Dear Fellow Wealth Worriers:

I have recently concluded that there is a certain portion of my brain assigned to worrying about money. It pays little attention to facts or figures; it just keeps doodling along without any self-conscious reference to past experiences or current solvency. Its sole job is hype-up anxiety, regardless of whether or not anxiety is necessary. I call this part of my cranium my fear-of-bring-broke brain (FBBB).

I used to think my FBBB was rooted in some kind of primal survival instinct. Small rural or urban neighborhood congregations don’t pay magnificently well, and for some reason there’s where I found myself called for many years. When periodically it was necessary to dump out the change jar to afford groceries or other household necessities, my FBBB refused to be grateful for the precious sufficiency of quarters, instead forcing my focus on the plethora of pennies. This FBBB piece of grey matter would insist I spend hours reviewing bills and credit limits, calculating the best path to breaking even or at least not sliding further backwards. My FBBB convinced me that when my income improved, he would sit back in comfortable silence. He lied.

For the past few years, corresponding to the generosity of FPCLG members, our household income has been comfortably sufficient. There remain some obligations from the lean days, but they’re shrinking, and even without the federal parent-loan bailout there is a reasonable path to a debt-free future. But my FBBB still keeps churning. Where in the past I would spend hours on Excel, writing macros calculating our distance to disaster, my FBBB now insists I spend exactly the same amount of time obsessing over retirement savings and long-term portfolio balance. No amount of reason shuts him up; history is irrelevant to his narrative. Back when income was lower, there were many occasions when a well-timed wedding honorarium or speaker’s fee just happened to cover another bill. (Yes, funerals helped too, but it’s creepy to confess gratitude for the timing of another’s demise.) The fact that we are well-fed, clothed, housed and affording two cars and plenteous dog treats is of little relevance to my FBBB. As I said, FBBB demands persistent attention.

What amazes me is how FBBB can be silenced by the promise of personal pleasure, but howls against the mere suggestion of generosity. There’s no internal debate over spending an extra $20 on a finer cut of meat, but considering giving that same $20 to someone who has no food sets off a whole array of FBBB alarms! It screams “Irresponsible!” when seeing the panhandler, calculating all the ways my hard-earned cash will be misspent on indulgences, but FBBB doesn’t think twice about how my car sales rep may mis-spend the commission. In both cases, it’s my money, but FBBB goes dark when I’m getting something I want.

Fortunately, I married someone with a significantly more balanced brain chemistry. When we spoke the other evening about increasing our pledge to FPCLG, she responded with a non-anxious, “Of course.” In fact, when I tossed her an amount which sent my FBBB into overdrive, she suggested we could do better than that. For her, history is a predictor of future performance. Without anxiety, she pointed out how we’ve always been blessed, and our current circumstances warranted greater generosity. As in all good marriages, she balances my pathologies.

I’m working on silencing my FBBB, perhaps putting my Excel skills to better use, or shutting down the computer and using the time spent doom-scrolling our finances to look around at just how good our life happens to be, using the anxious FBBB time to count our blessings and give glory to God. It is, you might say, a way of seeing.

Grateful for balanced minds, I remain,

With Love,
Jonathan Krogh
Your Pastor