As the Administrative Pastor at our church, I am deeply involved in the church’s budgeting process which is going on right now. We just got estimates for our group health insurance costs for next year – 30% increase! As employee’s we pay 10% of the costs, plus we have a high deductible.
Then I have been seeing that my electric costs may go up as much as 30% beginning in January (our state is deregulating the costs of electricity). Ouch!
I also know as the Pastor of Administration that if I get a raise this year it will be minimal – and probably will not cover the increase in costs of these two items. So that means that inflation coupled with pretty stagnant wages will cause my own personal “stagflation”.
So in the next few months as the picture becomes clearer I will probably have to be adjusting budgets to make ends meet. This is where budgeting becomes difficult. What to cut.
On the bright side, our only debt is the mortgage (which we are paying extra on). I love my job. And I have a wonderful family. It doesn’t get much better than that! So we will tighten the belt a little bit and ride out this storm.
