Last week we focused upon the basic question anyone needs to ask about retirement. “What income will I need when I cannot, or will not, be involved in full time work?” Everyone will come to a point in time when the skills and abilities diminish to a point others may do our job better. No one escapes the aging process, and some will experience this earlier and […]
A rule-of-thumb that many have used to plan for retirement is that an individual or family will need 70% of their pre-retirement income to sustain the quality of life in their retirement years. That was the conclusion of The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College as they sought a proper income replacement amount.1 Barry S. Warner, CEO of Informed Family Financial […]
Over the recent past, I have had the opportunity to have many conversations with a cross section of people about their individual financial situations. That is not unexpected when you are serving as the CEO/Administrator of a Pension Plan, served for more than a decade in the financial services industry, and in ministry. One of the primary questions asked is, “Am I (Will I be) in a […]
The relationship between Social Security and those serving in ministry has been a difficult and confusing one. Should ministers opt out of Social Security or not? Until 1951, those serving in nonprofit organizations were not allowed to participate in the government sponsored program.
In that year things changed, and ministers were given the option of entering the Social Security system. Unfortunately, […]
On Saturday August 12, the daily news cycle was consumed by the events in Charlottesville, Virginia. As the clash between white supremacists and counter protestors intensified, a normally peaceful city became the center of world media reports. It remains there as of this writing.
Exchanges between people of faith have become testy at best. Followers of Christ are judging one another’s faithfulness on a) whether their condemnation of […]
Both Benjamin Franklin and Sir Winston Churchill have been credited with the oft repeated proverb, “He who fails to plan is planning to fail.”1 Approximately 2000 years ago, Jesus spoke of the wisdom of thinking clearly about the future. He said no one would attempt to build a tower without a solid estimate of the cost and no king would go […]
Last week, we began by looking at a 2015 survey that analyzed the personal financial situations of more than 4,000 pastors across the USA. Grey Matter Research & Consulting concluded that an alarming number of pastoral families suffer financial stress.1 More recently, GuideStone Financial Resources released a report detailing four mistakes ministry families commonly make that sabotage their financial well being.2
Whether someone labels mistakes as sabotage or […]
In 2015, a survey was commissioned to study the personal and congregational financial situations of more than 4,000 pastors across the USA. The results were, in a word, alarming. Ninety-two percent identified a lack of retirement savings as a major personal concern. Thirty percent reported having absolutely no personal savings, either emergency or retirement. Seventy-six percent knew others who had left the ministry […]
The defined benefit pension plan was once the gold standard of retirement benefits. It was offered by the best employers, sought by virtually every employee, and the center of many difficult contract negotiations. “There once was a time when…you could expect to be rewarded for your loyalty and hard work with a gold watch and a steady stream of checks […]
Harkening back to the days of childhood (some 5 decades plus ago), there was a common theme among the families of our neighborhood. Our neighborhood was eclectic, including textile mill laborers, small business owners, school teachers and principals, salesmen in local stores, as well as managers and owners of textile mills. Parents ranged from high school dropouts to graduates of Duke University.
However, there was a common vision […]