Tag: practical help

  • Getting Started in Investing, part one

    money_stuff

    I’d like to let my youth ministry friends in on a dirty little secret. While pay has dramatically improved for youth workers in the past two decades the most consistent reason people leave youth ministry once they reach their mid 30s and above is mounting financial pressure. In other words, there are some glass ceilings on the personal income side of things that will eventually cause you to look for higher paying work in the church or not in the church if you don’t plan ahead. Plan ahead and you relieve the pressure bit by bit. Don’t plan ahead and that pressure builds and leads to a catastrophic failure.

    Here is a short list of those pressures:

    – Housing expenses skyrocket: That rental gets old, doesn’t it? Buying a house can be great when you land in the same place for 10 years or more. But buy and sell a house a couple of times when you change jobs and you’ll quickly see that’s a bad strategy for financial security.

    – Retirement savings becomes important: Most churches either don’t offer a retirement plan for their associate staff or it is extremely inadequate. Even if you are in a denomination that pays into a pension fund… getting ordained in order to get vested in that fund can be more costly than the pension you’d earn in the long run! (And with many mainline denominations tanking financially, you really need to wonder if that money will be there in 30 years.)

    – Kids get more expensive as time goes on: When you first have babies you think diapers and formula is a blow to your budget. Just wait! Eventually those kids will need braces, outgrow clothes every two weeks, want to go to camp, need a car of their own, and gulp… want to go to college.

    – Medical insurance won’t cover it all: Again, when you are young and/or first married this doesn’t seem important. But with premiums soaring churches are cutting back on benefits. So as you age into needing good insurance chances are your church is increasing co-pays and other out-of-pocket expenses.

    – Pressure to keep up with your peers: There’s only so long you want to live like college kids. Eventually, you are going to want grown up furniture, go on nice vacations, and have a little extra something here and there. I don’t mean that you’ll get more materialistic as time goes on… but you just get sick of scrounging.

    If you do nothing, eventually these pressures will leave you with no other option but to leave the ministry. You can do everything right in the 9-5 activity of working at your church. But if you don’t have a plan to address these mounting pressures, it will sneak up on you and the pressure will grow so intense that you may have no other option but to leave the job you love for a job that pays better. If the choice is lose your family or lose your ministry you will chose lose your ministry 100% of the time, right?

    My goal for this series is to encourage those in youth ministry– you don’t have to bail out!

    If you want to join along I will help you with a few basic strategies that will lessen these pressures. My hope is to help you stay in youth ministry longer. While things like soul care and youth ministry strategy are super important for staying in it for the long haul… I’m going to help you deal with the dirty little money secret that could eventually knock you out of ministry.

    Part two: Dealing with debt and savings

    Part three: COLA-  and I don’t mean Pepsi or Coke.

    Part four: 401ks, IRAs, 529 and other numbers that are important

    Part five: Outside income opportunities

  • Travel Day

    It’s after breakfast in Romeo and I’m wide awake here in San Diego. (4:00 am) The last 24 hours have been a blur as I commuted about 3000 miles to work yesterday. (Going home Friday) Besides the travel I did get some stuff done yesterday and I’m looking forward to getting more settled today.

    The first thing on my mind about yesterday is that people on early morning flights are boring. I’m not one who would like to talk for 4 hours to a stranger on a plane, but at the same time both flights I took yesterday morning were nearly silent. If it weren’t for the guy in 6C asking me about switching to Mac somewhere over Arizona I wouldn’t have said a word to anyone all morning. I’m all for keeping to ones self but lets all acknowledge one another as humans, OK?

    The second thing on my mind is that I have a really cool job ahead of me. Like any job my new role as “communitymeister” has a lot of things to do which are really important and will occupy my mind for more hours than I’ll admit. But there are two different aspects of my new job that have me jazzed.

    Over the last few Sunday’s numerous people at church have asked me, “So what is this new job all about?” I’ve always translated that to “I want to know if this new job is worth losing a pastor over at my church.” And people from the greater youth ministry community have been asking me to give a little more insight into my new role as well. (One friend even asked me, “Can I see your full job description?” Um, no.) So here they are… two aspects of my new job I totally dig.

    • I get to help youth workers from all over the place. It’s awesome that folks can write or call YS and get practical help and encouragement. And it’s fun to be that first connection these new volunteers and paid staffers have to the greater community of youth workers out there. I love listening to them and helping them with a couple of pointers from my experiences in the trenches… but I really, really love pointing them to places online where they can learn my most favoritestist word in all of church leadership… “Collaboration.” There’s nothing like the moment when the light bulb goes off, “You mean I’m not the only one who has a parent issue like this?”
    • I get to help tell my friends about Youth Specialties. Literally, I’ve had one day in the office and my mind is already racing with ways I can help connect this amazing staff of people with the greater community of youth workers.

    Just like at Romeo, it’s not going to be my habit to talk about work very often on my blog. Sure I will talk about things that are going on in my life or things that I’m excited about. But my purpose in blogging has never been to expose the inner workings of my job… because lets face it, that’s boring for all of us. It’s not like I’m one of those early 2000s bloggers who would rant on and on about the inner workings of their jobs. I’ve been blogging a long time. And I have rules to follow.

    My purpose in blogging has always been to expose the inner workings of my mind. And for those brave/stupid enough to want to know all about that I suggest you subscribe to my RSS feed (or email) and get ready to laugh a lot.