On yesterday's Faith & Finance program on American Family Radio, SMI’s executive editor Mark Biller suggested many ideas for strengthening your overall financial health in 2025.
To listen, click the play button below. Scroll down for the transcript.
Faith & Finance with host Rob West airs weekday mornings on American Family Radio. A different version airs weekday afternoons on Moody Radio.
(More radio appearances by members of the SMI team are posted on our Resources page.)
Transcript
Rob West:
British philosopher G.K. Chesterton once said, "I know as much about the future as you do, which is nothing."
(chuckle) Hi! I'm Rob West. Only God knows the future, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't plan for it. Mark Biller is here today to help us do that. He's got "Your 10 Most Important Financial Moves for 2025."
And then it's on to your calls at 800-525-7000.
This is Faith & Finance on American Family Radio — biblical wisdom for your financial decisions. (theme music ends)
Well, Mark Biller is the executive editor at Sound Mind Investing, an underwriter of this program. And it's always a treat to have Mark with us, but perhaps even more so each December when he brings us SMI's take on your most important financial moves for the new year. Mark, great to have you back with us.
Mark Biller:
Thanks! So one quick clarification for listeners up front. This article — Your 10 Most Important Financial Moves for 2025 — it actually has more than 60 different options or action items that listeners can choose from, and they're spread over a half dozen different categories. The idea of it, Rob, is that each person can go through that list and they can check their own personalized "Top 10."
And then with each of these action items, there's a link to an article or a helpful resource — a lot of 'em covering the SMI newsletters of the past year. So it's really supposed to be a personalized Top 10 list.
Rob West:
Yeah, I love it that it's not a cookie-cutter approach.
All right, Mark, as we dive into this, how about we take a dive a bit deeper into 10 of these financial moves, just as someone might do who's using this resource.
Mark Biller:
Yeah, that sounds great. Let's start with the Put First Things First category.
Rob West:
All right.
Mark Biller:
And one that's a helpful one to start with is "Develop a Financial Plan and Stick to It."
Planning is essential to managing your finances well. And in Luke 19:13, while awaiting the master's return, faithful stewards heed the master's instructions, which are, "Put this money to work until I come back."
Rob West:
Well, we certainly need to do that. God entrusts his resources to us so that we might multiply them — all the while giving him the glory.
Mark, let's stay in this category of First Things First. What's another financial move for us?
Mark Biller:
Sure. So another option in that group is to "Build an Eternity Portfolio." The financial resources that God entrusts to you aren't just for caring for your family.
Now that's crucial to be sure, but once your family's needs are met, then what? And this option encourages considering exponential generosity, which involves increasing the percentage level of your giving as your income grows. So you'll be laying up treasure in heaven, and your investments will compound over all eternity.
Rob West:
I love that idea. Now those are just two of the 10 or so great suggestions in that particular category.
Let's move on to the next category: Strengthening your Financial Foundation. That's, of course, very important.
Mark Biller:
Yeah, it sure is. So in this category, how about we start with "Build a Workable Budget"? Now, I know a budget sounds pretty basic, but most people won't be able to strengthen their financial foundation without one. You can call it a "spending plan" if you prefer. Either way, it empowers you to make the most of your money.
And I just encourage folks, if they've struggled with budgeting in the past, not to give up. Money management reversals and mistakes happen to everyone. Just try to identify what went wrong before and learn from it.
Creating a workable budget is going to make it a lot easier to make another great move in this category too, and that is to "Spend Less and Save More." So many people spend too much on today and save too little for the future, so we're trying to turn that around. We want to focus on keeping expenses low and making saving as painless as possible by setting up automated savings or retirement account transfers.
Rob West:
Yeah, this is really helpful, Mark. We're, of course, talking today about the great article that's available at soundmindinvesting.org. It's titled Your 10 Most Important Financial Moves for 2025.
Mark, let's move to the next category, and that is Developing Your Investing Plan. What are some of the financial moves in this section?
Mark Biller:
Yeah. Well Rob, job number one here is going to be to "Create a Long-Term Investing Plan" if you don't already have one. So just like a spending plan helps guide your day-to-day finances, an investing plan is going to lay out the pathway to your long-term financial success. An investing plan helps you allocate appropriately and then creates a framework for making sound investment decisions.
And another really timely one that goes along with that is, "Don't Allow Your Investment Decisions to be Overly Influenced by Current Events" — like what's going on in Washington. Everybody's focused on this new administration in the White House, a power shift in Congress, and that does mean that next year is likely going to see significant changes in economic and tax policy.
But rather than rushing to judgment about what exactly those changes are going to mean, for better or worse, for the markets, we suggest staying focused on your long-term plan instead.
Rob West:
All right. Now there's another category called Broaden Your Portfolio, and I'd love to go a little deeper into this category. What are some possible moves there?
Mark Biller:
Yeah, there are many opportunities for broadening your portfolio that are listed in this article. We've got links to helpful articles for all of them, but here's one in particular — and that is "Improve Your Understanding of Economic and Market Trends that Affect Your Investments." So technological innovations like AI, interest rate expectations, international conflicts, domestic elections — all these types of things have implications for the investing markets.
Typically, those implications aren't immediately clear. So it's helpful to start learning about how those things impact the markets and your investments. And this is the kind of thing that SMI provides its members with all throughout the year, while avoiding speculation and predictions as these events occur.
Rob West:
Yeah, that's really helpful. Now, of course, a lot of our listeners, Mark, as you know, are thinking about retirement, whether it's right around the corner or a bit further down the road. And that's the next category that we come to on this list: Looking Toward Retirement. What do you have for us?
Mark Biller:
Yeah, well I'm sure you can appreciate this one, Rob, because I know you're asked about it almost every day. And that is "Have a Plan for When to Claim Your Social Security Retirement Benefits." Claiming as early as age 62 can make sense in cases of bad health or financial extremity. But most people likely come out financially ahead by waiting until full retirement age, which is typically age 67 or maybe even a little later.
And determining the best approach for each individual requires considering their health, their marital status, earnings history, projected living expenses, and their overall financial condition.
Rob West:
Yeah, that's exactly right. Now, also in this category are decisions about paying for healthcare costs. I know the next one has to do with that. Share that with us.
Mark Biller:
Yeah, it's "Educate Yourself About What Medicare Pays for and What it Doesn't," and then planning accordingly. A big mistake a lot of retirees make is assuming Medicare is going to pay for all their healthcare costs in retirement, and it doesn't.
So a lot of people need to consider additional coverage by either a Medicare supplement plan — that's Medigap — or a Medicare Advantage plan. And, of course, before making an important choice like that, you want to do your homework.
Rob West:
Yeah. We also, of course, encourage our listeners to check out Christian Healthcare Ministries as an option in this season of life. Becoming a CHM member can also help you cover medical expenses, not just in retirement, but really anytime.
All right, one left — and I love this category. It's called the "hodgepodge" category. What do you have there?
Mark Biller:
Yeah, that's our Children, College, and Miscellaneous category, and lots of great suggestions for financial moves in the new year. One of those is "Start Your Children on the Road to Becoming Lifetime Investors." And that's simply because a long time horizon vastly improves the odds of investing success.
So this is one where we talk about how no-commission trades and fractional-share purchases of exchange-traded funds can make the cost of entry lower than ever for young investors to get started.
Rob West:
Yeah, that's great advice. We get a lot of questions about that from our listeners, for sure.
All right, those are 10 possible financial moves for the new year — out of the 60 or so in the article. But, Mark, we've got a little time left, so I'm going to ask you for some bonus suggestions — maybe some of your favorites from the various categories in this article.
Mark Biller:
Yeah, glad to Rob. How about "Treating Every Day as a Gift From the Lord"? Life is fragile and fleeting. So treasuring the days that we have and using them wisely as a faithful steward of God's blessings.
And another one that's related is "Deepen Your Prayer Life by Learning to Listen to God." Discerning God's voice from other voices is a challenge for all of us, but it gets a lot easier if we have a clear, biblically informed understanding of who God is and what he desires for his children.
Another one would be, "If You're Married, Commit to Managing Your Finances as a Team." We know that opposites tend to attract, and a lot of times that means husbands and wives have offsetting strengths and weaknesses — and that includes regarding money management. But by understanding each other's temperaments, we can capitalize on our combined strengths and hopefully minimize our weaknesses.
And here's one final one, Rob. And that is "Review Your Estate-Planning Documents."
Not necessarily a fun note to end on, but making sure that those that are designated to act on your financial or healthcare behalf — and making sure that they have up-to-date planning documents — is really important because laws and life circumstances change. So you really need to be reviewing your will or trust every five years or so, if not even more than that, and making sure you've got current power of attorney, perhaps HIPAA waivers — all those important documents — to make sure that these important bases are covered.
Rob West:
Mark, that was great advice. These are financial moves for 2025. You can read all about them — and the other 45 or so that we didn't get to in this article. It's titled Your 10 Most Important Financial Moves for 2025, and you can find it at soundmindinvesting.org.
Mark, thanks for stopping by. We'll see you in the new year!
Mark Biller:
Thanks, Rob. Happy New Year.
