Congratulations, you made it to 2024! Whether you triumphantly marched into the new year or skidded in on your knees like me, I hope 2024 turns out to be your best year yet.
As I have in most previous years, today I’m offering up a list of the Pastor’s Wallet’s 10 most popular articles in 2023, based on views. If you haven’t had a chance to read these yet, you may want to.
The top-performing blog post of the year was the question that gets to the bottom line of one of the biggest financial benefits for pastors. Updated early in 2023, this post offers the basics of what you can actually claim as a clergy housing allowance.
The natural follow-up to the first article’s question, this one goes into more detail on what can actually be claimed as housing allowance and what has been definitely ruled out by the IRS. It’s also an excerpt from my book, The Pastor’s Wallet Complete Guide to the Clergy Housing Allowance.
The housing allowance seems to be the most popular topic around here, doesn’t it? This article answers a more complicated question that actually originated with a reader, that of IRS reporting. If you haven’t had the time to read it yet, I would highly recommend it for your own peace of mind.
Here’s another housing allowance topic that is important for you to know, ESPECIALLY if you’re getting close to retirement. There are a lot of undefined gray areas when it comes to claiming the housing allowance in retirement, but this excerpt from my book lays out the most important parts that we know for sure.
Finally, we’ve gotten away from the housing allowance! And on to the stressful topic of health insurance. Many churches cannot afford to pay for health insurance for their pastors, so it’s important to be familiar with the other ways that churches can help and also the options that pastors have on their own.
This is the oldest blog post on this list and also the one that brings me the most sorrow. It’s the oldest because it is still completely relevant and I haven’t come up with a way to improve it. It brings me sorrow because I wish the body of Christ took better care of our shepherds so that they didn’t need to be making secular resumes.
And we’re back to the housing allowance again! One of the major limitations placed on the clergy housing allowance is that it cannot exceed the fair market rental value of the home. (If you’ve read my book, you know which popular pastor and author inspired the addition of that rule!) This article helps you figure out how to calculate that.
This article is a great place to find all of the basics of what the clergy housing allowance is and how it works all in one place. If you only send one link to that new pastor on your staff, this should probably be it.
This is one of those questions I’m going to ask when I get to heaven since I’m sure the IRS doesn’t even know why they have it set up this way. Even though I don’t know the reason behind this particular setup, this article will explain it so that you can pay your taxes properly, which I highly recommend that you do.
This article jumps into the intersection of two major topics that are handled uniquely for those in ministry. It covers both the effects on the housing allowance while you’re working and accumulating benefits and also once you start collecting benefits. It also includes two questions you can ask to determine if the tax professional you’re talking to actually understands clergy finance. This is a must-read for every pastor.
Honorable Mention
While those are the top 10 articles of the year, there was actually a page on the site that isn’t a blog post that had more views than all but article #1: our housing allowance calculator. With just shy of 10,000 views, I felt a little bit guilty leaving it out. If you want an easy online calculator to estimate your housing allowance and even add in a 10% cushion, you should check it out too!