Kathy English
Hello. I’m Kathy English, and I want to welcome you to Profiles and Stewardship, where my husband, Bill English, has conversations with business owners about how they integrate their role as business leaders with their faith in Jesus Christ. Today, Bill is talking with Keith Moeller, the founder of the Molar Advisory Group. Keith is passionate about helping Christian business owners become more generous toward God as they live through their retirement years. Keith and Bill will also discuss common best practices and mistakes people make regarding retirement planning. I hope you’ll find their conversation challenging and encouraging. So grab a cup of coffee, sit back, and learn from Keith Moeller in this Profiles and Stewardship episode.
Bill English
And welcome. I am Bill English. Here the publisher at Bible and Business. I just want to say good morning. Bible and Business exists to help Christians in business integrate their leadership roles into their faith and to understand all that the Bible says about owning and leading a business. So I want to thank you for joining us this morning. This episode is part of a growing series titled Profiles and Stewardship. These interviews are intended to illustrate what Christian stewardship looks like in the real world for Christian business owners and Christians who lead in business. So from time to time, I take a Saturday morning and I talk with business owners and business leaders about how they integrate their role, their leadership role into their Christian faith. These profiles and stewardship episodes are unscripted. We broadcast live while we’re recording them. They’re real and they’re unedited. We only do one take of these interviews and I don’t go back and clean up anything. So many of the topics that I discuss in this series are from my book, A Christian Theology of Business Ownership. Today I’m talking with Keith Moeller, who is the founder of the Molar Advisory Group, a group that is serving private clients who need wealth management advisory services.
Bill English
Keith has deep expertise in estate tax minimization and family generational continuity. He is a certified business exit consultant, and he helps people retire with confidence. Keith has been featured in the Forbes magazine, the Kiplinger’s newsletter, the Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal, and several times in the Wall Street Journal. His personal mission statement is this it’s all about people. I am here to give my life and serving others when Keith isn’t working, which I think is most of the time, if I know my friend Keith, he enjoys golf and basketball and tennis and several other sports, but he also enjoys traveling to see the landscapes and the cities in America and around the world. So, Keith, welcome to profiles and stewardship and Bible and business.
Keith Moeller
Thank you, Bill. It’s nice to join you. I appreciate the opportunity to chat with you this morning.
Bill English
Yeah, me too. Now, right off the bat, if you’d like to get a hold of Keith Moeller, you can at Keith Moeller. Moeller at Northwestern Mutual. Nancymarrin.com. So Keith Moeller@nm.com and just a few housekeeping things before we get started. First of all, depending upon which platform you’re watching this on, whether it’s YouTube or Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn, there’s going to be an area to interact with us via chat services. Go ahead and enter your comments or your questions there. It’ll take them about 15 or 30 seconds to show up at our end, but then when we see them, we’ll be sure to interact with you on that. Secondly, I have a second computer screen over here. So if I take my focus off of what’s going on here and I look over here, it’s only because I’m looking at my second computer screen where I have an electronic Bible set up and some other resources for today’s broadcast.
Keith Moeller
On my screen, it looks like you’re looking at me. If you look at that screen.
Bill English
I should just sit here and talk to you like this.
Keith Moeller
There we go.
Bill English
Thirdly, I just want to invite you to head over at some point to my website, Bible and Business.com, where I have over 200 podcasts and well over 200 articles that help Christian business owners and Christian leaders in business. Understand what the Bible says about your role of leading and owning in a for profit or even a nonprofit business here in America today. So all that aside, Keith, glad you’re here. We’re going to get started today and I’ve got to pull up. Here it is, the text. We’re going to start by looking at building client relationships. And the reason that I want to kind of focus on this is because a number of the people who watch these broadcasts are people who rely on referrals in order to get their businesses to run well. In other words, they don’t buy lots of advertising. They don’t do TV, radio, that kind of thing. They are a referral based business. So I’m curious, what approach do you have in building client relationships? How do you do that? And what are some of the scriptures that you use to building client relationships?
Keith Moeller
Well, let’s start with Scripture. Jesus is always the perfect example. And I’m thinking of Mark 1045 where Scripture says, even the Son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom. For many. How does one get favorably connected to people and start to build a client relationship? For me, many pronged approach I’m in a position where because of my expertise, other advisors will reach out to me and say, hey, I think I need your help with the case. Sometimes I meet people in a public setting. We just had our 34th anniversary in business January 31. So I’m much in a position where existing clients are saying, hey, I think there’s someone you should meet. But harkening back to those earlier days where just trying to make favorable connections with people. I think authenticity is incredibly important. I’ve often said to people I’m probably one of the worst salespeople in the world. I’m kind of a nerd. My family has said I’m a geek, but somewhere along the way I figured out and my wife was really helpful with this I got to show up in a public setting and just shake some hands and get to know some people.
Keith Moeller
But it’s the next step, I think, Bill, that can be critically important. So oftentimes we’re trying to sell something, sell an idea, sell ourselves, sell a product, whatever. And somewhere along the way, I figured out that it’s really about service. So going back to that scripture, it’s really about serving. So my first conversation with folks is we don’t know if we should establish a professional relationship or not. And I’d like to, in ten or 15 minutes, be able to say, hey, let’s do this. But what we do is allow people to get a sense for who we are without any strings attached and determine together if that’s a relationship that makes sense. And I found that’s been a great approach to really reduce the tension and the interaction, to say, ideally five years from now, you’d like this business relationship to be something you look forward to. What are the things that you would have wanted to accomplish? And from a provider of services, I would like to have that same sense as well. So let’s invest some time together with no strings attached and just give ourselves an opportunity to get to know each other and see what it would feel like to have that client advisor relationship at the end of a couple of meetings.
Keith Moeller
If it makes sense to establish a long term relationship, we’ll know better what that should look like and how we should work together.
Bill English
Yeah, and they wouldn’t even meet with you if they didn’t think that you had the expertise to begin with. Right. I think in any referral based business, there has to be, at the core of it, people are referring to somebody else because that somebody else has an expertise that is needed in that situation. And those who are doing the referring are putting their reputations on the line when they make those referrals. So you have the expertise, and then you’re saying, well, we may not be a good fit chemistry wise. Right. And so from a chemistry perspective, let’s just see if this is really going to work. That’s probably a pretty solid approach where sometimes people say, no, I think I’d rather work with somebody else, but I would suspect most of the time, because you are a likable guy, that they would end up contracting.
Keith Moeller
Even if I am a geek.
Bill English
Who’s the other geek? Kirk Cousins. Did you see the Honors show here.
Keith Moeller
Last week for the I did not.
Bill English
You got to watch the very end, because Kirk Cousins has been described as having this really kind of this geeky, not prickly, but just an offbeat personality. Right. And he goes on stage and he sings a song about how Tom Brady has retired. And he’s so happy that Tom’s Brady has retired because now everybody else has a chance, right? He stole the audience during that time, I think.
Keith Moeller
Now, I’m going to back up just a minute. This is CBO Christian Business Owners. I’m going to take a moment with that word Christian. We know where that term started. You go back to the Briens and it was actually a derogatory term when it was initially coined in the scriptures saying to people, oh, you’re just little Christ. So if you look at it in that realm, first of all, I don’t claim to be a Christian. I claim to be a follower of Christ. If somebody else decides that I am like Christ and boy, that’s a tall order, right? And would decide that I’m a Christian, I mean, that’s an incredible honor to be called like Christ. So in the context of the question that you are asking, how can I, as a follower of Christ, a believer of Christ, be Jesus in the world? In my view, there is no on off switch to my faith. And if as I’ve grown, it’s about life, business and personal, all blending together. And spiritual, I mean, the spiritual, my faith in Christ is the foundation of who I am. So I’m taking a long time to get there.
Keith Moeller
But what I’m saying is that interaction, we have two principles. One, we are generous with our time and tools. A little bit counterintuitive, but part of it is because my wife is in business with me, you know, 1520 years ago, we finally realized I’m a bit of an acquired taste, so people need some time to get to know me. So two principles. One, we are generous with our time and tools. We are putting that out there and that is service 45 principle. Secondly, we make it easy for people to disengage if this isn’t right, if this isn’t a good conversation, if this doesn’t feel like a good fit, it’s absolutely fine. Complete permission to tell me, you know what, I can see this isn’t right for us and we make it easy for people to disengage. When there’s that kind of integrity and authenticity in the conversation, then people can be who they are. And there’s more likelihood that five years from today they’re going to be happy, we’re going to be happy with the result.
Bill English
Yeah, no very good words. In terms of maintaining client relationships, do you have any advice for younger people who are in a referral based business and they’re finding that their client base is kind of a revolving door? I don’t mean that over a period of days or weeks. I mean over a period of years. Every two or three years, some of their best clients leave and they’re always having to go out and find new clients. How do you maintain client relationships?
Keith Moeller
Well, it’s a great question. I would say it starts with what’s the commitment at the beginning? At a certain point, I kind of decided, okay, is this a longterm relationship? And having that candid relationship with an individual can be really helpful. And then and when we say longterm relationship, what does that mean? And what I do sometimes a person needs surgery. They don’t need an ongoing relationship. There’s a particular need, and we solve that. I call it doing surgery. In other cases, there’s a fully engaged relationship that’s needed. So defining that upfront and then as a provider, being able to commit to that relationship and then knowing what is the cadence? What’s the best way to contact? What’s the cadence? Should we be in touch every six months? Should we be in touch once a quarter, once a year? What is the depth and breadth of the services that we are going to provide? And then one thing that is a lost start in today’s technology world is handwritten notes. It sounds really simple, but some of the deepest relationships I have and the responses that I get are from handwritten notes. So I have a habit.
Keith Moeller
And if I have any clients that are listening to this interview now, you’re going to kind of know what’s happening behind the scenes. But I look at my calendar over the last couple of weeks every week, and I look for folks that it feels like a handwritten note is in order or if somebody’s got a particularly difficult time going on in their life or something exciting. We recently had a client who was promoted to CEO. I give the list to someone on my team. They get the address and the stamp on there. And I don’t want to waste a stamp, so I’m going to make a handwritten note. And it might take me a week to get the note done, but we’re going to get it out there. Okay. Now, again, back to the faith thing. John 1335. By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, that you have loved one for another. Expressing care. I mean, we’re sitting here in a world full of conflict right now, incredible anxiety. My wife and I were just reading a post about the level of anxiety and depression that has risen, especially in our younger people.
Keith Moeller
And if a follower of Christ, if as a believer, we do not have an answer for that, there’s fewer things that would be more important than just being able to show care. And believe me, we don’t get it perfect at Mueller Advisory Group, but we care. We try to admit our blind spots, and maybe I went off on a tangent a little bit, but that we’re finding that makes a difference. It’s not just business. I mean, we’re fellow citizens in this world, and we’re helping people along the way to a better place.
Bill English
I tell my managers, most people never feel cared for. They rarely feel cared for, and they are rarely thanked for what they do. And there are times when I just walk around the office and it’s a smaller office. We only have about 55 people in our home office, but I’ll walk around the office as the CEO, and they’ll say, how are you doing today? And I try to dive into their personal lives a little bit, just a little, and then thank them for the good work that they’re doing. And as Christians, it just seems to me that if we’re grateful to God for what he has done for us and how he has literally rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of His Son, can we not show some gratitude to others who work for us and who really do good work in our businesses? These are good people.
Keith Moeller
Absolutely. For those who might be listening that are curious that maybe not followers of Christ, if our lives if our lives are not showing that, then shame on us. And as those who are maybe curious or not followers of Christ, you have complete permission to let us know. Because while Jesus was the perfect example, sometimes we are imperfect copies and we need to approach those conversations with humility and grace, recognizing that we don’t always get it right.
Bill English
Very true. We’re talking today with Keith Moeller, who is the founder of the Molar Advisory Group. You can get a hold of Keith At. Keith? Moeller. M-O-E-L-L-E-R-M. Nancymarry. Northwestern mutual.com. And we’re going to move on to our next question. Keith, let’s talk for a little bit about what the Scriptures say about saving versus hoarding. And I’ve kind of covered this, at least from my viewpoint, in my book of Christian theology of business ownership. But talk to me for just a few minutes, kind of just till the ground here a little bit, if you would, about saving and hoarding and how Christians should be looking at these two topics.
Keith Moeller
So the scripture that came to my mind was Proverbs 1311. He who would get rich would gather little by little. So for those who might conclude that to be a believer in Christ is a commitment to poverty scriptures to make it clear that God chooses to favor for the sake of promoting his kingdom. So in terms of our responsibility, I think of loop 1248. Last half of the verse says, to whom much is given, much is required. Okay? So there is legitimate saving that needs to happen. You think about Joseph in the Old Testament, how God gave him the dream and he was able to help. He became second in command and helped the nation gather during a time of plenty over seven years to prepare for seven years of complete devastation. There is definitely biblical saving. Now, on the other hand, there’s definitely porting. And I’m sitting here with my Bible in front of me. Forgive me. I’m a bit of a King James guy.
Bill English
We still love you, man.
Keith Moeller
Yeah, it’s just how I got started memorizing scripture. But this one, it’s Luke, chapter twelve. And we all know the story, starting with verse 16. Jesus spoke parable. He said, the ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully. He thought within himself, saying, what shall I do because I have no room where to bestow my fruits? Well, we know the story. He said, I’m going to build barns. And then Jesus God said to him, you fool, this night your soul will be required of you. So the hoarding okay, so he didn’t say money is the root of evil. He said, Love of money is the root of evil. And if we are people of faith, there’s a purpose for that wealth. To whom much is given, much is required. So being prepared to care for your loved ones, to provide the cash flow that’s needed at a time of life when you’re not able to work, that is all very prudent and wise. But to hoard and not use what we’ve been given, not just in money, but in time and talent and margin in our lives, those of us that those who get to the point where there is margin, we’re not given that just to consume it on ourselves.
Keith Moeller
If I’m a follower of Jesus, then I’m going to use that to build his kingdom in some way, to serve others in some way.
Bill English
Yeah. And that reminds me, I’ve been reading through Ecclesiastes in my morning devotions.
Keith Moeller
Sounds like exciting reading.
Bill English
Well, I’m a geek too, right? You and I, we’re just personal. We’re happy personable geeks, actually.
Keith Moeller
Forgive the joke. But Ecclesiastes is incredible. A wise man who found the futility of so many things. So go ahead and finish your thoughts. Sorry about that.
Bill English
Actually, I was thinking about writing a book on Ecclesiastes, but then I realized it would be about nothing. But 519 says moreover, when God gives someone wealth and possessions and the ability to enjoy them, right, some people have lots of money and they’re just crumbsons. They’re unhappy people. But when God does give wealth and possessions and then he gives you the ability to enjoy it, then we should accept our lot and be happy in our life because this is a gift from God.
Keith Moeller
Absolutely. I’m also thinking of Philippians, chapter four, where Paul said I’ve had plenty. I’ve been in want. I’ve learned whatever condition I’m in there with to be content. I recently sat in a session interesting story about Bernie Madoff. He was a market maker before all of what happened. And the word bill is enough. What is enough? And as what we’ve tried to do, my wife and I, is set our standard of living well below our means so that that allows time margin. Time margin is a little difficult because as you well said, I have a tendency to work a little bit and money margin to serve and to have impact. And if you’re always stressed about where’s that next dollar going to come from, it’s hard to be in that place. And one of the things we have done and that I love doing in our business, we help people create donor advised funds so we can scrape the cream off and put it into a donor advised fund and create a charitable checkbook so that as the opportunity is there and we see needs within the kingdom, places that we should serve, then we take advantage of that opportunity.
Keith Moeller
And by the way, not every piece of giving in my belief has to be to a Christian organization. Jesus talked about giving a cup of cold water in his name. There are incredible needs in the world and who better to have an impact on these incredible needs than people who claim to be followers of Jesus, right?
Bill English
And so that leads us let’s look at the flip side of this. Let’s turn the coin over. Hoarding. In my book, I define hoarding as excessive saving. In other words, you save enough to meet reasonably so, to meet future expenses, so that you’re not a burden to society or to your family. If possible, you save enough, but beyond that, you give it away, in part because wealth is a renewable resource, in part because you don’t need it, and in part, other people do need it. And so I look at hoarding as excessive savings. So that’s kind of where I’m at with that. Why don’t you tell that hoarding ground for just a minute and help us understand where you come from.
Keith Moeller
Well in advance of us spending time together. Bill, you said you like scriptures. And that rung true with me because for me, having younger in my life done a fair amount of scripture memory, it just it’s like it becomes the foundation of so the hopefully not to bore with too much scripture. I don’t know if that’s possible, but.
Bill English
It isn’t for our audience. No.
Keith Moeller
So I think of Matthew 16, Matthew six, it left me Matthew six. Yes, matthew 619 and 20 where he said don’t lay out for yourself treasures on earth where moth and rest corrupts the layout for yourself treasures in heaven where thieves don’t break through and steal. So that excess that you’re talking about, it’s all about what is the purpose and it doesn’t mean, as you, as you mentioned from Ecclesiastes, that we should not enjoy the abundance. I mean, Jesus also said you haven’t asked and you haven’t received, so you don’t have joy. Back to the King James hitherto of the ask nothing ask and you receive that your joy will be full. But bringing people along with you in that joy and it’s that sense of holding tightly and not letting loose of it kind of like the Dead Sea.
Bill English
Yeah. So saving and hoarding rich people should not be hoarding. We should be generous. Not a lot, but there’s some in most churches who should be giving 50, 70, sometimes 80% or more of their wealth away. The last guest I had who runs a family office out of Houston, he knows a guy who lives on 100,000 a year. He owns a crane company. Who owns crane company. He owns a crane company and gives away over 50 million a year to various causes.
Keith Moeller
I am completely amazed by some of those stories that I hear, Bill. And again, what an opportunity to have an impact on the world if you limit your lifestyle so that you can maximize the abundance. I go all the way back when I was younger listening to Larry Burkett Christian financial concepts, talking about minimizing your lifestyle so you can maximize the abundance for the kingdom. But at the same time, it doesn’t mean that there’s not the opportunity to have a nice place, enjoy life, use those things as a part of the whole process of being who we are supposed to be as believers.
Bill English
Yeah. Let’s not beat ourselves up because God in his sovereignty had us born in the most affluent generation of the most affluent country at the most affluent time that this world has ever seen. And he had you and I and others born here in America. We weren’t born in Calcutta. We weren’t born in the 7th century China. Right. He had us in his sovereignty, born here. There’s a purpose and a reason for that. And much of that, to my way of thinking, is to help become help the church right now become the greatest sending organization that the Christian church has ever seen, in part because we’re able to generate wealth and make that possible.
Keith Moeller
Yeah, it just goes full circle back to the scripture I started with, to whom much is given, much is required. I think it’s in one corinthians. It’s required in stewards that a man be found faithful, being faithful and to the glory of God. Right.
Bill English
Well, we’re talking with Keith Mueller today, who’s the founder of the Mole Advisory Group here in Minneapolis St. Paul. You can get a hold of Keith at keith moeller. Moeller at Keith Moeller@nm.com. And let’s shift gears here one more time. Keith, I want to get into your sweet spot, which is key things for a sale, transition key elements for retirement planning. Tilt the soil here for us for a little bit. What’s the best practices and the worst practices for retirement planning? And if you’re a business owner and you’re looking to sell your business, what are some of the best and worst practices for that situation as well? So I’ll just let you ramble around in that field for a while, Pete.
Keith Moeller
All right. Well, we can certainly interact together, because I know you do some work in that area yourself. One should not start a business this is very idealistic without knowing how you’re going to get out. So even from the beginning, it’s interesting to me when you start as a solo owner one thing, but two business owners will come together with an idea and they’ll develop. It’s interesting to me that they immediately think about what if we die or become disabled? And obviously one should have succession agreements in place with triggers in place to decide what happens. And then often that’s the end of it. And the most likely thing that’s going to happen, they’re going to live and hopefully the business is profitable, right, never gets dealt with because we get busy running a business, making a profit and we don’t make those plans for the more likely event that there’s going to be a living buyout. So, best practices, first of all, start with personal. What is the personal vision? Somewhere along the way I figured out that going to the business exit plan without understanding the personal vision was unsuccessful. So for any business owner that is watching this, I would encourage them get crystal clear about what your personal vision is.
Keith Moeller
What is your mission, your personal mission, your vision for life, when do you plan to retire financial independence? What are all of those personal objectives that you hope to accomplish through this business? Because for closely held business owners, unless they just have really huge egos and they just want a business for pride’s sake, they’re trying to accomplish personal goals through their business and understanding, building that vision clearly allows us to come to the table for the conversation of how do we exit the business to accomplish those things. So to me that’s one of the best practices start there.
Bill English
So the first best practice is to understand the personal goals of the business owner who is generating the wealth to begin with.
Keith Moeller
Absolutely. And then secondly, recognize that unless you just happen to have a really hot widget, the value of the business is the people. If I am working with a business where if the business owner walks away, the business cannot continue oftentimes I like to ask so if you were gone for a month, could not communicate with your team, what would happen with the business? So early on developing the ability of key people on the team, being able to duplicate the jobs that the active owner does and the business owner working themselves out of the job makes that business more valuable. Because now if I’m an outside buyer or even an inside buyer, I know once that business owner is bought out, and let’s be honest, most business owners, they have a hard time with somebody else making the decisions, right? I’ll confess to that. So once they’re bought out, they may stick around for some intellectual capital for a period of time, but typically it’s not going to go well. So the business needs to be able to operate on its own. So early on developing the ability of people to duplicate the jobs for.
Keith Moeller
The active owner and eventually get to the place where the business owner could walk away and be inactive for extended periods of time and the business continue to run as it does today.
Bill English
Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head. The business owners are the ones who have risked money and put a lot of sweat equity into the business and a lot of those decisions route through them. But what I find is that that kind of a business will scale to a certain point and it depends on the business. If it’s manufacturing, it’s kind of one area. If it’s services oriented, it’s probably a lot smaller. But at some point the business stalls because all of the decisions are routing or most of them are routing through the business owner. And the ones that aren’t routing through the business owner are being overseen by the business owner. And at some point you’re right, the business has to allow for others to step up. And this is where family succession planning can become really difficult. I’ve worked with and you probably have two Keith, I’ve worked with several, a number of family businesses where the owners can’t let go, the families can’t step away. They’re 75, 77, 78 years old, they can’t step away. And the kids are in their 50s going, when is it my turn? When do I get a shot to really run this thing?
Bill English
And the smart owners have something to retire to that is transcendent and outside the business so that their identities and their life purpose isn’t wrapped up in the business, it’s wrapped up in what God has called them to do outside of the business. Those are the ones that I have worked with that are the most successful.
Keith Moeller
In succession plan wholeheartedly agree. I’ve got a couple of those conversations going on right now. And in that process, especially in family businesses, developing the trust in that next generation leadership, one of the things that we’ve done is encouraged the use of someone to step in and do executive leadership assessment and coaching because it’s hard for mom and dad to have that conversation with the children. And let’s face it, we see things one way and the younger folks see it another way and their way might be better for today’s world because of how things have changed with technology, et cetera. If I can introduce a third party who is skilled at executive leadership assessment and coaching, do that for me also so that we understand why we act the way we do and why we interact the way we do. And that person can introduce maybe some tough things that need to be said or dealt with with the children, whereas it would be really hard for mom and dad to do that. So you separate the personal relationship from the business relationship in that knowing that you can have that kind of input. I think that’s really helpful when it’s a family business succession and I’ll just kind of circle back into the personal planning.
Keith Moeller
Sure, if I know as a business owner, if I’ve got the personal plan in place and I know I need X to be able to live the lifestyle that I want to be able to live for the rest of my life, then I know what business valuation plugs into that. And look at all the personal resources too, which is Social Security if there’s a leftover pension from somewhere, investment assets, retirement plan through the company, all of that. Which leads to another best practice. As difficult as it is, somewhere along the way, business owner has to learn to take a little. As the business grows, circle, keeps getting bigger. How do we scrape a little bit of that profit off each year and funnel it into eggs in different baskets? I know our business is never going to have difficulty, right. Because we’re strong people, we always know we’re going to be able to be successful. But having those other resources, especially for businesses that are intense, hard asset type businesses, there’s not a lot of liquidity. Having liquid resources to be able to accomplish those personal objectives is important as well.
Bill English
Yeah, I tell business owners to try to pull some out a little bit year by year, as opposed to waiting for the big payday, even though there might be a big payday down the road when they go to sell their business. The business will never be worth what the owner thinks it is. It will always be worth less because owners almost always overvalue their businesses. And then I had another thought and they’ve already left me. So I’m getting old, keith getting old. Saying by the way, for those of you who are watching right now, you can use the chat services in the platform that you’re on. I think everybody right now was watching through YouTube. And so YouTube, I believe, has a chat services. If you have a question for Keith or comment, you’re welcome to enter that. And we have about four or five minutes left here. We’d be happy to answer some of your questions through the chat services. And as I’ve said before, we’re talking with Keith Moeller, who’s the founder of the Molar Advisory Group. You can get a hold of Keith at keith. Moeller. Moeller@nm.com. So for those who don’t own businesses, they’re people who work for somebody else their whole life.
Bill English
What are some best and worst practices to get ready for retirement planning for them?
Keith Moeller
Well, I’m a big believer in clarity of vision, do the hard work and I think the fun work. We encourage people, husband and wife take an hour of quiet time on their own. We have an exercise actually, that asks them questions to go through. Envision, what does retirement look like now, for those who are people of faith, that might mean we’ve got an entire faith mission that we want to accomplish during, but whatever that vision is crystalclear painted and living color. And then in that context, the hard work that the notsofund work, the boring work, put together a hypothetical budget based on the lifestyle. If you just look at what you’re spending today and compare that to the difference it would look like if you fulfill that vision, an essential budget and a discretionary budget, then rallying all the resources. Look at all the resources that are available. And there are stress tests available in the financial world today where financial trials are done to help you get a sense of confidence that you’re going to be able to create that cash flow with inflation for the rest of your life without running out of money.
Keith Moeller
Doing that work as early as possible and setting realistic targets about what you can accomplish. That’s incredibly powerful work and it’s fun. And we see that happen in people’s lives. And we’ve had people who dreamed ten years in advance, we’re going to spend the first year of our lives in retirement in Italy. And believe me, when that email came from the client several years ago, we’re headed there. What how fulfilling that was for us as a team. And of course, for them to know that they dreamed this, built the dream, and now they’re off to live that dream.
Bill English
So 65 or 67% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. And we know the debt structures in this country are not favorable. I don’t see how on a national level this thing ends well for America, given the amount of debt that we’re accumulating. At the national level, the amount of unfunded mandates for Social Security, the state pension plans are underfunded by one and a half trillion. We’ve got almost a trillion dollars credit card debt now in America. There’s just debt everywhere.
Keith Moeller
You’re such a bright spot this morning, Bill.
Bill English
You know, I am at Faith Radio at Ktis this July. A little bit on Faith Radio. Ten years, sometimes off air, they say, well, that was another bummer Bill Wednesday. But seriously, there’s a lot of Christians in their fifty s, sixty s and seventy s who have very little savings and they face a very uncertain future. And some of that is of their own doing. Much of it probably was out of their hands. And how do you work with them? What do you say to those folks?
Keith Moeller
Well, as people of faith, we know that God will provide. Now, he gives us wisdom. If any of you lack wisdom, ask, and it shall be given from James. And he certainly wants for his people to take responsible action. Okay. So he doesn’t reward disobedience. Right?
Bill English
Right.
Keith Moeller
And as you say, sometimes at no fault of their own, they’re in this position. So it’s a matter of pulling the resources together, figuring out what’s reasonable to believe, and taking responsible action day by day. Obedience does not always guarantee the result that we think we should have you look at the life of Jesus. His obedience led to death on a cross, and some would think that’s failure, but that was the perfect result. God’s work is always perfect, even though it doesn’t look like it’s perfect, and he accomplishes his will. So obedience, trusting and following his leadership as closely as we can.
Bill English
Yeah. Every day is a new day in the Lord. You can always start fresh. And worst case scenario, you start by just saving a little bit at a time and you’re thinking your head, well, that isn’t enough. I can’t retire on this. You’re right, you can’t. But God will provide that. As you are obedient, God is able to bless more. In the scriptures, there’s always this association. I’m going to say not really a correlation, but an association between being obedient to God and God’s blessing, whereas there’s always an association between sinning and being under God’s curse. And so every day is a new day. You can always start fresh. So, Keith, I want to thank you for joining us today. It’s been a real pleasure to talk with you. I’ve learned a number of things from you, so thank you.
Keith Moeller
Well, thank you, Bill. It’s always a joy to fellowship with other believers and in some way, shape or form, I hope I’ve been an encouragement. And that’s what we’re here for, to serve Him and trust Him with results.
Bill English
So we’ve been talking with Keith Moeller, who’s the founder of the Molar advisory Group. You can get a hold of Keith at keith moeller. Moeller at Nm. Northwestern Mutualm.com. So, Keith, thank you again for joining us today. And for those who have been watching, I hope that you will watch another profiles and stewardship that is coming up. I believe my next one is with if I’m thinking right, it is with Ken Larson, who is the owner of Slumberland here in the Twin Cities. He and I are going to talk about best and worst practices in succession planning for businesses. So I’m looking forward to that. And we’ll also, of course, be talking about his faith in the Lord. He has a ministry of talking about finish strong, finish well. And that’s a ministry that you might want to take a look at. So, again, Keith, thank you for joining us today. Enjoy your time down in Punta Gorda, Florida. This was recorded in February, so I’m righteously jealous that you’re in warm weather and I’m not here in Minneapolis. So until then, in the next episode, you all take care and have a great day.
Kathy English
Thank you for joining Keith and Bill today. I hope you found their conversation to be helpful to you as you grow in your faith in Jesus Christ. If you’d like to talk with Bill, just email him at bill@bibleandbusiness.com. I know he would enjoy connecting with you and thinking through some of your most difficult situations. Bill and I hope you’ll join us again for another Bible and business profile and stewardship podcast. So until then, may God richly bless you as you serve him today.
Kathy English
Take care.