Tithing vs Offering

[whichwaytogo47]

My wife and I are in debt and thus struggle to tithe. We’re both 34. Our rent is about 30% of our income and our debt is about 24% of our income. We have about $1,800/month leftover.

 

[1Lord1Faith]

Just give what you can. It doesn’t have to be money. BTW, TMI.

 

[whichwaytogo47]

Thanks so much!

 

[TheLittleLady]

Start small.

Can you put $5 in the collection each week? What about $1? Support the Church in all three ways

At our parish, if every household increased their giving by $1 each week our parish would not be in the red! $5 per family per week, we could do amazing things.

 

[whichwaytogo47]

Definitely could do the $5. Thanks so much! I just have to go to the bank and withdraw the money. I set aside $20 every 2 weeks for lunch (it’s cheap to make your own lunch or get a pizza slice).

 

[angel12]

My wife and I are in debt and thus struggle to tithe. We’re both 34. Our rent is about 30% of our income and our debt is about 24% of our income. We have about $1,800/month leftover.

We’re not required to tithe. Do what you can.

 

[HeDa]

There are times when money is tight for a family or person. Give more when you have the possibility.

You can also help to support your parish/diocese in doing some work in or around the church building like repairing broken items, laundry, cleaning windows, moving furniture, cleaning the basement of stuff that should have been thrown away, archive, gardening etc.

 

[pensmama87]

One suggestion I have read, if you are interested in making an effort to give more, is to take a look at your budget and see what percentage you give now (when my husband and I did this the first time, we were at under 1% of our take home pay, because we just had very little disposable income.) When we made our budget for the next year, we increased it to 1% (our financial situation had improved some, too.) The next year, we went up to 2%. Our goal is to eventually give away at least 10% - probably 5% to our parish, and 5% elsewhere. But we started much, much smaller, and gave away time when we could, instead.

(Edited to add: And even though we now give more, I still think it is our time that makes the most difference!)

 

[Roseeurekacross]

catholics dont tithe.

 

[Seagull]

Cut up your credit cards -
Pay off your debts -
You gotta give something…
You don’t go out to restaurants and all that -

Give back to the Lord though -
And be a cheerful giverv
The Lord understands…
but make a promise that you’ll give what you can.

 

[whichwaytogo47]

We’re not required to tithe. Do what you can.

I think you’re supposed to give especially when money / time is tight. If you give of what is tight instead of out of abundance, it’s far more of a spiritual discipline. You’re supposed to give out of your first-fruits. So for someone who’s wealthy, giving their time where time is tight can actually be more valuable than gifts of money.

Of course, getting the budget together would help us give more. It would help if our gifts at the top of the budget would reflect further down the budget in the spending category. We do spend a lot on travel (my family), entertainment (her friends), and fuel probably in that order meaning fuel is where we spend the most money. The average spent on fuel is probably about $275 / month and car repairs are probably another $200/month because they get driven a lot. Entertainment, we spend about $400/month (if we could cut that down to $300/mo or $200/mo, there would be more to give) since we and our friends don’t do the best of coordinating potlucks. The travel to family & friends is about $150/month. Than our debt payments are $900 to $1100 a month and our rent is $1,200. Cell phone is $100, internet is $100, no cable TV, and electricity is about $95.

The only thing we’ve done well is my wife has a 48% pension, I have a 30-33% pension. She contributes 5% of pay towards her retirement and I contribute 5% but my employer matches 5%. I started at age 26.