Giving

Book Review: Faith for This Moment

/ J.K. / Leave a comment

Faith for This Moment

My Rating – Must read

Level – Quick, easy read

Summary
The premise of the book is that the US has changed, we are now a post-Christian nation, and so the question that we currently face is, what do we do about it? He points to a turning point (this moment) in his life, and one he thinks had a larger effect on the nation. To him, things changed after the Pulse nightclub shooting back in 2016. He specifically mentions an NPR interview with a local Orlando pastor, who has asked ‘how do Evangelicals respond to his crisis when it is clear politically that Evangelicals are anti-gay and pro-gun.’ Apparently the pastor had no answer. I suppose you could quibble with the anti-gay statement, but perception can become reality, a notion only made stronger with the 81% support of (self identified) Evangelicals for President Trump.

After the Intro, where he points out how proudly nonreligious Portland is, McKinley spends his first chapter discussing this moment as well as other broader trends in US culture. The following 12 chapters answer his question of what to do now. He compares modern Christians in America to ancient Jews in Babylon. That is to saw, we are exiles, which means that we will not fit nicely in to current norms of society. He challenges us to embrace this notion and spends a few chapters each on things like giving, Sabbath, vocation, and hospitality which on the one hand will will differentiate us even further, but on the other, are all commands from God for us to follow.

My Thoughts
I was originally going to rate this book a little lower, but as I wrote the summary, it made me realize how potentially important this book could be; if for nothing else than an intro into thinking about ourselves differently. In the age of political Christianity, where a large number of self described conservatives look solely to government for their source of comfort and strength, McKinley challenges the efficacy of these practices. On page 24 he states, ‘from gay marriage to gun control, these efforts have backfired.’ He goes on to point out the ways in which this is true as well as the lasting impact of the ‘Culture Wars.’ He comes back to this in a later chapter and discusses the fact that our efforts have gone here instead of teaching people the Bible and for this reason, ‘people have put down the Bible, and picked up self-help books.’ He doesn’t discuss this idea too much further but the sad fact is that this has had a double impact as self-help and inward, selfish focus have come back around and are now effecting the church more than the Bible.

A final thought I liked as he challenges political Christianity is in his chapter titled ‘Babylon.’ He discusses empires and the power of nations and reminds us that in the Bible the might nations (Babylon, Assyria, Egypt), where never the good guys. Instead, they were used, by God, to punish his people. This should make every Christian, especially those of us who pursue political power for the sake of Christ, to stop and think for a few moments. I think his challenge to Christian norms of political power might alone be worth reading the book, but if not (or if you are already there) the remainder of the book serves as a valuable intro practices that will help us live out our life in exile.

Many Christians haven’t even heard of some of the practices he touches (mentioned above), and certainly only a few really follow them well. Vocation might be the trickiest topic, especially for a generation who’s idea of career has become so converted. There are many other books to dive deeper into this topic if your interest was piqued. His strongest chapters were on hospitality, some Christians probably fail at most, and Sabbath. Really focusing in on Sabbath and rest and separation is cultural norms is an idea regaining prominence recently; I’ve seen few different books dive a little into it.

My only critique, really, is that the intro was too short. As someone born and raised in the South, I would’ve liked to hear a little more about the life of a Christian on the other end of the spectrum, the Pacific Northwest. Overall, I think it is an interesting, if short, book that hits on some big topics, from our interaction with our current moment, the concept of exile, and reforming some of the ancient practices of God’s people. The breadth of ideas and challenge of this book make it a must read.

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

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.

Charity & IRS Audits

/ J.K. / 5 Comments

I recently finished reading Relationships: A Mess Worth Making, which I may review later, but I thought there was an interesting anecdote in one of the last chapters, one of them relates a story of man he new that was audited by the IRS due to the amount of money he gave to the church. His point being, what if all Christians gave so much money that tax auditors had to give it a second look.

I thought, man, how much is this guy giving as a percent of his income that would make the IRS suspicious? I could imagine a situation where giving goes up dramatically in one year. Say someone started a new job with a bigger salary, or took a big promotion/made partner, or something along those lines. If you are living on the fixed budget, then you’d have more money to give. Just because you have a raise, doesn’t mean you mortgage or groceries go up.

This is actually what happened to Mrs. MMT and me. Last year(ish) we both took different positions (that were promotions) with new companies. You almost always get a bump in salary if you go to a new company or get a promotion, and we did both, the both of us, so it was kind of a double double raise. However out expenses didn’t move up in the same proportion as our income, obviously, so we were able to increase our giving rate. We also spent a little more on ourselves and dramatically increased our savings rate, but overall we felt like, when faced with the question, ‘what should we do with this nice bump in income the Lord has blessed us with?’ part of the answer has to be to give more, and not in the total amount.

Clearly, if you make $50K and your salary goes up 10% to $55K, if you are holding to a 10% giving, then your giving would go from $5K to $5.5K. But like I mentioned earlier, if you have a handle on the rest of your expenses, you should be able to give more than 10% to church and other charities. It is not like the tithe is a hard and fast rule. We, as Christians, are not bound to 10%, and we can give more. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 9:7 – Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

We were more convicted of this during the summer when our pastor did two sermons (Part 1 & 2) on generosity as part of a large series on Money, Sex, and Power. It is also something I had been thinking about since we started our new jobs. We know we are ‘supposed’ to give 10% and we are supposed to save 15%. But if you have a large salary increase, what would it look like if you saved 25%, but still only gave 10%? That can’t be right, right? So, that is a point that the pastor was pointing out, what do your percentages look like. But, I digress too much, maybe I should make that into another post.

So, back to the present. I filled our taxes. I like using the H&R Block Tax Software. They have a cool feature that does an audit check for you and will tell you if something is really bad or just curious. Well, we were flagged. The system told us to double check out charitable deductions, because we had given a large amount. Of course, it wasn’t actually a large amount, just relative to income, it was a percentage they thought could raise interest for an audit.

I had just finished reading that book, so it made me interested. I’m imagining what it would look like to give 20-25% or more to the church, but I’m getting flagged for barley more than 10%. Why? Well, I looked into it. The average American only gives 3% of their adjusted gross income to charity. The most recent Pew study shows that 70.6% of American’s claim Christianity. So, if we all gave 10% and everyone else gave zero (which certainly isn’t the case, 1.9% claim Judaism, another .9% claim Islam, so there are a few more with the 10% guideline. Of course it would be ridiculous to think only religious people (or only these particular religions) give money to charity), then the average charitable giving of an American should be around 7%, not adjusting for things like income and religious affiliation, etc.

Maybe not surprisingly, the more money you make, the less you actually give. This article from Fool shows giving peaking at incomes of $50-75K with 6.8%, and then declines in every bracket until your income hits one million. Forbes breaks it down in even more specifically, take a look at your income and see how you compare. People start giving $3K once they make about $65K (notice, that is less than 5%), but don’t add that extra thousand to bring their total giving to $4K until they make almost twice that, at $125K (now we are closer to 3%). If you go from making $100K to $200K, you should be double your giving, instead you are going from $3.6K to $5.6K, at this point we are down to about 2.5%.

So, two things here, not only are we not giving more as a percentage as our income goes up, we are actually giving less, but we aren’t even giving close to 10%. No wonder it is a red flag that someone would give 10%. Imagine what it would look like if all Christians about a certain income gave 10%, and then as they made more that percentage increased? If we said from our abundance, we give even more back? What affect on society? Instead from more abundance, we become even less faithful. It is almost like we can only serve one master. It also frustrates me that so many Christians oppose certain types of welfare and government safety nets, claiming that charity should support people, not the government. While I don’t necessarily disagree, it is beyond hypocritical to claim that will not even giving 10% to your own church.

Anyway, this post became longer and less coherent than I intended. It was an interesting coincidence that I was challenged by this book with the example of the guy audited, only to then have my tax software tell me I needed to double check my own numbers, to then finding out Americans give so little as a percent of the income. Maybe I’ll break out some of these ideas in later post and try better next time.