Faith Based Investing

is your advisor proactive OR

DO THEY HAVE THEIR HEAD in THE SAND?

Here’s hoping your financial consultant has kept up with the times.

The memory is indelible: in the last two quarters of 2008, investors with short- to mid-range time horizons cringed as their portfolios lost 20%, 30%, even 40% of value. This bear market was not only a test of investors … it was also a test of financial advisors.

Did your advisor respond to the changing environment?

When the market corrects, a good financial advisor stays on top of things. As things turned bearish in fall 2008, many portfolios went the way of the market, with numerous investors moving to the money market for cover. Yet other investors found themselves making money during the downturn. Was it luck? Or simply the right strategy?

Some market conditions demand a change.

In late 2008, was your advisor sharp enough to meet with you and alter your financial strategy to one appropriate to the bear market? Did he or she offer you an approach that could exploit opportunities in that market with your goals in mind? An astute advisor recognizes that being proactive in a changing market can potentially change the client outcome – for the better.

The market is dynamic.

More bull and bear markets will follow. What do you think your current financial advisor will do next time? Sit back and relax when conditions improve? Mysteriously ignore you when the markets slump?

The nonprofit National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) has recorded five recessions since 1980 and three since 1990. If you are investing by a 20-year or 30-year financial plan, you may ride through a handful of recessions over the next two or three decades if history is any guide. If recessions and bear markets rear their heads, will your investment strategy be updated? What is the risk of having it set in stone?

Today, anyone frustrated with current portfolio values has reason to consider a new financial advisor. If you feel that inattention and misdirection characterize your relationship with your current advisor, perhaps it is time for a change. You are not forbidden from changing advisors. You may look back one day and realize that the change helped your portfolio.  Want to incorporate your values into your financial plan, go to www.jayperoni.com or send me an email at info@jayperoni.com.

The Faith-Based Millionaire Mind-Set

After going through the process of aligning your values with your finances, you may begin to discover and wrestle with questions you’d never before pondered. You will begin to get a glimpse into the mind of the faith-based millionaire. The mind-set of the faith-based millionaire often differs greatly from the mind-sets of others I have counseled. To help you further gauge your mind-set, here are a few foundational questions:

* Do you have faith in God or money?

* Do you rely on God or on your own abilities?

* If you have faith in God and rely on Him, do you place your full trust in Him?

Thinking like a faith-based millionaire will help you become one. There are some common ways of thinking that influence how those who have been faithful and are wealthy approach money. This thinking is quite different from that of the general population.

The mind-set consists of four core beliefs:

1. God Created Everything

This means that you believe it all starts and ends with God just as stated in Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (niv). If you believe that God created everything from the planets to the earth to life to humans to, more specifically, you, then this should be the foundation of your faith. Who is in control of everything?

2. God Owns Everything

Psalm 24:1 shows us that “the earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it” (niv). This belief comes from a life of trust and reliance on God. Your faith is your greatest asset in this world. As your faith continues to grow, your reliance on God should increase as well. If you believe God owns everything, this motivates you to a whole new level. This also leads to an important question: Who does your money really belong to?

3. We Are God’s Trustees

First Timothy 6:17-18 exhorts, “Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share” (niv). This helps to form the mind-set of a trustee. A trustee is one to whom property is entrusted. The belief that God entrusts you with wealth carries greater responsibility and a higher purpose. This mind-set also looks to shift from your self-interests to God’s interests. If you believe God created and owns everything and He has entrusted the things of this earth to you, isn’t your money really His money? He allows you usage during your lifetime, but He is still in control and the ultimate owner. That line of thought leads to another important question: How should you manage His money?

4. Managing Money Involves an Emphasis on Honoring God

The core of this belief is to look at how God would want His money invested. This involves an understanding of what God would support or condone. You may believe that issues or causes are not just black or white. You may believe that there are gray areas. Do you think God sees in gray? There is right or wrong. Man uses gray to justify his lifestyle. Rather than be convicted of wrongdoing, man often changes what God intended to suit his needs rather than God’s desires. How should God’s money be invested?

An Investor’s Best Friends

Any investor would do well to call on three friends during the course of his or her financial life: diversification, patience, and consis­tency. Regardless of how the markets perform, these practices should be a part of your investment philosophy.

Diversification: a key to safe investing

The saying “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” has real value when it comes to investing. In a bear market, certain asset classes may perform better than others. The same goes for a bull market. If your assets are held mostly in one kind of investment (say, mostly in mutual funds or CDs or money market accounts), you could be hit hard by stock market losses, or alternately lose out on potential gains that other kinds of investments may be experiencing. So there is an opportunity cost as well as risk.

READ MORE HERE

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Faith-Based Marketing

I just finished reading Faith-Based Marketing: The Guide to Reaching 140 Million Christian
Consumers.  This book from Bob Hutchins and Greg Stielstra (author of Pyro Marketing) takes a close look at ways to approach the growing faith-based market.  This is a must-read book for anyone considering or currently serving the faith-based community.  From small businesses to large corporations, from churches and ministries to charities and other organizations, this book provides an executable blue print on how to tap into one of the fastest and most loyal consumer groups in the world.  You have to get your hands on a copy!

Lack of Understanding = Missed Opportunity

Most businesses don’t have a good understanding of the faith community and how to market to this huge audience in effective, culturally sensitive ways. Many attempts to market to Christians have backfired, because the marketers had little understanding of Christians’ values, taboos, and “hot buttons”. Yet the size of the opportunity is enormous. Faith-Based Marketing provides everything business leaders need to understand 140 million Christian consumers and effectively reach them. It explains who Christians are, what they want, and provides traditional, new media, and word-of-mouth strategies to communicate with and engage them and their churches. The book also includes a valuable directory of top Christian organizations, churches, and events, to help marketers and business leaders find out whom to contact and how. The book includes a free subscription to a companion website with bonus content.

Should You Pursue the Faith-Based Market?

It’s the largest, most faithful, highest spending market segment in the United States, yet chances are you have never considered it. America’s 140 million weekly church-goers spend $5.1 trillion annually and support the businesses that understand and respect them with near-religious devotion. But to reach them effectively, you’re going to need some help.

Faith-Based Marketing provides everything you need to understand the Christian consumer power niche and effectively reach it. It explains who makes up that community, what they want, and what it takes to appeal to them. Then, based on survey research from believers across the country and interviews with experts, it provides practical guidance for creating faith-based marketing plans that work.

In many ways, Christians are no different from other consumers–they are discerning shoppers who put price, value, customer service, and convenience ahead of loyalty to businesses that just happen to be owned by Christians. But they are also a somewhat forgotten market that promises big returns for those businesses that develop real relationships with them. Christians may be ordinary consumers who need the same prod-ucts as everyone else, but they respond extraordinarily well to marketing approaches customized to their needs.

Faith-Based Marketing presents a bounty of other important insights as well–common mistakes marketers make in dealing with the Christian market; how to serve rather than sell to the market; and what works and doesn’t work when dealing with pastors and other church leaders. You’ll also find proven strategies for effective radio, print, online, word-of-mouth, and direct marketing, as well as resources–in the book and online–that tell you who’s who in the Christian community and how to reach them.

Though increasing your sales is the ultimate goal, this book isn’t just about selling more of your stuff to Christians. Faith-Based Marketing reveals that when you market your products the right way, you won’t just make more money but also meet the needs of Christian consumers in ways that respect their beliefs and improve their lives–a blessing for us all.

Next Week: Bob will be on The Jay Peroni Show

Bob one of the Co-Authors of Faith-Based Marketing will be on The Jay Peroni Show.  Jay and Bob will talk about the book and the faith-based market. Don’t miss this exciting dialogue!

Faith-Based Marketing: Is it Right for Your Business?

Losing Money?

Most investors who manage their own portfolios fail to keep up with the stock market averages. For example, in 2007, DALBAR, Inc. (www.dalbar.com) found the average equity investor underperformed the S&P 500 index by 7.5 percent per year for the twenty-year period from 1987 to 2006. Remarkably, this was not the first time investors have failed miserably in their quest for stock market wealth. DALBAR had found similarly poor performance in each of its previous fourteen annual Qualitative Analysis of Investor Behavior (QAIB) reports. They concluded the problem is behavioral. Investors make poor choices, and their improper investment behaviors are corrosive to their success.

Will Rogers once said, “Don’t gamble; take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don’t go up, don’t buy it.” Ironically, good investment choices are the goal of every rational faith-based investor. No one seeks failure, yet failure persists. Decades of data dispute the fact that most investors fail to recognize they have a problem, let alone pursue strategies that solve their short­comings. Good choices and sound investing are illusive. If taming bad behavior was easy then everyone would make the appropriate course corrections as soon as they stubbed their investing toes enough to learn they were traveling on the wrong road. What should an investor do to fix his or her poor behavior patterns?

DALBAR suggests professional help is critical to bridging the gap between purpose and performance. QAIB 2007 states, “The most im­portant role of the financial advisor is to protect clients from the behav­iors that erode their investments and savings.”

The four common goals of every faith-based investor should be to:

1. Know yourself and not let emotions make your investment decisions

2. Listen and follow the Word of God as it relates to your invest­ment portfolio.

3. Buy low and sell high.

4. Avoid unnecessary costs, fees, expenses, and taxes.