How do you pay for a mission?

[All-American]

This is one of those questions that I really should know, but frankly, don't. My family paid for me to go on a mission, so I actually don't know the mechanics of how one actually finances their mission. Do you make a monthly payment to your home bishop in the missionary fund? How exactly does it work?

[Surfah]

This is one of those questions that I really should know, but frankly, don't. My family paid for me to go on a mission, so I actually don't know the mechanics of how one actually finances their mission. Do you make a monthly payment to your home bishop in the missionary fund? How exactly does it work?

It happens just like you said. With missionaries, there's a general fund, but then if specified will go towards that particular missionary.

[Jeff Lebowski]

You just make a donation each month to the missionary program along with your tithing, fast offering, etc. You don't need to designate the missionary. You are asked to contribute $400 per month. Nobody follows up on your donation.

[RobinFinderson]

This thread seems as good a place as any to offer advice on how I saved up for my own mission.

As an incentive, my parents offered to double anything I saved for my mission and college. So if I put away $100 for mission/college, my parents would match it. This gave me a great sense of personal investment in my college education and mission. I worked two jobs as a teenager. I worked a paper route for about three years. This required getting up at 4:00am every morning (I had to get up that early to get it done in time for seminary at 6:00am). The route took me about 1.5 hrs to deliver, every day of the year, including Christmas and Easter. Collecting money from my customers took about six hours, once a month (it took this long because I would have to go back, time and again, to find people at home). All of that effort earned me about $200 a month, of which I would pay $20 for tithing, I would keep $30, and I would save $150, which turned into $300 when my parents doubled it. I don't recall what the mission donation expectation was at the time, but I believe that $300 would have just about covered it.

I also received about $20/month allowance for mowing the lawn once a week. Again, $2 for tithing, $10 for my pocket, and $8 (turned into $16) for mission and college.

Later in high school I got a job working as a camera man for a local news station. This involved shooting the news, and when I was lucky, shooting an occasional minor league baseball game (fun!). This job paid about $10/hr, and I worked the job maybe two or three nights a week, for about 3hrs (there was an early news and a 10:00 news, and I would do my homework in between). So that comes to about $300/month. Again, $30 for tithing, $200 for mission and college (turned into $400 with help from parents), and about $70 for my pocket.

This was the economics of my teenage years, and in this way I managed to pay for my entire mission and most of my college (I had to work as a math TA at BYU to pay for the rest). I left BYU with no debt, a degree, a great wife, a beautiful child, and a great work ethic.

On my mission I was SHOCKED to find out that most missionaries didn't pay for any part of their own missions. On the mission, I lived frugally, and saved about a third of my monthly stipend. When nosy ZL's and AP's caught wind of my secret horde, I was encouraged to turn it all back over to the mission president, since these were 'sacred funds' that had been consecrated for missionary service. Screw that, I thought. This was extra money from my paper route and days at KTGF news! By the end of my mission I had saved enough money to pay for a trip to Europe for three months. I bought the plane ticket (and a copy of Lets Go Europe) while still in the field. I was home for one month before I left again to backpack through Europe. The mission prepared me well for three months of sleeping on trains and in flea-ridden hostel beds. I can still remember the look on one AP's face when he found out that I had no intention of giving back a single penny of my hard-earned scratch. Awesome!

So the long and short of it: I feel that doubling the money was a great way to get me to save for college/mission, and it gave me a real sense of investment. I would recommend this kind of approach over paying for mission/college outright.

Cheers!

rf

[cougjunkie]

Is the $400 a month tax deductible like tithing?

[ERCougar]

Is the $400 a month tax deductible like tithing?

I'm not an accountant, but I've heard that part of the reason they've switched to non-specific donations is that it becomes tax-deductible.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Is the $400 a month tax deductible like tithing?

Yes.

[Fiyero]

I saved up and wrote a single check beforehand. My bishop said to just do that rather than worry about sending 24 monthly checks. I don't know how it was distributed afterwards; I didn't worry about it.

[PaloAltoCougar]

Is the $400 a month tax deductible like tithing?

It's deductible, but many members manage to commit tax fraud nonetheless by also claiming their missionary child as a dependent during the mission. Since the Church is paying for the missionary's living expenses, the parents aren't entitled to the dependent claim. But I knew a few who not only deducted the $400/mo. contribution they were making to the missionary fund, but also claiming a dependent as well. Wrong.

[CardiacCoug]

It's deductible, but many members manage to commit tax fraud nonetheless by also claiming their missionary child as a dependent during the mission. Since the Church is paying for the missionary's living expenses, the parents aren't entitled to the dependent claim. But I knew a few who not only deducted the $400/mo. contribution they were making to the missionary fund, but also claiming a dependent as well. Wrong.

Interesting. I didn't realize you had to choose between those deductions but that makes sense.

[Mormon Red Death]

It's deductible, but many members manage to commit tax fraud nonetheless by also claiming their missionary child as a dependent during the mission. Since the Church is paying for the missionary's living expenses, the parents aren't entitled to the dependent claim. But I knew a few who not only deducted the $400/mo. contribution they were making to the missionary fund, but also claiming a dependent as well. Wrong.

ignorance is bliss

[Shaka]

My parents paid for it. The only stipulation for them doing so was that I graduate from seminary. I only learned of this stipulation my senior year of high school when my parents found out I'd been skipping out on seminary every day to go skiing. Fortunately they found out towards the end of ski season. My parents layed down the law and told me they wouldn't pay for the mission if I didn't graduate. I had to complete work from a bunch of independent study booklets to make up for the missed classes. Frankly I enjoyed the booklets more than I enjoyed actual seminary.

The reason I could leave early was that I had seminary after lunch and varsity sports after seminary. I wasn't playing basketball that year due to an injury so no one kept track of whether I was there or not. I had a buddy with the same schedule and we would hit Solitude every day at lunch. Even better is that my buddy and I were both on the newspaper staff and that class met before lunch. Oftentimes we could get out of that class and get up the mountain even earlier.

Yes, I'm a Utah Mormon.

[SteelBlue]

When nosy ZL's and AP's caught wind of my secret horde, I was encouraged to turn it all back over to the mission president, since these were 'sacred funds' that had been consecrated for missionary service. Screw that, I thought. This was extra money from my paper route and days at KTGF news! By the end of my mission I had saved enough money to pay for a trip to Europe for three months. I bought the plane ticket (and a copy of Lets Go Europe) while still in the field. I was home for one month before I left again to backpack through Europe. The mission prepared me well for three months of sleeping on trains and in flea-ridden hostel beds. I can still remember the look on one AP's face when he found out that I had no intention of giving back a single penny of my hard-earned scratch. Awesome!

I had saved a bit of money by the end of my mission as well. Equalization had just begun about halfway through my service and they were still learning the ropes of meting out the funds. I had about $500 at the end of my mission and I offered it to my MP during my exit interview. He said, "no way, you keep it. You saved it."

[Donuthole]

I, too, am a Utah Mormon, but my story is more akin to that of Robin's than Shaka's. Aside from my 2-years of full-time missionary service and my first year of law school, I've had a job of some sort or another since I was 12. It started with a paper route, which was always accompanied by a construction gopher job over the summers. As soon as I was 16, I took a job at TCBY Treats peddling Hot Fudge Brownie Sundaes and Cappucino Chillers for $4.25 an hour (minimum wage at the time). To this day I still remember the proper weights to which most of the items were supposed to be made (Hot Fudge Brownie Sundae was 10.5 oz, and the Cap. Chiller was 12 oz.). I spent many a high school late-night weekend there, and never once did I spit in or otherwise "adapt" anyone's order (at least not intentionally. There was the one time that I dropped a lady's butter pecan sundae on the floor (it was a very clean spot, I swear) and still sold it to her, as I had just dipped the last of the butter pecan for her. I even gave her a discount without her knowing.). After closing at 11:00 p.m. it usually took us another 45 minutes to an hour to get the place cleaned up and ready for the next day.

As a cursed summer baby, I still had a full year after high school graduation before departing on my mission. (Little did I know that year would be one of the funnest years of my life. But that's a thread for another day.) I was shocked, shocked I say, when, after my first week of classes at Dixie College, I learned that "full time student" did not mean 6 hours a day in class. And with the curriculum at Dixie seeming more like 13th grade than College, I found it pretty easy to attend class and work two part time jobs--one in retail at Big 5 Sporting Goods and another at SkyWest Airlines in the copy/mailroom.

My saving structure from each of these jobs was 10% tithing, 45% mission savings, 45% spending money.

By the time my mission call arrived, I had saved nearly $12,000 for my mission. I was pretty excited about the prospect of having $3500 left over after my 24-month service was over (Missions were $375 a month back then). I was even more excited when, just a couple days before I left for the MTC, my dad told me that they didn't plan on using my money to pay for my mission, meaning I would have enough money to pay for most of college when I got home.

Unfortunately, about 6 months before my mission was over, my dad lost his job. With 3 kids still at home and very little emergency savings, my parents had no choice but to use my savings. My mother refused to use it without my permission, and since they couldn't really wait for a 2-month turn around in the pouch (one month to get to me, and another for my response to get back to them), they called my mission president and explained that they needed to ask me about it. Of course it wasn't even a question for me--I felt grateful that I got an extra phone conversation with Mom and Dad--and my dad found another job about 3 months later. By then, there was only about $2000 left in the account, which I instructed them to use to bring my younger brother and come pick me up from Guatemala. We spent 10 days traversing the country, staying in hostels and cheap motels, eating from steet vendors, and renting Brazilian-made automibiles like the Dihatsu Terios and the Chevy Joy.

[Shaka]

Dhole that's awesome. It was great that you had that money that helped your family out at a critical time. I'll bet you've reaped rewards ever since.

I too had paper routes (D-News baby) from the time I was ten until about fourteen. When I was sixteen I was required to work during the summer and pay for stuff like gas, clothes, entertainment, and dates. I worked during the school year but only if it didn't conflict with whatever sport I was playing at the time. Fortunately my mom bought me a lot of clothes for my birthday and Christmas because my idea of paying for my own clothing was wearing sweats and a t-shirt everywhere.

I count myself fortunate that my parents paid for the mission so I could blow my money on teenage whims. Yes, I'm guilty of taking my parents generosity for granted but I don't think that's abnormal for a teenage kid in Utah.