Evolving Personal Finance » giving
Giving Should Exceed Saving?
My church put on a financial boot camp this past weekend, the content of which largely followed Dave Ramsey’s baby steps, along with additional Biblical support for a debt-free generous lifestyle and some fun mathematical examples of the power of compound interest. But one of the volunteers mentioned a principle that he and his wife live by: his savings rate does not exceed his giving rate. I admit that I was surprised to hear this come … Read entire article »
Filed under: giving, retirement, savings
Obligations on Your Side Hustle Money
Kyle has been volunteering with the production team at our church for about a year, mostly running the slides and handling the video-playing. One of the men who runs the sound board is taking a sabbatical and they are looking for someone to fill his weekends. Kyle has wanted to learn how to run a sound board for a while so this is a perfect opportunity. Plus, we found out that it is a paid … Read entire article »
Filed under: giving, retirement, side income, taxes, values
How Do You Decide What to Spend on a Wedding Gift?
Today we’re going to discuss a point of etiquette! This post was inspired by a recent invitation we received to our first black tie wedding of our peer group. Since we’ve been married, Kyle and I have worked out a standard amount of money to spend on a wedding gift. We choose gifts from the couple’s registries that total to about $70-80 so with tax and (sometimes) shipping it’s usually around $80-90. That range is purely … Read entire article »
Does the Source of Gift Money Matter in Spending?
This past weekend I was in Atlanta participating in a global health case competition. The top prize was $6,000 for a team of 6. My team didn’t win or even place (though I was very happy with our performance) but before the weekend I spent a little time thinking about how I would use the $1,000 if we did win. If I received a sum of money as a gift from a family member, for instance, … Read entire article »
Why Do We Make Rules If We’re Just Going to Break Them?
Kyle and I have a rule: We don’t watch important basketball games (i.e. any game involving our team, or the final rounds of the NCAA tournament) with people who don’t care about basketball (apathy is bad enough – rival fans would be inconceivable!). You can imagine the situation that inspired this rule! So I was surprised when Kyle told me yesterday that he is planning to watch our team’s big rivalry game this weekend with people … Read entire article »
Filed under: budgeting, choices, credit cards, debt, giving, retirement, values
Living a Step Behind
This week I’m thinking about a great illustration that our pastor used a few years ago in a sermon on putting others before ourselves. He was helping our church accept that if we chose to live by the Biblical principles of money management, we should expect to see obvious differences in our lifestyles in comparison with our peers at work. By tithing 10% of our income and giving generously above that, we would be one step … Read entire article »
Where Should We Give?
In March 2009, I pledged a certain amount of money to our church for an expansion campaign. It included an up-front donation and monthly installments over a three-year period. Next month is the last I’ll make that monthly installment and (after re-adjusting my tithe) we are going to have $58 a month freed up in our budget. Since we are accustomed to giving away that amount of money, we are not just going to completely keep … Read entire article »
Christmas 2011 Goals Recap
We did fairly well accomplishing our monetary goals for Christmas. Goal 1a: Cap spending at $10/recipient for extended family members. Result: While we didn’t succeed in capping each individual gift at $10, we did get the average under $10 – $9.65/recipient for Kyle’s extended family (about 15 recipients) and $5.30 for my extended family (one gift for a family). Goal 1b: Cap spending at $50/recipient for extended family members. Result: We succeeded in spending less than $50 per recipient … Read entire article »
Keeping Christmas in Perspective
Christmas 2010 was a financial disaster. It was our first Christmas as a married couple and we had major clashes over gift-giving philosophies that resulted in higher-than-usual spending for both of us. We also flew to CA – our largest single expense. When I tallied it all up in January I resolved that we wouldn’t let another year play out that way. I completely lost focus on “the reason for the season” and got caught … Read entire article »
Book Review and Application: All Your Worth
Last month I read All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi (affiliate link – thanks for using!). The authors have another very interesting book titled The Two-Income Trap that I have skimmed and am now more interested in reading in full. You may recognize Elizabeth Warren’s name because she was the deputy director of the new federal agency spearheading consumer finance protection until last summer. I really, really … Read entire article »
Filed under: books, budgeting, credit cards, giving, savings
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