We Should be Praising The Church for Having $100 Billion in Savings Not Criticizing It!

When the news broke that the Church had over $100 billion in savings, the reactions varied wildly. Many people were upset or left wondering, “why does the Church have $100 billion in savings?” The answer is actually extremely simple. The Church practices what it preaches. Namely, It spends less than it brings in. It saves for a rainy day. It does not bury its talent, but rather, seeks to increase it. It does not throw money at problems but uses the money to enable people to fix their problems. Let me dive deeper into each of these to help clarify why the Church should be praised for having $100 Billion in savings.

1st. The Church spends less than it brings in.

For the Church, debt is considered bondage. The Doctrine and Covenants is full of instances where the Lord repeatedly told the Saints to pay off their debts and not to go into debt. D&C 19:35, “Pay the debt, and release thyself from bondage.” D&C 64:27, “It is forbidden to get in debt to thine enemies.” D&C 104:78, “Pay all your debts.” and D&C 115:13, “Do not get in debt to build the house of the Lord.” But more than just scriptures, the modern prophets and apostles have repeatedly told us to avoid debt. President Heber J. Grant said, “From my earliest recollections, from the days of Brigham Young until now, I have listened to men standing in the pulpit … urging the people not to run into debt; and I believe that the great majority of all our troubles today is caused through the failure to carry out that counsel.” Gordon B. Hinckley counseled, “I urge you to be modest in your expenditures; discipline yourselves in your purchases to avoid debt to the extent possible. Pay off debt as quickly as you can, and free yourselves from bondage.”

The Church was not always debt-free, there was extensive debt held by the Church from the exodus period. Lorenzo Snow, the fifth prophet of this dispensation, was prompted to reemphasize tithing as the Lord’s prescribed law of finance to enable to Church to become free from the bondage of debt. Many members did not pay their tithing at the time or were lax due to hard living conditions among other reasons. To them President Snow declared, “The time has now come for every Latter-day Saint, who calculates to be prepared for the future and to hold his feet strong upon a proper foundation, to do the will of the Lord and to pay his tithing in full.” A few years later in 1907, Joseph F. Smith declared, “Today the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints owes not a dollar that it cannot pay at once. At last we are in a position that we can pay as we go. We do not have to borrow any more, and we won’t have to if the Latter-day Saints continue to live their religion and observe this law of tithing.”

“Interest never sleeps nor sickens nor dies. … Once in debt, interest is your companion every minute of the day and night; you cannot shun it or slip away from it; you cannot dismiss it; it yields neither to entreaties, demands, or orders; and whenever you get in its way or cross its course or fail to meet its demands, it crushes you”
J. Reuben Clark (in Conference Report, Apr. 1938, p. 103).

2nd. The Church saves for a rainy day.

If principle #1 is followed and debt is paid off and then avoided, then eventually there will be a surplus. The Church has been clear that we should save for a rainy day. Joseph B. Wirthlin taught, “The wise understand the importance of saving today for a rainy day tomorrow. They have adequate insurance that will provide for them in case of illness or death. Where possible, they store a year’s supply of food, water, and other basic necessities of life… Brothers and sisters, the preparations you make today may one day be to you as the stored food was to the Egyptians and to Joseph’s father’s family.” Robert D. Hales taught, “To provide providently, we must practice the principles of provident living: joyfully living within our means, being content with what we have, avoiding excessive debt, and diligently saving and preparing for rainy-day emergencies.” Ezra Taft Benson said, “Do not leave yourself or your family unprotected against financial storms. … Build up savings.”

It is clear that the Lord expects us to save and prepare for a rainy day. The Church does the same thing. Could you imagine if the Church did not have savings and every whim of the market affected tithing and the ability for the Church to operate? “Oh no, tithing has dropped. We need to close the temples.” Such a thought is so far-fetched it is unimaginable. The Church has saved surplus tithing because it practices what it preaches in preparing for a rainy day.

“Live within your means. Get out of debt. Keep out of debt. Lay by for a rainy day which has always come and will come again. Practice and increase your habits of thrift, industry, economy, and frugality”
J. Reuben Clark (in Conference Report, Oct. 1937, p. 107).

3rd, The Church does not bury its talent but rather seeks to increase it.

For many people, the fact the Church has savings is logical (they understand that if you spend less than you make you will have savings), but they struggle when they learn that the Church has invested those savings and has a stock portfolio that is allegedly valued at over $100 billion USD. They struggle that the Church is putting tithing into stocks. For this one, we actually start with the New Testament. In the parable of the talents, the Lord tells of a master who gave three servants different amounts of money and left for a long time. It details how the first two servants used the money, aka invested it, and it increased. The third servant did not invest the money but rather buried it in the earth; there was no increase. The first two servants were praised and rewarded when the master returned, and the third was blasted and stripped of what he was given for being an unwise servant.

Understanding the parable of the talents, nothing else would make sense for the Church to do other than actively trying to increase the value of their savings. It is very important to also note they are doing it wisely. They are seeking to follow acceptable accounting practices that they encourage the saints to follow too. Namely, a diversified portfolio. It would be unwise to put all the church savings into a single stock, so they do not. They hold multiple stocks across multiple industries to reduce the risks associated with stocks and to gain an increase. They are not putting all their money into speculative stocks to get rich quickly. President Oaks has taught, “the same spirit of gambling, the same reckless wagering on the chance turn of events, characterizes some forms of investments. The same evils that attend a throw of the dice for money can attend the person who casually puts his money on a highly speculative stock or commodity investment.” The Church investing their savings in a well-diversified portfolio is not only scripturally what they should do, it just makes plain Dave-Ramsey-style sense! Once you are out of debt and have your emergency funds in place, start to invest for the future!

“A well-managed family does not pay interest—it earns it. The definition I received from a wise boss at one time in my early business career was ‘Thems that understands interest receives it, thems that don’t pays it.’”
L. Tom Perry

4th. The Church does not throw money at problems, but rather uses the money to enable people to fix their problems.

There are a lot of people who get upset every time the Church announces a new temple, saying that money could be better spent helping the poor. These same people are outraged at the savings the Church has and says, “Why don’t you spend that $100 billion in savings on helping people?” Comments like these are criticism masked as charity. The Church could literally announce they are spending $90 billion of their savings on a charity project and these people would still complain say why only $90 bIllion?? It will never be enough. But criticizing the Church and using charity as a cover is nothing new. In the New Testament, Judas criticized Jesus when He was anointed with oil saying that the oil could’ve been sold and the money spent helping the poor. Often the root of these comments is personal apostasy and coveting the tithing they voluntarily paid.

Comments criticizing the Church for not spending more on welfare also highlight that many Saints do not understand how welfare works within the gospel plan. They view welfare as a problem to throw money at to fix. This view has led many Saints to buy into Satan’s gospel counterfeits: namely socialist welfare programs funded through forced taxation with the promise that everyone will be taken care of (sound familiar?). Many governments of the world that run Socialist Welfare programs throw ever-increasing money at problems (money that they use force to take from people via taxation, or that they go into debt for) and they spend this money with very little results. Within the Lord’s program of Welfare, the goal is not to simply throw money at a problem as the Lord could provide if all we needed was money. The goal is not even to ‘get results’ like many government programs. Welfare within the Church is about blessing both the giver and the receiver. Marion G. Romney explained it like this:

“The Lord doesn’t really need us to take care of the poor. He could take care of them without our help if it were his purpose to do so… It would be a simple thing for the Lord to reveal to President [Nelson] where the deposits of oil and precious ores are. We could then hire someone to dig them out and we could float in wealth—and we would float in wealth right down to Hades. No, the Lord doesn’t really need us to take care of the poor, but we need this experience; for it is only through our learning how to take care of each other that we develop within us the Christlike love and disposition necessary to qualify us to return to his presence.“

Marion G. Romney, Living Welfare Principles, Oct 1981

The Lord’s welfare program uses money to enable the Church to throw resources and people at the problem. When they do make donations in cash, it is with carefully selected partners to ensure that they use the money for fiscally sensible projects. One example of the Church’s long-term welfare strategy is when they used welfare funds to hire local tsunami victims in Southeast Asia. What did they hire these workers to do? They hired them to help rebuild schools, churches, contribute to clean water projects, and repair fishing boats. The fishing boats were to ensure the economic recovery of the region as fishermen without boats can’t fish. To read more about the Church’s post-tsunami welfare activities click here.

Church welfare is aimed at self-reliance. The goal of all their help is to help you start progressing spiritually and temporally towards independence. That is why the Church focused on rebuilding and repairing the fishing infrastructure after the 2004 Tsunami. The Church has repeatedly focused on helping people to help themselves. President Spencer W. Kimball learned this the hard way when he was a Stake President and needed aid to help with flooding in Arizona; Here is his story as related by Dieter F. Uchtdorf:

In 1941 the Gila River overflowed and flooded the Duncan Valley in Arizona. A young stake president by the name of Spencer W. Kimball met with his counselors, assessed the damage, and sent a telegram to Salt Lake City asking for a large sum of money.

Instead of sending money, President Heber J. Grant sent three men: Henry D. Moyle, Marion G. Romney, and Harold B. Lee. They visited with President Kimball and taught him an important lesson: “This isn’t a program of ‘give me,’” they said. “This is a program of ‘self-help.’”

Many years later, President Kimball said: “It would have been an easy thing, I think, for the Brethren to have sent us [the money,] and it wouldn’t have been too hard to sit in my office and distribute it; but what a lot of good came to us as we had hundreds of [our own] go to Duncan and build fences and haul the hay and level the ground and do all the things that needed doing. That is self-help.”

By following the Lord’s way, the members of President Kimball’s stake not only had their immediate needs met, but they also developed self-reliance, alleviated suffering, and grew in love and unity as they served each other.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf, Providing in the Lord’s Way, Oct 2011.