This dialogue explores the importance of committing one’s work to the Lord, touching on vocation choices and planning for the future, especially retirement. The speakers emphasize that God values all types of work as long as it honors Him, and stress the need for Christians to plan wisely for an uncertain future, relying on God but also using wisdom and making practical plans.
The conversation pivots to discuss Social Security and its originally limited role in retirement, cautioning against heavy reliance on it due to uncertainties about its sustainability. They advocate for personal responsibility and planning, including using 401k plans and other investments, even if they are not biblically responsible, ensuring to make use of employer matches and exploring other investment accounts.
The dialogue also advises younger listeners to start planning for retirement early, using conservative growth rates and realistic inflation indicators in their planning. It encourages consistent savings and disciplined budgeting, highlighting the importance of avoiding procrastination and preparing for a worst-case scenario in retirement planning.
Read TranscriptionProverbs 16:3. Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established. So, does the Lord care if your chosen vocation is a plumber, lawyer, teacher, garbage man, YouTuber, financial advisor, or producer of a talk show? You know, it certainly takes all of those vocations to make a productive society. And God gives us all gifts with the intent that we will use them to honor, worship, and glorify Him. So as long as we acknowledge that our gifts come from the Lord and we desire to honor God and to serve God with those gifts in whichever vocation we choose, our plans will be established. Other versions say “go well,” “succeed,” “take place,” and “be carried out.” So in my experience, God doesn’t say no to a request that is in line with and fulfills His will. What do you think?
That’s good stuff. I appreciate the representation there, by the way, in the jobs. That’s good. You know, we do talk a lot about planning on the show, and that’s what this verse mentions. And I think Christians can have a unique relationship with planning because, on one hand, we have the anchor of the theology of trusting in God’s perfect plan, and no matter what we do, we can’t change that. That’s up to God and not up to us. It’s up to us to be obedient. On the other hand, though, we are commanded to use wisdom, to seek wisdom, and to plan well for an uncertain future. God knows the future, but we do not, so we need to plan well. We hold it all with open hands, of course, but we need to plan well nevertheless. I think we should apply these same principles as we consider our retirement planning.
Shana, we talked a little bit about this on yesterday’s show. I kind of want to continue that conversation here about how we plan well for retirement. A topic we didn’t get to yesterday was Social Security, and with the uncertainty of the future sustainability of Social Security, how much should we depend on it for our future retirement?
Well, of course, we should depend on the Lord for everything. You know, there are two extremes: there’s the people that say, ‘I’m gonna plan out my future down to the penny—every future expense that I’m gonna have. Good luck with that, by the way.’ And then there’s the other extreme that says, ‘Jesus is coming back, so I’m not gonna worry about anything.’ I think both of those extremes probably need some adjustments to their thinking because, especially when Jesus went back to heaven, his disciples were asking a lot of questions about when he was coming back and all of that. One of the things that Jesus told them was to stay sober and vigilant so that you’re not deceived and to be about your Father’s business. He said, ‘Do business until I come back.’ But really focusing back on Social Security: Social Security was never meant to be a primary income for seniors. Unfortunately, it is for a lot of seniors. You hear people talk all the time about being on a fixed income, and typically when somebody says that, it just means that they don’t have a company pension or other assets they can draw from; they are fully reliant on what the government is sending them every month from Social Security. They should get that because they paid into it, but the fact is Social Security was never originally supposed to pay for very long, if at all.
When the program started back in 1935, only 54 percent of men and 60 percent of women who reached age 21 were even expected to make it to age 65, which was the retirement date for Social Security. Those that did were only expected to receive benefits for between 12 to 15 years. Today, many more people are reaching age 65—between 72 and 84 percent, depending on your gender. Those that make it to 65 receive benefits for 15 to 20 years. So, there is a whole lot of stress on the Social Security system, not to mention Congress writing themselves IOUs and dipping into the trust funds and things like that. I think it would be foolish to rely very heavily on Social Security as your sole source of income in retirement.
Yeah, and you know, Shana, it brings to mind—we speak pretty negatively, I think rightly so, on the show about depending on big government to help bail people out, whether it’s student loans or giving people free stuff or letting people come into the country and not be documented and then giving them free stuff. I think this is one of those things that would be far better for us to rely on our own hard work over years and years to be able to provide for that.
Right, yes. I definitely think we need to have some resources set back.
Yeah, for sure. Well, one of those resources, Shana, that we talked about is the company 401(k). That’s typically one of them. Just a question that I had for you here: we’ve talked about this before, but I’d love to hear your thoughts again. If a 401(k) plan through work is not biblically responsible, what should we do? What advice would you have to listeners who have 401(k) plans that aren’t biblically responsible?
Yeah, so most of the options in a 401(k) plan are not biblically responsible because they’re typically just mutual funds that are unscreened. Any unscreened mutual fund is almost by default going to have some companies in it that are not biblically responsible. The good news is that only about 10 percent—but that number is growing—of company publicly traded companies fail the screen for biblically responsible investing, which still leaves a huge universe. But those 10 percent are the ones that are most widely held in most mutual funds. So if you don’t have—even if you’re likely to have at least one or two biblically responsible options—probably not in the equity area; it’s going to be more like a government bond fund or stable value fund. The thing that you can do, especially if you get a match, is contribute up to the match so that you get that free money because you’ve gotten a hundred percent return on the money already. Then deploy that to the biblically responsible funds that you do have in the 401(k) plan and then start investment accounts on your own outside of work. You can still get the pre-tax benefit up to a certain amount in an IRA. You can get a tax-free option with a Roth, or you can just do a regular investment account.
Yeah, that’s good, Shana. And how about for the go-getters in our audience? How about the ones who are—you know, I know we have some folks who listen to the show in their 20s or 30s, and they are starting early and they’re ready to go. What advice would you give them as they’re getting ready to plan for their retirement, even though it might be 40 or 50 years from this particular point?
Yeah, so—and we say it a lot—start early. Even if it’s only $10 a month, even if it’s $25 or $100 a month, start early. Do something. Don’t take for granted that you have plenty of time down the road and you’re working and you want to get some toys and some things and some pleasures out of the way right now. Make sure that you get in the habit and the discipline of saving and investing. Budget. If you haven’t already, go to ssa.gov—that’s the government website for Social Security. You can track your benefits there. If you’re using retirement planning tools—and there are a lot of them available probably through your brokerage or out there on the internet—plan conservatively. Plan for a worst-case scenario: use a low growth rate—don’t use 10 or 12 percent; use 7 or 8 percent. For inflation, you’ve got to put something in: use 3 to 4 percent or even higher. Don’t use the 2 percent Fed target because I don’t think it’s going back there. If you get on there and you’re playing around with the numbers, you’re going to see exactly what I’m talking about. It’s going to change the output drastically if you over-plan versus under-plan.