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.

Goodbye Coco You Will Be Missed

Last night my dog Coco shuffled off this mortal coil. I adopted her two years ago at the age of 9. She was a Chesapeake Bay Retriever.
She liked scratches behind the ear, long walks in the park, dog treats, and anything I was eating. Yes I actually put a diaper on my dog. When I adopted her she was incontinent. It took a while to get her medication right to stop it, and I took every measure I could to keep myself from cleaning pee off the floor.
Goodbye Coco you will be missed.

Apartment Farm Update

Well it has been a couple of weeks sense I planted my seeds, and I wated to give you an update.

This is lettuce. It's been the easiest and the quickest to grow, although it has the prime real estate in front of the sunniest window.

The one on the left I believe to be carrots, and by the process of elimination the one on the right would be the broccoli. It's kind of pathetic that I don't know that the plant form of the vegetables I eat are.

Lent-1 Brian-0

Well it's been 3 1/2 weeks sense the beginning of lent. I haven't been to good a keeping my lent promise. You may remember that I have been trying to keep off the Internet while at home.

The Internet is winning. I started out good, but then I would remember that I really had to e-mail that person and it can't wait. or I just have to get this peace of information. Next thing you know I'm on the Internet for 1/2 an hour.

Oh well, better luck next year.

What to do with your economic stimulus refund?

The other day I had a great discussion about what do to with my economic stimulus refund come May. (Click) The conversation resulted in a pledge to give away 1/2 of the money received to the poor in our neighborhoods. Check it out and let me know what you think. (Click)

Rich Christians in and Age of Hunger - Book Review

In recent years there has been a lot of talk about poverty from the Christian perspective. Ronald Sider's book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger has helped to shape that conversation. Sider takes the time to layout the facts, establishes a biblical foundation about poverty, and how it can be ended.

If you are easily bored by facts this might not be the book for you. Filled with dates, percentages about everything from calorie consumption data to Gross Domestic Product growth, it can make your head spin at times. But Sider does a good job at explaining the facts of poverty in terms that people can understand. On a side note the book is currently in it's 5th edition, so the facts are being updated every couple of years to stay current.

A shining example of Siders insight into the economics of poverty is his explanation the Gross Domestic Product. He points out that many negative things can actually help the GDP grow. A much better indicator of growth is the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). It takes into account factors like enviromental polution and longer work hours for the same pay. According to the GPI American life hasn't gotten much better sense the 1970's!

The only down side to the book is it's lack of answering the "What can I do now" question. Although Sider does provide an entire section to answer this question, and talks about the concept of a graduated tithe, I felt as though I would like more concrete steps. Sider talks more about what the Federal Government could do to end poverty than about how the individual can. Having thought about this issue for the past two year and being ready to take on more personal commitments I was a little disappointed.

Over all I highly recommend this book, it is a great way to get the facts on poverty and some biblical perspective too.

Little green phone

My friend told me about a new smart phone by Palm called the Centro. Its basically a cheaper alternative to the Treo. This sounds great to me. I have been wanting a smart phone for some time but I really didn't want to shell out $250.00 or more for something that I could very easily loose. (I say that but I haven't ever lost at cell phone)

On the other hand, I have a perfectly fine one year old Motorola Pebble. Its small and a great lime green color. I can sync it with my computer and it works for me. I like this phone, in fact I loved it up until two days ago.

So I have been seriously thinking about upgrading my perfectly good phone for something else then I get an e-mail from a friend with this.

The Story of Stuff.

Oh well I guess I can go a little while longer with my little green phone.