Faith Works 12-1-18

Faith Works 12-1-18

Jeff Gill



Stewardship and frictionless spending

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'Tis the season for shopping, and of course it's generally assumed that as a pastor and preacher I'd have something to say against rampant consumerism and wasteful spending in a season that should have a better reason than just buying stuff.



Well, sure. But that's too easy. And only a part of the problem.



Art Rainer, a Christian stewardship consultant and author, recently shared three "scary money stats" in his blog: first, that 40% of Americans don't have enough cash to cover a $400 emergency. Other than a credit card, there's no backup capacity.



Secondly, Rainer notes that in 2018, the amount of student loans INCREASED to $1.5 trillion. And he notes that student loan debt is not just a Millennial problem. Did you know that Gen Xers have the highest average student loan debt, at almost $40,000?



His final scary money stat is that 33% of Americans have $0 saved for retirement (and 23% have saved between $1 and $10,000). Two-thirds of Millennials have nothing set aside yet, and the oldest of them are pushing 40.



Now, let's argue that people who attend church services regularly tend to be a bit more organized, have more of plan in mind and in action than the general population. We'd like to think so, wouldn't we? And I think it's true . . . but not entirely so.



So I should assume, if you cut those stats in half, that on a Sunday you're preaching to a room where 20%, one in five, can't come up with $400 cash in an emergency. That Gen Xers (call 'em 57 to 37 year olds) in church have around $20,000 or more in student loan debt hanging over them, and the Millennials if you have them in worship, age 35 or less, are right behind them. And over 15% of your parishioners have literally zero retirement savings.



I'd guess most preachers and church leaders would, on reflection, not dispute any of those projections into their congregation. Add in that the older folks in many of our churches may be more stable, a bit more secure, but feel responsible for adult children who are Boomers or Gen Xers or Millennials that fall right into those scary stats, and you can see where this overall financial picture impacts church life.



What do we do about this? Obviously there are many reasons for them, and one is simple lack of money. If you don't make much, and life costs lots, you won't be able to avoid becoming one of those scary stats. The goal in general is to get to where you make more, control costs, and "come out ahead." "Ahead" being getting out there with savings and plans for your financial future, so your income is ahead of your expenses.



For years many clergy in counseling with newly married couples or families in a variety of fiscal challenges would recommend "the envelopes." It was a simply system of committing together in a household to taking the paycheck when it came in, cashing it, and sorting the dollars into envelopes for "tithing/church giving," "retirement savings," "emergency fund," "rent," "food," "clothing," "entertainment," and so on. If you ran out of bills in an envelope, you didn't spend in that category until the next pay period or month.



Many young couples reported that "the envelopes" helped them get into good habits of controlling spending and disciplining their financial practices. Few keep it up forever, but it's a great way to start out. The problem, of course, is that our economy is pushing all of us in many ways to frictionless spending. There's nary a paper dollar involved in most purchases, between credit and debit cards, tapping your phone or scanning bar codes. We order items through apps and on a browser, and the envelopes are as quaint as, well, writing a letter and putting it in an envelope.



Some financial services companies are offering apps that hearken back to "the envelopes," letting the user create categories of purchases online, and you tag each interaction like clicking through your email, sorting them into various virtual folders which you can place a limit on, so the bank app tells you that you are reaching the maximum for your "eating out" budget, for instance.



One way or another, though, the challenge for most of us is to become conscious and mindful of our spending. The commercial marketplace has a vested interest in keeping us unconscious and unmindful of how our earnings are flowing back away from us into their pockets. This is where the question of frictionless spending is a spiritual as well as an economic issue.



Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; the first three years of his marriage, he and his wife wrote down everything they spent and went over their lists at the end of each week. Tell him what has worked for you in not being a slave to your money idols at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.