Money...It's Not Just A Pink Floyd Song

For the past three months I have become more diligent with my finances. I have been keeping a spreadsheet of all my expenses and tracking how I spend my money. Also on Friday I had my yearly review at work and the small pay raise that comes with it. With both of these things happening, I think I am ready to do something that I have been wanting to do for a long time. Figure out how I can manage and spend my money justly. Not a small task by any means and fought with many difficult questions.

To start with I can think of two options; A graduated tithe or capping my income. A graduated tithe as I understand it has a base income with a 10% tithe and anything above that is tithed at a higher rate. Capping your income is just as it implies, you figure out what you need to live on and give away everything above that. I am not sure which one is better but I am leaning towards capping my income just because there is less math involved.

In order to make this process "just" I feel as though I have to base it on some facts. In researching I came up with a few disturbing things. The 2006 US poverty level for a single person is $10,400.00 a year. (Click) The 2006 US annual household income is $48,201.00. (Click) Now I realize that I live in a major US city (Boston) and that these two numbers would be higher for my area, but I can not understand how anyone could live on these incomes per year. If I am to manage my money justly I feel as though I should somehow acknowledge people in these situations.

Here come the hard questions:
1) As I look at my three months of expenses, I find that my highest expenses are: Savings, Rent, Tithe, & Food in that order. (All other expenses are under 10% of my monthly income) Fortunately I do not have any student loans, one of the unspoken benefits of dropping out of college. I feel as though I am living simply: I don't have cable, I share a car, I have started to buy clothes at thrift shops and I rent a modest apartment well under the median price. Given that information, I also make 25% more than the average American household, but I still feels like there is not enough. Clearly given the information I have collected about my life over the past three months this is not the case. Why is this?

2) Part of managing my money Justly is how I give it away and how much. Presently I give my tithe to an urban minority church that I have a connection with. But where do I go beyond that? How do I choose other organizations to give to? Do I given domestically Do it give internationally? Do I give to both, and in what percentage? Do I give to secular organizations?

3) As you man have picked up in my listing of monthly expenses, savings is the largest category. In fact it makes up about 22% of my income. This is certainly not the norm in America and not the norm for most of my life, only about the past 6 months. The reason for this is that I want to buy my first home. Even at the present high rate it will take me a couple of year to get a down payment together. Remember I live in Boston. (I also want to put about 20% down.) I am wondering if it is just for me to put so much money into savings. Should I cut back and give more of that money away?

In conclusion, there are a lot of questions I have been struggling with in the past few days. Any thoughts would be helpful. Also if you have any figured this out for yourself, please let me know how you handle it. I am planning on talking this through with a friend this week to help get some perspective.