You were going to replace your fence, but then you didn't. You were going to buy that new sofa, but then you didn't. You were going to move to a more expensive place, but then you didn't. Life doesn't always go as planned, does it? While altering your plans can be annoying, it is more significant for pastors when it comes to housing expenses. At the beginning of the year, you have to carefully estimate your yearly housing expenses in order to avoid paying taxes on them with the clergy housing allowance. You meticulously calculate your anticipated rent, utilities, home purchases, and big projects. And then life happens. Plans change. Things don't go as expected, and your eligible housing expenses are lower than the housing allowance that your church gave you. You should have been paying taxes on some of that money, and you didn’t. Now, what do you do? Excess Housing ...

Clergy taxes are incredibly unique in a complex tax system, so it can be hard to find a tax preparer who actually understands how they work. I’m always getting requests for referrals, so I turned to my readers for help. These are the tax preparers that my readers have recommended. I have not personally worked with any of them and have done no research or due diligence, but they each have at least one happy pastor client. Bret Willoughby, CPA Yahr Income Tax Vingroup Stewardship Services Foundation StartChurch Clergy Advantage Witmer Wood Tax Consultants Master Plan Tax Services Clergy Financial Resources Connie Buskhol, CPA  Keller & Owens Wooten CPA Leeanne Stilley, Senior Tax Specialist, Small Business Certified (H&R Block), leeannepstilley@gmail.com CrossTribe Advisory Clergy Tax Team Laurie Rust, CPA Solomon Tax (English & Korean speaking) Molly Shattuck, Centennial Tax Kyla Schnell, Marcoe Tax Agency For Missionaries: Wacek & Associates The only way to get on this list is to be referred by a client. If you are a tax preparer that wants ...

This is an excerpt from my book, The Pastor’s Wallet Complete Guide to the Clergy Housing Allowance:  The church is not required to report the housing allowance to the IRS. Unless a church includes it in an informational section on Form W-2, the IRS and the Social Security Administration (SSA) are only made aware of the housing allowance when a minister files Schedule SE to pay Social Security taxes under SECA.  Form W-2 You should review your Form W-2 that you receive every year to make sure your church prepared it correctly. Many church treasurers and bookkeepers have received absolutely zero training, they’re just doing it because they’re not good at saying no. So, make sure to double check. This is what it should look like: Box 1  Wages excluding housing allowance. This is what the church reports to the IRS as your income. The housing allowance is exempt from income and should therefore not ...

We’ve arrived at the final days of 2025. At the end of each year, I like to do a recap of the year’s most popular blogs. This is only for 2025. For all time views, the winner would be #8 below, third place would be #1 below, and second place would go to Secular Jobs For Pastors: 9 In-Demand Skills You Already Have. That’s just blog posts, though. This year’s top-viewed page, which is also the all-time top-viewed page, is our Pastor’s Wallet free online housing allowance calculator. Now, here are 2025’s most popular blog posts: 1. What Expenses Qualify For The Minister’s Housing Allowance? This year’s top post is actually almost 6 years old. It’s an excerpt from my book about the housing allowance that I published right when I published the book back in 2020. I guess I was right in assuming this would be one of the most popular ...

Because a pastor’s opportunity to opt out of Social Security is so unique, many Social Security employees don’t understand the law surrounding it. Unfortunately, this results in pastors being denied benefits that are rightfully theirs. This is what you can do to appeal the decision if it happens to you. View post

This is a guest post by Joe Floris. With over 20 years of experience in full-time church ministry, Joe currently serves as the teaching pastor at Community Alliance Church in Butler, PA. His passion for both personal and pastoral finances has grown alongside his calling to shepherd others in their financial journeys.    If you are reading this, it is likely you are a pastor.  Which means you probably you have been through the candidating process at a church.  You meet people.  Eat food.  Answer questions.  Eat food.  Ask questions.  Eat food.  Give a sermon.  Eat… well, you get it.  Eventually, the tricky topic of pay comes up.  That was where I found myself newly married, in my late-20’s, at the end of the interview process for a local church staff position. The church offered me the job, but my number crunching showed it would take some gymnastics to make the ...

Paul McWilliams is a pastor’s kid turned financial advisor specializing in helping pastors and churches make wise financial decisions that align with their mission.Many pastors spend the early years of ministry pouring everything into their calling—often at great personal sacrifice. They plant churches, lead with limited or no salary, and make do without retirement benefits because the church simply isn’t in a position to offer them. Fast-forward 20 or 30 years, and those same pastors are heading toward retirement with little saved and not much time left to catch up. Here’s the good news: your church may be able to help in a very meaningful way—without breaking any IRS rules—through something called a Non-Electing Church 403(b) plan. Why This Matters Churches have a unique opportunity to make tax-advantaged contributions directly into a pastor’s retirement account. This isn’t just theory—it’s built into IRS rules specifically for churches.Even better, these contributions: Are not subject to Social Security ...

On July 4, President Trump signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). It’s an 870-page piece of legislation that contains some things that are relevant to your life, many things that aren’t, and a lot of language that would go right over your head.I have not read the bill, nor do I intend to. As a financial planner, I know who I trust in my industry, and some of them are happy to read long legislation and parse it out for the rest of us. I thank God for those people, and this blog post would not have been possible without them.   This article will provide a summary of the elements of the OBBBA that are likely to be the most relevant to you. With each aspect of the bill, there are caveats, nuances, and many details that I am leaving out. My goal here is to give ...

A while back, I wrote about how to calculate how much life insurance you need. That kind of article usually makes stay-at-home parents tell their spouses, “Honey, you need more life insurance!” or maybe even just, “Honey, you need life insurance!” (After all, only about half of American adults even have life insurance in place.) But what about you? Do you have life insurance? Do you even need it? View post

Recently, I explained to you what financial planning is. Just like pastoring is a whole lot more than just preaching, financial planning is a whole lot more than just investments. If you haven’t read that article, I would recommend reading it here before continuing on.  I gave an overview of the different areas of financial planning in that article and now today we will do a deep dive and look at some examples of how that plays out for pastors and the strategies that we use that are unique to people in your position. Let’s start with the clergy housing allowance. That’s an easy one, right? Just maximize it and save on taxes? Not always. Let me show you how a financial planner approaches these things. Housing Allowance Sometimes maximizing your housing allowance can actually cost you money. Take, for example, the child tax credit. A portion of the child tax credit is ...