Estate & Gift Planning Awareness

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October is Estate and Gift Planning Awareness Month — dedicated to supporting the improvement of financial awareness and financial literacy for all Americans.

According to the Financial Awareness Foundation, a majority of adults in the U.S. that reach age 79 are almost out of money even though life expectancies are well in the mid-80s and beyond.

Over 120 million adults don’t have nor do they understand the importance of having a current financial, estate and gift planning strategy to protect themselves and their assets during their lifetime and after death.

Too many young people and their families are burdened with excessive education debt. Student loan debt is the second largest class of consumer debt after mortgages!

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reported in January 2019 that there’s a link between financial education and financial well-being. A key finding was that while many adults desire to educate themselves to become more financially literate, they often seek out that information only within their social networks. This cuts across all demographics, including education level and income and is quite alarming: People are making critical life decisions based on information gained from non-experts and fragmented sources. 

If you, or someone you care about, needs a financial health and planning checkup, we are happy to offer our professional advice, or we can recommend a financial planner that is the ideal fit for your personal financial situation. Drop us a note at info@stewardshipworks.org

How Apple Killed the App

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The Stewardship Foundations’ credo is defined in the Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience first written in 2009. It was a popular movement among Christians of all faiths. There was even an app on iTunes so people could sign their agreement to its principles.

So here we are, ten years later, living in a society where our young people consider same-sex marriage and abortion as simply individual “choices without consequences” even while they continue to believe in God, attend Church with their family, and pin “prayer hands” emoticons on chat apps and Facebook.

The Declaration itself always suffered the expected criticism from left-leaning media pundits and non-believers, but no one would have thought that the giants in technology would suppress its message of hope, faith, and charity. 

To allow its message to be heard and to gain more signatures, the Manhattan Declaration designed and placed an app on Apple’s iTunes store.

Shortly thereafter, in November 2010, Apple received 7,000 signatures arguing that the app was homophobic and offensive. Apple removed the app, saying that it “violates our developer guidelines by being offensive to large groups of people.” Within a month, more than 45,000 had signed a counter-petition to have the app reinstated. Regardless, it remains invisible on the web.

Has political correctness gone too far? Is it stifling our rights to express our faith and beliefs? It appears so. But not at the Stewardship Foundation.

Abortion is Morally Bad

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In February 2019, the Knights of Columbus, a worldwide fraternal benefit society founded in 1882, conducted what they named, The Marist Poll. The survey polled 1,008 adults in the U.S. randomly selected from a list of telephone exchanges from throughout the nation in proportion to its population. In other words, the poll was not conducted to include or exclude any race, religion, income, political leaning, age, gender, or geographical element. The results were statically significant within + or – 3.5%—as are all properly conducted surveys.

On the issues of abortion, do you consider yourself pro-life or pro-choice?

Pro-life 47%
Pro-choice 47%
Unsure 6%

The same question in October 2008 returned 44% pro-life and 50% pro-choice — a statistical uptick of 6% for pro-life. Unsure in 2008 was the same, 6%.

On the question “Do you think abortion should generally be legal or generally illegal during the last three months of pregnancy, the overwhelming majority (between 85% to 57%) said no, it should not be legal. And interestingly, the percentage was the same for men and for women (71% said illegal) — a sharp rise from January 2019 when only 38% said illegal.

Of course, this is only one poll and considering how well pollsters do determining election outcomes, we will need to wait for future polls to collaborate the results.

The Stewardship Foundation takes a stand to respect all life, unconditionally, and will never sway from our conviction. We believe that induced abortion is not healthcare but murder.

We believe that a fetus is not a possibility, it is a person, not fully formed, but with all it needs to become that way — and it has a soul. An unwanted pregnancy is unwanted by the birth mother, but it is wanted by another couple who has not been able to become pregnant.

At the Stewardship Foundation, we believe in the sanctity of human life, marriage and sexual morality, and religious freedom and the rights of conscience. If you agree, we’d love to hear from you. If you have a friend or colleague who you think might want to speak with us, please pass this along.