Spend on What You Love, Including Your Neighbour

Picture a man: mid-thirties, two kids, good income, a colour-coded spreadsheet. Gives almost nothing. Not because he is stingy. Not because he hates the idea. He has just never quite gotten around to building it in. Every category has a number. Travel: on. Dining: on. Mortgage: on. Generosity: whenever there's something left, which is rarely.

He is not a bad man. He is a thoughtful man who has organized his spending around his preferences and called it intentionality.

That man is not hard to imagine.

There is a personal finance writer named Ramit Sethi (you may know him from I Will Teach You to Be Rich or his Netflix show) who has built a large following by arguing, correctly, that most budgeting advice is joyless, shame-based, and ultimately useless. The standard budget worksheet with its 47 categories and its implicit message that you should feel guilty about anything enjoyable does not change behaviour. It just makes people feel worse before they abandon it.

His alternative is what he calls "conscious spending." Figure out what you actually love, spend extravagantly on those things, and cut ruthlessly on everything else. Don't apologize for the $400 dinner if experiences are what make you come alive. Drive the used Civic without guilt if cars mean nothing to you.

I find this genuinely helpful. I'll say it again before I push back: it's genuinely helpful.

He also has a concept he calls "money dials": ten categories of spending that represent what people commonly value: eating out, travel, health and wellness, convenience, experiences, freedom, relationships, generosity, social status, self-improvement. Each one is a dial you can turn up or down based on your actual values. A man who loves to travel and hates maintaining a nice home should have a great travel budget and a simple apartment, not the reverse. Turn up what you love. Turn down what you don't. Stop spending by default and start spending by design.

That is a useful framework. And to be fair: generosity makes the list. It sits there at number eight, right between relationships and social status. Ramit is not an ungenerous man.

But here is where I want to push. The problem is not that generosity is absent. The problem is where it sits: as one preference among ten, dialled up or down the same way you'd dial up dining out or dial down social status. That framing assumes your personal values are the right starting point for deciding what you give. And for a secular personal finance writer, that is a reasonable assumption.

For a Christian man, it is the wrong one.

The Framework Does What It Claims, and Nothing More

Sethi's conscious spending model is doing a specific job: helping people stop spending by habit and start spending by intention. It names a real problem, that most people's spending bears no resemblance to what they actually value, and offers a real solution. If you say you care about your relationships but you spend $80 a month on a gym you never use and $12 on the one dinner out with your wife every two months, something is misaligned. The money dials concept gives you language for that.

That is genuinely good. I have recommended his book. I will probably recommend it again.

What the framework cannot do, and does not try to do, is answer the deeper question. Sethi's whole architecture is built on self-knowledge. What do you love? What do you value? What brings you alive? The framework assumes your preferences are the right starting point for your spending decisions, and that dialling them up based on your values is what good stewardship looks like.

For a secular personal finance writer, that is a reasonable assumption.

But the Christian tradition asks a different prior question: not "what do you love?" but "what are you for?"

Those questions lead to very different spending frameworks. And the difference shows up most clearly in how each one handles the generosity dial.

Why the Rich Farmer's Strategy Was Sound, and Still Got Him Called a Fool

In Luke 12, Jesus is asked to settle a dispute over an inheritance. He declines ("Who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?") then uses the moment to say something that cuts deeper than the money question: "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions."

Then he tells the parable of the rich farmer. The man had an exceptional harvest. His response was entirely reasonable by any modern standard: plan for abundance, maximize storage, secure the future. "Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry." Nothing about that strategy is obviously wrong. He was not a spendthrift. He was not reckless. He was doing exactly what Sethi's framework would produce for a man whose top money dials were freedom and security.

Jesus calls him a fool. Not because he was bad at managing money. Because he thought the abundance was his to configure.

That phrase, "his to configure," is what I keep coming back to. The conscious spending framework is, at its core, a configuration project. You have resources. You configure them to maximize what you love. The dials are yours to set.

You are not the owner. You are the manager.

That is not a frame that eliminates enjoyment. It doesn't require guilt about good coffee or a family vacation. It means your enjoyment is not the point. You hold resources in trust, on behalf of something larger than your own satisfaction.

Think about what that actually does to the spending decision. If the money is mine to configure, then the question is always: "Am I getting the maximum satisfaction out of this?" Every dollar is a vote for myself. But if I am a steward, the question becomes: "Am I deploying this well on behalf of someone else's purposes?" Those two questions are not the same. The second one is harder, and it produces a very different kind of person over time.

What It Looks Like to Start With Giving Instead of With Yourself

Here is where I want to be careful, because this can tip into exactly the kind of joyless moralism I just criticized.

I am not arguing that Christian men should have grim budgets. I own money dials. I have things I love spending on and things I don't care about, and I think it is wise to allocate accordingly. There is nothing wrong with a man who loves hospitality having a generous food budget, or a man who loves hiking allocating real money to gear. Specific preferences are not sinful. Stewardship does not mean asceticism.

What I am arguing is that generosity is not just another dial. Not a preference to dial up or down the same way you calibrate your travel budget or your dining-out habits. It is a prior commitment. A first allocation. A lens you look through before you look at the other dials at all.

There is a moment in 2 Corinthians 9 that I find more practically useful than almost any financial advice I've encountered. Paul writes: "Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." What strikes me is the sequence. Decided in your heart to give, before the collection plate comes around. Before the appeal is made. Before the need is presented. The decision is made in advance, from conviction, and it shapes what is available for everything else.

You don't run your preferences through your budget and give from whatever remains. You decide what you are called to give, first, from the heart, with joy, and then you run your preferences through what remains.

That inversion is what Sethi's framework does not have room for. Not because he's missing something obvious. Because his framework was not built for it.

The Dial I've Turned Up, and the One I Haven't Always

I have a confession. I have dials I've turned up, and I know exactly which ones they are.

I love having people over. Our table is probably our highest non-fixed expense, and I don't lose sleep over it. I think hospitality is part of what we are called to as a household, and I am glad to spend there. I also like good coffee more than is strictly necessary, and I have made my peace with that.

But I have also had seasons where I turned up the dials I love and the generosity category quietly stayed flat. Not a decision, exactly. Just inertia. Just the man in the spreadsheet with everything categorized and the generosity line reading "occasionally."

I know that man. I am not always different from him.

What I've come to believe, slowly, honestly, is that the generosity question is not one you answer last. You don't set all the other dials to where you want them and then see if there's anything left to give. You ask the generosity question first: "What is this household called to give?" That question has a real answer. Not an infinite answer. Not a guilt-driven answer. A decided-in-the-heart, cheerful answer that shapes the space the other dials are working in.

Proverbs 11:25 says: "A generous person will prosper; whoever refreshes others will be refreshed." That is not a prosperity gospel claim. It is a claim about the kind of person generosity produces over time: a person who holds resources loosely enough to actually enjoy them, because they are not depending on them to provide what only God can provide.

A man who has decided his giving first has a different relationship to the remaining dials. He enjoys his travel differently. He enjoys his table differently. He is not performing the life of someone who has everything configured correctly. He is actually free.

Your Neighbour Is Not an Optional Dial

The ten money dials on Sethi's list all share one feature: they are about what you experience. Travel: something you experience. Experiences: explicitly. Even relationships, framed his way, is about the meals and moments and memories you enjoy with people you love. Even generosity, framed his way, is a personal preference, one of your values, turned up or down based on how much it matters to you. The framework is built around your first-person experience of your life.

Your neighbour doesn't appear in it. Not as a person. Not as someone with a prior claim on what you have. He is simply outside the model's frame.

That absence is not a flaw in Sethi's thinking; it is a feature. His framework is explicitly about optimizing your experience of your own life. That's what it's for. But when I sit across from men who are trying to figure out what it means to handle money as a Christian, the conversation always eventually arrives at the person on the other side of the fence. The friend whose car broke down and who won't ask for help. The family in the congregation who is three months behind. The international student from church who is eating poorly because the exchange rate is brutal this year. These people are not abstract. They are just outside the frame of the money dials model.

I am not criticizing Sethi for this. He is a personal finance writer, not a theologian. He doesn't claim to be building a Christian framework, and I'm not expecting one from him.

But I am building one. And a Christian spending framework has to account for the fact that the people around you (your neighbour, your church, the man in financial crisis who won't ask anyone for help) are not optional considerations. They are people you exist for, at least in part. That is not a peripheral claim in Scripture. It is close to the centre.

1 Timothy 6:17-19 addresses wealthy people (and if you are reading this in Canada with a regular income, you are wealthy by most meaningful measures) with this: "Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share." Willing to share. Not reluctant to share when the ask is compelling enough. Willing. It is a posture, not a transaction.

A man with that posture is not choosing between his travel dial and his generosity dial. He has already settled the generosity question. Now he is deciding whether he wants a nicer car or a better vacation. Those are real decisions. But they happen downstream of something already decided.

One Question to Ask Before You Open the Other Dials

Here is what I recommend. Not as a rule. As an experiment.

Before you touch any of the other dials, before you think about whether you can afford the ski trip or whether you should upgrade the kitchen, sit down with your household budget and ask: "What are we called to give this year?"

Not "what can we afford to give." That question reliably produces the answer zero. The "called to give" question is different. It requires you to decide something in advance, from conviction, and then organize the rest of your spending around it.

If you have no giving practice at all, if that line on your budget is blank or "occasionally," start with ten percent of your take-home income. That is the tithe. It is a starting point, not a ceiling. The tithe calculator will show you what that looks like on your actual income. And in Canada, charitable donations to registered charities generate a real tax credit: the federal credit alone is 29% on amounts above $200, which means the net cost of giving is meaningfully lower than it looks on paper. If ten percent sounds impossible given your current situation, start with two. Make the decision. Write it in the budget. Make it the first line, not the last.

For most people, the church is the natural first home for this decision; it is the community you are embedded in, the one doing the long work of formation and care that money actually supports. But let the giving question come first, before the dial conversation starts. Everything else follows from that.

If you want to trace why generosity is not just a financial discipline but something that runs deeper (the question of where your heart is actually anchored), the /gospel page on this site is worth your time. Not as a detour from the money question. As the ground underneath it.

Then open your money dials. You still get to have them. The table, the travel, the used Corolla or the nicer one. Those preferences are real and worth honouring.

You just hold them differently. Because they are no longer the whole story.

The Man Who Gets There

I want to come back to the man I opened with. Spreadsheet, everything categorized, generosity at zero.

He is not a bad man. He is a thoughtful man who inherited a framework where spending is a configuration project, and he ran it well. He just hadn't asked the prior question.

I do not know if he will.

But I know what it looks like when a man does. He doesn't stop spending on what he loves. He doesn't trade the vacation for a hair shirt. He just stops treating his income as his to optimize and starts treating it as something held in trust: for his family, for his neighbour, for the kingdom.

The man who gets there still has money dials.

He just holds them in open hands.