I never really knew my maternal grandmother Clara. She was deep in the fog of early onset Alzheimer’s by the time I came along, although I was given Claire as a middle name in honor of her. My mother, who would have been 95 this month, told certain stories about her mom, and one lit my imagination as a child and has remained with me. My mother’s family lived in a very small town in eastern [Read More …]
Living Simply in a Cohousing Community: An interview with Yvette Schock and Bob Francis
Bob Francis, a sociology professor at Whitworth University, and Yvette Schock, a Lutheran pastor and chaplain at Riverview Retirement Community, have a wide-ranging experience of shared simple living. They each lived in intentional communities as single people, and they have been thoughtful about how they think about consumerism and share experiences with other people in their lives. In 2019, the [Read More …]
A Jubilee Fund replaces credit card debt with community trust — and frees everyone in the process
The Portland-based Jubilee Fund raised $100,000 to eliminate credit card debt for eight neighbors. The individuals who had their debts paid off then became donors, making payments to reparations efforts for five years with 0% interest. What would it look like to build equity and trust by freeing our neighbors from debt? How could we organize a community so that everyone could live with a [Read More …]
Spending our money: It’s a work-in-progress for us
Most people believe that having enough money is a prerequisite for living a good and comfortable life. For most of us, we need money for food, a home (or apartment), meeting our medical needs, buying clothes, obtaining an education for ourselves and our children, and having transportation to get to our jobs. Acquiring even more money opens the door to even more – perhaps a larger and more [Read More …]
Figuring out a new, faith-driven financial path
Trying to align our money choices with our deepest values was confusing, humbling, and complicated. But we weren’t (and aren’t) alone. A few years ago my husband Zach and I began having conversations about “faith and money.” We entered the conversations with some trepidation, as if we were entering uncharted territory. Simplicity and responsibility The conversations [Read More …]
From anxiety to grace: How my thinking about money has changed
I have never matched most people’s image of someone enslaved to money. I have never thrown ethics to the wind to get or keep a high-paying position; I have never been interested in a high-paying position at all. I have never run up huge credit card bills which I could not pay off. Yet my heart has been in bondage to the idol of money. I grew up an only child in a home with an income that was [Read More …]
Honoring the past, envisioning the future: Faith and Money Network celebrates 40 years
As we celebrate our 40th anniversary at Faith and Money Network, we’re taking a look back at our legacy, revisiting the programs and events we’ve introduced over the decades, and outlining the possibilities that lie ahead for our small but mighty organization. Don McClanen founded the organization as the Ministry of Money after holding his first unofficial workshop in 1976. Don found himself [Read More …]
Jesus and the Roman Coin
I think I was a teenager when I first came across the story of Jesus’ clever back-and-forth with the religious authorities of his time. The story is found in Matthew 22:15-22, and the line familiar to most is in verse 21: “Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” At the time, and in recent memory, I [Read More …]
What practicing Sabbath Economics looks like for my family
The Kingdom of God is a beautiful place — kind of like my backyard in the Upper Eno Watershed in North Carolina: lush, green, a riot of color where birds are singing happy songs and splashing in the bird bath. In this place, every living creature has enough. No one is poor or in need. There is abundance, not scarcity. This is a pipe dream, you might say, but this is the world God provides for us, [Read More …]
Investing, Giving Locally, and Becoming Big Budget Nerds: How One D.C. Couple is Figuring Out Their Finances, Together
Danny Mortensen and Liz Schmitt are a thirty-something couple residing in Washington, D.C., where they attend Capitol Hill United Methodist Church. Schmitt grew up in upstate New York and has lived in D.C. since 2009. She’s a self-proclaimed budget nerd who is working on investing locally. Outside of her day job in environmental policy, she has been getting back into teaching piano and enjoys good [Read More …]