Why should I wait until 70 to collect social security?

Podcast Announcer
00:00:00

In a world where crushing debt keeps you trapped, where living paycheck to paycheck has become your new normal, and where the dream of retirement seems impossibly out of reach, there's hope. Join financial evangelist Ralph Estep Jr. A man who's walked through the fire of financial failure and emerged stronger on the other side.
Welcome to Ask Ralph, the show where real world experience meets biblical truth. To break the bondage of financial despair.
To get ready to take control of your money, break free from the financial stress and align your resources with God's purpose for your life. This is Ask Ralph with Ralph Estep Jr.

Ralph
00:00:41

Welcome to the show, everybody.

On tonight's show, we've got some great questions to answer, and we'll also answer your questions as well, so feel free to put them in the chat because tonight we're diving into three questions that hit right at the heart of of what many of you are grappling with right now. We're gonna start with a retirement dilemma that's keeping one of our viewers up at night.

It's that classic Social Security timing question, but with a fascinating family longevity twist that makes it especially interesting.

Then we're gonna move into tackling a spiritual and financial question about tithing on tax refunds, something I know many of you have wondered about but maybe haven't asked. And finally, we'll clear up some confusion about tax obligations in the gig economy, especially for those of you who are doing delivery service.

It's a perfect timing as we head into tax season, but before we dive in, I want to remind you you can drop your own questions right in the chat as we go along. And while we'll focus on these three main topics, I'll try to address as many of your questions as possible in our time together.

So tonight we're going to talk about real questions, biblical wisdom, and practical solutions. So don't miss this episode of the Ask Ralph show where godly principles meet real world challenges.

And if you're facing, like I said, a similar financial dilemma, remember, you can submit your questions right here in the chat. If you don't feel comfortable doing that, you can go to just askralph.com. well, thank you again for joining me.

It's great to be back after a couple of weeks off. We did some traveling. My wife and I went down to Houston to see my oldest son, and we had some good times there.

And it's a little bit warmer down there. And then of course, we come back here, and now we got this snow on the ground here all around us but hey, we're making work of it.

So this is your weekly opportunity to get your questions answered.

So like I said, feel free to answer those questions in the chat and feel free to comment and stick around because at the end, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to give away a hundred dollar Amazon gift card later in the show. Let's get started with our Bible verse for this week.

And this one comes to us from the book of Ecclesiastes. It's not what I use a lot of times, but I thought this was perfect as we think about Social Security.

And it comes to us from Ecclesiastes chapter 7, verse 8. And it tells us this. It says better is the end of a thing than its beginning and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.

I think that really speaks to patience. It speaks to the end of things and it talks all about that planning.

We talk about that on the show all the time, that Christian financial planning as we work to master our finances with that Christian perspective.

Now one of the things, if you've been catching the Daily Show, I've also been moving into a gratitude statement every day because one of the things I really want to focus in in, in 2025 is finding a reason to be grateful every day.

And I'm going to encourage all of you if you're listening to this show, if you're watching the show here live, think about something every day that you're grateful for. And today I'm going to share this with you.

Today I'm grateful for God's wisdom in teaching us that patience often yields greater rewards, just as waiting for Social Security can provide better long term benefits for many people. So let's get right into it today. And we're going to start with our first question. And our first question comes from Sarah.

And this is that big Social Security question we were talking about. And this is what Sarah wrote. She said, dear Ralph, I'm turning 62 next month and feeling pressured to start collecting Social Security.

My friends say I should take it early because, well, you never know how long you'll live. But I'm healthy and I come from a family of long lived people.

My mother lived to be 92 and I'm still working part time at my real estate business and don't desperately need the money right now. What should I do? The thought of leaving money on the table keeps me up at night. Well, let me just tell you something.

That is a question that I get asked routinely and it's Something that we're definitely going to address on today's show. So let me tell you about a client I had back in 2015, because I really think that's the best way to address this particular issue.

And we'll call her Martha. Now, Martha was in a very similar circumstance to what you're facing, Sarah. She had some choices.

She could retire and start collecting Social Security at 62, or she could wait till 67, which was her full retirement age. Or she could wait to age 70. And let me just lay it out for you what the options were. So at 62, she would collect $1,500 a month in Social Security.

If she waited till her full retirement age, she would collect $2,200 a month in Social Security. And if she put it off and waited till she was 70, guess what? She would collect $2900 a month in Social Security.

So this is one of the questions I get in my practice all the time. People say, ralph, what should I do? So let's talk about how I counseled Martha and how you can use these things to make this decision for yourself.

So let's talk about what I call her key circumstances. First thing is we looked at Martha and I said to her, how's your health? And Martha said to me, she says, ralph, I am super healthy.

She had strong health indicators. And then of course, she shared with me about her mom. She had a robust family longevity history.

You know, when clients ask me this question, you're going to laugh when I say this, but a lot of times I say to them, hey, get out your crystal ball and let's figure out when you're going to die. And usually I get that pause like, did you just say what I thought you said? Yeah, because this is what it comes down to.

But now also in Martha's case, she had a stable financial foundation, like she said. You know, just like you said, Sarah, you don't really need the money. Well, Martha was in that same place.

And just like you, she had some active part time employment. So again, Sarah, this pretty much mirrors your situation. So that's what I wanted to get into. What were the critical decision factors?

So you really, these are the questions you have to ask yourself. So we took a look at Martha and she had adequate retirement savings to bridge that gap. You know, she didn't have to worry about taking it.

At 62, she, she still worked part time. She had planned for her savings, she had planned for retirement. So that was a really good thing.

And then we start talking about her mother and guess what? Martha's mother lived to be 97. So I looked at Martha and I said, well, you've got good genetics there, my friend.

So she decided, she said, ralph, I'm going to continue enjoying my life. I'm going to continue working part time and get that additional income. Now, it also depends on your particular living situation.

If you've got a husband and wife with a difference in age. And I'm not going to get into that tonight because it gets really in the weeds.

But that may be an option to talk to somebody like myself and see what you want to do about this. So in the end, here's what Martha did. She said, ralph, here's what I'm going to do.

She said, I'm going to wait till I'm 70 and I'm going to collect that $2,900 a month. Now, of course, at that point it actually had grown a little bit, but think about that.

If she had done it at 62, she would have only got $1400 a month. So by waiting that extra eight years, she, she went from 1400 to $2900. And I'm going to share a little bit of information with you.

In the end, Martha lived to be age 95, which is just amazing if you think about it. So she collected benefits for 25 years. And if you're wanting to be like me, you're doing the math, you're saying, how much more does she collect?

Well, here's the whopping number by waiting till 70. Now again, this is all relative. Because she Lived to be 95, she added an additional $420,000 to her benefits.

So you might be saying, ralph, boy, that strategy proved highly successful. It sure did. So when she died at 95, she definitely maximized her lifetime Social Security income and it validated that weight and maximize approach.

You might be asking, Ralph, what lessons do we learn about this? And this is the key. If you don't listen to anything else I say, as it relates to Social Security, this decision is highly personalized.

It depends on your health, it depends on your savings, it depends on all of those things.

You also have to have a long term perspective because you can have the approach of, well, you know, I'm just going to take it at 62 because, you know, I threw the dice on the table and I'll get that money now. And there are also some tax reasons not to take it early because they limit how much income you can make.

It's going to be taxable income to you regardless, but you Also have to think about your health as longevity factors. And the big biblical takeaway from this is that power of delayed gratification.

Now, if you get, if you want to get more information about this, one of the things I've been talking about on the Daily show is every time I do a show, which is daily, I write a blog as well. So you can go to askralphpodcast.com/blog. And on those blog posts I get into more detail and actually put in some more examples.

I've got some resources you go and check out. So let me take a look here and see what we've got in the way of chat questions. They don't have anything coming in.

So if you've got a question you want to have answered on the show, I'm going to encourage you to just go ahead and enter it right in the chat. Well, let's move on to our next question. And this question comes to us and it didn't give me a name on this one.

So I'm just going to go with this question. It said this and this is one. It was interesting.

When I got this question, I thought, you know what, I've never really been asked this and I hadn't thought about it at all. But with it being a Christian based podcast, we talk about giving the Lord our first fruits. I thought this was a great question.

So the question is this, should I tithe on my tax refund if I already tithed on my income throughout the year? Now, if you don't understand the term tithe, tithe is a biblical principle where you're giving back to the church.

Basically, if you want to think about it in a real simple term, it's given back 10% of whatever income you make. So the question here is, you got through the year, you got your tax return done, and then you got this refund.

And the person's asking the question of Ralph, do I need to give my 10% on that refund? Now, you want to go back and forth through some different discussions here.

If you think about it, the initial income that created that tax refund, if you're doing tithing, you've already tithed on that. Now I'm going to tell you, a lot of believers choose the title and refund since it represents additional funds being received.

They think about it like this is this bonus? So I'm not going to tell you where I stand yet. We're going to get into this a little deeper.

But consider that if you had received correct withholding amount throughout the year, you would have had more to tithe on each paycheck. And this gets into the bigger question. So I get this question too, wasn't asked today. But this is another question, Ralph.

Do I tithe on my gross pay or do I tithe on my net pay? You know what? I think you gotta look and see what's in your heart. And that really gets to the core question that we're talking about today.

And that idea of tithing on tax refund raises an interesting theological and practical discussion. It just does. And I think the core question involves whether a tax refund represents new income or simply a return of overpaid funds.

So let's talk about tax refunds. What exactly is a tax refund? And a tax refund, in my point, is essentially money you overpaid to the government throughout the year.

So in my view, it's not technically new income, but it's rather a return of your own money. See, and a lot of people get hung up on that. But let's talk about that for a second. It amazes me. Now, I've been doing this for over 30 years now.

It amazes me. Somebody comes in to get their taxes done and they are super excited when they get a refund. And that's great. Everybody likes to get a refund.

But what I try to explain to them is you're getting your own money back. In fact, I just recorded a show this morning about tax refund loans that'll come out next Tuesday.

I'm gonna encourage you to check it out and share it with people because I believe that is one of the biggest scams on the planet. Think about this. You put your money away all year long through your paycheck.

You had your, your withholding setup, said you got this refund, and then some of these tax places want to charge you a fee. Spoiler alert. It's a big number as a percentage to get your money back. Now, that's not what we're talking about here.

But so here's the thing I'm going to tell you while we're talking about this whole tithing on your refunds thing, yes, it's great to get a refund, but you're getting your own money back without interest. And maybe you're struggling throughout the year.

So one of the things that, before you even get to this question is take a look at your withholding and see if you could potentially adjust it so that you're not in that position while you're getting the refund in the first place. But that's really the issue. So let's talk about the arguments that people who say yes, you should tithe on the refund.

First argument they have is this stewardship perspective. You know, it's found money, it's money you weren't expecting.

So whenever they receive a lump sum on money, some view it as an opportunity for generosity. Now I'm not going to argue with that. I think that the Bible talks at great length about the, the cheerful giver, that level of stewardship.

And for them the refund feels like extra money, which makes it easier to give it from. And another thing a lot of people say is it, you know, and I did this when I did my research, there was a lot of talk about this.

I didn't realize so much. But some see it as a chance to give their first fruits from a windfall.

And so there's, that's the four, that's the people who believe that you should tithe on this. And they're basically saying if you've received the correct amount in each paycheck, you would have tithed on that then.

So tithing on the refund can be seen as catching up on what you would have been given. Okay, I can live with that. That's fair. So they're saying. And that's taken a perspective though, if you think about it.

Let's going to get in the weeds here a little bit. That's taken a perspective that they were tithing on their net check. So I'm going to throw a little curveball in here.

If you're tithing on what you net received and I would agree with that, that you should tithe on your refund. But if you're tithing on your total pay, then maybe that's the other side of this, which is what I'm going to go to right now.

And that's the arguments for not tithing on the refund. A lot of people consider that what they call double tithing.

I guess it's that whole die idea of double taxation because they argue the original income was already tithed on when earned and tithing on the refund could be viewed as tithing twice on the same money. Now look, I'm not going to get into an argument about it. I think that's one you got to make up with your own maker there.

You got to decide what's in your heart. If you're tithing on the gross amount of your pay, then that's probably true. I wouldn't disagree with that.

But if you're, if you're tithing on the net amount of your pay, then I think an argument could be made that this is money that you should tithe on. And again, like I said earlier, the refund is a return of your own money. It's not new income. So it's kind of like withdrawing money from savings.

That was previously titled. And that's what a lot of people say.

They said to me, ralph, when I did some research and asked a few people their opinion, they said, ralph, think about it like this. If you get your paycheck, let's say you get a $500 a week paycheck, and you take that money and you put it in a savings account. Fantastic.

You tithed on that $500 because that's what your income was. Well, then when you take that money out of the savings account, you're not going to tithe on it again because that's already your money.

And that's their argument and the people who oppose this. So what is the practical consideration we should have here? I think it all comes down to your personal conviction. That's what.

It plays a major role in this decision. And that's where you need to pray about it. You need to consult, maybe you talk to your spiritual pastor, your advisor, some mentors.

And in the end, to answer this question, each and every person's got to decide based on their understanding of what stewardship means. Now, I'm gonna throw a couple alternatives out there for you if you want to not even have the discussion in the first place.

So one of the alternatives you could do is consider giving a portion of an offering rather than a full tithe. Use the opportunity to give some special causes or needs. You know, a lot of people in our church that I go to here locally, we.

I go to Middletown Baptist Church. And by the way, we have a podcast, and I would highly encourage you to check it out.

You can go to NBC podcast.com I'll put a link to it in the show notes. But a lot of people will use as an opportunity for special causes.

Maybe they give to the building fund, or they give to missions, or they give to benevolence. But it all comes down to your own personal prayerful decision based on your personal conviction. So I hope I've answered that question.

I know I was kind of all over the place with that, but I can see both sides of that from a very fair perspective. And I don't know that there's a right or a wrong answer. It comes down to what's in your heart.

If you're going to be grudgingly do it, then I don't think you should be giving money to the church at all or giving money to charity at all.

If you feel like it's this obligation and you're doing it, you know, you're all tensed up when you're writing the check or when you're making that direct deposit or sending that ach or however you do it. That is not the heart that the Lord is wanting you to have.

So big picture, examine yourself, examine your heart and then make the decision that is the right decision for you. Well, let's take a look here and see. Do we have any more chat questions coming in? Do see a few people here in the chat.

So like I said, I'm going to encourage you to put your questions into the chat window here. You just type it in. If you put a Q at the beginning of it, that'd be great.

If you want to make any comments about the show or what we just talked about, how do you feel about this whole thing? What's your position on either taking Social Security at age 62 or. Or 67 or 70? Put your comments in the chat. I'd love to hear from you.

And then let's talk also in the chat about that whole tithing discussion. You know, maybe your position is rough. I don't tithe at all. I just give what I feel like the Lord has told me to give. So how do you feel about it?

I would love to hear your comments. Well, while you're putting those in there, let me move on to our third question of tonight and this one comes to us again.

I didn't get a name on this one, but they sent this over through our Facebook group and it says this, it says, I had a side gig last year driving for a delivery service. When do I need to pay taxes on this income? And I'm telling you, when I got this I was like, that is a great question.

In fact, my youngest son, he was helping out a fellow, I think it was last summer, the summer before actually doing these delivery service. I don't know if it was Uber or one of those doordash or something like that. And it's interesting because a lot of people are doing that.

I'm just amazed by it actually.

It is amazing how many people do this delivery service and that's a discussion for a whole nother show because I see people spending so much money on getting donuts from the donut shop delivered or a cup of coffee and all these kind of things that get in your car and go get it or make it at home. So, but let me get to the point of the question. So this question is really asking us a very specific thing.

They got a side gig, they did driving for delivery service and they did that last year. And they're basically asking me at this point, when do I need to pay taxes on this income?

Well, to be blunt with you, now that we're in 2025, you've got to have to start thinking about doing your taxes. Now.

In general, if you're going to owe more than a thousand dollars in taxes from this self employment income, you should have been paying quarterly taxes. Let me tell you what that means. So basically what the IRS is, you know, think of it on these terms.

If you have a job, you work for somebody, when you get that paycheck every Friday or every other Friday, however often you get paid, they take the taxes at that point from your paycheck. Well, the IRS wants you to do the same thing. If you're self employed, they want you to pay those taxes as you go.

That's what we call quarterly tax estimates. And they basically set this arbitrary number of $1,000.

So basically, if you owe less than $1,000, you generally don't need to make estimated tax payments. But if you owe more than that, the IRS can actually go back and assess a penalty for what they call underpayment of estimated taxes.

So they're going to look at your income and they're going to quarter that and say, okay, well in the first quarter you made, let's use a simple example. So let's say you made $25,000 doing this delivery service income. Okay, we get your tax return done and you owe $5,000 in tax.

Well clearly that's more than 1,000, so you should have been making quarterly estimated payments. So somebody like me, or if you're doing your own tax return, they're going to ask you to annualize that income.

They're going to ask you to put it into buckets. So let's do a real simple example. So if you owe $5,000, let's make it $4,000. For sake of our discussion. Make it simple.

So basically their position, the IRS's position, and the states for some extent, you know, depending upon what state you live in, wants you to be paying in at least a quarter of that during each of the quarters, which think about it like this, you owe $4,000 at the end of the year. So you would have owed $1000 during the first quarter. You would have owed $1000 during a second. You get the idea.

So by the time you get to the end of the year, you do your tax return, you owe $4,000.

Well, the IRS or the state or both are going to go back and charge you a penalty for not making those estimated payments during the first quarter, during the second quarter, during the third quarter. Now, the fourth quarter, that payment is not actually due till January 15th, but they could charge you a penalty for that as well.

So if you're going to have this, what we call side gig or side hustle or this other income, and you're going to make more than a thousand dollars, you need to sit down and talk with somebody like me. You can book a call with me. Just go to askralph.com, click on book a call. We can have a consultation and let me help you avoid those penalties.

Now, in addition to that, it is super important that you track your expenses. Now, I'm going to throw a few things out here that I think you should be thinking about.

Now, if you're doing delivery driving, the most obvious thing you want to keep track of is your mileage and your vehicle expenses, because they're deductible. Now, I want to get into the, into too far into this. You can't do both.

Either you're going to take your mileage or your vehicle expenses, but keep track of that stuff. And over and above that, a lot of clients ask me this question. They said, ralph, okay, that's great. That sounds fantastic. I figured out my mileage.

I got my vehicle expense. I'll talk about some other things here in a few minutes, but how much should I be setting aside?

And I'm going to tell you in general, you should be setting aside about 30% of your earnings for taxes. That way you don't have a big surprise. Like Gomer Powell used to say, surprise, surprise.

You don't want that big surprise when you go meet with somebody like me or the person who handles your taxes and they say, oh, guess what, Sally, you owe $25,000. Now, that's a lot bigger income in that case.

But even $4,000, a lot of people would have sticker shock if they came into me and said, oh, I did this side gig. I owe $4,000. How's that possible? Ralph so that's why I'm saying to set aside 30, even to be more conservative, maybe 35%.

So let's talk about those tax obligations.

Like we said, if you're going to do more than $1,000, that's going to trigger that, that quarterly tax bill because you want to avoid that year end tax bill nose penalties. Now, the due dates for these quarterly estimates are April 15th. And again, you're going to laugh when I tell you this.

It doesn't actually fall on what you and I would consider the end of a quarter. But again, it's the IRS, they do what they want. So the due dates are April 15, June 15, September 15 and January 15.

Now, a lot of clients will say to me, ralph, do I have to be exactly on those days? No, you don't. The idea is that the goal should be to pay that quarterly. And you also don't forget about the states.

Now, over and above all of that, this is where I'm going to talk to you about keeping detailed records of your earnings. You've got to know what you're earning.

That would include, if you say you're doing that delivery work, you might get a 1099 at the end of the year from Uber or DoorDash, whatever it is. But let's say you're getting tips. Well, guess what, you got to track your tips as well because that's taxable income to you.

So save those payment statements you get. Maybe you work. I've had a couple of clients that do, and they work on multiple platforms.

They might be three or four different services because they're trying to get as much income from that as they can. Because you gotta report all that income, regardless of whether they send you that 1099 at the end of the year.

A lot of people say to me, ralph, well guess what, dude, they didn't send me to 1099, so I'm good. I don't have to report that income. That's a bad plan.

Because if you're the unlucky winner of the audit lottery and the first thing the IRS does, they pull your bank statements and they look at what you deposited during the year and they're going to say to you, hey, Ralph, I see you had $25,000 worth of deposits, but on your tax return, all you showed was your income from your W2. Where does other $25,000 come from? Oops. Yeah, and maybe they didn't send you a 1099, or maybe that was tip income. So pay attention to those things.

So keep track of all that. You also want to keep track of all your vehicle related deduction, because here's a truth bomb.

I have yet to see somebody who's actually made positive earnings from these delivery services. Now you can do it, but you got to be really good at it.

You got to be working in a very small confined area because your mileage and your, your expenses for your car, for wear and tear and gasoline and insurance and all that kind of stuff, they make a huge number. So you might be saying, ralph, well, how do I keep track of the mileage? Well, here's what the IRS says you have to do.

You've actually got to keep a mileage log. A lot of people say, ralph, I don't have time for that. Well, guess what? If you get audited, you're going to wish you'd made that time.

So track all your business miles. There's some great apps out there that you can use to do that.

My understanding is some of these delivery services actually build that app right into the product itself.

So you can either take the actual expenses that would be your fuel, your insurance, your wear and tear, car washes, repairs, gas receipts, all those type of things, or you can take a mileage deduction and simply you take the number of miles that you had and you. And that's the way you pay the taxes. I don't know what I did here. I made this thing all small of a sudden, There you go.

But anyway, so that's the idea with the vehicle stuff.

So again, getting back to the big discussion here, tax planning wise, set aside that 30 or 35%, because here's a sneaky little secret that a lot of people don't talk about. And that's this thing called self employment tax. You might be saying, ralph, what in the world is that? Well, it's a 15.3% additional tax.

And now you're going, ralph, you got my attention. So yes, you're going to pay federal tax. If you live in a state that has state income tax, you're going to pay state income tax. And guess what?

Because you work for yourself, you had to pay what's called self employment tax. Well, that's an extra 15%. So let me throw some numbers at you. So let's say that you're in a middle tax bracket.

Let's say you're in 22% federal tax bracket. There's 22%. Let's say you live in Delaware like most of my clients do here.

I have a lot of clients throughout the nation as well, but a lot of them live here in Delaware. Let's say you add another 8%. So now we're at 30%. Okay, we're at 30%. I told you to hold 35.

But I'm getting ready to tell you, and when we Add this self employment tax on it, that's an additional 15.3%. We're at 45%.

So that's when you might want to sit down with somebody like me and have a consultation about how can I do things to limit or mitigate that self employment tax. I deal with clients every day with that. That you might be saying, ralph, what do I do with this money?

One of the things I'm going to tell you to do is set up a separate savings account and keep track of all that money. And again, factor in your state and local income taxes. So what are my takeaways? Key record keeping best practices. Use a mileage tracking app.

Save all your business related receipts. Document work related phone and data expenses. Because if you're doing this, you're probably using a cell phone.

So you can probably take a deduction for your cell phone expenses, your Internet costs, and maintain separate business and personal expenses. You don't want to commingle those things. And here's some things don't forget about. Like I just mentioned phone expenses.

Maybe use delivery bags or equipment. Maybe you have business insurance. All of those things are things that you can use as a deduction on that side hustle or that side business.

I know we, we talked about a lot of stuff there, but this is not a simple question. Big picture, if you're going to owe more than $1,000 and you didn't pay quarterly taxes, you may very well owe a tax penalty.

Well, let me take a look here in the chat, see if we've got any questions. Does anybody have any comments tonight or everybody's still asleep that I pray. Everybody asleep? I don't know.

Anyway, I'm happy to take any questions you might have. If you've got a question that we've talked about tonight or maybe it's a question we haven't even discussed tonight, I'm happy to address that.

And I want to, I want to ask you for a huge favor tonight because one of the things we're trying to do, I do this every day on my show, but I'm trying to grow this live show because it's an opportunity for people to interact with me. It doesn't cost them a dime. I don't charge a consultation fee and we talk about some cool topics on there.

And this is where I'm doing these Tuesday night sessions. Because here's the deal. We're tackling real financial challenges.

We're talking about things that are real challenges for people and we're applying some biblical wisdom like our whole Discussion tonight about tithing and should we tie on our refunds? These are real biblical questions. They're tied directly to financials. And listen, I've been in the same situation.

I've walked this path, and I know it can be super challenging to try to align your finances with your faith. That whole discussion about tithing, I'm going to be honest with you, A lot of people are like, ralph, I don't even know what you're talking about.

But that's why I'm here every Tuesday night. I want to share both practical guidance and spiritual insights. And here's what I want you to do.

Here's my homework for you, if you're willing to do it. Think about some people in your life right now. Somebody that struggle.

Maybe it's somebody at church, maybe it's somebody that you know from work or somebody that you know that your neighbor, something like that, and they're struggling with debt. Or maybe there's a family member that's trying to grow their business God's way. You know, they're trying and they just feel like they're struggling.

Maybe you've got a friend who needs biblical wisdom for their finances. So think about that person right now and imagine how different their situation could be with the right guidance.

Because we're building something special here. It's a community believer supporting each other's financial journeys.

And every Tuesday night, we're transforming lives by combining sound financial principles with strong faith. That's the whole reason I do what I do. It's the reason I turn on this microphone. It's the reason I turn on this camera.

I plan out these episodes, I write these blog posts. So here's what I want you to do right now. Pull out your phone.

What I want you to do is to take and text askralphpodcast.com/live to any person you thought of a few minutes ago when I talked about people who need your help or people who need financial help, just text that to them and say, listen. Go to this website because once the live show is done, you can still go watch tonight's live show, but give them a reminder to meet us next week.

Tell them about this great live show that you found every Tuesday night, 7pm Eastern time, and let them know that they can get their specific questions answered just like you are tonight. If you've got questions, I'm here to answer them. You might be saying, ralph, what impact is that going to have? What's going to have a huge impact?

Because when you share the show, you're not Just sharing financial advice.

Yes, you're doing that, but you're offering them a chance to join a community of financial savvy Christians and you're helping them find a pay at the financial freedom that honors God. So again, do me a huge favor. Think about those people that are struggling.

Think about those people that you know are living paycheck to paycheck or they're battling debt or they don't know how to, they don't know where to turn. Because here's the deal.

Your one message, that text message or that email or that phone call, that whatever that is, your one message could be the turning point in someone's financial journey. And here's the cool part. We can work together on this and we can help more people achieve their financial success while growing closer to God.

And that's what this community is all about. It's all about supporting each other as we master our finances from that Christian perspective.

So I'm going to check again and see if we've got any comments or any questions in the chat. We don't have any. So guess what it's time for? It's time for our weekly drawing. So let me find the button to do that.

Let me do that and let me go over here and start this. And the countdown will start right now.

So what we've got now is if you're interested in getting in the into the drawing tonight is a hundred dollar Amazon gift card. I do this every week. All you've got to do is in the comments, type in the word #askralph.

So once somebody does that, the countdown will start and then we'll have five minutes and one of the lucky people who's on the show tonight will actually win that hundred dollars. You might be saying, Ralph, why do you do this? Because I want people to have the opportunity to come to the live show.

I want people to have a desire to come here. So share it with your friends, share it with your family. Just go into the chat right now. There we go. Salty Waters has entered. That's fantastic.

Just type in #AskRalph. And I do this every week because, listen, people are hurting, people are struggling with their finances.

People feel like they're taking three steps forward and they're getting shoved four steps back. I see it every day. I look at Facebook groups of people talking about how they overspent for the holidays.

In fact, that's the show I'm going to be recording tomorrow. It'll come out next week. And that's what do I do now that I've overspent during the holidays.

And I'm writing another book and my third book's coming out right now. It's going to be the seven.

It'll be released in a month or so, but it's going to be the seven biblical principles to help you break free of that paycheck to paycheck lifestyle. And there are so many people that are dealing with that right now. Inflation is tough. Prices continue to go up. You go to the grocery store.

I know my wife thinks I'm crazy, but I go into this grocery store and I'm amazed at the prices. She pretty much handles that stuff. And I go in there and I look around, I'm like, are you kidding me?

Like this stuff is that expensive and I've got the means to handle it. God has richly blessed myself and my wife.

But there are people out there struggling and that's why I do what I do, because I see it as my mission field. So again, if you're in the show tonight, we got a couple more people there. Just go into the chat window and type in their #askralph.

Because if nobody else enters, it looks like Salty Waters is going to win that hundred dollar Amazon gift card. So you want to get in there and make sure you get a chance to enter that drawing as well. But we do this every Tuesday night.

So again, like I said, I'm going to encourage you to share the show with friends. Maybe they can't make it on Tuesday night. We'll just share that Ask Ralph with them. They have a whole. I have a whole catalog.

I'm getting ready to have 700 episodes on the website now. I gotta be honest with you. I listened to one from a year ago. Things have gotten a lot better.

I listened to it the other day and I was like, wow, that sounded terrible. But it was still good information. But I do that every day.

We put things out on YouTube, we do these YouTube shorts, we put things on TikTok, we put things on Facebook reels. I write this blog post because there are ways to get past where you are. There is hope. That's the thing.

You know, I work with a coach for my podcast and he said to me a couple weeks ago, he said, ralph, you know, one of the things you really could talk about on your show, and I had to agree with him, is there is hope. So many people feel hopeless.

So many people feel like they've made bad decisions and they've got themselves buried under this burden that they don't think they're ever going to be able to get out from under. But let me tell you right now, you can do it. There is hope. I can help you. I can give you the tools.

If you listen to my show, if you watch the show, if you read the blog, you can join our Facebook insiders, or even come Tuesday nights and interact with other people here on the show, there is hope. And the best part of it is there's hope because I believe in the power of prayer. I believe in the power of our Christian faith. There we go.

And Pokemon guy has entered. So now we got two people. So let's get entered into the the contest here. We got about another minute and forty seconds.

Once that thing goes off, somebody's going to win that 100 bucks. Amazon gift card's a good time to get it. If you didn't get what you wanted for Christmas, it'll be your opportunity to get it.

But anyway, like I was saying, that's the whole reason I do this show is I want people to have that opportunity to ask questions. You know, we're getting ready to get into tax time. Taxes are tough, and people try to do them themselves and they make mistakes.

And if you've got tax questions, you can bring them to the show.

If you know somebody that's struggling with their tax return, maybe it's your neighbor, maybe it's your cousin, your sister, your brother, your friend, somebody from church, say, hey, you know, I know this guy Ralph. He gives away free information every Tuesday night. Send them to the show, have them come in and interact with us. They can ask their questions.

So that's what we're doing today. And if you're in Delaware in the area, and we just got a nice snowstorm here, I understand we're going to be getting some more.

My buddy Mark lives down in Alabama, and I think it's gotten colder down there than it's gotten years. And I. I think they're fixing to get a snowstorm or an ice storm down there as well. So this is the thing you can do. You go join the show.

You can stay inside in a nice warm home or wherever you're at and just ask your financial questions. So we're coming down to about 27 seconds here. So this is your time.

If you want to enter the contest, just go into the chat window, type in there #askralph. Because if you don't enter, you can't win. That's just the bottom line. So I'm going to encourage you to go in there, hit #askralph.

We got 14 seconds left. Time's a waste of my friends. We're going to 10 seconds left and then we're going to have a winner of this week's Amazon gift card.

I'm going to get a sip of tea here while we're waiting on that. All right, here we go. Now we're going to shuffle the deck here. Got two people that have entered and let's see who the winner is tonight.

Let's see who it's going to be. And tonight's winner is. Let's see if who's it going to be? The suspense. And the winner is. Salty Waters. So I really appreciate Salty Waters.

I see her in the chat window every week. I really do appreciate you being here to participate in the show. It's been great. And you're our winner tonight. So congratulations, Salty Waters.

You'll be getting an email from me with your Amazon gift card. So thank you so much for doing that. And as I end here tonight, I just want to thank you for joining me tonight.

You know, like I said, every Tuesday evening you do this and share the show with your friends. And remember this. Big deal. My passion is to help you achieve your financial success. I want to see you live out your dreams.

I want to see you grow in your faith because I know together we can master your finances from a Christian perspective. So as they end the show, as I always end the show, stay financially savvy out there and God bless you abundantly.

Podcast Announcer
00:39:26

Thank you for joining us on the Ask Ralph show, and with a simple click to subscribe, we'll invite you back to our next episode. And remember, financial issues don't have to be complicated. Just Ask Ralph.

The information contained in this episode of Ask Ralph is based on data available as of the date of its release. Saggio Accounting Plus and Ask Ralph Media, Inc. Is under no obligation to update this content if changes occur.

Applying this information to your specific situation requires careful consideration of all facts and circumstances, and any information provided is not to be considered as financial, tax, or legal advice. Please consult your tax advisor or attorney before acting on any material covered.