Objectives:1. Evaluate common types of investment accounts and their benefits.2. Analyze common investment vehicles and their benefits. 3. Assess investment types to avoid. 

AMEN 2017: Are You Willing?

Objectives:1. Evaluate common types of investment accounts and their benefits.2. Analyze common investment vehicles and their benefits. 3. Assess investment types to avoid.

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Adventist Medical Evangelism Network (AMEN)

Trading the Talents

Alistair Huong

Trading the Talents: Part 1-Biblical Principles on Investing

Father in heaven, thank you for this afternoon that we can spend in discussion and to think about a practical aspect of our stewardship responsibilities.

May you give us biblical principles to apply and may your spirit guide us to be able to increase our talents for your kingdom and for your glory.

So as Albert mentioned earlier, we have a, my wife and I have a personal finance blog, savingthecrumbs.com.

Investing is just 1 aspect, but the whole gamut of biblical principles.

So I encourage you to check it out if you want to get more details.

But if reading is not so much what you're interested in and you prefer to listen, On AudioVerse in 2015, GYC, I actually did a six-hour long seminar on this topic of personal finance.

And it covers the broader aspects of the various aspects of how to manage our money.

And I think it's important to mention that although the emphasis here at Amen this hour and the next hour will be specifically on investing, investing is not the silver bullet to solve all the other problems in our financial life.

There are times when investing actually should be put on the back burner to deal with other more pressing responsibilities.

And so I encourage you to get the full context if you have the time, GYC 2015.

And so we're dealing with investing specifically.

And I was told by the programming committee when they invited me to speak that this is a unique crowd because generally physicians, dentists, medical professionals have a few pennies to rub together, those are the exact words.

And so we're approaching this from that standpoint, that we're dealing with individuals who are, you know, already not particularly laden with debt, although I understand medical professionals usually come synonymously with a lot of debt, but the assumption is that there is higher earning potential in the audience and what we're dealing with.

And so what I say here may not necessarily apply to just anybody.

We need to have a scriptural basis for why we do what we do.

And so I want to look through a number of passages, and then we're going to synthesize it together as we get started.

Matthew 25, 27, it tells us, you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, now my coming I should have received my own with interest.

We're familiar with the parable of the talents, 3 servants, each were given their allotment of talents.

And this is what the master said to that third servant when he came home expecting an increase.

We know the story of the talents and you know 1 of the interesting things about this parable is I feel like we apply it to everything under the sun frequently except money.

We say our time, our influence, our strength, my musical ability, you know, whatever it is, but then money, the actual literal object that Jesus used in his parable, we say, nah, it's not so important.

Well what does the Spirit of Prophecy have to say about this?

Councils and Stewardship, page 113, paragraph 1, the followers of Christ are not to despise wealth.

They are to look upon wealth as the Lord's entrusted talent.

Goes without saying, but sometimes it does bear repeating.

By a wise use of his gifts they may be eternally benefited, but we are to bear in mind the fact that God has not given us riches to use just as we shall fancy to indulge impulse to bestow or withhold as we shall please." So that's the balancing statement.

Yes, it's a talent to be increased, but we got to remember it's not our talent.

Even if we increase it, it still doesn't belong to us.

The purpose for increasing it is for the Lord's purposes to return to the master.

But he does expect increase interest on his talents.

Hoarded wealth is not merely useless it is a curse.

In this life it is a snare to the soul, drawing the affections away from the heavenly treasure.

So we're going to look at some passages that have a little bit of tension here.

On 1 hand, Christ expects to receive interest on the talents he's given to our management.

But yet, we're told we are not to hoard the wealth.

So we are to grow it, but not to hoard it.

And you know the parable, the story of the rich fool.

He says, let's build bigger and bigger barns, let's fill those and take an early retirement, take my ease, eat, drink and be merry.

But the Lord said, you fool, tonight your soul be required of thee.

What shall a man gain if he shall gain the whole world, right, and lose his soul?" So we have to keep in perspective.

What's God expecting of us to do with it?

Councils on Stewardship, page 250, paragraph 2, had you and your wife understood it to be a duty, okay?

We have a duty here that God enjoined upon you to deny your taste and your desires and make provision for the future.

Instead of living merely for the present, you could have had a competency and your family have had the comforts of life.

So here the Spirit of Prophecy gives the counsel, you ought to have made provision.

It is a duty to make provision for the future.

And it's interesting she uses the term, our family could have the comforts of life.

It's that it's okay, based on spirit of prophecy, to have comforts of life.

We sometimes have this perspective when we think about stewardship that God is looking up there like, no, you need to give it all away, until we live in a cardboard box and have 1 outfit to wear and our shoes are wearing out.

Until we have given that much, then we're not truly being faithful.

We ought to take care of the health and the needs of our family and we actually should save up for it.

Testimonies for the Church, Volume 5, page 156.

It says, Brethren, awake from your life of selfishness and act like consistent Christians.

The Lord requires you to economize your means.

We use the term saving the crumbs on our blog, Economizing Your Means, let every dollar not needed for your comfort flow into the treasury.

So yes, it's okay to take care of our family and provide some of the comforts of life, but whatever you don't need, God expects it to go back into his work.

This is really the foundation of everything we're talking about here today.

As servants, we are responsible to increase our talents, which includes money.

But the objective is to make provision for the future, for our future needs.

It means to have enough, to save up so we have enough, not to get filthy rich.

And once we do have enough, all the surplus should flow back into God's treasury.

So that's the line of thinking based on scripture and the spirit of prophecy principles that we're looking at.

And how much are we investing for, right?

So I wanna get into some principles now of how do we determine what is a acceptable and acceptable form of investing.

I'm just gonna mention this here and that is because we live in a sinful world, there is no such thing as a perfect investment.

Something that is all upside and no downside.

Trading the Talents, Part 2-Evaluating Investment Options

Father in heaven, thank you for bringing us safely together again.

I pray that you will guide us in our discussion help us to think with Principles of how to manage our money in a way that will glorify you give us wisdom with your holy spirit We pray in Jesus name amen So the last hour we went through principles and with the principles we have created a scorecard that we can use to help us evaluate various types of investments.

And the green checkmark, I hope it actually shows up for the screen well enough for you to see, that means it's good.

And the point total is just the added up of the green check marks.

So what I've done with this scorecard, it's not an objective measurement that is applicable to everybody in all circumstances at all times.

This is a tool for you to apply for your particular situation.

So when I say, is it easy to understand, an investment might be easy to understand for someone who has a lot more experience or a lot more education in a particular field than I do.

So just because I don't find it easy to understand does not necessarily mean it's not easy to understand for everybody.

You know, investments can change with time.

There was a time when home mortgage rates were very high and CD rates were much higher than they are today and savings accounts and so forth.

Of course, that's also a question that it's compared to what, right?

When we say diversified, some investment assets are diversified, has diversification built into them.

Whereas some, they're easy to diversify on your own, versus some investments, they're just such large capital investment that's hard to diversify.

So there are different ways to answer that question.

We talked about speculation being something that generally arises from within the investor, as opposed to being innately in the asset.

But there are certain assets that, by the way that they are handled, tend to be more speculative than others.

Different people have different risk tolerances.

Liquidity, Again, it's not a matter of right or wrong, whether something is liquid or not.

It's just we need to take it within consideration in our whole investment portfolio.

And this last 1 I need to clarify a little bit.

And that is, when I say complete moral clarity, it's not whether something is morally acceptable or not.

It's saying can we have clarity in all of its incidental and indirect moral affiliations.

It's what I'm trying to communicate here.

Is it possible when we're looking at a particular investment, is it possible to know with 100% certainty that all of its incidental ramifications and interactions beyond my initial direct interaction is also morally in the clear?

It's more a matter of can I know versus is it right or wrong?

So I just want to make sure that that point is clear.

Because if something is morally unacceptable, it's morally unacceptable.

But this is more a matter of can I know with perfect clarity?

So let's take a look here at, I already summarized this, but this scorecard is a guideline to help evaluate investment types.

So some of these ratings may be subjective, okay?

And higher scoring investments should be given priority in our portfolios, but that doesn't necessarily mean all lower scoring investments should just be discarded.

They can be useful for diversification purposes.

Now, what are you going to place more weight in?

Using the analogy of the eggs in the basket, The bigger the basket and the stronger the basket, the more eggs it can hold versus the 1 that's a little flimsier.

So let's take a look here at some types of short-term savings.

So I notice I call them short-term savings.

They're not investments because they don't beat inflation.

But savings accounts, money markets, CDs, we're familiar with what those are.

You can get them at our local banks and other places.

There are US federal treasuries, they call them.

There is also a type of bond called TIPS.

And it stands for Treasury Inflation Protective Security.

And what it is, it's a type of bond issued by the US federal government that is pegged to inflation.

So not only do you get what's stated on the bond as an interest rate, but it also adjusts for inflation.

So inflation goes up, you actually get covered for the increase in inflation.

And then there are what's called bond funds We'll talk about mutual funds more in a moment but bond funds are type of mutual fund that specialize in purchasing many bonds and there are benefits and pros and cons doing it that way, but though that's what those are and SDA union revolving funds How many of you here are familiar with revolving fund?

OK, so for those who are not familiar, at least here in the US, I don't know if they have them in other countries in the world.

And not even all unions in the North American division have them anymore.

But our unions have a fund in which we can invest money that goes back to the Lord's work.

You get a note, so you're loaning money to the church, and the church has this fund through which they can loan money out to other church entities for their use.

So usually it's like church building projects or buying a church or something like that.

And so the churches then pay the union an interest rate.

And then the members who actually supply the money to the fund, they also get an interest rate.

In the Southern Union where I'm at right now, I think the interest rate is about 1.25%.

So we're not talking about huge amounts here, but for some place that's earning us a little bit of interest, and at the same time, it's investing in the Lord's work, I actually think the SDA Union revolving funds are a great option to include within our investment portfolio.

It's something worthy of being considered.

And I'm in the Southern Union, so I'm not familiar with all of the other unions, but what I recall, 1 of my friends in the Southwestern Union said that their interest rates were quite a bit higher.

And then now in the Pacific Union, I think they don't have revolving funds anymore.

So you may have to do a little bit of calling to your union treasurer's office to get more information on that.

So when we talk about these types of short-term savings, we want to run them through our scorecard.

In general, I think they're fairly easy to understand.

And that's why we use them for short-term savings.

So those of you who were here in the last hour, you remember we diversified short-term savings, things that we need within 5 years.

Things longer than 5 years, we invest in something that can beat inflation.

And so for the under 5 year range, these types of savings vehicles can be useful.

In most of the cases that we just looked at, yeah, they're very low cost.

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Trading the Talents

Trading the Talents, Part 2-Evaluating Investment Options

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Trading the Talents: Part 1-Biblical Principles on Investing

50m

Trading the Talents, Part 2-Evaluating Investment Options

54m

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