God and Money, by John Cortines and Gregory Baumer

John Cortines and Gregory Baumer met as students in the Harvard Business School.  A class project about giving grew into a longer paper which grew into God and Money: How We Discovered True Riches at Harvard Business School.  The bottom line of this book on giving is this: decide what you need to live on, and give away everything above that. 

Cortines and Baumer do a nice job of outlining their reasoning, starting with the biblical account.  They argue that Christians aren't commanded to tithe, but to them, giving goes way beyond a tithe.  In practical terms, they propose that Christians determine what they need to live on, and set a savings goal for retirement.  With whatever they earn beyond that, they can give to their church (I credit them for pointing out the primacy of giving to the church) and other Christian causes.  They even propose that givers band together and collectively give, multiplying the impact of their gifts.

As one who has worked in the non-profit world, dependent on the generosity of committed givers, I appreciate their project.  As an antidote to a materialistic, keep-up-with-the Joneses American mentality, their perspective is welcome.  The book is full of stories of families who have deliberately limited or downgraded their lifestyles so that they can give more.  The authors point out that Christians control a vast amount of wealth, and if more Christians limited their spending on themselves and gave more, tremendous good could be done.

Despite the great message, as I read I continually felt that the book was not for me, or even for most Christians.  Cortines and Baumer began this project while at Harvard Business School.  For them and their classmates, throwing around six and seven figure income numbers is no big deal.  For most Americans, including most Christians, five figures is more realistic.  Six figures would be great.  They propose that a good target for a family to live on would be about $100-150 thousand per year, and a retirement goal would be from $1 to $4 million. 

Now, for a Harvard MBA, $100,000 is probably a modest starting salary.  To live on that might seem like poverty wages.  But to most of us, that sounds pretty lofty.  The average household income in the US in 2017 was about $61K.  If you make more than $100K, you are comfortably in the top 10%.  As I read about these guys making sacrifices to buy a smaller house or drive an older car so they would spend only $150K a year, I found myself longing to earn more--so I could give it all away, of course!

The authors write that everyone tends to compare themselves to people above them on the income scale.  Guilty!  They make the occasional nod to those of us below them--the widow's mite and all--but for the most part, they look to the super rich for their examples and inspiration.  The overall effect, for those of us not in the top single digit percentages of wage earners, is, frankly, exclusion and inadequacy.  If you are a very high income family, check out God and Money.  We 90-95%ers will need to look elsewhere.