Financial Life with Kingdom Purpose with Eric Hall

0:00 Everyone knows how turbulent the economy is, how difficult it is with inflation, some of the government policies, some of the one world government talk of cryptocurrency. How are we to navigate this? How are we to know what to do? How are you doing with your own investments or preparing for your retirement? Well, today on the Strang Report, I'm going to talk to a man who can give us some answers. Hello, everyone. I'm Stephen Strang. My guest today is Eric Hall. He's an author, a distinguished financial advisor for over 19 years of expertise. He served in roles such as vice president at both JP Morgan and Merrill Lynch, as well as performing executive coaching for international companies.

0:47 His financial services are centered on conservative Christian values, allowing him to guide clients through uncertain economic times with a focus on investment strategies that are outside of the reach of the market manipulation by the elites, the world economic forum, and those in control. His audience is largely those who are skeptical of conventional banking and Wall Street offering tailored advice to conservative Christians seeking financial guidance aligned with their beliefs. He's also a pastor of a thriving church in Indiana. Eric is fully, he nurtures the ministry of the prophetic and he preaches the soon coming of Jesus Christ within his ministry.

1:33 As a financial advisor, this perspective is crucial for clients who are preparing for significant economic shifts and value a spiritual dimension in their financial planning. His services attract individual and families with an average portfolio size of $1.5 million, particularly those seeking to distance themselves from main street financial systems and advisors. Eric's expertise extends across critical investment, event planning, home buying, mortgage lending, retirement income planning, and wealth management. By focusing on clients who desire a financial path that reflects their conservative and Christian values, Eric Hall stands out as a leader who is not only equipped to navigate complex financial landscapes, but also deeply understands the motivations and concerns of his clientele.

2:33 You don't want to miss my exclusive conversation with Eric Hall. Stay tuned. Eric Hall, you have a very interesting business that is also a ministry and also helps people in these very, very difficult times we're in. So I want to start my podcast today by asking me to explain to me and to my viewers and listeners what exactly it is that you do and how it could help them.

3:19 Yeah, absolutely. First off, thank you, Mr. Strang, for having me on your program. Greatly appreciate it and certainly appreciate the work you've done all around the world going back decades. So thank you very much. This is what I do. I help people. I help people navigate in the financial climate that we're in today. It's been turned upside down. There is a Wall Street and there is a Main Street, which represents two different economies in the United States. And Wall Street doesn't know Main Street anymore.

4:00 And Main Street is certainly frustrated with Wall Street. Can you elaborate a little bit so we're sure to get your point? Yeah, absolutely. So Wall Street represents markets, what you see on the mainstream media, different programs that hey, this is how you should invest. This is what you should do. This is what is happening right now. Why things are good or why things aren't so good. Wall Street has a tendency to not consider everybody's man day to day and what they're doing, living. And in America today, we know Wall Street doesn't have a problem living day to day where Main Street has a little bit of a struggle living now in the times that we are in from paycheck to paycheck.

4:51 And of course, there's a lot of evidence that backs that up. So Main Street, while they're struggling with inflation, they're struggling with lack of increase of pay and income, lost jobs, Wall Street's just trucking along looking at market indices and saying, hey, we're doing great. And that's the measurement for what's good for America, unfortunately. But it's leaving a lot of people behind. And I will just share this with you. Since 1971, if you go back and you look at some of the charts, you'll see that the middle class has shrunk. And over the last three years, we've seen a rapid acceleration in the shrinking of the middle class.

5:35 And so it's leaving. We're losing the middle class because of all the different things that are hitting Main Street while Wall Street is just trucking along doing their normal thing. And not only that, but a lot of the big companies, the big corporations, big pharma, certainly the military industrial complex, which is what President Eisenhower called it. They do a lot of business with the government and that keeps them going. Yeah. And these sort of endless wars that we see, just all kinds of things. A lot of it seemed to come out with COVID. And what is an average person to do?

6:15 I mean, we can maybe see it, understand it. Most of us don't understand it. Right. But we have to make decisions. We have to make decisions on paying our bills this month, but also preparing for our retirement. So what is an ordinary American or should I say even an ordinary Christian to do? So the question that you asked was what do folks need to do right now? And that's a great question. There really is no specific answer to that because everybody is unique, just like your thumbprint, just like your iris. Everybody has a unique set of circumstances, but there are some general, I would say 30,000 foot view areas to focus on.

6:59 And primarily I would suggest looking at liquid alternatives or looking at institutions that are not over leveraged, looking at investments that invest in things that are not sin related per se. There's a lot of good things that are out there, but we have to make sure that they are obviously meeting the needs of each individual accordingly. So that's a broad question. That's probably one of those things that I would have to answer on a personal basis with somebody who would ask those questions. Well, give us a little bit of your background. I read earlier your bio.

7:40 You have a very interesting background working for some very big companies. You're obviously very intelligent, but you're also a pastor. And so you see things from a biblical perspective, which most people in the financial space don't. They don't consider what the Bible says or what God's will is or believing God like we would in the church, so to speak. But we have to, each of us has to operate in this secular society. So tell me a little bit about your own background, how you got into this and kind of how you can help people. Sure. Well, Stephen, that's, I appreciate you asking that question.

8:22 So I was a vice president with JP Morgan, was a vice president with Merrill Lynch, worked with several other companies, did a couple of things. Recruited, trained, advised advisors on how to give advice, work with individual clients. A lot of things that I did, there's not too many things I did not do in these major corporations. And how I got to where I am today, I mean, I was called to preach when I was nine years old. I was preaching in my father's church. I grew up, I moved to Indiana. My wife and I, we traveled the United States as an evangelism team, held revivals and crusades.

9:07 Eventually we settled down and God opened the door for us to pastor a church. And this church was so small, this is a really small, so I had to figure out a way to take care of my family. And so somehow God opened the door for me to move into the financial investment services side of life. And through that, God has just exploded my understanding in these things and taken the complexity of that world and putting it together with an end time view or a real time view of what's happening in the kingdom of God. You're right. It is a different perspective because we have to live like Jesus is going to call us today and we also have to occupy till he comes.

9:54 And so how do we navigate through that storm? I will tell you that what I learned on Wall Street is not so much in the best interest of those who live on Main Street because money moves things. And so taking that and combining those areas, knowing what Wall Street is doing, understanding what the Bible is saying about money, but not just from a stewardship side of it, but also a real time, hey, look, things are changing. Everything that can be shaken will be shaken. Well, it's shaking now. Economy is shaking.

10:35 The global political world is shaking. Wars are... All that stuff is happening right now. There is a way through it. There is a process. There is something that we can do to protect ourselves financially and navigate through this. That's what I specialize in. That's what we do. All of this is driven by the fact that we want to go into the world and we're doing that. We're going to nations, some of them I can't mention because they're challenged nations. We wouldn't be able to get in, but we go to these nations and we preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. We're seeing massive conversion rates, but we're bringing those things together. So it's a very unique thing. Probably never heard of it before.

11:16 Neither did I. But it's a door that God has opened and we're using that. We're just blessing the kingdom of God 360 degrees. That's very interesting. That's one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you because my whole career, we've been telling stories, stories of people that are doing unique things, people who have vision, who have faith. It seems like things are getting more and more difficult, but I think of just even earlier in the last century, World War I was horrible. The worst war in human history up to that time.

11:56 The Depression was one of the worst economic periods our nation ever did, followed by World War II, which is even worse than World War I. And then do I need to mention the nuclear standoff that we've had with Russia, the Cold War they called it. And I'm a few years ahead of you. And listen, when I was young, there was the anti-Vietnam era, drugs and alcohol and free sex and riots and everything else. And somehow we survived all of it, but it seems that a lot of this is kind of recycling now.

12:38 So what do you feel that the Lord is up to? I know you believe the Bible, so you believe that it's all culminating in the end of time. Kind of help me and help my viewers understand, because we want to understand. We want to be led by the Holy Spirit. Yes. Well, I think what you're seeing right now is an appointment of times. It is, you know, Daniel talked about the increase of knowledge, right? We live in a time where knowledge is accelerating at a pace and every day something new comes out. Artificial intelligence, it's quantum computing, all of these things. So we're seeing all of these things come to pass in one generation, all of it.

13:18 And we're not on here to talk about prophetic events taking place that the Bible said would take place, but they're all culminating to this event. From a financial standpoint, I was born when Nixon was president. Ronald Reagan was the prolific president of my younger years. My first presidential vote was for the elder Bush, and so over time. But during that same time, gold standard is dropped. We move away from that. We start going into this strictly fiat currency type of a situation. And since that day, the dollar has been devaluing at an accelerated rate. That's going to continue.

14:00 We see the world economic forum using crisis to push a global agenda, agenda 30 or 2030, which deals with moving from shareholders, people who own stock, to stakeholders, people who don't own stock, but the DEI initiatives and wokeism and all of those things. All of that stuff is affecting the financial world, not just in the US, but in every capacity. Everything about investments, money, anything that has an asset value is being destroyed, except for a few things. Gold's a great thing. But all of these things are being destroyed at the same time.

14:42 Why? To push us into a one world government, to push us into a one world currency. It's almost like, and there's no coincidence. I don't believe in coincidence. It's like everything is happening at the same time. Digital dollar, the acceleration of the dollar decreasing in value. And the third thing is GDP being outpaced by inflation or by the national debt. We are now 134% of GDP in debt. So that's a bad thing. All of these happening almost around the same time. It's all coming together. It's all happening. And I do believe that what is happening is this is all lining up.

15:26 It's all in preparation for what God is going to bring about here very, very soon. And that would be his church being called out of this world. Now your company is called AlignX. AlignX. Tell us more what you do. And it seems to me that you have a lot of answers that people are looking for. It's hard to know who to trust. You see the ads. You don't know what to do. You'd feel like just one out of, what is the population now? 330 million in our country. And that's just the United States. So what does a person do and how can you as an advisor help those of us who have a need?

16:11 So AlignX was born out of the idea of a vision that God gave me. The Lord just began to deal with me in prayer. And I don't want to make this long, but I'll tell you real quick. I was praying. I was in a revival. I was praying. The preacher was preaching. The Lord spoke to me and said, you need faith. And I'm thinking, Lord, I've prayed for people and the blind eyes have opened. The deaf ears have heard. There's not too many miracles I haven't seen done in our ministry. And the Lord says, you need faith? And I'm thinking, I have faith. And he says, no, you need the kind of faith that gets out of the boat and walks on water. He says, I'm realigning your life. Everything is going to be realigned. And he did. And I don't want to go into detail, but long story short, I got to the place where God did.

16:56 He realigned everything, my ministry, my family, everything that we were doing, what I was doing for an occupation. Our church started to grow. Business started to go in different directions. Missions, we began that work. The X, the Align comes from that realignment. The X comes from align. What do you want to align in your life? Align your finances, get that in alignment with God, get your heart in alignment with God, get your attitude in alignment with God, get your family in alignment with God, get your health in alignment. So the whole idea behind Align X is that we want to help people realign themselves with the kingdom of God and the kingdom voice that is being spoken by Jesus to all of us.

17:46 We want to make sure that there's an alignment. He said, you pray this way, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is, it already is, in heaven. So what we want to do is help people get them to the is in heaven by way of aligning specifically their finances and their goals with their family. And then we in turn help others align through ministry. So that's where that Align X comes from. That's what we do. That's how we're helping people. And if there's anybody out there that's watching this program right now, go to alignx.net, just fill out a form. We'll get back to you. We'll talk to you and we'll see what we can do to help you.

18:26 I can't help everybody, but I will do my best. Our team will do our best to make sure that we have a good, godly conversation with you and help you make sense of the things that you're dealing with right now, especially with the worldview that we see right now. You know, in the few minutes that we have left on this podcast, I want to just ask you some practical questions. If somebody's watching this long, that means they're really interested. And if are there, you know, all these things are very, very complicated, much more complicated that we can get to in a short podcast. But also when it all boils down, a lot of times it's just very simple things like to get ahead.

19:09 You've got to be honest, you got to work hard, you got to save, you got to live within your means. So when it comes to investing, planning for our future, our retirement, trying to navigate these very difficult things, you mentioned DEI, the one world government, the currency, you know, there's a lot of things that are confusing. But when it comes down to it, what are the two or three things that everyone should do and start doing right now, whether they work with you or work with another financial advisor or just try to do it on their own? What is the advice that you would give that will the people can take away from this podcast and do something now?

19:54 Absolutely. Great question. Again, just a great question. So the first thing that I would tell people is you have to have, and anybody will tell you this, you need six months worth of emergency money set aside. You've got to do that. Everybody has a life event happen at least one to two years, and that's a life changing event for the good or for the negative. It's just going to happen. So you need to have six months of money set aside. And I've had people tell me, I can't do that. We've talked with them. We've helped them. We've showed them areas where they could do that, and they've been able to do that. So you mean six months worth of income, half an annual salary, whatever that is.

20:39 Yeah. Well, let me define that a little bit better. Six months of non-discretionary spending, money that you have to have to pay the bills and to eat and keep shelter over your home. That's what I'm talking about now. So it may be a little less than a year's salary because some folks just, they like to go eat out a lot. So that's my suggestion. You're going to hear that from everybody that's in the financial services industry. Doesn't matter what their background is. The second thing that I would say is you have to secure income over and above your social security. There's a lot of people who think that social security is going to take care of everything that they need.

21:23 You can pay off your home, pay off your car. You can pay everything off and say, I'm going to live on social security. I just want to tell you, it's going to be very difficult for you to do that. Just these last few years have proved when you have inflation, inflation from 2021 through mid 2023 was over 24% across the board. Now you can itemize things at 30, 40, 50, 60% inflation. But if you're trying to buy eggs on a fixed income and we have that happen, and I will tell you inflation's here for a long time. It's not going away. Go listen to Jamie Dimon. He'll tell you. Same thing. Wall Street won't tell you that, but he will and I will too.

22:04 Inflation's not going away. It's here for a while. If that is the case, then you need to have a second source of income above and beyond. There's ways to do that. That's where we really get into the weeds and I have to be careful about giving broad advice in that way. But I would say that we have to figure out what that income is going to look like for you. The third thing is legacy planning, planning for a long retirement, making sure that once you start the income stream or you have secured that income stream situation that you are obviously preparing for future needs down the road, whether that be a new roof on the house or buying a new vehicle, taking care of a grand kid who needs money for college.

22:49 You never know what's going to hit, but there's a lot of things there that you don't see coming. I call it the three bucket system, the emergency fund, the income, and then the asset accumulation and acceleration. Those are the three simplest ways to view moving forward. Now, again, everybody's different and how we do that for each individual is going to depend on their specific situation. But those are the things that I say you have to focus on right now. And I will say this, just let me throw one more thing in there. The 60-40 rule, 60% stock, 40% bonds did not survive this inflationary onslaught that we saw through 2021 and up through today.

23:36 It did not. And I'll be honest with you, going forward, this is one of the things I stay that a lot of people disagree with me on. It's not going to work in the future either because we have so much volatility. And there is good reason to believe that in order to stop future inflation, which I believe is coming, more inflation, you keep kicking that can down the road, it catches up to you, that they may have to raise interest rates again. And if they do that, if they do that, if they have to do that again, then that becomes another issue that it's going to be very difficult to deal with. So that affects the banks, that affects just about every asset that's out there.

24:20 So that 60-40, we got to figure out a different way to do that. I got the answer, but I just can't share it with you live because I'll get in trouble. Well I'll add one, and that is it's hard to navigate this stuff yourself. For one thing, there's procrastination, there's uncertainty. We can't stop and go to college to figure this out. So you've got to find trusted professionals that can help. Just like if you're going to sell property, you need a good real estate person. You're going to do a will, you need a good lawyer. Well, when it comes to finances, each of us has to find a financial advisor who we trust.

25:04 We need to do our research, we need to do our due diligence, because ultimately we all have to take control over what we do and not just leave it to chance. And yes, we have to believe in God, and we believe that God takes care of his own. And one of the ways he takes care of his own, in my opinion, is he gives us wisdom, he gives us relationships and so forth. So as we wrap this up, I want to give you the last word, and then I'll be back with a final thought from my viewers. Absolutely. Thank you, Stephen, once again for allowing me to be a part of your program. It's an amazing thing that you're doing, reaching the entire world. That's certainly our goal. And if I can align what we're doing alongside with what you guys, what an incredible thing that's happening.

25:48 God is moving in this time. There's great revival around the earth. You're part of the fastest growing. One professor at Boston College recently said that this movement that's happening right now with God is the fastest, most incredible religious move ever seen on planet earth. And I'm paraphrasing, but that's why I just give it to our church yesterday for Pentecost Sunday. It's incredible. And you're a part of that. Everybody that's on here, you're a part of that. And really, everything that we talked about, none of that is near as important as your relationship with Jesus. And I hope that through this program and working with your pastor, whoever it is, that you continue to grow your relationship and get out there and tell people about Jesus.

26:40 Invite them. Tell your testimony because that's what this is all about. And that, to me, is the most important thing. So God bless you and thank you for letting me fill that in at the end. If you take to heart what Eric Hall said, this could be one of the most important podcasts you've ever watched. Thank you for staying tuned this long. If you haven't subscribed to The Strang Report, please take time and do it now. Hit the little bell so you're notified every time that we're live on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 4 p.m. Eastern time. And if you're interested in more and if you follow me, if you're interested in what I have to say, you need to check out my newest book, Spirit-Led Living in an Upside-Down World.

27:23 I'm going to talk to you about the entire chapter about the end times and how difficult it's going to be to help you get more information about navigating this. I also have a lot to say about finances and goal setting and doing just practical, common sense things. I think you'll really enjoy the book. You can get it at SteveStrangBooks.com along with the other books I've written or on Amazon.com or on MyCharismaShop.com. It's easy and I hope that you'll check it out. I think you'll really benefit from my book, which will be a follow-up to this interview with Eric Hall and everything he had to say about investing and finances.

28:03 Mine is not from that perspective, of course, but it's from a spiritual perspective that will help you dig a little deeper. Thank you for watching my podcast. Tune in again every Tuesday and Thursday at 4 p.m. Eastern time. Thanks for watching. God bless you.