Christian Stewardship

Book Review: Practicing the King’s Economy

/ J.K. / 4 Comments

Practicing the King’s Economy: Honoring Jesus in How We Work, Earn, Spend, Save, and Give

My Rating- Must Read

Level – Easy read, medium length

Summary
The book basically tries to answer the question of what would it look like if we worked, ran businesses, spent money/time, and gave money/time in a way that was entirely shaped by a Biblical World View. After the intro the book is broken into 12 chapters that are based on the six ‘keys’ to practicing ‘the King’s Economy’. One chapter will introduce the key and the next is a shorter chapter that gives examples of how that key works in the real life, with examples of people/organizations that the authors know.

The six keys are – Worship, this is about who we worship. Is it God or money and how does that look in the way that we give. Community, the focus here is about having a broad community of all types of people, particularly those from different economic classes. Work, why do we work and what is the point of work? Also, what does the Old Testament concept of ‘gleaning’ look like in a modern world? Equity, based on the command that their be no poor among us, this isn’t necessarily just about making sure everyone has money, but that every one has a job and kind provide for themselves (or help to give to others), even further, it is about making sure that those jobs are enough. Creation Care, this is about environmental stewardship. Finally, Rest, and this is a call to bring back the practice of Sabbath.

My Thoughts
I really enjoyed this book. It was probably the most thought provoking and in some way challenging book I’ve read in a long time. Sadly, it isn’t often you read a book targeted at a popular Christian audience that makes you think, even rarely does one challenge the way you should live.

I’ll get the two nit-picky things I didn’t like out of the way first. I didn’t really like the intro, and this was due to their misuse of stats that is a pet peeve of mine. In the intro, they are trying to show that we are richer now than ever, but more unhappy. Unfortunately, they use GDP per capita, which is a useless statistic, because it ignores income inequality and the fact that middle classes wages have been stagnant for decades. It also ignores cost like tuition and healthcare that have risen more rapidly than anything else. However, I don’t disagree with their premise, if nothing else, we are at least more materialistic than ever and constantly surround ourselves with distraction. Second, and I think this is more on the editors or publisher, they only ever refer to Jesus as King Jesus, and this is done to reiterate the title, and it is just awkward and I wish authors/editors wouldn’t do that.

No back to the good part, if you are modern American Christian, especially on the conservative or Republican side, this book will be a challenge. I’d suspect many hardcore Republican’s won’t finish this book as it challenge the assumption that making money is the most important thing in life. It also encourages people to pay living wages, which Republicans generally oppose vehemently. Of course, there are aspects that all sides of the political spectrum will like and dislike, which is a great reminder that neither political party works from a Biblical worldview and we ought not act like they do.

The first chapter, about putting God first and showing that by how we give should challenge the way we all handle money. American’s like to think of ourselves as generous, but in reality we give about 2.5% of income. The Community, Equity, and Rest were interesting chapters that should make you think, and if you take take it seriously, will affect your life. And of course, it should right? The Bible calls us to be different, and especially the chapters on Community and Rest are reminders of just how different we should look. The Creation Care chapter was good and I agree with all of it, I’m a big advocate of environmental stewardship. However, it was probably the weakest on a Biblical basis, and I’m not entirely sure it fit well with the rest of the book.

The best chapter, and worth the price of the book alone, is the Work chapter. For one, many of us, especially white-collar workers who have a lot of options, struggle with what work should look like in out lives, but the crazy part is gleaning. In the Old Testament, the Jews were not allowed to fully harvest their own fields. God required that they leave the edges unpicked so that the poor, widows, orphans, and foreigners would have something that they could eat. Obviously, we are not a majority subsistence agricultural community anymore. So the authors dive into what it could look like and the ideas are fascinating and in some ways pretty radical to the way we view life in America.

I don’t necessarily agree with some of their options, or at least the way that they would work out in most places, but they are thought provoking nonetheless. It is certainly something I’ve never thought about before, but it has been on my mind sense I finished the book a few weeks ago. If you really want to be challenged and forced to think and try to rethink the way we view the economy today, and how we should view it as as Christians, this is a book for you. It is probably my favorite so far of 2018, and is definitely a  must read book.

*I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Money and Church Buildings

/ J.K. / Leave a comment

A few weeks ago, I wrote a short series on money (parts 1, 2, 3, & 4), and one of the things I talked about was, what to do with it? I realize I’m in a somewhat unique situation in wondering what to do with extra money, but it will make more sense if you just read those original posts. However, I wrote all those posts (though the publishing overlapped) before our pastor made an announcement one Sunday that caught us all be surprise.

Our church meets in a public elementary school, which has been our meeting place for six years or so (I’m not entirely sure, we’ve only been members for about three years). Our current contract takes us through this August with a one year open to take us through the summer of 2019. Our pastor indicated that there was a new principle at the school was not interested in the option year or a contract renewal, and therefore we would need to be out the first week of August. Also, it wouldn’t really be August because renovations to the school were to take place over the summer, so, actually, we had until Memorial Day. This all came up in the middle of March.

We also rent some office/meeting space in an industrial area down the street. Providentially, the same week that we find out we are not longer to meet in the school, the landlords of our office space stop by one day and tell the staff that the space across the parking lot (roughly 17,000 square feet) will soon be available, you know, in case we are interested.

I skip through the meetings, drama, stress, rushing around that ensued over the next few weeks, but ultimately, we decided to go for it. The idea was to find our own space in the next two or three years, but, it appears, God had another plan. All that to say, it was going to take some money. The space was actually two spaces, one was an office/warehouse type use and the other was basically a call center/cubicle farm. Estimates for renovating the space came in at around $900,000. Now, we are a church of 300-350 people or so, or about 120-130 families, with probably about 80-85 of which are regularly attending, money giving members. Realistically, a pledge of $12-15K per family (average) isn’t terrible, that is, when you are fundraising for two or three years.

We had about six weeks. Not only did we need to ‘raise’ that money in six weeks, we also needed a little more than a third of it in cash, in May (by today, actually). Again, I’ll fast forward through the sleeplessness of the elders and staff team, the endless meetings, the tireless efforts of a few volunteers, and the arguments/debates/conversations about other possible cheaper options. Two weeks ago was what we called commitment Sunday, where everyone wrote down what they were committed to bring in up front cash and what they could give over the next year and yesterday was the culmination of that phase as people brought their first checks. Ultimately, we fell slightly short of the goal, but people committed to give roughly $862,000 over the next year. However, the we do have some reserve funds that we can easily commit to cover the gap, so the project moves forward.

Construction drawings have been produced and submitted and hopefully work will begin soon. The target date for us to have our first service will be the first Sunday of November. In the mean time, after a few great meetings with the school staff, we’ve worked out an agreement in which we will still meet at the school through October. Luckily, there are never any problems with contractors or construction timelines, right?

It was been a fascinating few months for out community. The discussion among people regarding money, giving, finance have been incredible and have grown and matured us as a body. The church community itself is not very old (maybe around 20 years) and has meet in a few random places over the years, with no specific place as home. Now, we will have an actual space, that is ours all day every day, and for the next 10 years. This will be longer than we’ve ever been in one place as a church. It is longer than we’ve ever been in one place as a family (our ten year anniversary is in three days). So, there is a lot of faith and trust that this is where God wants us (community and family) to be. It has changed the mindset of the community for what commitment looks like, with time (specifically long term thinking/goals) and obviously money. Some of the stories that have some from this have been incredible. Two quickly, one woman is retired and living on a pension, she has decided to take a job and give the entire entire salary over the next year (I could write a whole post on this story) and one of the build/design professionals we contacted was so impacted by our story that he actually gave our pastor $1,000 to go towards the building fund.

That was really the point of me writing this post, which has now rambled on longer than anticipated. We prayed that God would guide us in budgeting a giving out of what He has blessed us with, and now, giving to the building fund alone will be a largest budget category over the next year, followed by our mortgage, and then our regular giving. To be honest, it is kind of scary. It is a lot of money, and a huge commitment for us. We are sacrificing a few things here and there, mostly notably holding off on replacing an old car. You can actually hear Mrs. MMT discuss this here (she tells our story in an interview style interaction one morning with the pastor and one of the elders, who also shares a story) if you are interested, and you can even go to the main page here to see the entire timeline with updates as we received them as well as more stories of people discussing giving and commitment to the church.

This entire story has really reinforced to me the importance of how we handle money as Christians. I wrote about the importance of budgeting, because without it, we don’t have the flexibility to be able to give more when called upon. I realize many people struggle and their income just isn’t there to give what they’d like, but my focus is on those who have the means, but don’t pay enough attention. The amount of people I’ve heard from over the past few months who looked back through their spending (some for the first time) or made budgets for the first time, and were in shock over the amount of money they wasted on certain things has been surprising. I know many people don’t pay attention, but this is really some poor stewardship as a whole church community. People were finally looking, and coming to me saying, I can’t believe I spend $2,000 a year in cable, or I can’t believe I spent so much money on going out to eat. They were essentially finding hundreds of dollars a month in their budgets.

Obviously, this is something we as Christians should talk about more. Money should be much less of a taboo than it is, especially considering the amount of time Jesus spent discussing money. He is our example, and if we take that seriously, we are clearly failing. I think it is a topic I will try to write on more, here on this site.

Anyway, it is an exciting and scary time of us as a family here at MMT (the term of our lease will have sprout entering as a pre-schooler and leaving as a teenage) and for our church community. God has blessed us and given as an opportunity to pour much of that back in to our community, so I just wanted to write that our and share with the few of you who still read this. More updates to follow, I’m sure. It should be fun.

Christians and Money – Money in Marriage

/ J.K. / 3 Comments

I’ve been rambling for a few weeks about Christians and money, it started when I was flagged on my taxes for giving ‘too much’ money to charity, then I jumped to budgeting and how poor most of us are as stewards of what God has given us, before finally getting to my originally planned post about what to do with an abundance or living with plenty. The logical next step in the progression is to talk about Christians and retirement (as it is practiced in most of America), as that is kind of the end of money. Instead, I’m going to take a bit of tangent and talk about money in marriage.

I listen to a few personal finance podcast, and one of them has a recurring type of episode called, ‘Ask Paula’, where the host respond to emails, voicemails, etc., often with a guest host to help weigh in. On this particular episode, the guest was a relationship expert and one of the callers had a question about handling money with her boyfriend. She was a pretty high earner with a good savings rate, and he was a low earner with student loan debt. They had no religious or cultural reasons to get married, and didn’t plan on having kids. They lived together and planned to spend the rest of their lives together. Her question was, should she pay off the remainder of his debts.

Astoundingly, neither of the host thought it was a good idea (well, with some caveats; one of the way in which the caller suggested to help pay off debt, the host said she wouldn’t recommend doing that in general, let alone this situation and the guest hosts recommended against paying off the debt, unless she had some sort of contract or at least realized that she might just be throwing money away, but it if felt good, then do it.) Now, the host, as far as I can tell, is non-religious and it didn’t seem the guest host was either, regardless, this was a personal finance expert pairing with a relationship expert to give advice about money in a relationship. So, my point isn’t they should be married, covenant, lack of commitment, blah, blah, blah, because the fact is, many married people, even Christians (you know, those who are ‘one flesh’) have this separated view of money.

As a quick aside, I will say I disagree with the hosts, but from a practical reason. If you really do spend your entire life with someone, and you both hit 70, it isn’t actually like one of you has saved well while the other is broke. When he doesn’t pay is part of the rent, what will you do, kick him out? If you have savings, but she is debt, and you want to take a vacation, but she can’t afford the plane ticket, are you going alone? That would be the logical conclusion; I really don’t understand what people are thinking.

However, I see this is marriages, and with Christians, constantly. It just happened this past Sunday, I was telling a guy about the general rule that you should save 15% of your income. His first question, ‘is that 15% each, or just one of you?’ Well, you each want to retire, right? But the bigger issue, is he had the focus on each. The income between the two of you is your income. You are supposed to be one. If you have an income of $100K, you need to save $15K total, period. It doesn’t matter if one person makes three fourths of that, all of it, half of it, or none of it. Like I said above, what good is it for you to save and your spouse have nothing? The money needs to be viewed as one, not two pots contributing to one. We have a situation where Mrs. MMT doesn’t have a 401(k) at work. We make similar incomes, so I save almost 30% of my check, while nothing is taking from her. It doesn’t matter, though, all our paychecks go to one account and we pay all the bills from it, and we have a monthly budget based on that income.

Not everyone sees it that way. A guy at work is in the same situation. He was asking me about investing one day, and mentioned he only did 7%, as this was what was required to get the match. As I tell everyone, I told him he needed to put in 15% and his wife needed to be doing the same. After telling me his wife doesn’t have access to a 401(k), I told him he needed to double up. His response was, ‘and then she just gives me some of her money, so I have something to spend.’ I told him, you are married, there is no ‘his’ or ‘her’ money. See, they had two different bank accounts, and they split their bills. I think she paid for their rent, and he would transfer money to her to ‘cover his share’. That is a roommate. That isn’t marriage, at least as we see it from a Christian world view.

If you look at the relationship and finance expert opinions, they typically see three different ways to handle money in relationships. One is the roommate plan, where you have two different bank account that ‘your’ paycheck go into and one person pays bills with the other person ‘paying them back’ or splitting up the bills. My parents actually do this. They’ve been married 30 something years, and I’m pretty sure they’ve never had a joint account. On the other end of the spectrum is having just one account. All the paychecks and money go in, and all bills are paid out.

The latter is clearly preferable, as you really need to look at everything as one. However, there is middle ground approach, that might be alright, depending on how you use it. The third option people talk about is a hybrid, where you have a joint account and your separate account. Practically, that is one idea, but I’d split it up as to how you use it and it all depends on that joint account. If you have your own paychecks go into ‘your’ account and then move money over to pay the bills, you are just technology efficient roommates, you still aren’t one. However, if you have a joint account where everything goes in and out, but have separate accounts that are individual spending accounts, I think that can be alright. Sometimes this just happens practically.

When the Monday Morning Wife and I were first married, we had already been working and had out separate accounts, so we went to the bank and set up one joint account. The original individual accounts acted something like an allowance, but mainly we didn’t want to close accounts before buying a house, because you need credit history. My account consistently had problems after Wells Fargo bought out Wachovia, so we did close it, but Mrs. MMT’s old account become her music business account.

I can see the appeal of keeping the one pot with the two original, but eventually it gets to complicated and if you don’t need the credit history, you might as well fully merge. We are just an individualistic society that it is hard to not want to have our own money. Once we moved to one account, we budgeted an ‘allowance’ for each of us, that way we could have some free spending that we didn’t have to think about. We eventually dropped this practice as well, as after a few years, her budget was negative on near monthly basis and I had, well, about a few years’ worth of the budget there. Actually, in the interim, we just made a budget line called Mrs. MMT, but we’ve left that as well.

In the end, if you are married, you should have on account and not view things as ‘mine’ or ‘yours’. God says have become one flesh, so there is not more his and hers, there is just your family budget. You need to budget together, plan your spending, saving, and giving together. Not only from the practical standpoint of what will you do 50 years from now, but from the spiritual element as well. If you are committed to your family, you need to be 100% committed, and act as one.

Christians and Money – Plenty

/ J.K. / 2 Comments

Over the past few weeks, I’ve written two post related(ish) to money. The first one, was about giving/charity and the IRS, as I had just finished doing my taxes and was giving a warning that my donations were suspiciously high. The second one, was supposed to be about what to do with excess money, but I felt I had to start with the fact that most people are bad with money and inexplicably, very few people budget. So, today, I’ll jump back on track with what to do when you have plenty.

Before discussing plenty, you have to figure out, what is enough? My granddad is old enough that he was never caught up in the religious right or Republican Christianity, and therefore takes the Bible seriously about money, believing that greed is a sin. Growing up, he always told the story of a reporter asking the richest man on earth how much money he needed, and the rich many responded, ‘just a little more’. The exchange is attribute to Rockefeller, but I couldn’t actually find anything that confirms this.

Either way the point remains, the concept of enough is a moving target. As I wrote some last week, it is also almost impossible to discuss with some people. I know people, who make more than I do, who eat out 4-5 times a week, have a $150 cable bill will also having Netflix, Hulu, Prime, and still go out to movies. He tells me they are almost paycheck to paycheck, and don’t have enough. No, they have enough, they are just wasting it.

For the sake of discussion, let’s say that enough is covering the bills/expenses of living, saving 10%, giving 10%, with some emergency savings and then a little extra cash every month for fun (this is a category for going out to eat, booze and expensive dinners are not bills). So, you aren’t living paycheck to paycheck, and you are doing the right things with you money and have some left over, that is enough/more than enough. I know this is a basic and peoples’ living expenses can vary dramatically, some places have a high cost of housing, some people buy too much house, many people have car loans they shouldn’t, and of course you can always lower your bills (you don’t have to keep your house at 72 degrees year round).

Certainly, if you have a decent sized discretionary or misc. portion of your budget you have enough. I guess a quick and easy definition of plenty would be if that section of your budget is larger than your saving and giving; definitely plenty if that budget item is your largest.

Maybe you’ve never bothered to budget and when you do, you end up like my buddy at work or other people I’ve talked to and find out that discretionary part of your budget is quite large, hundreds to even over a thousand dollars is what I’ve heard of from people ‘finding’ money in the budget when they actually put it on paper. Alternatively, you have the scenario like the Monday Morning Wife and I had where we both have new (promotion) jobs at new companies, so we received a substantial bump in salary. Or finally, say one spouse had been laid off or taken time out for babies and is not back to work. For these last two scenarios, you were already responsible and smart, so you had a budget and are now, clearly in the plenty category.

So now what?

I’ll admit I have no idea. I’ve struggled with this and have been wanting to write about it for almost a year. I’ll confess I’ve spent too much time thinking (obsessing) over what to do. In some ways, it is simple, right? For example, you have the raise/new income/’budget find’ scenario discussed above of say, $600 month. There are only three places it can go, savings, givings, or discretionary. This even works for just a one time bonus or tax return, as well. If you start budgeting an extra $60 a month to giving, that still leaves you with over $500 in new money and no particular place to go. Say you save have of it, now you are down to an extra $240 a month. Should you really spend all that on yourself?

This is the kind of thing that I struggle with, not the spending so much, because I just don’t buy many things, but can you justify saving 50% of new money, will keeping giving to 10%? Especially as your income and plenty grows? Dave Ramsey recommends saving 15%, and giving 10%, as a starting point. However, if you get that big bump, or just expect a good amount of growth in income over time, how much do those two numbers need to align? Can you save 30% and keep your giving at 10%? Should it be 25% and 15%? I actually had this discussion with someone yesterday. I told him I do feel compelled based on God’s blessing, to give more. He points out that Paul tells us to give what we decide and not from compulsion because God wants a cheerful giver. That makes sense on the one hand, but on the other, I don’t really want to give any money. Right? That’s the problem most people have, I’m selfish and would much rather keep all my money.

I want to quickly discuss two solutions I’ve heard that takes you away from the percentage focus I’ve discussed. I’m sure I overthink all of this and focus too much on the percentages because I’m such a strict budgeter. I’m sure many of you reading this might say, give your 10% and if there is an additional need, give to it. That’s where my obsessive compulsive nature comes in and says, yeah, but it isn’t in the budget. Back to the two methods, they are both numbers based. One number, is your income, you pick the number you want to hit, then give away 100% of every dollar thereafter. The second is your savings, same deal, pick a number you want to hit, then give away everything else. All this assumes a solid budget that already accounts for a 15/10% savings/givings.

First, income, this one is interesting, probably more Biblically sound, but harder to follow. This one should be pretty relevant for anyone who expects large growth in income over life times. Assume you and your wife make about $50k, but know in 20 years, you each could easily be making $100k (well keep all money in real dollars for ease), which isn’t that far off a scenario. You set your budget at the combined $100k mark, leave room for some growth in savings, income, and discretionary, and then pick your number. Call it $150k. When you hit this point, you’ll be giving 10% already, but will then give 100% of ever new dollar. By the time you hit that $200k line, you’d be giving away an incredible $65k (well, I guess less taxes, so call it $55k), somewhere around 25-30% of your income.

I like this idea. It is simple, and I can’t really think of any reason from the Bible to not do so. However, it is scary. It would be incredibly hard for me to give away that much, and keep savings at the relatively safe rate of 15-20%. While, I’d be sure that I’d probably be fine in the future, it seems much easier to trust money than it does God. You never know what emergency may hit – housing, job layoff, or especially in America, a medical issue. But clearly that is trying to serve two masters, it seems.

So, that leads to the other method. I heard about this from a friend who was a financial adviser and it is something he recommended. Unfortunately, he died last year and we never had the chance to discuss further. The idea is straight forward, you save/give your 15/10%, then as income rises you increase your savings rate, then once you hit your target number, you stop saving and give the rest away. I really like this idea, because it plays in to my need for safety and comfort coming from something I can ‘control’. However, I can’t think much about the method without feeling like all I am doing is ‘building a bigger barn’.

Obviously, there is some nuance to each of these situations (if you are going with the nest egg method, but you are offered a 401(k) match, do you keep saving a little?), but as general guidelines, I find them compelling. This has gone long, so maybe I’ll do yet another post, but I haven’t even touched on some even more compelling and interesting situations such as financial independence, moving to ministry/changing careers later in life, and the craziest of all, retirement (having a pension is simple, you can give off of your income, but if you only have a nest egg, how do you give?). Admittedly, I overthink it, but how about you? Do you under-think it? See any major pros or cons for either method, or thing focusing on percentages is the way to go? Please leave comments if you have them, I’d love some input.

 

 

 

Christians and Money – Budgeting

/ J.K. / 4 Comments

Last week, I wrote a long rambling post specifically about giving and what the IRS might flag when you do your taxes, but also generally things related to money. One of the tangents I veered towards relates to what we would do with our money, specifically as it relates to getting new job, or some sort of other large bump in salary. My somewhat rhetorical point being if you salary goes up 10%, your expenses shouldn’t. Your mortgage/rent, groceries, other bills, are what they are, so you should have surplus, what should you do?

I think before diving into that, we need to point out that, for the most part, we are terrible with money. As I point out, American’s only give about 3% of their income, and this article shows, we save less than 5%, and finally, this article says the average federal tax rate is 13.5%, but a little nuance (see chart below) shows that no one pays double digit taxes rates until the make over $200K, so for the purpose of this post, I’ll call it 7%.

Put all those together, and are only talking about 15% of income. Throw in 33% for housing, 10% for food, another 10% for transportation, and lets call it 7% for misc., you get 75%. Or you can also take a look at this article, which goes over the average American household budget. I also took a look at Mint, there is a comparison tool to see how my spending stacks up against other in my metro area. Four big categories stuck out to me:
Shopping  – $5,873
Personal care – $1,148
Misc  – $2,506
Fees and Charges – $1,175
To note, shopping is a separate category from groceries. The income, from which the use data came, was around $67K, so this shopping category is close to 10% of pre-tax income. I’m not entirely sure what people call personal care, but $100 a month seems high. The Misc category is a little hard to judge. That might be unexpected expenses, not too sure as it looks like people are already spending $500 a month on shopping. The Monday Morning Wife and I use the Misc as a giant catch all for shopping, eating out, unexpected expenses, haircuts, etc. So, it was a little harder to compare how we stack up exactly. Finally, it appears people are spending $100 on fees and charges. I interpret that as people are spending $100 a month to not pay attention. I understand things happen, but I can’t imagine how you get hit with so many fees if you are actually keeping on top of paying bills and monitoring you accounts.

Which I guess brings me to the point I want to make in this post. Not necessarily the original point I was going for, but here we are. We are just not effective stewards of our money. Mainly, because we are too lazy to pay attention. I talked with a guy over a year ago. I mentioned with the new jobs, we were thinking of possibly trying to pay the house off earlier. As we were talking, we realized our incomes and expenses were roughly the same, but he wasn’t in a position to have extra money. I asked him about budgeting and tracking, and he wasn’t doing it. This is a smart, high educated guy, who is a committed husband and loving father, but was just failing to pay attention to his finances.

I found this to be pretty consistent last summer when our pastor did a series on money, our small group discussed what people were spending on what and how people track and budget. Out of the five of us, only one other family was seriously tracking. Some people were saving, but not giving, some were giving but not saving, some were doing both, but couldn’t tell you how much they spent going out to eat, or where their money went, so they were falling further and further in debt. Many of the guys have great salaries, or large bonus, and one had recently started a new job with a big pay raise. So, they are paying their bills, but spending the rest, neither increasing their giving or saving. This is a huge problem for most Americans called Lifestyle Inflation were you end up matching you spending to your income, so that is you receive more and more money, all you do is spend more and more.

So, it ends up with people being highly compensated, but live paycheck to paycheck and do not feel like they are actually blessed by God, despite their obvious abundance. I was talking to a coworker the other day. He and his wife combine for an income that likely puts him in the top 10% of all earners, and despite their being in their 20’s, with two incomes and no kids, he was wondering how it is possible to ever retire. I asked him, well, how much are you saving, he wasn’t sure. We just cannot use what God has given us, unless we actually know what we are going with it. If you aren’t tacking, you really need to start and get your spending under control. If you don’t know where your money is going, it is a safe bet that not enough of it is going back to God.

I had intended for this post to go a different direction, but I realized as I researched and thought back to my conversations with people that you can’t really talk about handling abundance until you know what that even means in your own spending and how most people don’t even respond to God’s blessing enough to know what they are even knowing where it is going. So, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, next week I’ll try to get back to abundance, and two different solutions I’ve seen heard of as a response.