately.
I'm interested in that, but it almost feels a little
futile at this point to follow the debate because it
changes so often. It's like once you finally think that
(12:20):
you understand, oh here's what's going to happen with India,
you know, come back and now there's something different, and
you know, I don't have a voice in what's happening there.
I don't get to influence any of the decisions that
are made. So I am a bit more interested though
in's still what is still happening, but what is sort
(12:40):
of flying under the radar, maybe not as discussed as
much in mainstream media. And since Elon Musk has left Doze,
that topic has sort of fallen out of the mainstream
news cycle to a large degree. But I've said many
times that there are a lot of moving parts to
trump andomics two point zero. So welcome Jason, welcome back,
(13:04):
Thanks for being with us today. Let's pick up on
that train of thought there. Let's talk about the work
that that Doge has continued to do. That we're not
hearing a whole lot about absolutely.
Speaker 6 (13:19):
So we are currently sitting at about two hundred billion
in cuts that the DOGE dot of website receipts are showing.
And this is the djusted amount of about two hundred
and thirty six dollars per tax pair. And although HR
one might have sabotaged a little bit of you know,
potential trillions and savings into a vacuum sealed package of
(13:40):
nine point one billion, and this is just the first
year that DOGE is actually working, and they are continuing
to work in the background. It's actually almost better that
the media isn't really covering it. It's even possible that
DOGE could continue past the administration's goal of July of
twenty twenty six. I know Elon talked a lot about that,
but I hope they stay around for the entire administration.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
So right now, the leading.
Speaker 6 (14:04):
Agency cuts the top three are the Human Department of
Human Services, the General Services Administration, and the OPM or
the Office of Personnel Management. Those are all people agencies essentially,
And this might have showed up in the recent job numbers,
but out of the three million civilians that are employed
by our government to date, the only ones that have
(14:25):
been cut are about eight hundred or eighty four thousand total. Now,
the departments that I just mentioned announced two hundred and
ninety two thousand personnel to be cut, but right now
it's being sort of suspended through the legality, So the
people side isn't worthy where I was concentrating as much
and what I was looking at. So the goal was
(14:47):
about two hundred billion in total wages to be cut
from that total number of two hundred ninety two thousand.
So right now, if all of those are actually cut,
once the legality and the severance packages have pretty much
dried up and pop we have moved on, that will
ultimately be about a ten percent cut.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
Of federal workforce. So that kind of shows us there.
Speaker 6 (15:06):
That's in addition to the AI help and the tech
sector and also retail sectors of you know, AI actually
really taking over and people sort of moving out of
those positions there. So what I've really been waiting on
is the regulatory cuts, and that finally is coming to
fruition here post HR one.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Yeah, so cutting waste, fraud and abuse is one thing,
and it's a very very good thing.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
I think it needs to continue to happen.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
And you know, if it wouldn't become part of corrupt government,
I'd say make DOGE permanent. Then you have the risk
of it really deviating from its mission, as probably most
government organizations do. But DOGE is also, you know, as
you mentioned, is using AI to help on the deregulation front.
(15:54):
So Jason, bring us the receipts on what DOGE is
doing with deregulation.
Speaker 6 (16:00):
Absolutely, the last week I talked about hopefully DOGE in
these deregulations might help the housing market. That might actually happen.
So the regulatory burden right now is so large that
it could be the fourth largest GDP in the world
if you actually took that amount of money. So doge
dot gov right now, on the regulatory side, is showing
estimated savings of a little over thirty billion in just
(16:22):
the regulatory nonsense. Or that's one point nine million words deleted,
And I thought that was funny. It's actually measured in
words in the regulatories. It's not actually dealing with people.
So from a regulations and internal guidance, this is required
for word count reduction so that the repeal process can
go to Trump's desk essentially, So Doge built an AI
(16:44):
tool that analyzed over two hundred thousand federal regulations and
they found to find what was illegal.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
Or expired law.
Speaker 6 (16:53):
So there's laws that were there and then are now expired,
but they're still being followed, still operating. So they found
that half were illegal. So that's one hundred thousand rules
that they found.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Hang on, hang on, hang on, stop right there. I
want you to say that again. Say it's slower and
let this sink in. So AI found what two.
Speaker 6 (17:14):
Hundred thousand federal regulations, with half one hundred thousand rules
were illegal.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
So here's why that matters, folks.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
It's because when the government comes in and puts all
of these regulations out, companies who want to do the
right thing and to follow the law and to avoid
the funds that might come with breaking the law have
to hire people and create whole new departments and spend
a lot of money on complying with these rules. And
so now we're learning that half of these rules are useless,
(17:48):
illegal or expired. That is just plain insanity and that
you know that is going to help translate to the
bottom line of companies. And I've got a quick little
my own a personal real life example here. So we
have a rental property that is we have a renterer
that is in that's being assisted by HUD and it
(18:09):
seems like every six months they're there to do an inspection. Well,
we just got an emergency fail for the last inspection.
That happened because they changed a regulation and our smoke
detectors have batteries they're not hardwired in, so they emergency
failed the whole inspection because they want us to go
(18:31):
out and hardwire in smoke detectors instead of just making
sure that they're functioning properly with batteries. So, I mean,
I'm at the point of right now, you know what,
I don't I don't even I don't even want the
government involved in my rental property at all.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Now.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
I'm not going to kick my renter out because she's
a good renter. But it's like this is getting ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Every six months there's something new that they want us
to do, and it's just absolutely ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
But keep going.
Speaker 6 (19:03):
Yeah, So, the National Association of home Builders estimated that
regulations add ninety four thousand to the cost of a
new home.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
So that's a new build, right, new construction.
Speaker 6 (19:12):
So if they were to eliminate that, Oh this is
good for me, this would actually only bring the price
back to to twenty nineteen twenty twenty median new home
or new construction build of roughly around three fifty depending
on where you're looking, of course. So that's how much
is added already into the cause here without that inflation
and everything else.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
I believe that I live on the coast, and I
know what all of the hurricane regulations are, and you
know all of those hoops that you have to jump through.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
It does it changes the cost? Go ahead?
Speaker 6 (19:41):
So DOJ's AI has what it actually has done already
to date renown since they just started, is they rewrote
over one thousand rules at HUD or the Department of
Housing in Urban Development. So that's what they're starting with first.
So here's the process. AI finds an inappropriate regulation, rewrites it,
hands it to a human review, and then it can
(20:01):
go to Trump's desk for the final repeal.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
So that's that's important.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
That's important, hands it to a human That's why not
all a all jobs are not going to be replaced
by AI, because I'm used.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
I've dabbled with AI.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
And you know, you can find it really useful for
some things, but it needs a trained eye to uh,
you know, to proofread it. And you know, the good
thing about I think I don't think they're working with
the version of chat GPT that the Joe public has.
But you know, they can put in real things. They
(20:36):
can put in things like our constitution. They can put
in you know, they can put in the actual laws
as they're written, and they can say, you know, compare
this to this. Then it takes it. You know, it
doesn't become a subjective thing. It becomes an objective thing.
It's like, these are our standards for what's right and wrong,
for what's legal and illegal, and you go find the
(20:56):
things that are in violation of that and bring them
to our attention because there's just so much out there.
Speaker 6 (21:01):
Keep going, Jason, So deregulation, So we talked about a
little bit of a housing area where I have been
excited and hopeful and very positive to the most carrying
more weight than just the people headcount reduction for the
government is deregulating in the energy sector. So with that,
of course, you know, making companies be able to work
without the involvement of the government obviously saves money. But
(21:21):
also time and efficiency, so easing permitting processes for drilling
or liquid natural gas export terminals, accelerating project timelines, you know,
increasing that energy production that Trump's goal was to be
energy you know dominant, so accelerating through the deregulation like
the recent EU trade deal. If tariff negotiations lead to
(21:43):
a favorable trade deal like the zero tariffs on exports
to the EU. For also the EU to buy up
seven hundred and fifty billion of US energy, I see
that very good for the energy sector. Also, they are
required in this trade deal to invest six hundred billion
into the US, which is most likely going to be
towards the domestic energy and manufacturing all by twenty twenty eight.
(22:07):
So this makes me excited for the FISM partners in
the fact that our investment models cover favorable sectors in
deals like this.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
So this is where I'm most hopeful.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Yeah, I'm glad you said that, because that's the tie in. Really.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
You know, what we try to do is we try
to talk about the things that are happening in the world,
the things that are moving the markets, to help you
understand trends and things like that. But we also have
a team that goes through and we know what the
trends are.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
You know, we.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Come to conclusions about what's going to be the leading
trends in the future, AI energy, dominance, all of those
kind of things, and then we structure our asset allocation
models around those things. So if you are a partner,
there's a little bit of snippet into you know, behind
the curtain there and why we may have some sectors
(23:03):
more waiting in some sectors than in others. If you're
not a partner, we invite you to become one. It's
just one hundred and thirty two dollars a year, and
you can find out more information and sign up right
online at Financial Issues dot org. Well, folks, if you
are listening on an outlet that only carries the short
version of the show, we wish you a farewell and
a good day. If you're sticking around for us, there
(23:25):
is more Financial Issues to come after our upcoming break.
Make sure that you find us on all of the
social media outlets that we're on, and we stream on
demand on your favorite podcast and on our phone app
and our website, so you can go back and catch
all the episodes that you may have missed.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Stay tuned though. We've got more financial issues coming right up.
Speaker 4 (24:05):
Welcome back everyone to Financial Issues be taking you the
rest of the way here. Thank you to Shanna and
Jason this great segment there. I appreciate their insights so
very much, folks. I do hope you'll sign our petition
right now. By the way, we do have a petition
active for Tesla. We want to make Tesla aware that
we're not pleased with how they've been using the shareholder
(24:26):
dollars that they've been given, and so we issued a
sell alert for Tesla about a week or so ago,
and then we issued this petition as well that we're
trying to get as many signatures as we can. We've
not sent the petition over to them yet, we will
once we have the appropriate amount of signatures. We have
over three hundred as of this morning, which is excellent. Well,
let's keep that rolling, folks. I'd love to get five
hundred or even a thousand by the end of today.
(24:48):
I think that would be awesome. So go ahead and
sign that if you haven't yet. The way to get
to it is financial issues dot org. If you go
to financial issues dot org, just click the so there's
like a little pop up that comes up there. It's
a petition pop up. You just click on that that
takes you right to it. I'm also going to put
the link for the petition in the chat though, so
just dropped it into the chat there for you, so
(25:09):
you can follow that as well.
Speaker 5 (25:10):
And I'd say once you sign it, don't stop there.
Share it with your friends. Try to get as many
people as you know to sign disolutely.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
Share it with your church, share with your friends, social
media accounts, emails. We want as many people as we
can on this. This is not just for partners, folks.
You don't have to be a partner of Financial Issues
to sign it, so make sure you do that today.
We want to use the megaphone of financial Issues well, Sam,
As we talk about often, the Lord's given us this
megaphone to steward well, and so we want to steward
it well.
Speaker 5 (25:36):
In fact, another way you can get to the petition
is by clicking the little megaphone.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Button right on the website. Absolutely there's a tie in there. Yep, yep, megaphones. Yeah,
good stuff. Thank you for that, Sam. Let's go to
the markets here, folks. How they finished last week, so
they were looking to close the week strong. The major
indices rose Friday in the midst of the ongoing tariff
related headlines that we've been seeing really on and off
for the last probably four months. Now. By midday, the
tech heavy Nasdaq was leading the way, same with the
(26:01):
late afternoon, and that's how the markets ended. The Nasdaq
finished just under a full percent positive, the S and
P five hundred was just over three quarters of a
percent positive, and the Dow Jones finished just under half
a percent positive, So good finish for the markets and
a good week overall as well. The Dow Jones ended
up one point three percent positive for the week ending
August eighth. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq rose about four percent and
(26:23):
the SMP rose about two and a half percent, So
strong week for the markets, and they're looking to continue that.
They were up this morning before the bell, as the
opening bell just occurred about six minutes or so ago.
The Nasdaq is right now slightly negative and the Dow
Jones slightly positive, and the S and P five hundred
is right at the flat line. So that's what the
(26:45):
markets are looking like this morning. All right, Sam, let's
take a look at this headline. I found this one
rather fascinating, as student loan delinquency has been a topic
of conversation among the talking heads in the financial space.
What can you tell us about this, Sam, It's been
hitting some pretty high numbers.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (26:57):
This comes as Shanna had talked about how household debt
is reaching all times high in the United States on Friday.
She also talked about this briefly, but I wanted to
dive into these numbers because they're quite disturbing. Actually, so.
New Federal Reserve data shows student loan delinquency rates are
now at their highest levels in twenty years. In fact,
it's twenty one years now that the COVID nineteen grace
(27:18):
period has officially ended. The share of student loan debt
that it's at least ninety days late jumped nearly thirteen
percent at the end of June. That's up from eight
percent in March. Now, the average federal student loan debt
held of March this year is around thirty nine thousand dollars,
So each person is holding roughly thirty nine thousand dollars
(27:40):
in debt, with a total loan amount equaling one point
eight one trillion dollars across the United States now most
of that's being held by millennials and maybe some Gen xers,
but even individuals in their sixties are holding up to
one hundred and twenty five billion dollars. And by the way,
about sixty percent of those who make student loan payments
(28:00):
are making them up to three hundred dollars a month.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
Wow. Brutal stuff there, you know, It's just that's a
tough spot, especially for those in their old age. Sam,
I had no idea folks in their sixties you don't
think about that as much. The question I have is
what what are they doing with student loans still in
their sixties.
Speaker 5 (28:18):
Now.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
I'm sure some of them might be postgraduate loans. Perhaps
they're perhaps they have a you know, a doctoral degree
or something like that. But boy, that's really really tough.
That's yeah.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
The only thing I could really think of that might
justify it. I mean, of course, life circumstances, not mentioning those,
but would be let's say you went to college later
in life, which I've known some people do do that.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
Yep, yep, absolutely, so, you know, it might not be
the best to retroactively play quarterback for this. There's not
much that you know, the folks in these situation can
do except you know, get these big honkins student loans
paid off as soon as possible. You know, folks, this
is a good reminder. We we couch our debt conversation
a lot on this show because there are a lot
of talking heads out there who will say things like
(28:58):
all debt is evil, all debt is bad, and we
want to take a biblical approach to this and say,
you know, no, there actually can be some good uses
of debt. But the reality is debt is very dangerous,
very dangerous. And I would say that there is an
inherent danger with all kinds of debt, even the good ones.
So even as you're about to enter into, for example,
a mortgage debt, which is a very good debt and
(29:21):
can be because it's you know, on an appreciating asset,
different things like that, you still have to be careful, folks,
You really do. This is a great lesson, I think. Also,
the only wise way I can think of, and Sam,
you can tell me if you disagree with this, the
only wise way I can think of to utilize student debt,
which I personally think is one of the more foolish
kinds of debt, is if you're earning potential for your
(29:42):
degree vastly outnumbers the amount of money you're borrowing, then
I think I might be okay with it. I'm still
not a fan of student debt at all. I'd rather
you either go for a job where you don't need
to go to college at all, or if you need
to go to college, figure out a way to pay
for it, or have people in your life who can
pay for it. We have to be prudent about these things, Sammy.
Hear the horror stories the time of the right, right right.
You know, the person who goes to you know, a
(30:03):
four year degree, they get, for example, a teaching certification,
and they'll start, they'll start around fifty thousand dollars a
year and they exit with one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars of student debt. It's ridiculous. You know, you really
do have to measure, okay, the degree that I'm going
for and the possibility of a higher income, how does
that compare to how much money I'm pulling out right now?
Speaker 5 (30:22):
Like if you're going to be a surgeon or something
along those lines, and that's also a type of career
where you actually do need to be taught the technicalities.
Part of the problem with the whole student loan conversation
is why are so many people going to colleges. Well,
I don't just blame people getting stupid degrees, which is
part of the problem, and colleges promising that people are
going to make money when they don't. I also blame
(30:43):
it on businesses, because now that so many people are
going to colleges, you have businesses requiring college degrees for
things that never ever ever required them before. I think
of journalism as a great example. That used to be
a working man's job where you knew how to write,
you were intelligent, but you didn't have enough money to
go to college, so you got this kind of intellectual job.
(31:04):
But it was also a working man's job. But now
that it requires college degrees, it's turned it into this
elite status job. And I just think so many jobs
would become like that, and it's unfortunate for the working class,
it's unfortunate for debt, and it's also just made the
country worse because it's made people feel more important than
they are with these traditional jobs.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
It's well said, man could be a good lesson out
there for anyone who's a business owner. You know, what
are you looking for in an employee? Are you looking
for that degree, are you looking for that certification, or
are you looking for someone who actually has skills that
you can offer, that they can offer to be able
to make money for the company. I think it's really good.
That's something Sam that you know. I'm so I'm talking
with Megan right now. We're trying to figure out, Okay,
how do we how do we figure this out with
(31:45):
our kids. We still have several years to go. We
got some time to figure it out. But right now,
I'm not feeling so confident about encouraging them to go
to college. I'm not saying that I won't, but boy,
the trade school's looking a whole lot sweeter right about now.
Let's just put it that, you.
Speaker 5 (32:00):
Know, everyone's talking about trade schools that you know, I
envy people in them, But at the same time, there's
no way I'd go to a trade school. I'm just
not that kind of right guy.
Speaker 4 (32:07):
I'm not handy.
Speaker 5 (32:08):
So that's the thing you're hearing for gen z Ers
and Millennials go to trade schools. But I'm thinking I'm
not going to be a welder or a plumber. That's
just not who I am, so you know, so that's
not always the best track for everyone either.
Speaker 4 (32:19):
Exactly, you need to figure out how the Lord is
blessed you, and that's that's a good thing if you're
in our situation. You've got, you know, younger kids like
that is to be able to encourage them and the
skills that they know and then figure out the next step.
Speaker 5 (32:29):
I do think parents need to have conversations with their
kids when they are taking out student loans to actually
explain to them how much money they're actually taking out,
because I think so many eighteen nineteen year olds are
completely in the dark.
Speaker 4 (32:40):
Of actually what they're getting into and they just assume,
you know what, I'll have the money to pay this
off later. And yeah, that's that folks. That's why we
have to be so careful when you're getting into any
kind of debt. It's important there, Sam, Thanks for sharing
that brother real quickly here, folks. Before the ag we
got upcoming this week, we got some inflation datas the
NFIB Optimism indecks as well as other inflation data breaks
TUESDAYPI breaks Thursday. We also get retail sales coming out
(33:03):
on Friday, earning season, not a whole lot, truthfully, this
has a bit of a down week. We get deer,
we get Cisco and not much else. Here comes Craig
Halgrian with the agg and then we'll be back with more.
Speaker 7 (33:12):
This is Craig Holguard with your financial issues. AG update
for August eleventh. Corn chapter on on Friday and end
of the session slightly lower as the forecast continues to
look for non threatening weather. The trade is also anxiously
of waiting tomorrow's USDA report. Now, the August USDA report
is a very popular one for yield changes. In fact,
over the past twenty years we haven't seen a single
(33:33):
August report where they kept the corn yield unchanged. Friday
saw December corn finished the day at penn and a
half lower at four or five and a half. And soybeans,
the big news is that we still have not seen
China buy any US new crops soybeans. Now, Brazil's not
going to have any beans available to meet that Chinese
demand from about November through January. And the question on
everybody's mind now is how long China can keep avoiding
(33:55):
buying US beans until we see China starting to buy
beans from US, We're going to have a very nervis trade.
That was reflected on Friday, with November being six and
a quarter cents lower and nine eighty seven and a half.
We just struggling near five year lows as major international
producers like Europe and the Black Sea region continue to
increase their production estimates. As a result of Minneapolis, September
(34:16):
weight actually was a little better. We up two and
three quarters there at five seventy six and three quarters.
Kansas City, on the other hand, was three and a
quarter cents lower at five eighteen in a quarter in
Chicago dropped by three and three quarter cents to close
at five fourteen and a half. Cotton futures continue to
be mired in the doldrums. December futures ended Friday session
seventeen points higher at sixty six sixty. Lifestyle futures had
(34:39):
a pretty disastrous close to the week. October live cattle
were six dollars and twenty five cents lower of two
hunred and twenty five dollars ninety two and a half cents.
Speaker 4 (34:47):
Per one hundred to week.
Speaker 7 (34:48):
September feeder cattle dropped by nine dollars and twenty five cents,
ending the session at three undred and forty dollars thirty
seven and a half cents per one hundred. October, Leenho
had futures with twenty five cents lower and ninety dollars
sixty seven.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
And a half cents per one hundredweight.
Speaker 7 (35:01):
US see No Future saw their string of higher closes
come to an end the closing bell on Friday. We
have September futures twelve points lower, ending this session at
eighteen sixty two. This has been Craig Holguard with your
financial issues Egg update. We'll be right back with more
financial issues after this.
Speaker 5 (35:27):
The opinions and recommendations expressed on this program do not
necessarily represent the opinions of the station or any of
the program's sponsors. Additionally, all products or services offered by
the program sponsors may not be known by the program.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
Thanks so much for joining us this morning, folks. I
appreciate you all on the chat chiming in here today.
George from North Carolina stand as long as colleges and
universities continue being the indoctrination centers that they are, the
government will never have a problem with it. George. I
think that's a huge issue here and I think you're
exactly right that until colleges can be upended to become
what they were supposed to be. I mean, folks don't
(36:06):
realize this, but most of the well established universities in
the Western world were founded as Christian institutions that somewhere
during the nineteenth century, maybe a little later, they converted
to liberalism. Basically they you know, apostatized. It's funny to think, Sam,
but all these Ivy League schools were once Christian schools.
They had theology program.
Speaker 5 (36:25):
Exactly, and it was supposed to teach you beyond just theology,
was to teach you about all the good Western traditions.
That's where the liberal arts came from. Was the idea
that maybe this wasn't going to be used per se
for a career, but it was going to teach you
how to be the kind of person that could live
well and to have a good career, regardless.
Speaker 4 (36:45):
Of what it is.
Speaker 5 (36:45):
And you know, that's just not what the effect is anymore. Arguably,
it makes people worse. It makes them more entitled and
spoiled and thinking they're on a four year vacation and
learning ideology that has no application in real life.
Speaker 4 (36:58):
Exactly right. And folks, please don't hear us say that
we're down on college as a whole. Sam and vers
talking hearing the break. We both went to college, we
both have bachelor's degrees, and we learned a lot of
good things from it. We're just trying to take a
really a true view of what this thing is, and
you know, understand that there's some good, there's some bad,
and we just have to figure that out.
Speaker 5 (37:16):
You know, if we could get back to what college
was supposed to be, it'd be a wonderful want thing.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
It would be a wonderful thing. Absolutely. We got Jason
from Oklahoma. Hi Jason, good to see you, brother, Nelson
from Louisiana. And we've got John and Alabama. Good to
see you. Daryl in Texas. Good to have you, brother.
We've got who else do we have here? Brian and Kara.
Hello Brian and Karen. Nice to see you guys this morning.
Let's see who.
Speaker 5 (37:41):
Else Lisa, And it is not a pre record, Lisa.
Speaker 4 (37:46):
I'm proving to you this isn't a pre recording because
I'm literally reading your comments as they're coming in right now.
So yeah, Lisa, good to see you. Nathan, seeing you
there as well. Happy to have you all this morning,
delighted to be here. Hey, Sam, let's tackle this interesting
question that we saw. So Sam does some really great
research work for us folks, and Sam will scour the
depths of the Internet to find interesting things that we
(38:09):
can talk about.
Speaker 5 (38:09):
That's a fancy way for describing scrolling social media and
wasting my time and occasionally finding something interesting.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
You dig for some gold and you and you find
it here. Brother. So we found this comment on Reddit
that I thought was real interesting. Sam, you go to
read this for us. Yeah, it's a bit longer one.
Speaker 5 (38:26):
I'll try to abridge it where I can, but I
think it's just something good for us to think about
as we're in the business of making money. And he's
kind of calling it out for Christians, but in a
way that's measured and I think actually kind of thought provoking.
So I thought we'd get your thoughts seth. He says,
I'm becoming increasingly disillusioned with right wing ideology superseding the
teachings of Christ and other New Testament theologians. I think
(38:48):
Jesus's instructions on where to lay up your treasures you
cannot serve two masters, the story of the rich young ruler,
Camel through the eye of a needle, et cetera. Are
all quite clear on the subject of wealth. But I
see I'm in time again. The rich men favored by
God in the Old Testament held up by Christians as
an example of why it's okay, maybe even ideal, to
(39:08):
be filthy rich. What is the truth on this matter?
I know a rich convert can be saved through God
anything as possible, But can a Christian really pursue tens
or hundreds of millions of dollars in earthly treasure and
still have his heart in the right place? All to many,
mostly poor or middle class Christians seem to think this
is perfectly fine, so long as a small percentage of
(39:30):
that wealth is donated. What do the theologians say, Well, it's.
Speaker 4 (39:34):
A good question. I may not be that expert theologian,
but I'll take stab at this one. Sam, what do
you say? I believe the answer is pretty simple, and
it seems to me like this guy's heart is in
the right place. I think he's trying to come to
the right understanding of how Christians should think about wealth.
Here's the deal, folks, Jesus does not actually care as
(39:54):
much about the amount of money you have as he
does about the condition of your heart. Cares far more
about the condition of your heart than he does the
size of your bank account. The reason I can say
that with such confidence is because I believe that people
who were rich in this life and people who were
poor in this life are in heaven. Because it does
not matter how rich you are or how poor you are.
(40:15):
What matters is does your heart belong to Christ? The
reason Jesus spoke so often about where to lay up
your treasures with the two Masters Paul's teaching on the
dangers of wealth. The other verses that this guy mentions
here is because there is a danger that comes with
the love of wealth. It's a temptation that faces all
of us, and I would argue that it perhaps faces
those who have more of it even more than it
(40:37):
faces those who have less.
Speaker 5 (40:39):
So I think what he's asking, then, is he's not
arguing I think that you can't be a Christian and
be wealthy or even pursue wealth. He's just asking, doesn't
pursuing wealth A lot of wealth, especially in the millions
of dollars, mean that your heart is not on christ
it's on the wealth.
Speaker 4 (40:56):
Yeah, So I can think of Sam, and I'm sure
you probably can't too, and maybe those in the chain also.
I can think of Christians in my life who have
a lot in Christians who have a little. The interesting
thing that I've found Sam, to be honest with you,
is I can think of potentially more people in my
life who are more generous and they have more. I
(41:18):
can think of a lot of wealthy people who are generous.
Now I can also think of some who are not
as wealthy who are generous too. But it's interesting to
think about that. I've also met rich people who've made
their wealth their God and poor people who love Christ.
Can the Christian pursue tens of millions of dollars a
true Christian pursue it and still have his heart in
the right place. I think absolutely he can. The question
you have to ask is why is he pursuing it?
(41:38):
That's really the important question. Why are we pursuing this?
If he's looking for stability and comfort with his money,
I think his heart's in the wrong place. His heart
belongs to his money, or it's tempted to belong to
his money. If he's a true Christian, but he's experiencing
that temptation the old man fighting with him. That I
think sam would be the case with the rich young ruler. Now,
the rich young ruler, I don't know where his heart was.
(42:00):
According to that story, that's the last we ever hear
of him. So you have to wonder if his heart
actually truly did belong to Christ.
Speaker 5 (42:05):
Or there is a tradition that it's John Mark, although
we don't actually know that, but that is something to
think about.
Speaker 4 (42:11):
So if it was something like that, in the final analysis,
he did eventually come to Christ. But I think that's
an interesting one there. So you know the quest, it's
a speculative.
Speaker 5 (42:18):
There's a little bit to back it up, but you're right,
ultimately we have no.
Speaker 4 (42:21):
Idea exactly exactly. The question I would wonder is, is
the rich man who is a Christian looking to build
legacy for his descendants. That's a biblical concept, by the way,
as well as a stockpile of wealth, not for himself,
that's very important, Not for himself, but a stockpile that
can be used like a weapon for the glory of God. Folks,
(42:41):
money is a powerful thing. Money can be used for
tremendous good, and it can be used for great evil.
And if you have a lot of it, that's a
really potent weapon, really powerful weapon, whether it's through generous
donations in life tithing, or if it's the gift bequeathed
that death so important. I think the Christian man who
(43:03):
is wealthy, the Christian person who's wealthy, Christian man woman whoever,
understands that he's taking none of it with him. So
he's raising up as much of it as he can,
earning as much as he can to be utilized while
he's got breath in his body. Listen, Sam, here's the deal.
Throughout the history of the Church, God has raised up
very many wealthy individuals to use their resources as a
(43:24):
gift for the Church. I would argue, at least humanly speaking,
the church would not survive. The early Church would not
have survived without the wealthy people that God sovereignly put
in its path.
Speaker 5 (43:35):
Exactly, you have all the patrons, all the wealthy, particularly
women who were like supporting the church. And part of
the problem there was that then you would have the
Church treating these wealthy people different. So you see the
New Testament condemning the difference of treatment for these people,
but not for the fact that they're wealthy.
Speaker 4 (43:51):
Exactly right, exactly right, folks. The wise man who is
wealthy knows that when he dies, his net worth will
be zero. That's a good thing for us to keep
on the forefront of our hearts. When you die, your
net worth goes to zero. No matter how you may
be a multimillionaire right now, someday your net worth will
(44:11):
be zero, And all that's gonna matter is did your
heart belong to Christ? So the wise man understands that
while there's still breath in his body, while he still
has that net worth, he is using that for as
much good as possible to bring glory to God. Let
me say one more thing about this, Sam I think
we have got to get the point of the rich
young ruler story right. This passage gets abused so many times.
(44:33):
Here's how it gets abused. Jesus said what he said.
He said, go and sell all your possessions, give to
the poor to come and follow me. He said that
to one guy. He did not say that to his disciples.
He didn't say that to the rest of the believers.
He said it to this guy. I'm not discounting Jesus's
teachings on the dangers of wealth by saying that I'm
saying what Jesus actually said that verse that is misquoted
by so many people. He said it to one guy.
It was this guy here, And the lesson was not
(44:54):
even about the guy's money. The lesson was about the
guy thinking that he was good enough to get to
heaven because his wealth, as the Pharisees believed. And there's
a good chance this guy might have been one if
he wasn't John Mark, there's a chance that he was
a Pharisee as well. They believed that their wealth, because
they were wealthy people, was the result of their inherent goodness.
(45:15):
Because I am good, God is required to make me wealthy.
They were the first prosperity preachers.
Speaker 5 (45:20):
It goes back to Job's friends when he's losing all
his wealth. They're saying, well, it's because something bad.
Speaker 4 (45:25):
You must have done something wrong. Job, it's your fault.
This guy believed that, and so Jesus's lesson he's teaching
him is not your money is evil. He's teaching him,
you're not good enough to get to heaven. It's harder
for a rich man to enter into heaven than it
is for a camel to enter through the eye of
a needle, because it's harder for anyone who thinks they're
good enough to get into heaven to get there. We
(45:48):
can't get in, folks. We need the grace of Christ.
That's the lesson. That's the lesson that Jesus was teaching.
The money issue was really just a pathway to the
justification by Christ alone issue that this guy didn't get.
He thought, my goodness is enough to get me there.
That's the lesson. That's the lesson. So to bring it
all back, what do we do with this? It's simple.
(46:08):
The Christians should build wealth for the glory of God.
They should. I believe that absolutely. We need to understand
the dangers of wealth, and we certainly need to not
put our hearts into our wealth. But we should use
money as a tool for the glory of God. We
don't hold it with closed hands. It's open handed because
we know it all belongs to God anyway. So we
build it, we steward it. We know it's not ours,
we know it belongs to God for the purpose the
(46:30):
specific purpose of leaving a legacy that includes providing for
our family, that includes providing for our spiritual family, for
our church, for organizations around us who love Christ, and
ultimately to make much of the name of Jesus. If
Christians understood that, folks, boy, we could make such an
impact for the kingdom. And I praise God that so
many of you and the financial lichies audience understand that,
and you're building wealth for that very purpose, to make
(46:53):
much of Jesus Christ's name. That's our hope, folks. I
hope it made some sense. I appreciate you joining us
from show today. God willing, we'll do it again tomorrow.
Until then, remember all of it, it's all his. Let's
be found good and faithful students, with all it godless.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
If we ever forget that we're one nation under God,
then we will be a nation gone under
Popular Podcasts
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.