Give It Up For MONEY HACKS That Help Churches & Churchgoers Alike! (Financial Stewardship Best Practices)

Join Zoe and Vance as they share their personal stories of getting hacked and dive into savvy financial tips for churches, from getting cash back on tithes to cutting down on processing fees, all while exploring how Overflow is changing the game in church financial management.

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Transcript

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So I think it'd be a fun idea to do a money hacks episode. Let's go. Everybody loves money hacks. Oh, life hacks in general, people love it. We love a good hack. Except if it's for your own credit card information that we don't like hacks. Nope. But thankfully, we care Dr. Sock two, type two, the only giving platform that we know of in our space that is SOC two type two compliant ongoing auditing across our security and compliance protocol to keep your data and your information safe. Which means we deeply care about, hey, that email you get from even big tech companies, they're like, oh, by the way, your info guy. I got two, two of those last week, you know, and one was from the government. I feel so helpless. Sometimes. Me too. It's just like, so what does that mean? Like? Am I going to lose all my money? Like, am I gonna lose my identity? My waiting? Yeah, it's just like, it's just literally FYI. There's like, no recourse. Like, do I sue you now? Like, what is a class action suit? I'm gonna get a check later. I don't know what this means. And the reward for this is like in now you get three free months of security on the back end. Protection. I'm like, What a gift. You shouldn't give him this maybe beforehand, not after you must know. And this is why I get an estrangement number. Now, I get so many spam calls and text messages, text messages. So annoying. I think it's because every time you have to pay for something. You have to put a phone number out there every time. But why? Because then it's on the package. Now all the ups FedEx and USPS drivers are getting numbers. People are selling Saida black market out there people agree. Anyways, it's not about security today. It's about money hacks. So security about savings. Great. We love alliteration here. Oh, you're a pastor, you live in this land? We have to do it. Yes. I'm talking to pastors. They love it. Exactly. And I want to talk about some ways in which people can save within the church context, whether you work at a church, or you just go to church, and I'm gonna come and hang out with one, it's gonna rile some people up. And I care us not. Because I think a life hack, let alone or money hack is to actually ties on a credit card that gives you a percentage cashback, get them because you can give more that way. And you know, who's paying for that cashback? That company who's giving you the money back? So I'm like, so basically, I'm also partnering with AmEx, Amex is also giving to my church. I wanted to give them that opportunity. Wait, so you get cashback through Amex? I forget which card it is. But yeah, were you talking about like you tithe on your Amex or your credit card or whatever for like the trouble points? No, I'm saying getting getting cashback not for points getting just straight up. Yeah, that's I took that profit off the tithe. Wow. No, I'm not profiting. We give more that way. Well, you give the cash back. Yes. Wow. Yes. That's, that's how I should articulate it. Yeah. Wait, so you are giving like, more than 10%? Yeah. So basically, we're making Amex MasterCard and Visa go fund with you. Yes. I wrote. You. Yes. Okay. Fire is giving with you. Oh my gosh. Wow, new thing I give with you. Be like a new flex on Instagram. Like so. I give with a mix. Yeah. They, they sponsored this type today. But I think it's a it's a fun way to that's, that's um, that's okay. Okay, then I mean, I mean, that's, that's it's only okay. I was excited about decent. That's decent. You got some nerves. So you're like increasing your giving by, you know, some basis points. Golf Club, golf club. Thank you. Standing ovation would be double your giving by corporate matching. If you work for a fortune 500 company that has a corporate gift matching program, like an apple or a Google I'm talking about Silicon Valley companies but if you're in the Midwest, if you're in the south, you would know your local fortune 500 company Coca Cola Whatever that might be, they will match your giving up to a certain amount. I know Apple just down the street, they match up to$10,000 $10,000. Oh, and so you know, that was cute. Give with a mix. Yeah, it makes sense for you back to my game. Let me give with you or you can get your employer to double your giving double your money. I heard that there's another company that does that to overflow. We help facilitate it. Just lowbrow. help maximize giving we're unlocking you also matching more ways to save? Oh, our company? Yes, we do. I know. Oh, by the way, here it was brand new. More than that. We do more than that. Yes. So first of all, we believe in the time so we can't go anywhere. We are not willing to go ourselves. So we tithe off of our revenue, people, none of our profit because we're a startup and we don't make no money. We don't make no profit profit yet. We will be profitable one day. Amen. But we are growing. We're in reinvesting into growth. But off the top off the revenue. We are giving back to essentially the local church. That's our primary customer. Yeah, but basically 10% And you know, as cool as a portion of that, we allow our employees our flow fair, we divvy it up and they get to give to the charitable organizations that they want to direct it towards. Which is pretty cool. We write letters to these organizations. These organizations are so surprised. They're giving platforms also giving to them. Yeah. Which is super cool. But we also yes, you're right. We do. We do match your giving that also comes out of our we also give with you Sheesh, yeah, look at that. Now imagine if we did that matching, but then also used cashback credit cards on that. It's everybody's ballgame at that point. Yeah, sorry. I wasn't trying to diminish your No, it sounds like you were but yeah, that'll be the last tip you hear from me, you can take the rest of the episode. No, but money hacks. You know, a lot of people don't realize that there are massive tax incentives for giving. Now most people know it's like, yeah, when you give to a 501 C three, you get a charitable tax deduction. But people don't understand the impact of giving things outside of cash, like stock and crypto. So let's quickly I know we talked about this often, but not everyone's heard it. Talk about the tax incentives for giving noncash to a nonprofit? Well, let's talk about that. But let's just talk about it in general, because one of the most powerful itemized deduction possibilities you have if you give over a certain threshold, don't quote me on this, it's I think over 12,000, if you're single, maybe over 18,000, if you're married filing jointly, again, I might have those numbers off. But the point is that if you get over a certain threshold per year, you can start itemizing your deduction. And essentially, the ducting off of your income tax rate, essentially, it's, it's, it's one of the most powerful things that you can itemize deductions for is charitable giving. And so if you're a tither, you're already going to be close to that threshold or exceeding that threshold by large measure in saving a ton on taxes if you live in California, like me, or the other offensive state, New York. Yeah. And basically, they just take all of my paycheck every single time. Really, that tax rate can be looked at as a subsidy for my giving. Because ultimately, I'm gonna get a lot of that back. Because I am also giving back to my community, my church, other charitable organizations. And so it's super cool. I mean, that is kind of a blessing and a benefit we have in America as we got credit for that. Yeah. And so yes, I'm going to stay in California, we have nice beaches, we have nice towns, we have beautiful weather, it's in NorCal really mild unless Jolin Zhou come in. It's really cold and rainy, only when they come in. But that's the big advantage for giving overall, there's an additional advantage if you give non cash assets. And because when you give of your capital gains, specifically your appreciated gains when you give up that it is completely protected from any taxes. Because when you transfer those capital gains to a church or charitable organization, and they liquidate it instead of you, because they're a tax exempt organization, they keep all of the gains. Oh, it's a win win. Except for Uncle Sam. I like that because most people want to keep all the gains when it comes to working out. But there's more than one ways to keep all your gains. There was one that was a mom joke and you're gonna be a mom soon. Oh, why is this the Joker's podcast? So, just everybody knows. Okay, it's like cirrhosis me for this. It's not a roast. It's an encouraged. Yeah, I guess you're just trying to make it. Roast. I don't know what we are given a podcast at some point we're gonna do like a big reveal. That's gonna be fun. Oh, it's the day comes and when the day comes, we will but that day is not just gonna tune in just for that. Is this the episode? Yeah, what's happening Jared is gonna tune in is this the episode? Like that was how I announced it. I was like, Yeah, I need you to listen to this. He's like, why am I listening to? That's right. It's for pastors, you're telling me you recorded this two months ago? And you're just telling me now? Oh my gosh, that's so funny. But you've also learned a lot about money hacks. Being a pastor, what are some other ones that you can think of? I know there's a housing allowance thing. Can you tell us about that and how people can maximize certain provisions that have yeah, there's what's called a clergy housing allowance. You know, the, I think the history behind this, again, don't quote me on this. But to my understanding the way it's worded in the IRS, the way it's worded in the the tax forms that you have to fill out to qualify for this. So that you can be compliant, is they use words like parsonage. And so my assumption is that this was created, so that there could be a tax free way for ministers and clergy to have housing. You know, you do see that there are mega churches out there that are well financed and well funded. Yeah, but there are over 300,000 churches in America, most are not overly financed and overly funded. Yeah. And so these advantages that the government has provided, kind of like a subsidy really helps the average minister be able to afford things like housing. Okay, if you have a minister, that is counseling, shepherding, helping people in the community, you don't want them to struggle for a house, you don't want them to struggle, yeah, for finding a home and having a place to sleep and host and meet with people. And so those are there are these advantages. So it is called the clergy housing allowance, there is this worksheet that you need to fill out and fall away on your records in case you get audited. Because it allows you to fill out pretty much not just housing, but things that go into kind of the day to day expenses. So there's things like furniture, there's things like utilities, there's, you know, things that would be the bills related to housing, too, you can put on this worksheet. And then basically, you take your salary minus whatever you calculate on that worksheet. And the difference of that is the thing that gets taxed. Well, a lot of times, that allows pastors to stay in lower tax brackets, that allows pastors and clergy to be able to pursue housing and housing related expenses, without needing to be taxed on that as well. And it's in addition to also having to spend on that. So it is good from the standpoint of you think about it, especially in like places like California, New York. Yeah. You're getting a bump of you know, I don't know, 10 20%. On your overall compensation. Yeah, if you didn't have that. And so that allows the church to not have to pay crazy large salaries and expend a lot of money to staffing, when pastors and clergy can specifically take advantage of this. So it just makes the allocation of funds a lot more efficient and optimized. Thanks to the government. Really? Yeah. That's so crazy. I've never heard of that before. That's a big money hack. What else you got? Money hacks? You know, I think that when it comes to I mean, where do we want to go do want to go for pastors for churches? What do you think the felt need is? Let's go one more pastors, and then we'll go to churches. Yeah. So I think money hacks for pastors, and I don't like to frame it as hacks, because all of this is just trying to manage stewardship, right? Yeah. But there are certain things as a pastor that you're probably primarily using for the ministry. Right. And so for example, let's say, you know, you're literally on your phone all day doing pastoral calls, like that maybe you shouldn't consider either the church covering some of that expense. Or at the very least, if you're using it for work, you can use it as a write off, or a tax deduction, you can obviously apply this principle to anything else that you're primarily using. For the ministry. There are things like car and home office expenses, that was a big thing in the pandemic, where a lot of pastors and ministers are setting up offices in their homes, they're renting services from their homes, and there's a lot of paperwork that you need to fill out to make it proper. Like you have to understand the square footage and break down. Oh, wow, specifically that the household that's allotted for Office is and you need to make sure you keep receipts if you're going to deduct things like mileage, if you're driving to visit people and things like that. Because again, if you're audited, all these things will be checked. Yeah. But if you can be on top of those things, you can be clever. You can for the things you're already doing for the ministry anyways, use it as a tax advantage as well. This is not really a hack. It's just stewardship. Yes, it's just being clever. This is being smart, isn't even working the system, it's falling in line with this system, it's understanding the system, and make sure it works for you. Yeah. And on the topic of stewardship, because we're so passionate about this, I think this is the time to tell them how we are helping churches with their stewardship, which is honestly, another money hack. Well, the biggest hack of all is to check in on your merchant processing fees, right? This is super important that you understand this, that you are literally paying 2.9% 3.5% If there's a platform fee on your giving platform right now, upwards of 5%. Just imagine like, if all time you know what comes to your church is $100 million, do you really want $5 million to just go poof, into merchant processing. That's, that's not a good look. And that's not a good use of resources. And so you want to make sure that you're doing everything that you can to minimize merchant processing fees, we literally do a free cost analysis, if you just give us your payment processing statements. And we can help guide you on how to get that even a lot of people don't know how to really retrieve that type of data and that information, because these are the things is trying to hide from you. Right, they don't want you to know all the money, you're giving them 10s of 1000s, hundreds of 1000s millions of dollars over time they are going to be giving to merchant processing fees, we can help you extract that data, do an analysis for you, and give you real ways to minimize merchant processing fees. And it's not just a win we've seen minimized they're like, alright, you can save us a couple bucks. Well, not really. It's a little bit more than a couple bucks, because tell them what we just found out about that one church in Virginia. Yeah, just want you to in Virginia over the course of three years and just merchant processing fees, not including the subscription cost we're gonna save for them on their giving platform right now. We're gonna say them in just merchant processing fees.$150,000 $150,000. Yeah, I don't know, Virginia. I've never been there. But I would assume that's at least a couple staff members. Oh, my gosh, that's, that's massive. These are not like little, you know, acorns. This is an oak tree that we're saving you. Thank you, Joe. He gave me that one. That's why I was Pat. But no, it really is a big deal. And we can get you the lowest fee. Right. And the industry. Yeah, that's pretty guaranteed. No, no, it's literally guaranteed. I'm not just blowing smoke because we can underwrite specific rates for your church. Because of the full stack financial technology solution that we built. It's the first of its kind in its industry. And literally, we can guarantee the lowest. And so if you would like to take advantage of that Lincoln bio, I'm just kidding. It's not Lincoln bio. It's up podcast is the link in the description. But it's also overflow.co is how you can show notes. I've always loved to say that because I for the longest time didn't even know where the show notes were. I thought people were lying. But you didn't know to scroll up. Nobody thought because the whole like Apple podcast app thing was kind of confusing for the show notes where I get it now. Okay, guys, says the Silicon Valley co founder Sheesh. You're gonna live with that mistake. You just admitting to everyone you don't know how to use your iPhone. No, I'm more relatable now. That's right. Thank you for that vulnerability. Thanks for sharing that. Okay, well, I love this episode on money hacks, which is actually just stewardship, which we know you all care about. So we'll see you next time. Thanks so much for listening to the give it up podcast if you want to receive even more insights on church innovation, culture and giving now you can sign up for free to be an overflow insider where you'll receive exclusive content discounts direct access to Vance Roush to get your questions answered, and also invite only access to our monthly fundraising leadership forums, head to overflow.co backslash insider, or just click the link in our bio to sign up for free today. In order to get this podcast in the ears of even more church leaders. Could you please subscribe and leave a review for the show? This tells the podcast players what people are enjoying and want to hear more of and we are adamant about providing maximum value to even more church leaders. Thanks so much. We'll see you next time.