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Biblical Retirement, Charitable Giving, GIVMOAR Video, Investing, Retirement Income, Taxes

GIVMOAR – Giving Breaks The Power of Money

Jason Demland

Jason Demland

13 min read
GIVMOAR – Giving Breaks The Power of Money

Why I Beg My Clients to Give More, Not Less

GivMoar Episode 1 · Give More, Retire Well

I’m a financial planner and tax planner by trade – a CFP and an EA. But I’m first a Christian and see everything through a biblical worldview. My reformed faith isn’t silent about – as Francis Schaeffer put it – How Should We Then Live? GivMoar is a silly online name for a serious topic – a hermeneutic – a lens to look through when thinking about money – specifically as we deal with retirement because that’s when most of us really start to get serious about our finances. Ron Blue frequently says “giving breaks the power of money” and that’s a powerful statement. We see in scripture that generosity is good, that it’s evidence of submission to Christ and a great use of money, and we see that God is always concerned with our hearts when we give, rather than how much or in what proportion we give.

The Bible talks about money more than almost any other topic. Christians know that giving is important and even commanded. Lifeway Research found in 2017 that 83% of Protestant churchgoers still believe the OT principle of the tithe applies today – but separate research from Barna shows that only two in five practicing Christians (42%) give at least 10% of their income to their church – let alone give out of overflowing abundance.

Why is money so hard to work with? In this world after the fall, where the ground fights back, capital markets exist and there are evils abounding all over. The love of money is, after all, a root of all kinds of evils, and we are remarkably wealthy in this country at this time and it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. But work is still good, and putting our money to work is a way to engage in that co-creative work that God made us as His image bearers to do in the first place. So even though it’s hard, it’s still good to plan, prepare, and count the cost.

With all this in mind here’s why I’m doing this show. GivMoar is about retirement planning. It’s about giving. It’s about saving money on taxes. It’s about leaving money to your kids. It’s about making sure you don’t take unnecessary risks and making sure you’re confident in your plan and you won’t run out of money to do the things that are important to you. But it’s more than that. GivMoar is a way of looking at your money – it’s God’s money entrusted to you. Using it on yourself if necessary, but not the primary goal. GivMoar is about deploying the resources you’re stewarding in a way that glorifies God and enhances our enjoyment of this life and Him.

GivMoar is about finding our comfort in life, death, and taxes in Jesus Christ. I spend more time begging my clients to spend and give more, not less. Fear and inaction are causing you to pay more in taxes, give less to your church, and leave less to your heirs. So if you’ve got a money problem or money worry, the answer is probably GivMoar. I’m Jason Demland. Welcome to GivMoar.

The Meaning of Life, According to the Catechisms

What’s the meaning of life? Maybe that’s not a great question. In Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy the supercomputer named Deep Thought computes for seven and a half million years before giving the answer to “Life, the Universe, and Everything” as 42.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism is more precise when it asks:

Q: What is the chief end of man? A: Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

Now that is an answer. Now we’re getting somewhere, you’ll probably ask “How do we do that?” and that’s the great thing about catechisms – that’s what the rest of the questions and answers work through. You can go ahead and read them yourself – or find another show for that. But the short answer is you need to know you’re a sinner, know how you’re saved, and that you’re to live a life of thanksgiving because of it.

About eighty years before that answer the Germans started with a different question: “What is your only comfort in life and in death?” in the Heidelberg Catechism. The answer to that:

That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.

The catechism actually explicitly asks in its second question something along the lines of “What am I supposed to know so that I can live and die with this comfort?” and answers: Your guilt, God’s grace, and gratitude.

Record scratch. Hold on, Jason! Why are you talking about the meaning of life? That’s kind of deep, right? You’ve got a lot of nerve thinking you’ve got it figured out.

Well, that’s one of the great things about following Christ – we do have it figured out and we get to be pretty bold about it. We have these treasures in jars of clay – cracked pots – my old friend would often say. We know the meaning of life. This makes money worries and problems small affairs when compared to the vastness of Life & the Universe & Everything, but it doesn’t make them unimportant. Rather it puts them into their right place and gives us the liberty to work, and plan, and grow, and even fail.

Your Tax Return Is a Window Into Your Heart

How you use your money is a window into your heart. If your use of money is in line with your purpose, your meaning, the truth, then even if you lose everything you won’t fail. And if you do lose everything, you’ll know it’s for an actual tragic reason and not due to your failure to plan and work.

If you show me your tax return and your bank statements, I’ll tell you what you care the most about. If you’re around retirement age I can guess what a lot of those things may be. Is it your house? Is it travel? Is it your kids and grandkids? Is it your local church? Is it your health? Is it the federal government of the United States?

If you’re nearing retirement, you’re starting to look deeper into your finances than you probably ever have before – and if you’re already retired, you can probably relate (I’ve never retired myself). That may be why you’re here today. Suddenly the use of your money seems finite. It always has been, but now it’s real. That memento mori knowledge that you too will die is starting to seem like it just actually might happen and you need to make some plans. Is your investment allocation right and are you in the right kind of investments? Should you have saved more into Roth options before? Are your required minimum distributions going to be so large they put you into another tax bracket? Are you going to be able to continue your charitable giving? What are you going to do for healthcare? Should you do Roth conversions, start a Donor Advised Fund, fund a revocable trust, buy an annuity, take your pension lump sum, downsize your house, open Trump accounts or 529s for your grandkids? Should you use retirement guardrails, inflation adjustments, or a spending smile projection? Will you travel more or buy a vacation home or a boat or an RV? How much money should you leave to your kids? How should you leave money to your kids? Should you have long-term care insurance? Do you have living wills? What should you do about your life insurance? And on and on and on and on.

Those and hundreds of other questions will come up.

Personal Peace and Affluence Won’t Satisfy

My argument to you is that if you’re just after what Francis Schaeffer described as a life of personal peace and affluence – those questions can all be answered, but the answers won’t satisfy. You can always be optimizing your plan for more peace or more affluence depending on how much fear or greed you’re experiencing but you won’t ever be done being fearful or greedy. That’s a worldly outlook on financial planning and it often gets dressed up as values-based in our relativistic society. There are strategies optimized for dying with zero, traveling, and building multi-generational wealth. There are risk-reduction strategies, guaranteed income stream strategies, hiding your money from the medicaid spend-down boogey monster strategies.

There’s not really anything wrong with any of these strategies – as long as the heart is right. It’s hard for me to talk about financial planning with folks without touching on the edges of the great big question of “WHY?”

Why do you work? Why do you retire? Why do you spend? Why do you pay taxes? Why do you give?

There Are Only 5 Things You Can Do With Money

If the answer is some form of “to glorify God” then you’re probably on the right track and you’re probably using a GivMoar lens to look through – because there are only 5 things we can do with money: We can use it to LIVE, we can GIVE, we can GROW it for later, or we can OWE debt, or OWE taxes. That’s Ron Blue’s LIVE, GIVE, GROW, OWE framework. And I’ll talk more about that next time, but you can have a giving outlook on each of these uses (well…maybe not owing debt – we’ll get into that later too). Subscribe to the GivMoar YouTube channel or the newsletter so you don’t miss that topic.

In Retirement, Giving Is More Than a Budget Line Item

In retirement, it’s usually the LIVE category that gets the most attention. The questions abound: How can we use strategies to not outlive our money? How do we make our money last? What’s a safe withdrawal rate for us? Just this week I sat with a retiring couple when working through their plan that has a 90% probability of success. I told them something I keep finding myself saying – and I’ve been shocked at the amount of times I sit with folks and tell them “your plan is looking great. You can actually afford to give more and spend more and still be in a good spot.” I don’t think they fully believe me yet, and the fear of another Great Recession or Great Depression happening right when you finally decide to retire lurks within all of us. But the 80-year-old client I met with two months ago gets it. They’ll see too eventually.

Usually by the time retirement comes around our standards of living are pretty well set – you know about how much you need to be comfortable. But if retirement income planning for expenses and maintaining standards of living are the primary goal – giving just remains a budget line item. Maybe it remains at 10%. But retirement isn’t a “run out the clock” situation. It’s life too. That means you’re still working and resting on repeat – but it means doing it with more freedom than you may have had previously which means while you’re healthy you may have more capacity for growth and generosity than you’ve ever had before.

Thinking of GIVING as more than just a set percentage of money is life-changing. It’s definitely that; your local church needs money to pay your pastor and it’s good that we pay our ministers of the word and pay them well, but it’s more than just that. Large financial gifts are also a part of that. Gifts out of abundance and sacrificial gifts above your budget are a part of that. Your service is a huge part of that! If you’re 55-75 you’re overflowing with life experience and hard earned wisdom that you absolutely need to give – especially in the service of your local church. Having a GivMoar mindset may mean retiring because you’ve reached a financial finish line – but you don’t actually stop working. You can work in the service of something else – whether that’s volunteering or continuing to do the job you’re very good at and paid very well to do and using that money on something other than spending it or saving it.

The functional mechanisms that exist to make any of these decisions as efficient as possible are fun to work through, but none of them change your heart. Giving breaks the power of money and reminds you that God owns it all and you are free to work and rest and give. A Monte Carlo simulation won’t do that. An 8-year Roth conversion – capital gain harvesting – gift of appreciated securities – Donor Advised Fund strategy may save you a ton in taxes on giving you were going to do anyway – but it doesn’t give you rest. Giving does. So let’s start with that.

Your Assignment

Here’s your assignment – pull last year’s tax return and your giving records. Calculate what you actually gave as a percentage of your gross income. I’m not guilting you. Do it. Knowledge is power. Now take it as a percentage of your total assets. Percentage of income giving makes sense for the accumulation phase; it’s a different philosophy in retirement.

How does that make you feel? Pray about it.

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