Last week I wrote about not expecting pastors to be your primary source of information about generosity.
This week it’s about financial planners. Don’t assume that because they know the difference between a charitable remainder trust and a charitable gift annuity that they know anything at all about actual generosity.
The truth is that most financial planners are trained at, well, planning your finances. Most have a financial incentive in mind — namely fees for managing your money.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. I use them regularly. In this increasingly complex world we all need their expertise.
But … financial planners, accountants, money managers and investment bankers should not be your first choice for understanding generosity.
There are exceptions. I have a friend and sometimes colleague who works for the National Christian Foundation and volunteers for Generous Giving. He’s a financial planner who has thought deeply about what generosity looks like, and he is a gifted listener. He helps people set up donor advised funds and other such platforms so they can maximize their generosity, PLUS he helps them think through what generosity really means to them. There are others like him, thank God.
On the flip side, I once had an accountant nearly refuse to help me with a gift of a financial instrument to a charity because “it would put your financial stability at risk.” Those are big scary words, until you realize that our gift amounted to less than 1% of our net worth. I ignored him and am glad I did. He knew about financial planning, not about generosity, and giving something this large away seemed irresponsible to him.
Plus I have lost count of the number of people who come into wealth (their company has a successful IPO, they inherit an estate, or whatever) and then ask a financial planner to set up a charitable trust of some kind. The financial planner, who relies on spreadsheets, almost always has them put a predetermined amount into the charitable trust.
And then that’s that, all their giving comes from that trust for the rest of their lives. It sounds simple and neat, but it is far away from the Godly generosity where pure joy is actually found. See, I believe that God wants us to wrestle with our decisions. And if we make one decision, one time, about how much we are going to give away … then we’re done wrestling. Which likely means we are done growing spiritually, at least in the area of generosity.
If pastors can give you a broad overview of generosity, then financial planners can give you the framework for HOW to give. But they aren’t very good at exploring why we should give.