In the spring of 2004, I was in my second semester of MDiv. studies in seminary, and before class one day, I overheard some nearby classmates discussing with each other whether or not someone in ministry ever truly retires. If you’re either already in ministry or are currently training to be a minister, I would imagine you’re aware of this debate.
It’s not my point to get into the details of that debate here, but as you might expect, my classmates expressed their differences of opinion, each offering what he thought was sound rationale for his position. I listened, and at an appropriate lull in the conversation after each had argued his side, I decided to join in with a couple of questions to take the conversation a slightly different direction.
“So let me ask you a couple of questions,” I said to the classmate in favor of retirement. “Since you do think retirement from full-time ministry at some point is appropriate, what does a good retirement plan look like? Have you already started saving for retirement?”
If you’ve read the “About” page on this blog, you’ll likely recall my background and interest in financial matters that I took with me into seminary, including how I found few within the seminary community who wanted to discuss personal finance and investing. Therefore, you also probably won’t be shocked at what happened next.
My classmate just kind of stared at me for a moment in what I interpreted as disbelief. Then he replied, dead serious: “I don’t have any savings, and I probably won’t ever be able to save anything. I guess my retirement plan is that God will take care of me.”
Mere seconds later, our professor walked into the classroom, and it was time for class to begin.
“God will take care of me”: I thought about those words some after class that day, and I’ve thought about them a lot ever since, if I’m being honest. My unexpressed response to those words then is exactly the same as my expressed response now:
“God will take care of me” is not a retirement plan.
The Problem of Not Preparing for Retirement
“God will take care of me” is not a retirement plan, friends, yet I fear that thinking that it is one is an implicit principle to which many seminary students, ministers, and denominational employees actually adhere. Some may expressly adhere to it, consciously making decisions with it in mind. For others, adherence to it may be more subconsciously driven.
I have no way of knowing if my classmate had thought of his circumstances in exactly those terms or actually ever said those words aloud before. But I presented him with some direct questions, and after a brief pause, out the words came.
I also don’t know what my classmate’s financial circumstances were: how much debt he had, what his annual household income was, etc. Perhaps he was so far underwater financially that he thought he would never find any way to swim up out of it. I know there are some extremely difficult financial circumstances out there, especially within the context of seminary.
Still, not knowing the particulars of my classmate’s life and circumstances, I do know this: “God will take care of me” is not a retirement plan no matter what your circumstances are. Let’s talk about why that type of thinking is so dangerous.
To begin, let’s take a look at where the average American stands in retirement preparedness. According to the Federal Reserve’s “Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2019” (published in May 2020), only 37% of non-retired adults think that their retirement saving is on track.
What about how much Americans currently have saved for retirement? According to the Federal Reserve’s triennial “Survey of Consumer Finances,” in 2016 (the data for 2019 will be released later this year), the median retirement account balance was $60,000, meaning that half of American adults have less than $60,000 in their retirement accounts, and half have more than $60,000.
I showed in the first post of this blog that even for a person previously living on $42,500 per year–and receiving a monthly Social Security benefit–a retirement account balance of $315,000 at age 65 would support him or her only until age 79 (assuming that the balance remained in cash and was never invested).
A retirement account balance of $315,000 very likely wouldn’t cut it for a 65-year-old American to maintain his or her previous lifestyle in retirement. And the median retirement account balance across all ages is $60,000?
If you think those numbers mean that many Americans have a big problem on their hands, you’re exactly right. But that’s just everyday Americans. What about ministers, specifically?
In a 2015 study commissioned by the National Association of Evangelicals, senior pastors were surveyed on a number of different areas, including their finances. According to the survey, 58% of senior pastors say they have $49,000 or less saved for retirement. 21% have nothing saved for retirement.
When looking at age, a fuller picture comes into view. The survey found that the median retirement savings of senior pastors under age 45 is $10,000. For ages 45 to 59, the median retirement savings of senior pastors is $40,000.
While these statistics pertain only to senior pastors, I think it’s safe to extrapolate them to ministers in general. And if we assume that a senior pastor is the highest paid position in the church (a reasonable assumption in most cases), then we should probably extrapolate downward for ministers more broadly, i.e., most ministers more broadly will have retirement savings of less than what we saw for senior pastors above.
Taking all of this in its totality, we see that many ministers, like many Americans, are ill-prepared for retirement. Regrettably, they’re not even close, to be frank.
Whether or not they adhere to “God will take care of me”-type thinking regarding their retirement, it’s clear that many ministers are not preparing for it well. But for those who are adhering to “God will take care of me”-type thinking, well . . . God’s going to have to do a lot for them in their retirement years, if their current retirement savings are any indication of their future financial state.
But on what basis should those who have that mentality think that God is going to somehow make up for that massive shortfall in retirement income?
Let me put it to you straight: There isn’t one.
What does this mean? It means that for anyone reading, you need to take what I’ve presented in this post thus far as an exhortation: Your future retirement security is largely in your hands, and you need to be building it wisely.
Is Financially Preparing for Retirement “Biblical”?
Receiving that exhortation brings us right back to where we began with my classmate: “I guess my retirement plan is that God will take care of me.” Rather than having that mentality, he should have already been preparing for his retirement through efforts of his own, understanding the wisdom of doing so.
Now, I want to be very careful here. I am not at all arguing or otherwise implying that God does not provide for his people. He does. I’ve both experienced it firsthand and have witnessed it in the lives of others, especially in my days as a seminary student. God does provide.
But God’s provision in our lives does not mean that we do nothing by way of providing income for ourselves and our families. I’ve yet to meet the Christian who simply sits at home and does nothing but log in to his bank account and refresh the page repeatedly, waiting for God to deposit money into his account supernaturally.
Nor have I met the Christian who goes about his daily life and experiences God regularly placing significant sums of cash in places he will find it. (Besides, if you go hunting antelope in the desert and happen upon a satchel full of cash, Anton Chigurh is probably going to come looking for it.)
Rather, God intends for us to work to support ourselves financially as a means through which he provides, and he expects us to exercise our God-given reason both in our work and in the financial decisions that result from being compensated for said work. Even if we had nothing but the law of God written on our hearts and our reason (no Scripture as God’s special revelation), we would still know that saving money for future use is a rational and right thing to do.
But thankfully that’s not all we have. We do have Scripture as God’s special revelation to us, and God does speak regarding money or its equivalent at multiple points in his Word. And naturally, he speaks regarding saving for times in which money and resources will be needed.
For example, in Genesis 41, after Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dreams, he proposes a plan of action to save Egypt from the coming famine that God has revealed will begin in seven years. In Joseph’s plan, for the immediate seven years in which the harvest would be plentiful, the Egyptian government should take a fifth of the produce and store it so that it would be available during the seven years of famine thereafter.
While we’re not talking about one’s retirement years in terms of them being famine-like, Joseph’s wisdom is applicable to us. Joseph, using his God-given reason, knew that since God had revealed the next seven years would be plentiful, those seven years would be the time to act: the time to save what would be needed in the seven years in which there would be little to nothing produced.
What are one’s retirement years if not years in which one is no longer producing income from working? Is that not little to no production (of income)? How will those years be funded? Simply put, they will be funded by money saved (and invested) during the years in which one was working.
Just as it was wise for Joseph to have the nation of Egypt save 20% of the produce during the years in which it was being produced for the years in which there would be nothing, it is wise for us to save (and invest) 15% (or more) of our gross annual income for the years in which we will not be working to produce income.
But, of course, that’s not the only place in the Scriptures to which we could turn.
Proverbs 6:6-8:
“Go to the ant, O sluggard;
consider her ways, and be wise.
Without having any chief,
officer, or ruler,
she prepares her bread in summer
and gathers her food in harvest.”
It is wise to save now what you know for certain you will need later.
Proverbs 13:22:
“A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children,
but the sinner’s wealth is laid up for the righteous.”
Specifically building and leaving an inheritance to one’s children (or even grandchildren) is evidence of a “good man.”
I’m not going to keep going further, but I’m pretty sure you get the idea. It is wise, it is good, it is right to plan ahead now for the years in which you know you will no longer be working. Scripture demonstrates it to be so. Your own God-given reason compels you to know it to be so.
Wisdom in Preparing for Retirement
And while the mistaken, harmful notions of “I’ll never decide to stop working,” “I’ll die at my desk,” “They’ll have to pull me off the pulpit,” and “I’ll work until the day I die because I have no other choice,” and the mentality they represent are worthy of their own post sometime, I’ll just say for now that there isn’t a single minister or future minister on the planet who should not be thinking about the following two realities:
- There will likely come a day when you no longer work full-time, whether brought about voluntarily or by circumstances completely outside your control.
- You must have a way to support yourself (and your spouse, if applicable) financially from that day until the day you die.
Simply hoping now, while working, while producing income, while having the ability to save (and hopefully invest) at least some of your income, that God will somehow take care of you financially during your non-working period later in life in which you will no longer be producing that level of income or anything close to it for the rest of your life?
That’s foolish. And you know it is.
I’m not trying to offend. But on this blog, I’m not going to sugarcoat things or lie to you, either.
“God will take care of me” is not a retirement plan.
Next post: “How Your Car Could Ruin Your Retirement”