Ep. 077 - Are You Overlooking These Stewardship Loose Ends?

Episode Transcript

Austin
Inevitably, there will be a time in your life when you change your bank, your 401k or cancel that Peacock subscription you signed up for to watch The Office three years ago. When that happens, what do you do with old accounts? Today we will be discussing the importance of addressing unused accounts.
Well Spencer, today we're going to be talking about tying up loose ends as a steward. And specifically we're going to look at accounts here. This can be actual bank accounts investment accounts. But it also is accounts that are digital in nature. And I think the reality is as a steward, we come back to this every episode. We are simply managers of the resources that God has placed in our hands.
And so if God owns it all, if he owns our bank accounts, then we as a steward really need to regularly be taking account of what is in our hands and what hands is it in, and where are those hands? So what are some key considerations here? As we think about just the reality of we are stewards,
God is the owner, God is the one who has bestowed on us these things. What do we really need to think about here?

Spencer
Well, there's a handful of different things, and we could look at it through the prism of what are we stewards of? We're stewards of our finances. We often talk about that. We're also stewards of our time. We're stewards of our relationships. And we can kind of go on down the line and our energy. But it's really three of those when we think about our finances, our time and the energy, the focus that we have.
Those, surprisingly all come to bear on this topic of what do we do with these loose ends? Because the loose ends, if we don't tie them up, they will continue to have that radiating effect. Sometimes for many years or even decades to come. So going ahead and addressing those not necessarily today, tomorrow, this week, but knowing that you've got a cadence that you can address these things over time is an important step.

Austin
Yeah, absolutely. And the reality here is the Bible does not tell us, hey, when you have your money at one bank in Colorado and one in Florida and you live in Tennessee, it's not a wise decision, but we kind of take a step back and say we can use general biblical principles of stewardship of how do I actually think about this? In reality here,
we’ll take a little bit of liberty. But Luke 9:61-62, Jesus is saying he's talking to his disciples. And yet another said, I will follow you, Lord. But let me first say farewell to those at my home. Jesus said to him, no one who puts his hand to the plow looks back, is fit for the kingdom of God.
And I think the reality here is there's a distraction like you were talking about. This disciple is saying, I want to follow you, Lord, but there's these other things that I need to take care of back here. I think when we are so focused on the let me take care of these other things back here, it turns our focus away from the kingdom of heaven, from God's kingdom.
And I think, is this like a salvific thing? No. But just because you have an unused bank account in Colorado is not going to keep you from the kingdom of the Lord. But if our distraction is always focused away from God and His kingdom, then that's really where we need to say, hey, I need to deal with this.
This is where the pronouncement of Jesus, of saying, no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God. Our focus should be solely on how do I serve the Lord well? How do I manage this resource as well? And if it's constantly bouncing around and all these other places trying to be like, I got to hold all of these things in tension, our mind is distracted and that's not a good place to be.

Spencer
Well, and these things just increase in their level of pain over time. And they do so sometimes on a slow rise, you know, you think about a bank account. If you deal with it right when you move, it can be much easier because you still know the tellers name, maybe that you've worked with forever and you still have some kind of contact.
Maybe you still have an address there and they'll honor things. Maybe you still remember your password, to that account. And you can get in and you can move those resources. But I guarantee after a year, there's much less likelihood that you still know that password. You probably don't know as many people at the bank after ten years, which that's often what will happen,
you know, you just don't address it over time. Ten years, maybe the bank's been acquired by two other banks. They don't even know your username anymore. Maybe the account number has changed. Maybe you've been keeping track of these things. Maybe you also haven't. So the longer that we delay on tying up a lot of these loose ends, it may not come back to bite us at that moment.
But when we try to tie it up 5 or 10 years down the road now, instead of it being five minutes that it would take, its five hours. Because, you know, there's so many different processes that we need to move through. And if we don't tie it up, then and we've got $10,000 in that account, why, it's even worse for our heirs down the road, because now they've got to, you know, go through and get things notarized and prove who they are and have, you know, all kinds of different, things there.
So it just gets worse and worse. With so many of these different things that, that we could address, you know, very easily.

Austin
Absolutely. Well and indicative in my life. My wife and I lived in Colorado for several years. And the small credit union that we use here in Tennessee, which my wife has used her entire life. Believe it or not, they don't have a branch in Colorado. And so when we wanted to make withdrawals, it's either you pay the ATM fee or you open a bank account there.
Now, when we moved back to Tennessee, the bank that we used in Colorado isn't in Tennessee. There's regulations about national banks. And so the reality is we just decided, hey, we need to close this bank in Colorado because I don't know when I'm going to be back. We love our friends. We have great time there, but we're not in Colorado very often.
So just like you were saying, if I tried to go back to First Bank right now, if I had a bank account there, I would be so frustrated with myself for not taking the 15, 30, 45 minutes that it took whatever it was that I've forgotten that it took. Now, ten years later, and I think the reality as well is there can be good reasons why some people might have accounts in different banks, if they need to have a business account versus a personal account, or if they're trying to keep a certain level in money market over and above FDIC insurance, there are certain times and scenarios where it actually makes sense.
However, if you've got five bank accounts that each have $10,000 in them, maybe it's time to consolidate to a single one.

Spencer
Well, it's the same thing with investment accounts, really. I mean, you know, having an account at Schwab, one at Fidelity, one at TIAA, you know, every now and then there's something that's unique with a particular type of investment. You know, TIAA has some in their, retirement plans that, you know, have some, particular features that can be helpful, but it's rare.
You know, oftentimes what we'll see is a client will come in, they start working with us on a financial plan, and we say, okay, well, you have some resources at Schwab, you have some fidelity, you have some, you know, over here, direct sold mutual funds all over the place. And we say, well, what's going on here?
Oh, well, I, you know, I was over here working at this employer and then this got merged over into here. And I just never addressed it. And that's fine. On some level, we can address it when, clients get to a certain point, but sometimes there's even tax consequences to that. Because things have gotten out of order.
There may be some cost basis in an IRA, for instance. And now we've got a bigger issue than if we just addressed it upfront. So there are even on the investment side of things, doing things in a more consolidated and a more focused way. It also allows you to track those resources more easily over time. So lots of different things that we'll dive in, you know, I know there, but, it happens both on the banking side and also on the investment side for sure.

Austin
Right. And again, we come back to this idea of where is my focus? Is my focus on that account, or is my where's my focus on serving the Lord? If in the back of my mind I'm like, oh yeah, I changed jobs and I need to roll over that 401k, I'll do it another time. If my focus is constantly distracted versus a level of simplicity, this is where my mind gets pulled away from the Lord.
And it may not be a tremendous pulling away, but anytime it's pulled away, even in [the] littlest bit, I really need to be cognizant of that. Is this a wise utilization of the resources that you've placed in my hands? And the reality is, it may be okay for a short time, but it may not be okay.
It again, we just have to really wrestle with what's, how am I to be a steward? How would God be pleased with the way that I'm managing this? Or should I really just take a couple hours one day, figure out where everything is, and start saying, okay, I need to do this, this and this, and there will be simplicity.
There will be a level of coordination and consolidation that just makes my life easier.

Spencer
Right. And at the end of the day, it makes it easier every quarter when you get those statements. Because if you get one statement versus 3 or 4 statements or, heaven forbid, 6 or 8 statements, and now you're trying to cobble things together, there's no way that you can apply the same diligence and tracking, you know, on 6 or 8 that you could on one with anything like the same amount of time so,

Austin
Yeah. Well, and to your point there, I think if we look at the 401k landscape in particular, let's say you are wanting to make significant charitable gifts, and you are in that season of life where you can make qualified charitable distributions and you're wanting to do that to your church or charitable institution of your choice. Well, if you've got 401k here or 403b over here, small IRA here, and you've got to take distributions from each of them.
One of the three can make charitable gifts, the other two can't. And so even there I think as a steward saying, hey, let's roll all of those into an IRA if you want to make significant charitable gifts there, rather than saying, hey, I'm gonna keep it dispersed because, well, I like what TIAA did here on this side.
And I like what Schwab did here. And I just don't want to take the time to roll it over. Well, now, if we are thinking about this as a steward, now, if you got to make taxable distributions of all of them for required minimums, if you're now giving out of those resources, well, there was a much more efficient way to do that.
So we really again, we just have to think how, it's not just about purely I want this easy for myself, but if I can steward those resources and they all go to charity, well, now I've been a better steward than maybe 20% of them going to the IRS and then the remainder to charity.

Spencer
Well, and this applies as well, we would say to the credit card side of things, if you have multiple credit cards, sometimes there are benefits, you know there that you can be chasing. But what I will tell you is for many, many years, more than a decade, I've had one credit card. And it's for purely simplicity. Yeah. I know that when I'm spending money, it's going out there and I'm paying it off every month.
So all of the different, expenses that I can put on that because I get, you know, cash back on that, all that I can, I'm going to put there and then there's a level of review. If I've got 2 or 3, and now I've got statements that I've got to combine, I will definitely have greater time that I've got to invest and I will miss more things. Because if you're a busy individual, you got a lot of different things,
moving on, you know, if you've got one subscription that you forget to cancel, it's a lot easier to miss that if you've got multiple statements that you're looking through. So even the idea that, hey, I can get a little bit more if I, you know, sign up with this company over here, and I use my groceries over here, and I sign up for this one over here, and I do gas over here, and then this other one
I do everything else. There's a level of complexity, you know, that we're introducing to life that rarely pans out. I mean, even if we look at signing up for, something like a, an airline, you know, card every few years, at the end of the day, they may give you a free flight, they may give you a couple of free flights, you may get $500-$600, but you have to weigh that against the fact that you're probably going to have to be tracking this over time.
You're going to need to freeze your credit scores to be able to do the application. There is an application, and then at some point, you're probably going to have to close that account, which they're not going to want you to close the account. So you're going to have to talk to 17 people in 14 different countries, you know, to get that done.
So, you know, at the end of the day, is it worth 12 hours of your time to be able to, you know, get that reward, whatever the reward is? You know, I've come to the conclusion that it's just not. Now other people come to different conclusions, but oftentimes it is difficult to justify that because these companies know, that they are providing a nice reward and they're going to make it more difficult to, for the for you to cancel on them.

Austin
Absolutely. You know, Spencer, coming back to that idea of making things really hard to cancel, I, I have been known to sign up for many a free trial for being able to watch the final game of a tournament that my favorite English premier League club, Liverpool, plays at, or I'll sign up for Peacock so I can watch the next game.
But I always make a little note in my phone that six days out so that I cancel before I get paid, before I have to pay. But the reality is, it's really frustrating to do that. It's frustrating to constantly sign up and then if I forget, okay, one $8, okay, that's not that bad. But if I have three, 4 or 5 six of these accounts, okay, $8 may go to now 40 or $50 a month.
And over the course of the year, that $50 a month goes to 600 for the year. And it's I really have to pause at that point and be like, was signing up to watch one game worth $8? Yeah, maybe it was. Was it worth it for the loss of $100 over the course of a year, $500 in the course of a year?
No it's not. And so the reality, I think as a steward, we really even need to think about those streaming services. It can be really easy when you get that pop up when you're watching a game or scrolling through to try to find that next movie you want to watch. Oh, get three free months or whatever. You sign up and then you forget, and they do a much better job of keeping you hooked for a long time because it's really hard to cancel.
They want to make it as hard as possible to cancel. And so I think just as stewards really looking at our credit card statements that our bank statements and saying, hey, what am I subscribed to? Have I watched Paramount Plus since that tournament final six months ago? No? Well then why am I still paying for it?

Spencer
Right. Well, and even having some kind of cadence where even on a quarterly basis, we look through all of the subscriptions that we have, on a smartphone. Yeah. And being able to sit because, you know, those are not line items. Oftentimes those are just, hey, Apple is billing you, you know, $17 this month. Okay. Why are they billing me $17?
Okay. You've got to get into, you know the
app and see okay, this is what you're actually being billed for on, on these services. So I think having some kind of cadence that again, it doesn't have to be every week or every month, but some kind of cadence that says, okay, oh yeah, I don't need that one, you know, anymore. I signed up for that for a couple of months.
I knew I would need it in the summer. Maybe it was some kind of guide to, you know, trails out west, you know, when we were traveling out there. Well, now I'm not out there and I'm not going there this year. So let's make sure that, you know, that comes off. But having some kind of regular cadence, you know, there where we're evaluating these things, if we've been known hypothetically to watch EPL, you know, football.

Austin
Yeah. So I think again, as we come back to this, is this the most important thing that we should be focusing our time on. Maybe not, but I think it's those things that like, it's a grain of sand in my shoe for the first mile, it may not be that bad, but 5, 10, 20, 30 miles later, okay.
This is really painful now. It's caused blisters. It's cause aches and pains and it's much harder to deal with an unused account, a ongoing subscription, or five ongoing subscriptions. So I think as stewards, that's where we come back and say, how do we honor the Lord with our wealth? How do we honor the Lord with all of the things that he's placed in our hands?
We have great access to lots of different services. We have great access to different banks that offer different things that, but the reality is, as a steward, I have to come back and say, is this how the Lord would want me to manage the resources that he has put in my hands? And if the answer is no, then it's time to do a little bit of hard work and really manage those well.

Spencer
Well and this comes back to selecting a simpler lineup of service providers who we know will always be probably competitive, you know, there at least in the marketplace. So one of the reasons sometimes that we suggest that folks have a money market account with someone like Capital One 360 or Marcus by Goldman Sachs is we know if they need a money market account as a secondary reserve, let's just say that they're going to be close to the kind of top of the market in terms of the interest that's going to be paid.
So sometimes that is worth it to sign up for that. Sometimes it's not. If you have just a couple thousand dollars there, getting a few extra dollars of interest is not going to be all that significant if you have $100,000 that you want to keep in an account like that, getting an extra 3 or $4000 a year can be really, really helpful.
But finding those institutions that are going to be good and consistent in their particular areas and sticking with them over time makes a whole lot of sense. You know, the credit card provider that we've used forever, is 2% cash back, you know, there are there are specials that are out there that could do a little bit better one way or another.,
for a short period of time. There's not too many that are going to be sustained at that level on a consistent basis. And so again, looking for those institutions that serve well in a particular area are consistent, are set up to be able to, you know, help you and then sticking with it and not jumping for all these different, you know, pieces.
Because at the end of the day, I think one of the things that we come back to as stewards is your time is valuable. Your energy, your focus is valuable. And if you have a level of consistency and setup with your, investment accounts, with your banking, with your home, all those kinds of different pieces, then you have more time to devote your focus to God's kingdom.
And, that's what it is at the end of the day.

Austin
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Spencer, thanks for this conversation. Hopefully this was helpful for those of you that are watching. Clients, if you have questions about how to consolidate bank accounts, when does it make sense to have one and not six, we would love to have that conversation with you. As always, feel free to leave comments down below and I'll see you again next time.
If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so that you don't miss the next episode.

Disclaimer
This content was provided by Second Half Stewardship. We are in Knoxville, Tennessee and you can visit our website at www.secondhalfstewardship.com. The information in this recording is intended for general, educational and informational purposes only, and should not be construed as investment, advisory, financial planning, legal, tax, or other professional advice based on your specific situation. Please consult your professional advisor before taking any action based on its contents.