MoneyWalk 163: Investing For Greater Return

This program will help you undo financial bondage.

Saving is generally considered money put away in vehicles that preserve the principle amount. Usually, the money earns a lower percentage of interest on a regular periodic basis. Also, it can be accessed quickly when needed. Usually, it focuses on seen and unforeseen expenses that might occur in the short-term (a period less than five years) for things like roof repairs, furnace repairs, hospital emergencies, etc.

Investing is often thought of for the long-term horizon (five years or more). It would normally be used for things like building retirement savings, funding a business or ministry dream that will take years to finally engage, saving for a child’s college tuition, etc.

The person who invests should understand that he will not earn periodic interest and that the value of the investment at any given time (whether increased or decreased from the time he bought it) is subject to supply and demand for that investment. Also, he may lose principle and should be willing to take that risk hoping that he will instead experience greater growth in value during the time he holds the investment.

Investing should usually be done after you have been disciplined to use good money management practices like consistently earning an income, adhering to a budget that keeps your monthly expenses below 70% of your take home pay, consistently giving money for ministry that leads people to Jesus Christ, saving at least six months worth of take home pay as an emergency reserve account, eliminating all debts, and committing to never co-signing for anyone else’s loans/debts.

Because most of us are not market experts and stock picking gurus, we should utilize a process called dollar cost averaging whereby we automatically buy on a periodic basis (weekly or monthly) a certain dollar amount of diversified investments with solid historical track records from a brokerage house like Vanguard or through our employer’s deferred compensation plan (401k, 457, 403b, etc.). This helps us exercise the buy low, sell high principle that leads to investment success and wealth building. Those who do otherwise are trying to time the market and are usually doing so without proper investment education. The vast majority suffer extreme losses over time and never wind up building the wealth they envisioned and hastily went after.

No matter the style, with investments past results are no guarantee of future returns. However, you should have greater comfort being invested after your financial stewardship is in order. Down the road (after 5 or more years of holding good investments), they will put you in a much better financial position and help you overcome inflationary pressures that might otherwise diminish the purchasing power of money in savings accounts.

Here are a few helpful guidelines you can use when the time comes for you to add investing to your good stewardship repertoire:

1. Review the prospectus for each investment to see what its one-year, five-year, and ten-year investment returns. Make sure they meet or exceed benchmark returns for that type of investment.

2. Identify its expense ratio. Stay away from any investment where it is not well under one percent of the assets under management.

3. Make sure no more than 10% of your investment dollars are put into any one investment. Proper diversification and asset allocation are generally best for everyone.

4. Start with no-load mutual funds until you are very knowledgeable about and skilled in capturing growth in the value of other types of investments (individual stocks, real estate, futures, oil & gas leases, etc.).

Many of the mutual funds you choose to purchase will have an electronic funds transfer provision that will allow you to immediately start investing in them by giving the brokerage house authorization to electronically transfer as little as $50 per month out of your savings or checking account that it will use to purchase shares of the mutual fund(s) you want.

The electronic funds transfer option allows you to avoid the minimum start-up investment (normally $1,000 or more) that many funds require for people who send checks to the investment firm. If you can't or don't wish to use an electronic funds transfer option, then it's worth your while to save the amount of money needed to meet the required minimum investment for the investment vehicle you want to invest in.

Investing is a great wealth building tool that can enhance your life and ministry. It also helps you better capture increased monetary value that can be used to abundantly give in the future in a way that enhances the lives of many others.

Please pray for this ministry and email any questions. May God bless you richly as you follow His plan!!!

Proverbs 6:6-11, Ecclesiastes 11:1-6, Matthew 25:14-30, Luke 19:12-27, 1Timothy 6:17-19

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You can find books authored by Randy and Karen Parlor at www.Amazon.com.

Save & Invest According to God’s Plan

This program will help you undo financial bondage.

Most people never reap reasonable growth because they never invest. Others never reap because they invest money only when the market is at a high point. They never feel comfortable investing when values have hit a low point. The feeling of not wanting to suffer loss makes them try to out think conventional investment wisdom which is to buy low and sell high. Instead, they put money in the market to buy an investment with a high current value.

They think they’re investing wisely but they only got in the market after the media spread the news that the current value is very high. Unfortunately, most of them pull their money out of the investment after the investment value tanks and thus suffer a loss. They will not make up the loss in the future because the experience has made them afraid to put money back into the market.

The bottom line is you should put and keep yourself in a position where you can regularly save a substantially amount of your monthly income so that you can eventually invest the lions share for the long-term. Learn to utilize the historical long-term growth pattern of the stock market to your advantage because this would be a blessing to you, your family, your friends, and other people that God wants you to help throughout your lifetime.

Investing should be done with money that is not needed within five years. Money you may need within five years should not be put in risky investments that do not protect the principle amount invested. This money should be put in savings accounts, money market accounts, certificates of deposits, or the like because they protect your principle.

The Lord would like to help you maximize the resources He gives you just like the two servants in the Parable of the Talents and the Parable of the Minas. Reasonable investing will reap great returns that can be plowed back into taking care of family responsibilities, evangelizing the lost, discipling believers, and helping the poor.

Please pray for this ministry and email any questions. May God bless you richly as you follow His plan!!!

Job 1:3, 42:12, Proverbs 11:24-25, Ecclesiastes 11:1-6, Luke 19:13-27

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You can find books authored by Randy and Karen Parlor at www.Amazon.com.

MoneyWalk 161: Diversifying For Safety And Reasonable Growth

This program will help you undo financial bondage.

When you put all your money in one investment account you take the great risk of losing all of it if the investment loses all its value, or the holder thereof goes bankrupt and did not put your money in a segmented account, or if you unknowingly invest with a scam artist running a ponzi scheme.

These types of things do happen from time to time and they happen in good and bad economic cycles. The principle of diversifying your assets helps protect your asset base from massive and total loss when such things occur. Even though your assets might not earn as much as one particular investment could have earned during a certain period of time, the upside is that you don’t have to worry about one bad apple spoiling the whole bunch nor all eggs being broken if you happen to drop the basket.

It has been noted that reasonable asset allocation and diversification have overtime reduced the risk of loss on investment portfolios while at the same time allowing very good growth during long-term investment horizons (five consecutive years or more). Therefore, you should seriously consider spreading your assets commensurately among different types of investments (no load stock and bond index mutual funds, real estate investment trusts, stable value funds, investment real estate, etc.) in order to obtain both benefits.

Once you save six months of gross pay in an emergency account, seven different investment accounts is a good scriptural number of different accounts you want to have for financial safety and stability throughout the various economic cycles you will encounter in life. Such investment accounts should be with licensed brokers and brokerage houses (Vanguard, Fidelity, T-Rowe Price, TIAA-CREF, etc.) that are in good standing with state and federal securities regulatory agencies.

You may want to fund each instrument equally or divide your investment up so you put in stock mutual funds or equity based investments a percentage that represents your age minus 100. You would then put a percentage representing your age in bond mutual funds or non-equity based investments.

No matter your age, if you are in a position in which you are uneducated about investment vehicles or you need to immediately live off all the money you have saved or you cannot mentally tolerate the risk of losing any portion of the amount you would invest then you should put the vast majority of your money in federal government guaranteed fixed income investments or retirement plan stable value investments.

Do this until you educate yourself about the different types of investments and you are comfortable that you can invest your money with a long-term investment horizon without buying investments at high prices when economic times are good and selling them at lower prices when times are bad. You invite scam artists and irresponsible investment behavior into your life and finances when you try to get high rates of return while not understanding the things you investment in and not knowing how to pick reputable brokers and financial advisors to help manage your money.

Again, the principle of diversification provides greater safety from total loss while rewarding you over the long term with a very reasonable opportunity for meaningful growth of your investments.

Please pray for this ministry and email any questions. May God bless you richly as you follow His plan!!!

Genesis 13:2, Job 42:12, Proverbs 15:22, Proverbs 24:6, Ecclesiastes 11:1-2

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You can find books authored by Randy and Karen Parlor at www.Amazon.com.

Surround Yourself With Wise Counselors

This program will help you undo financial bondage.

Seeking counsel from many others who are trustworthy and more knowledgeable than you in the financial arena results in the greatest financial protection possible. This diversification including asset allocation is a powerful tool to help you attain and maintain wealth. It gives you the ability, with longevity, to provide well for your family and give abundantly with longevity to your church and other ministries to spread the gospel and help meet the needs of others.

Diversification encourages you to use a variety of different advisors (brokerages, banks, investment advisors, brokers, CPA, etc.) and investment vehicles (stock and bond mutual funds, real estate, etc.). This provides greater protection from loss when a particular investment in your portfolio suffers a great loss in value. God forbid that this happens, but history has shown that it does occur frequently among investments that have great equity risk.

Diversification enhances the possibility that other investments will increase to remove the possibility of a fatal blow to your asset when the market value of one of your investments decreases because the different types of investments tend to have ups and downs during different periods of time.

The bible says give a portion to seven or eight because you don't know what evil may come upon the earth. The old saying “don't put all your eggs in one basket” is in line with this biblical instruction. Following this principle of diversification will protect your savings and investments in the sense that if the investment market drops one basket of eggs you will still have at least six other baskets of eggs that have not been dropped. It is very likely that these will investments will not have suffered a loss of value but instead have continued to grow in value.

Another component of the “many counselors principle” that you should employ along with diversification is asset allocation. It encourages you to buy different types of investments in percentages that are reasonable for your age, risk tolerance, and life situation. For example, a 20 year old might keep 80% of his investments in large cap and small cap no load index mutual funds and 20% in no load mid-term bond index funds whereas a 70 year old might keep 30% of his investments in total market no-load index funds and 70% in no load short-term bond index mutual funds and guaranteed fixed-income investments.

History has shown that the greater large and small cap equity investment provides the opportunity for the younger investor, who has time to overcome market losses, to potentially grow the investment to a much greater degree during the next 30 to 50 years even though he will endure various market losses in the interim. For the older investor who does not have time to make up for market losses, the larger bond and fixed income investments provide greater protection against losing principal.

Age appropriate diversification and asset allocation enhances the possibility that other investments will increase to remove the possibility of a fatal blow to your asset when the market value of one of your investments decreases because the different types of investments tend to have ups and downs during different periods of time.

There are a plethora of brokers, advisors, and some scam artists willing and ready to convince you to give them your money. You should educate yourself to any type of investment you think you want to put money in before you do so to ensure that you are comfortable with risk associated with that investment. Always thoroughly check the licensing status and complaint background of brokerage houses, brokers and advisors using information on file with the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), your state securities regulator, Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), etc.

Identify the 1-year, 3-year, and 5-year investment return for each investment and compare it to the market benchmark for that type of investment to ensure that the growth average annual growth you seek has been gained by the investment in the past. Educating yourself in these areas will provide you with information you need to make good choices about your risk tolerance, the suitability of the investment given your income and net worth, and the integrity of the brokerage, broker, and investment advisors.

Please pray for this ministry and email any questions. May God bless you richly as you follow His plan!!!

Proverbs 11:14, Ecclesiastes 11:2, Luke 19:13, Acts 6:2-4

Please forward these bondage breaking articles to other people who can use helpful insight!!!

You can find books authored by Randy and Karen Parlor at www.Amazon.com.

From Highest Interest to Lowest

This program will help you undo financial bondage.

This debt reduction method reduces the amount of finance charges you pay to the lowest possible level using credit accounts that you already have at your disposal. Consolidate debt using your current low interest credit cards’ unused credit amount to pay off your credit account with the highest interest charge. This process will help you obtain debt-freedom in the not-so-distant future.

The highest interest revolving charge accounts are normally those issued by retail establishments because most of them charge you around 25% interest for every dollar that is put on the account when it is not paid off in total when the bill is due. This means the financial institution is charging you 25 cents on each dollar that you let revolve (rollover) from month to month. That’s why it normally takes so long to pay these credit cards off when you make only minimum payments. Nowadays, you also have to be aware that many financial institutions that provide revolving charge cards will charge you much more than the original interest percentage when they believe you have become a poor financial risk. Some are charging upwards of 30% interest, which is 30 cents on every dollar that revolves from month to month.

It is not good for your financial health to have years of interest payments, especially high interest. This is why you should quickly get your financial affairs in order to pay off credit balances and develop a mindset to refrain from using them, unless you have the money saved to pay off your entire charge when the bill comes due. People that have been undisciplined in using credit cards in the past should cut the cards up and close the accounts no matter what others say about it ruining their credit score. If they don’t cut them up, the debt demon will continue to guide them into overspending and their credit score will wind up being terrible anyway as their debts grow larger, hampering their ability to pay their bills on time each month.

When you don't have enough available credit on a low interest credit card to pay off all your high interest credit accounts, then apply for a low interest consolidation loan at your financial institution. Consolidation loans are normally closed-ended, which means whatever is paid off is not re-usable. This is good when your past has shown reckless undisciplined spending. Do not consolidate any of your accounts that have an interest percentage that is less than the consolidation loan's interest charge unless overall the consolidation loan interest is substantially lower than the average interest rate you are paying on all your current accounts that would be consolidated.

Before using this approach, it's best to call retailers to close revolving accounts and cut up the cards so you won't be tempted to use them again. Besides, retailers’ accounts do not normally allow you to balance transfer outstanding balances of other accounts onto their accounts. They are issued to engage you in buying more of their products without regard for what will truly be financially best for you and your family.

Do not listen to advisors who encourage you to keep credit cards when past history shows you will remain steeped in debt. As you faithfully begin to pay your bills when due your credit score will rise over the next few years enabling you to obtain a low-interest mortgage and great home and auto insurance rates. In fact, you won’t really need the good credit score because the provision that comes from using biblical financial principles will bring you all the resources that are best for you and your family.

Please pray for this ministry and email any questions. May God bless you richly as you follow His plan!!!

Deuteronomy 28:12, Proverbs 22:7, Luke 16:8-12, Romans 13:8

Please forward these bondage breaking articles to other people who can use helpful insight!!!

You can find books authored by Randy and Karen Parlor at www.Amazon.com.