Can you imagine the criticism if the investment arm was losing money? The Church does amazing work providing resources during crises. I’ve personally cut trees off of people’s houses with chainsaws provided by the Church and given buckets of sanitation supplies when hurricanes swept through Florida.
There is always a tension in “what do you spend now and what do you invest for later” but I honesty feel like the Church cannot win this argument. Those who are distrustful of organized religion can win if the church is poor (“why didn’t their ‘prophet’ know better”); if they’re rich (“why don’t they give to X”); or if they do nothing (“they teach their own members to save but don’t practice that themselves—the hypocrites”).
I’m a believer so my view is not disinterested, but where is the conversation that they are conservative in their investments; won’t make money from industries they teach against; etc.
There are very few people in the ecclesiastical arm of the church who work full-time and are provided a living stipend. And many of those people were very successful before leaving their professional lives.
The current President (Russel Nelson) was a pioneer in open heart surgery. I’m pretty comfortable assuming he would have made more money in his life had he not accepted a calling to full-time ministry.
To me this article is interesting but the reaction is predictable. People will read into the confirmation of whatever biases they had to begin with.
For my part, I’d rather the church invest wisely than poorly...
> I’m pretty comfortable assuming he would have made more money in his life had he not accepted a calling to full-time ministry.
Two comments.
[1] The Mormon church is a corporation sole, meaning presently Nelson is the sole controller of all assets. He could reasonably set up his family for life with beneficial contacts and contracts. That is worth more than (now probably expired) intellectual property associated with open-heart surgery.
[2] The leadership of the Mormon church tends to come from the same set of Utah-based families. Not 100%, but certainly a high representation. It's a social network that has been extractive on the work and labor of their membership for over a century, benefiting these few families greatly. This doesn't mean the organization hasn't done good -- it has. It's just that good doesn't blot out bad, nefarious, negligence, or other societal negatives.
[1] Yet no one has alleged that anything like that has happened. Also if I was 90 years old and had plenty of money I would much rather live a comfortable retired life than work at the pace he works at.
I don’t know enough about the legal structure of [1] to have an informed opinion. Contacts and contracts are always the gift to children of connected parents. I hope to give the same to my kids... ;)
I’m sure it happens as it does in any family (hello Biden!) but I’m not convinced it’s more prevalent in the Church than any other organization of people. It’s an interesting thought, but I’m not sure how prevalent it is.
I have met several general authorities in various capacities (including Bishop Waddell who was quoted in the article). They are humans and suspect to all the frailties that entails, but they have all been serious minded people who take their roles as stewards seriously. I’m sure some amount of fraud or nepotism happens, but I also have a religious view that suggests that whatever wrong is acquired in this life will be corrected in the next.
I have known people who have done things with Church money that they shouldn’t have. All of them were excommunicated for the same. The Church takes its financial stewardship seriously with required audits at all levels.
I agree with the first half of [2] but not the complaint that follows. It was only recently that more members of the Church lived outside the US. As the Church has grown out of Utah and throughout the US (and outside world) they have done a better job of calling people from more areas.
I think this is part of human behavior as well. It can be frustrating, but it’s hard for someone in Salt Lake to know I could serve in capacity X without knowing me personally. Again, it’s getting better as genera leaders travel more and get to know local leaders, but it’s always easiest to think of the person you know.
This happens in business as well: a new CEO brings “his/her team” — I’d like to see less of it (and fully expect to as the Church continues to grow globally).
One part that was left out of the WSJ article but was released by the whistleblower was the source of these funds. When members asked to donate money to charity, the church said they would happily donate it on behalf of the members. It was then taken from the members and funneled into this investment fund instead of redirected to charity (as they promised).
The church claims that since they are a non-profit that they are therefore a charity (they have also claimed that the purpose for stockpiling $124B was for the second coming of Jesus). While they might be able to make this claim legally... it was obviously not the intention of the members who invested the money. If members intended to fund the church directly, they could have simply paid their tithing or even over-paid their tithing (as many members choose to do) as usual. But they chose specifically to donate to charity, which implies someone other than the church.
Since I am assuming you are a member, you are familiar with the tithing slip. That extra line at the bottom that says "charity:_____" yep, that money never went to charity. It went into this fund that the church kept for themselves. Very honest and Christlike.
It actually says at the bottom: "Though reasonable efforts will be made to use donations as designated, all donations become the Church's property and will be used at the Church's sole discretion to further the Church's overall mission."
If you want your assistance to go straight to those who need it - then walk right to that person and give it to them. If you want someone who is experienced in making said assistance stretch further than just to that one family, ask someone experienced. Complaining seems like you don't trust the person to whom you just put in charge of using your donation wisely. So why was the donation made again?
Obviously one would expect the charity to report yearly on their endeavors - since no aid may be going out at all - however, reporting on each dollar would be a tad difficult to track. So not sure what would be required here.
Emptying out said donations all in one go (to avoid the perception of hoarding say all 100 billion) may not be good either since problems today may be more bearable than problems tomorrow. So not sure what would be required here either.
Probably the best remedy of those who do not wish to trust the Lds charities, would be to stop donating to them.
I think the criticism comes from them amassing so much wealth when there is still so much suffering.
There are people who will criticise churches regardless, but there seem to be a lot of reasonable people who look at the Catholic Church and the Mormon Church and determine their wealth is inconsistent with their teachings.
Mormons could probably further their message by selling their golden ornaments and using it to shelter the homeless, for instance.
There’s a reasonable conversation to be had about when to spend and when to save. I don’t pretend to have all the answers there.
But as someone on the inside, I’ll say this: local congregations have very strict budgets allotted to them, but the welfare component of the budget is essentially unlimited. Local leaders are encouraged (and it is part of their mandate) to “seek out the poor”. Most individual welfare happens at the local level, and local leaders are not expected to limit their assistance to the money the local unit pulls in. This is a simplification of the process, but welfare assistance is one of the few places where local leaders are not given explicit caps.
For a very centralized organization they give a lot of leeway to local leaders to let assess local needs.
That is just what is uncovered in the investment market with one subsidiary.
They also own 2% of Florida[0], huge land tracts in Argentina, Oklahoma and elsewhere, and attractive urban real estate in most major metropolises including apartment complexes in PA. They centralize donation collection of tithes and good will offerings such that about 8% stays back at congregations (based on personal observation as the finance clerk across several congregations and the analogue of dioceses--wealthy congregations would regularly see $25k/week from 200 congregants and have a budget of ~$8k annually, but this offset with congregations in less affluent areas). They also have massive economic influence over Utah, surrounding states, and often growing suburbs.
They have a very diversified portfolio. As doctrine they take the second coming of Christ seriously and believe they will transform into the world wide government on his return.
For the record I left several years ago, but have many family members still heavily involved. It's an organization which does not allow you to leave with your dignity intact.
Just a note on leaving the church: when you leave you leave all the people you have known all your life. Since you spend so much time in church activities fellow members become your extended family. When you leave you understand that the only reason you had contact with your extended family is because of the church. You become the lone man out. It's extremely hard to rebuild relationships outside the church. I don't think most shun you but some will. The members don't work to reach out unless it's to ask you to return to the church. It's very hard to leave.
I don't fully agree with this characterization. My girlfriend and her brother have left the church and there seems to be zero love lost in the family or their friend group that they grew up with. I know that this does happen to many people but it is not a uniform experience.
The phrase "no love lost" typically means that there is a great dislike or hatred between the two parties. From the context it seems like you're saying the opposite of that?
> It's an organization which does not allow you to leave with your dignity intact.
This is definitely not true. It may have been the case for you, but my dad and brother/wife all left years ago without any problems at all. We are still on great terms.
I dunno. One has to deal with the random crying, the questions of "Why haven't you baptized your children? I want to spend eternity with my grandbabies!", "They need primary!", etc. Then there's the endless gossip at family activities when you're absent about how you're leading your family to hell.
> For the record I left several years ago, but have many family members still heavily involved. It's an organization which does not allow you to leave with your dignity intact.
I've seen people leave with and without. As to why they've not left with dignity, it's sometimes not one-sided.
Edit: For those who are making many negative guesses and assumptions about my comments. My comment had nothing to do with the OP's personal life at all (as I know nothing about their personal experience). My comment was simply to make a counter-claim to the blanket statement that the church allows no one to leave with dignity.
The OP has since shared more details about their personal experience, which was absolutely a terrible experience in every way. It's awful that they, and their family, had to go through that. If I feel so awful about it, have I ever attempted to reduce the likelihood of such things happening? Yes! I have.
I have also seen people leave the church without any great undue process or negativity—or loss of dignity (in my interpretation of what was meant by dignity).
Edit [2]: There has already been more than 1 other person comment, who has left the church, who didn't experience any of the negative things that the OP did. That doesn't mean that OP is lying, exaggerating, or anything, it's simply my point—OP's experience is not the universal experience, nor the officially designed experience. Is OP's experience more common than it should? Absolutely yes.
Given that we haven't met, dorian-graph, this starts with the assumption that what people like me went through is trivial. For decency sake I ask you to reconsider this as a default position.
In order to get my records at least flagged as no longer a Mormon, thus to keep random visits from local congregations from occurring, I had to get a lawyer involved.
In order for my children to not be repeatedly hounded by some parents at school to come back with their kids over the weekend so they could attend the local congregation, we needed legal action.
I didn't speak out or speak up vocally when I left. I just stopped going to the local congregation. Not a single person there chose to continue friendship. My wife attended a few more years, and had to constantly deal with rumors that I had an affair (I did not). When we moved and I was no longer known to the new congregation, she had to deal with the the local leadership trying to instantiate romantic relationships with widowers and unmarried gentlemen in the congregation because they assumed I was either dead or because since she still attended our marriage was on the rocks.
My story is not unique, and I can say with confidence that the social pressures on the members result in them feeling justified performing actions intended to take away dignity of former congregants ("apostates").
Different Christian denominations have different relationships with wealth --- ranging from a "high church" tradition of inspirational grandeur to pseudo-evangelical "prosperity churches", as well as denominations that reject all that stuff, and the LDS relationship is unique and (in a relative sense) pragmatic. I don't think your blanket statement really applies here.
I'm guessing you're talking about the moneychangers being thrown out of the temple?
There are examples recorded in the scriptures of tithes and offerings, and also of a people preparing/amassing the relative wealth/supplies (Noah, Joseph, etc).
There are multiple levels of preparedness taught in the LDS church. The lowest, the family, being to only have necessary debt (e.g. university or a house) and to have 3 days of storage for in case of emergencies for your own family (or individual self), or to help others. Then in some areas you have Bishop storehouses. It goes up and up.
> I get why the churches do it (of course they don't believe in Christ)
I find a lot of people invoke Christ, but have little to do with his teachings.
Amusingly, his ideas align more with beliefs held by “the young left” than by “the old right”. (Yesyes, bad terms but you know what I mean) And yet the real-world allegiances are inverted.
I can't speak for more faiths, just what I saw in the Mormon faith. Basically, they literally believe they are the only church that has authority to act for God on earth, it was given to them, and they will be the world wide government during the millennium (a time period kicked off when Jesus Christ returns, in their view).
A lot of what the Mormon Church teaches is not based on the teachings of Jesus Christ. Mormonism and Christianity are two separate things much like Christianity and Judaism are separate.
But can you provide some citations that show that is Jesus's own opinion rather than people's interpretation of something?
IF you're talking about the "leave your money and follow me" thing, I doubt he was talking about the money itself there. He said it was harder for a man to enter heaven with all his riches – but what if someone's virtue rose so high that they were able to enter heaven and then they encountered money – it would not have been true that they were virtuous if the money itself is capable of corrupting them. It's like saying that water corrupts someone. Wrong education (environment) does. Wrong education means that they stopped handing down the truth which was revealed by philosophy, lost the ability to make students able to see reality, and came to spread falsehoods, stories, logical derivations, and people's thoughts instead.
Mind reading. Would you like me to tell you what's going on in your head? I'm not a Christian, BTW. But this isn't the place to make inflammatory statements.
Christians in general all denounce socialism --even it seems democratic socialism.
Christ taught: Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, give all you have to those in need then come follow me, else there's no path to heaven if you're a shallow rich person.
I'm no expert on Marxism, but I think there's quite a bit of crossover in ideologies.
But the point of my argument is most church's don't practice what Christ preached, they're essentially anti-christian churches.
> For the record I left several years ago, but have many family members still heavily involved. It's an organization which does not allow you to leave with your dignity intact.
A lot of people are trying to counter this. As an ex-Mormon I do want to share my experience. Not for the people of Hacker News, but because I know this issue is hard to talk about and I want others to know that they aren't alone.
I first off, do want to start with that I was a true believer. I was winning seminary competitions and happy to defend my love for god. But then my mom died. This was terrible in itself, but my dad quickly remarried and did so to a grade A manipulator. I would talk to my best friends about the issues and ended up actually staying over at these friends several nights because of the issues with that step-parent (she did a lot of horrible things, but this story isn't about her or my family). My friends' parents, who were Mormon, were very aware of what was going on. My dad actually stopped me from seeing these friends and so they kinda just faded away (I am no longer friends with these people today, sadly). But then in class (Mormons have 3 parts when you go to church, I will say class for non-major-congregation stuff for ease) I started to question things. Why was there no steel found in the Americas? Elephants? These maps don't make sense. Why don't we pray to our heavenly mother? And it just grew and grew. Some answers I got back were nonsensical, some were "have faith", others were down right misogynistic. So I stopped showing up. This caused a lot of contention in my family of course, one that hasn't fully healed to this day. But after a few weeks something interesting started to happen. The bullies (who were Mormon) who would pick on me, started inviting me to their houses (the popular kids in my school were Mormon, no I didn't grow up in Utah). It only took going once to realize that I was there because of the parents. All kinda of people would start reaching out to me. When I told them of the abuse that was going on, they all told me that it was part of god's plan. Then rumors started and those same bullies were glad to let me know what their parents thought. I found an old journal (something Mormons are highly encouraged to keep but now I'm afraid to because it was definitely used against me) and I just thought that I believed for far too long. I believed even when I first stopped going. But I can't say that the church has the moral high ground.
So why did I leave? It wasn't so much the nonsensical parts of the scriptures. It was because the people were willing to stand by and watch abuse. They preached all day about how we need to help one another but they would only do it if it was easy (like giving food to a needy member). They protected that abuse and then they participated in it. That is why I left.
In addition, I want to add that the church does have some pretty messed up believes. I do believe that the OP's comment is true even for those that left more easily (which does not seem to be as common).
Growing up with these beliefs is hard to undo. I grew up going to stake events. Would spend summers at several family members (while mom was sick). Went to church camp. I constantly saw these beliefs reinforced over and over, __it was not just my ward.__ The way women and people of color were treated like second class citizens. The toxic masculinity that they taught (we each had our "place"). The foundation of secrets always reminded me of the Romulans. How the church treats gays. How the church talks about non-members behind their back (I know, "Mormons are the nicest people!" Please stop saying this). And when you leave, they follow. I left over a decade ago, have moved all across the country, and this is the first year missionaries have not shown up at my door (and I'm guessing that's because I occasionally play boardgames with a member, who knows my distaste).
They say that the difference between a religion and a cult is that a cult is that a cult has a charismatic leader or living prophet and participates in brainwashing and abuse. I am not afraid to say that a spade is a spade.
And to those that left or are thinking of leaving. It is hard, but I promise you that it is worth it. Reach out to others that have left (you are welcome to reach out to me). And for the love of god, talk. I know we were taught to keep these feelings to ourselves, and really we had to, but please do find someone that you can open up to. It is healthier and freeing to just be you. You are not alone.
Thanks for sharing. I hope you find this cathartic and can find connection to people in your new life. I have to think there must be millions of people silently suffering who left various groups like this, be they religions or now political party / belief-systems.
Thanks a lot for sharing this. Never had any experience like yours, but I know of a few friends who experienced similar things with the Catholic church.
It's really crummy that you had to go through that. My wife joined at I think 32 and left at 36 without grief. Granted, she only kept up consistent contact with one friend from the church, so there isn't as much pressure compared to having family still in the church.
> It's an organization which does not allow you to leave with your dignity intact.
This is definitely not true. As a Utah native and one who left for my own reasons and still has family in the church, I would say that this statement is completely false. The Mormon church does not practice nor endorse any doctrine relating to shunning or harassment. Just because you left with some personality conflicts and bad terms with members doesn't mean anything. Statements like these generally do no good for anyone, and only further radicalize opposing views instead of urging people to engage in an meaningful discussion.
I have a close friend who experienced this. Just because the church has no official policy doesn't mean it doesn't happen. People showing up at your door for years when you've repeatedly asked for it to stop happening, including new addresses you move to after asking not to be contacted again (I've witnessed this personally, and it is deeply distressing and invasive), is harassment no matter what the intention behind it. And of course there is no official policy of "shunning," but individuals among your friends and family can be counseled that contact with you seems to be interfering with their faith and should be curtailed for their own spiritual good.
I'd have to disagree it doesn't necessarily enforce or push shunment but there is enough 'only way to heaven' talk that it makes family relationships with those still in perilous, and if you're underage and mentally out... gl trying to convince parents to let you resign without getting kicked out of the house.
I left and told my wife I was going to but still it's been a bit of a stressor in our relationship, but I couldn't no longer be part of such a malicious organization that causes so many suicides inside the state of Utah and has such a horrific history of racism.
I live in Utah. When I resigned from the Mormon church the entire ward shunned me and I was ostracized by my family. My home teacher told me that the bishop told the men in the priesthood not to associate with me.
My experience leaving was as follows. I don't feel bad nor bitter but it did have some negative repercussions.
I knew at 13 I did not believe and didn't want to follow but was forced to continue attending and forbidden to speak about my lack of belief to siblings. Come 18 I was suggested to move out which I happily did. My father sort of eventually accepted but would try to slip in religious sermons when he could. My mother on the other hand freaked completely out. Parents took all pictures of me down in the house leaving pictures of siblings. They gave a piece of property my non-Mormon grandfather left me to my brother with my mother calling and explaining they were doing this because I had left the church and she had never forgiven her mother and brother from leaving. Pretty rough but I got over it. Luckily I never built much social identity around the church so that was less of an issue. Also I left young and at 18 who cares what your parents think because they are stupid anyway :).
I don't think ostracism or social punishment is official policy but it is there in practice and likely very pronounced for some people.
I still have a sister and brother who are very and irrationally hostile towards me but the other siblings are friendly enough and seem ok. I don't talk about church nor discourage their belief, I simply don't participate. Mom never did get over it and we were never close again until her death. Sometimes she would call me saying crazy things but I didn't hate or resent her for it, I understand where they are coming from, in my belief they are mistaken and deluded and behaving improperly but hey people do that in many venues.
I felt like my leaving was a threat to a carefully constructed fragile synthetic narrative for people close to me who chose to remain. Even though I never actually argued against nor condemned the religion.
I suppose I should feel worse about the whole incident but what I really feel is a sort of pity. Like someone would feel for an alcoholic or drug addict desperately rationalizing their destructive behavior. I don't hate the church nor resent the behavior of family members. I understand, besides what they think has little bearing on my world at this point. Very happy I left early though. I imagine the process as an adult married with kids even is quite an emotional slap. I don't want to tell others what to do. If people are happy claiming to believe those things I'm ok with it. But I won't do any such thing even if it means social problems.
Ostracizing ex-members occurs in nearly every tight knit social group, especially ones predicated upon adherence to some ideology. It’s a basic tenant of human tribalism, and religions are perhaps the most tribal social groups we have ever invented.
I can't speak for the LDS church, but my brother left Christianity 5 or 6 years ago. I similarly left a few years later. Initially telling my parents was extremely uncomfortable, which stands to reason. They come from a tradition where parents are made responsible for their children's continued participation and adherence to the church, with eternal consequences for anyone who leaves.
Every time we see my parents they say goodbye as if it's the last time they'll see us. They continue to speak as if we're still participating in the church, and they cry every time my brother, who lives 3 hours away, leaves to go home.
A month ago my parents' church sent my brother a letter threatening him with damnation if he didn't return to Christianity and guilting him for not following in his parents religion. It then suggested he would be excommunicated (which has specific meaning in the denomination, it's not exactly shunning) if he didn't tell them where he was attending, or he could resign. It was sent as registered mail, and written in a way that was meant to be humiliating. My brother wrote back that he happily resigned.
I expect at some point I might receive the same communication. In the Reformed church this is both old and new. The idea of excommunication had existed since before the church came over from Europe. But in recent times churches have found it a useful, quasi-legal way to enforce conformity and allegiance. If that environment is as totalizing a force in your life as the church intends to be, you will find it very difficult to leave. That threat will worry you. But once you've left it often just feels hurtful and vindictive. It doesn't have the reformative effect it is intended to effect.
This was my experience as well (Utah native). I did not experience any shunning when I left, nor have others in my extended family.
Any shunning I have seen was due to other factors than merely leaving, such as the reasons behind leaving (one of my cousins was shunned for drug dealing and running from the law, not for leaving).
The Mormon church has a lot of experience with people leaving and appears to handle it pretty well in general. Of course leaving a religion is a hard and often agonizing decision and is painful personally, and people sometimes project these feelings onto others.
> As doctrine they take the second coming of Christ seriously and believe they will transform into the world wide government on his return.
I think this was the role of the Council of Fifty, which as been defunct for a long time. The last known member, President of the Church Heber J. Grant, died in 1945.
It's important to note the historical context around this. The LDS church used to be constantly in extreme debt and close to having their religious buildings taken away due to it. Then in the early 1900s they instituted a simple financial policy that could also be an example for members.
1. Spend less than you take in.
2. Save/invest a portion of what you bring in for a rainy day.
Thus over a hundred years that builds up. I'm a Mormon and personally don't have an issue with it as I know that wealth doesn't go to church leaders (they all get the same stipend which for many is less than they made in their professional lives) and is simply fund available to the Church for times of need.
Or, perhaps, to finance a massive interstellar spaceship a few hundred years from now... [0]
(In my ideal reality this should be the goal of _all_ investment funds. Also, everyone who enjoys the higher levels of the Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness [1] should watch The Expanse.)
> they all get the same stipend which for many is less than they made in their professional lives
It's weird how much this is being repeated in this thread. It's clear this opinion didn't form on an individual level but rather is directed by the church to their followers to repeat. It's an odd way of justifying position is all.
Ex Mormon here. Yes, it is drilled down into our brains. The same exact phrases.
And the stipend is 6-figures per year (most members don't know this though, it was leaked a few times now on paystubs). But all travel and room is also paid for. Plus most leaders of the church that receive this stipend are 70+ years old, so they are already living off healthy retirements in addition to now free housing and a healthy stipend. Church leaders are all successful businessman, doctors, and lawyers. Basically you pay your way to the top. So all of these people have incredible riches before they start taking these stipends.
Church members like to pretend like our leaders are scraping by... but they are in top 1% of income earners. Further, you should hear those same leaders talk about tithing to members. Even encouraging their poor members to pay up because "they can't afford not to".
It should also be noted that the church pays these top leaders, but chooses not to pay anyone at the congregation level. From the bishop (equivilant to a Pastor in most other religions), to the people teaching sunday school, the people cleaning the buildings, the bookkeepers, etc are all asked to do it for free. These are generally lower-income or middle-income members with full time jobs, asked to do this in addition to normal jobs... oh and they have to pay 10% of their pre-tax income to the church that they make from their job.
> No bishop [aka 'Pastor'], no missionary should ever hesitate or lack the faith to teach the law of tithing to the poor. The sentiment of “They can’t afford to” needs to be replaced with “They can’t afford not to.”
Note: If you click that link you will see that the title is "Tithing - A commandment even for the destitute", this man had the hairy balls to stand up with a straight face and say that no one is too poor to pay his church. While he flies private jets everywhere from these poor family's sacrifices.
I think having your members tithe is a big part of it. I know some wealthy mormons that have always given their 10%, at least that's what they tell me. I also know a couple of really large mormon families, like 12 kids large - they all tithe.
Assuming the countless anecdotes on /r/exmormon are to be believed, nobody really gets a choice. Your local leaders will browbeat you and try to look over your financials if they don’t feel you are tithing appropriately.
Is 100 billion really that much? The church has 16 million members. That is about $6,000 per member. The church has had 200 years of tithing and compound interest to get to this point. If used as an endowment to support 16 million people in 170+ countries that doesn't seem too crazy.
A single human (not mentioning any names) having 100 billion seems crazy.
This isn't that the church has $100 billion dollars. They actually are estimated to be worth more than Apple in real estate and cash.
This $100B is one single fund that is a "secret" fund. It was collected by the church members donating to charity, but asking the church to allocate the funds. So this is in addition to all the other offerings a member is required to make (10% of pre-tax gross income). So the church took money promising to allocate it to charity, and the church members thought they were donating to charity, but the church instead siphoned it off and kept it for themselves in a secret fund that they denied existed. It took a whistleblower from within the fund's organization to reveal it to the public.
So this is in addition to normal money that the church has, or its real estates, or its hundreds of billions in other investments. This is actually a tiny slice of the pie, but it was collected maliciously and wasn't reported to the IRS.
"kept it for themselves"---it still belongs to the church.
I thought everybody assumed, since the church so frequently taught its members about prudent financial management, that the church itself was doing the same thing.
I've left the church, I have many criticisms of it, but I really don't have a problem with an organization taking the long view and accumulating a large enough reserve to survive on the interest. It's the same approach universities and other large nonprofits use. And it's not like it's particularly neglecting its present-day mission either. Probably is too stingy, though (e.g. using volunteers to clean buildings.)
> A single human (not mentioning any names) having 100 billion seems crazy.
Technically, legally, the current president of the Mormon church, Russel Nelson, has those 100 billion dollars, and everything else the church owns, because of its corporate structure.
Those assets, technically and legally, belong to the office Nelson occupies, not Nelson personally. It's a corporation sole, which is often used by Bishops of other churches to hold the assets of a diocese. The alternative would be the corporation aggregate with a board of directors.
16 million members claimed, closer to 20%-30% attend, maybe 20% of that figure pay substantial amounts (excluding children, impoverished, most families are single-income homes due to Mormon doctrine, etc.)
$100 billion in one fund. $32 billion accounted for in other funds [0]. Not to mention 2% of the land in Florida, several billion dollars in commercial and residential real estate. Who knows what else they're hiding.
And 16 million members is fools' accounting. It doesn't account for the millions of people like me who don't go to church and yet are still members because I don't want to pay money to hire a lawyer to force the church to take my name off the records.
I don’t see any incongruity with a church that teaches its members to save to likewise have a large savings fund. It’s not like they’re just hoarding money: the Church actively donates billions of dollars to world-wide humanitarian projects. For a religion that believes in the second coming of Jesus Christ and a worldwide crisis preceding that, it only makes sense for them to save so that they can continue to aid people of and not of their faith during that time.
>According to an official church Welfare Services fact sheet, the church gave $1.3 billion in humanitarian aid in more than 178 countries and territories during the 25 years between 1985 and 2010. A fact sheet from the previous year indicates that less than one-third of the sum was monetary assistance, while the rest was in the form of “material assistance.” All in all, if one were to evenly distribute that $1.3 billion over a quarter-century, it would mean that the church gave $52 million annually. A study co-written by Cragun and recently published in Free Inquiry estimates that the Mormon Church donates only about 0.7 percent of its annual income to charity; the United Methodist Church gives about 29 percent.
They even use volunteer work for for-profit enterprises.
Yeah, but you see, building that temple in Rome was just so much more important than actual charity work...
I like how the Mormon church one-upped the Catholic church in this. The Catholic church sold indulgences, one-time absolutions for sin to fund their projects, but the Mormon church transformed it into a subscription service, for the low low fee of 10% of all your income forever.
Seems most churches are basically real estate companies. The same is said about the Catholic Church and Scientology. Even if they lost all of their members they could keep going forever.
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There is always a tension in “what do you spend now and what do you invest for later” but I honesty feel like the Church cannot win this argument. Those who are distrustful of organized religion can win if the church is poor (“why didn’t their ‘prophet’ know better”); if they’re rich (“why don’t they give to X”); or if they do nothing (“they teach their own members to save but don’t practice that themselves—the hypocrites”).
I’m a believer so my view is not disinterested, but where is the conversation that they are conservative in their investments; won’t make money from industries they teach against; etc.
There are very few people in the ecclesiastical arm of the church who work full-time and are provided a living stipend. And many of those people were very successful before leaving their professional lives.
The current President (Russel Nelson) was a pioneer in open heart surgery. I’m pretty comfortable assuming he would have made more money in his life had he not accepted a calling to full-time ministry.
To me this article is interesting but the reaction is predictable. People will read into the confirmation of whatever biases they had to begin with.
For my part, I’d rather the church invest wisely than poorly...
Two comments.
[1] The Mormon church is a corporation sole, meaning presently Nelson is the sole controller of all assets. He could reasonably set up his family for life with beneficial contacts and contracts. That is worth more than (now probably expired) intellectual property associated with open-heart surgery.
[2] The leadership of the Mormon church tends to come from the same set of Utah-based families. Not 100%, but certainly a high representation. It's a social network that has been extractive on the work and labor of their membership for over a century, benefiting these few families greatly. This doesn't mean the organization hasn't done good -- it has. It's just that good doesn't blot out bad, nefarious, negligence, or other societal negatives.
I’m sure it happens as it does in any family (hello Biden!) but I’m not convinced it’s more prevalent in the Church than any other organization of people. It’s an interesting thought, but I’m not sure how prevalent it is.
I have met several general authorities in various capacities (including Bishop Waddell who was quoted in the article). They are humans and suspect to all the frailties that entails, but they have all been serious minded people who take their roles as stewards seriously. I’m sure some amount of fraud or nepotism happens, but I also have a religious view that suggests that whatever wrong is acquired in this life will be corrected in the next.
I have known people who have done things with Church money that they shouldn’t have. All of them were excommunicated for the same. The Church takes its financial stewardship seriously with required audits at all levels.
I agree with the first half of [2] but not the complaint that follows. It was only recently that more members of the Church lived outside the US. As the Church has grown out of Utah and throughout the US (and outside world) they have done a better job of calling people from more areas.
I think this is part of human behavior as well. It can be frustrating, but it’s hard for someone in Salt Lake to know I could serve in capacity X without knowing me personally. Again, it’s getting better as genera leaders travel more and get to know local leaders, but it’s always easiest to think of the person you know.
This happens in business as well: a new CEO brings “his/her team” — I’d like to see less of it (and fully expect to as the Church continues to grow globally).
The church claims that since they are a non-profit that they are therefore a charity (they have also claimed that the purpose for stockpiling $124B was for the second coming of Jesus). While they might be able to make this claim legally... it was obviously not the intention of the members who invested the money. If members intended to fund the church directly, they could have simply paid their tithing or even over-paid their tithing (as many members choose to do) as usual. But they chose specifically to donate to charity, which implies someone other than the church.
Since I am assuming you are a member, you are familiar with the tithing slip. That extra line at the bottom that says "charity:_____" yep, that money never went to charity. It went into this fund that the church kept for themselves. Very honest and Christlike.
Obviously one would expect the charity to report yearly on their endeavors - since no aid may be going out at all - however, reporting on each dollar would be a tad difficult to track. So not sure what would be required here.
Emptying out said donations all in one go (to avoid the perception of hoarding say all 100 billion) may not be good either since problems today may be more bearable than problems tomorrow. So not sure what would be required here either.
Probably the best remedy of those who do not wish to trust the Lds charities, would be to stop donating to them.
There are people who will criticise churches regardless, but there seem to be a lot of reasonable people who look at the Catholic Church and the Mormon Church and determine their wealth is inconsistent with their teachings.
Mormons could probably further their message by selling their golden ornaments and using it to shelter the homeless, for instance.
But as someone on the inside, I’ll say this: local congregations have very strict budgets allotted to them, but the welfare component of the budget is essentially unlimited. Local leaders are encouraged (and it is part of their mandate) to “seek out the poor”. Most individual welfare happens at the local level, and local leaders are not expected to limit their assistance to the money the local unit pulls in. This is a simplification of the process, but welfare assistance is one of the few places where local leaders are not given explicit caps.
For a very centralized organization they give a lot of leeway to local leaders to let assess local needs.
When the thread was active, a critical comment was on top the entire time. No one can tell me this is happening without a coordinated effort.
They also own 2% of Florida[0], huge land tracts in Argentina, Oklahoma and elsewhere, and attractive urban real estate in most major metropolises including apartment complexes in PA. They centralize donation collection of tithes and good will offerings such that about 8% stays back at congregations (based on personal observation as the finance clerk across several congregations and the analogue of dioceses--wealthy congregations would regularly see $25k/week from 200 congregants and have a budget of ~$8k annually, but this offset with congregations in less affluent areas). They also have massive economic influence over Utah, surrounding states, and often growing suburbs.
They have a very diversified portfolio. As doctrine they take the second coming of Christ seriously and believe they will transform into the world wide government on his return.
For the record I left several years ago, but have many family members still heavily involved. It's an organization which does not allow you to leave with your dignity intact.
[0] https://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/morning_call/2014/03/far...
That phrase means there was no love in the first place so nothing was lost. Is that what you meant?
This is definitely not true. It may have been the case for you, but my dad and brother/wife all left years ago without any problems at all. We are still on great terms.
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I've seen people leave with and without. As to why they've not left with dignity, it's sometimes not one-sided.
Edit: For those who are making many negative guesses and assumptions about my comments. My comment had nothing to do with the OP's personal life at all (as I know nothing about their personal experience). My comment was simply to make a counter-claim to the blanket statement that the church allows no one to leave with dignity.
The OP has since shared more details about their personal experience, which was absolutely a terrible experience in every way. It's awful that they, and their family, had to go through that. If I feel so awful about it, have I ever attempted to reduce the likelihood of such things happening? Yes! I have.
I have also seen people leave the church without any great undue process or negativity—or loss of dignity (in my interpretation of what was meant by dignity).
Edit [2]: There has already been more than 1 other person comment, who has left the church, who didn't experience any of the negative things that the OP did. That doesn't mean that OP is lying, exaggerating, or anything, it's simply my point—OP's experience is not the universal experience, nor the officially designed experience. Is OP's experience more common than it should? Absolutely yes.
In order to get my records at least flagged as no longer a Mormon, thus to keep random visits from local congregations from occurring, I had to get a lawyer involved.
In order for my children to not be repeatedly hounded by some parents at school to come back with their kids over the weekend so they could attend the local congregation, we needed legal action.
I didn't speak out or speak up vocally when I left. I just stopped going to the local congregation. Not a single person there chose to continue friendship. My wife attended a few more years, and had to constantly deal with rumors that I had an affair (I did not). When we moved and I was no longer known to the new congregation, she had to deal with the the local leadership trying to instantiate romantic relationships with widowers and unmarried gentlemen in the congregation because they assumed I was either dead or because since she still attended our marriage was on the rocks.
My story is not unique, and I can say with confidence that the social pressures on the members result in them feeling justified performing actions intended to take away dignity of former congregants ("apostates").
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I get why the churches do it (of course they don't believe in Christ), but why do the exploited masses believe them?
I'm guessing you're talking about the moneychangers being thrown out of the temple?
There are examples recorded in the scriptures of tithes and offerings, and also of a people preparing/amassing the relative wealth/supplies (Noah, Joseph, etc).
There are multiple levels of preparedness taught in the LDS church. The lowest, the family, being to only have necessary debt (e.g. university or a house) and to have 3 days of storage for in case of emergencies for your own family (or individual self), or to help others. Then in some areas you have Bishop storehouses. It goes up and up.
> I get why the churches do it (of course they don't believe in Christ)
Why does the LDS church do it?
Amusingly, his ideas align more with beliefs held by “the young left” than by “the old right”. (Yesyes, bad terms but you know what I mean) And yet the real-world allegiances are inverted.
my favorite book on the subject of why is "Robert Cialdini's Influence": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influence:_Science_and_Practic...
-Jesus
Matthew 19:24
But can you provide some citations that show that is Jesus's own opinion rather than people's interpretation of something?
IF you're talking about the "leave your money and follow me" thing, I doubt he was talking about the money itself there. He said it was harder for a man to enter heaven with all his riches – but what if someone's virtue rose so high that they were able to enter heaven and then they encountered money – it would not have been true that they were virtuous if the money itself is capable of corrupting them. It's like saying that water corrupts someone. Wrong education (environment) does. Wrong education means that they stopped handing down the truth which was revealed by philosophy, lost the ability to make students able to see reality, and came to spread falsehoods, stories, logical derivations, and people's thoughts instead.
Mind reading. Would you like me to tell you what's going on in your head? I'm not a Christian, BTW. But this isn't the place to make inflammatory statements.
Christ taught: Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, give all you have to those in need then come follow me, else there's no path to heaven if you're a shallow rich person.
I'm no expert on Marxism, but I think there's quite a bit of crossover in ideologies.
But the point of my argument is most church's don't practice what Christ preached, they're essentially anti-christian churches.
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A lot of people are trying to counter this. As an ex-Mormon I do want to share my experience. Not for the people of Hacker News, but because I know this issue is hard to talk about and I want others to know that they aren't alone.
I first off, do want to start with that I was a true believer. I was winning seminary competitions and happy to defend my love for god. But then my mom died. This was terrible in itself, but my dad quickly remarried and did so to a grade A manipulator. I would talk to my best friends about the issues and ended up actually staying over at these friends several nights because of the issues with that step-parent (she did a lot of horrible things, but this story isn't about her or my family). My friends' parents, who were Mormon, were very aware of what was going on. My dad actually stopped me from seeing these friends and so they kinda just faded away (I am no longer friends with these people today, sadly). But then in class (Mormons have 3 parts when you go to church, I will say class for non-major-congregation stuff for ease) I started to question things. Why was there no steel found in the Americas? Elephants? These maps don't make sense. Why don't we pray to our heavenly mother? And it just grew and grew. Some answers I got back were nonsensical, some were "have faith", others were down right misogynistic. So I stopped showing up. This caused a lot of contention in my family of course, one that hasn't fully healed to this day. But after a few weeks something interesting started to happen. The bullies (who were Mormon) who would pick on me, started inviting me to their houses (the popular kids in my school were Mormon, no I didn't grow up in Utah). It only took going once to realize that I was there because of the parents. All kinda of people would start reaching out to me. When I told them of the abuse that was going on, they all told me that it was part of god's plan. Then rumors started and those same bullies were glad to let me know what their parents thought. I found an old journal (something Mormons are highly encouraged to keep but now I'm afraid to because it was definitely used against me) and I just thought that I believed for far too long. I believed even when I first stopped going. But I can't say that the church has the moral high ground.
So why did I leave? It wasn't so much the nonsensical parts of the scriptures. It was because the people were willing to stand by and watch abuse. They preached all day about how we need to help one another but they would only do it if it was easy (like giving food to a needy member). They protected that abuse and then they participated in it. That is why I left.
In addition, I want to add that the church does have some pretty messed up believes. I do believe that the OP's comment is true even for those that left more easily (which does not seem to be as common).
Growing up with these beliefs is hard to undo. I grew up going to stake events. Would spend summers at several family members (while mom was sick). Went to church camp. I constantly saw these beliefs reinforced over and over, __it was not just my ward.__ The way women and people of color were treated like second class citizens. The toxic masculinity that they taught (we each had our "place"). The foundation of secrets always reminded me of the Romulans. How the church treats gays. How the church talks about non-members behind their back (I know, "Mormons are the nicest people!" Please stop saying this). And when you leave, they follow. I left over a decade ago, have moved all across the country, and this is the first year missionaries have not shown up at my door (and I'm guessing that's because I occasionally play boardgames with a member, who knows my distaste).
They say that the difference between a religion and a cult is that a cult is that a cult has a charismatic leader or living prophet and participates in brainwashing and abuse. I am not afraid to say that a spade is a spade.
And to those that left or are thinking of leaving. It is hard, but I promise you that it is worth it. Reach out to others that have left (you are welcome to reach out to me). And for the love of god, talk. I know we were taught to keep these feelings to ourselves, and really we had to, but please do find someone that you can open up to. It is healthier and freeing to just be you. You are not alone.
This is definitely not true. As a Utah native and one who left for my own reasons and still has family in the church, I would say that this statement is completely false. The Mormon church does not practice nor endorse any doctrine relating to shunning or harassment. Just because you left with some personality conflicts and bad terms with members doesn't mean anything. Statements like these generally do no good for anyone, and only further radicalize opposing views instead of urging people to engage in an meaningful discussion.
I left and told my wife I was going to but still it's been a bit of a stressor in our relationship, but I couldn't no longer be part of such a malicious organization that causes so many suicides inside the state of Utah and has such a horrific history of racism.
I knew at 13 I did not believe and didn't want to follow but was forced to continue attending and forbidden to speak about my lack of belief to siblings. Come 18 I was suggested to move out which I happily did. My father sort of eventually accepted but would try to slip in religious sermons when he could. My mother on the other hand freaked completely out. Parents took all pictures of me down in the house leaving pictures of siblings. They gave a piece of property my non-Mormon grandfather left me to my brother with my mother calling and explaining they were doing this because I had left the church and she had never forgiven her mother and brother from leaving. Pretty rough but I got over it. Luckily I never built much social identity around the church so that was less of an issue. Also I left young and at 18 who cares what your parents think because they are stupid anyway :).
I don't think ostracism or social punishment is official policy but it is there in practice and likely very pronounced for some people.
I still have a sister and brother who are very and irrationally hostile towards me but the other siblings are friendly enough and seem ok. I don't talk about church nor discourage their belief, I simply don't participate. Mom never did get over it and we were never close again until her death. Sometimes she would call me saying crazy things but I didn't hate or resent her for it, I understand where they are coming from, in my belief they are mistaken and deluded and behaving improperly but hey people do that in many venues.
I felt like my leaving was a threat to a carefully constructed fragile synthetic narrative for people close to me who chose to remain. Even though I never actually argued against nor condemned the religion.
I suppose I should feel worse about the whole incident but what I really feel is a sort of pity. Like someone would feel for an alcoholic or drug addict desperately rationalizing their destructive behavior. I don't hate the church nor resent the behavior of family members. I understand, besides what they think has little bearing on my world at this point. Very happy I left early though. I imagine the process as an adult married with kids even is quite an emotional slap. I don't want to tell others what to do. If people are happy claiming to believe those things I'm ok with it. But I won't do any such thing even if it means social problems.
Every time we see my parents they say goodbye as if it's the last time they'll see us. They continue to speak as if we're still participating in the church, and they cry every time my brother, who lives 3 hours away, leaves to go home.
A month ago my parents' church sent my brother a letter threatening him with damnation if he didn't return to Christianity and guilting him for not following in his parents religion. It then suggested he would be excommunicated (which has specific meaning in the denomination, it's not exactly shunning) if he didn't tell them where he was attending, or he could resign. It was sent as registered mail, and written in a way that was meant to be humiliating. My brother wrote back that he happily resigned.
I expect at some point I might receive the same communication. In the Reformed church this is both old and new. The idea of excommunication had existed since before the church came over from Europe. But in recent times churches have found it a useful, quasi-legal way to enforce conformity and allegiance. If that environment is as totalizing a force in your life as the church intends to be, you will find it very difficult to leave. That threat will worry you. But once you've left it often just feels hurtful and vindictive. It doesn't have the reformative effect it is intended to effect.
Any shunning I have seen was due to other factors than merely leaving, such as the reasons behind leaving (one of my cousins was shunned for drug dealing and running from the law, not for leaving).
The Mormon church has a lot of experience with people leaving and appears to handle it pretty well in general. Of course leaving a religion is a hard and often agonizing decision and is painful personally, and people sometimes project these feelings onto others.
I think this was the role of the Council of Fifty, which as been defunct for a long time. The last known member, President of the Church Heber J. Grant, died in 1945.
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1. Spend less than you take in. 2. Save/invest a portion of what you bring in for a rainy day.
Thus over a hundred years that builds up. I'm a Mormon and personally don't have an issue with it as I know that wealth doesn't go to church leaders (they all get the same stipend which for many is less than they made in their professional lives) and is simply fund available to the Church for times of need.
Or, perhaps, to finance a massive interstellar spaceship a few hundred years from now... [0]
(In my ideal reality this should be the goal of _all_ investment funds. Also, everyone who enjoys the higher levels of the Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness [1] should watch The Expanse.)
[0] https://observer.com/2015/12/the-expanse-recap-1x04-mormon-s...
[1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScien...
It's weird how much this is being repeated in this thread. It's clear this opinion didn't form on an individual level but rather is directed by the church to their followers to repeat. It's an odd way of justifying position is all.
And the stipend is 6-figures per year (most members don't know this though, it was leaked a few times now on paystubs). But all travel and room is also paid for. Plus most leaders of the church that receive this stipend are 70+ years old, so they are already living off healthy retirements in addition to now free housing and a healthy stipend. Church leaders are all successful businessman, doctors, and lawyers. Basically you pay your way to the top. So all of these people have incredible riches before they start taking these stipends.
Church members like to pretend like our leaders are scraping by... but they are in top 1% of income earners. Further, you should hear those same leaders talk about tithing to members. Even encouraging their poor members to pay up because "they can't afford not to".
It should also be noted that the church pays these top leaders, but chooses not to pay anyone at the congregation level. From the bishop (equivilant to a Pastor in most other religions), to the people teaching sunday school, the people cleaning the buildings, the bookkeepers, etc are all asked to do it for free. These are generally lower-income or middle-income members with full time jobs, asked to do this in addition to normal jobs... oh and they have to pay 10% of their pre-tax income to the church that they make from their job.
> No bishop [aka 'Pastor'], no missionary should ever hesitate or lack the faith to teach the law of tithing to the poor. The sentiment of “They can’t afford to” needs to be replaced with “They can’t afford not to.”
That quote is direct from their official prophet.
Source: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference...
Note: If you click that link you will see that the title is "Tithing - A commandment even for the destitute", this man had the hairy balls to stand up with a straight face and say that no one is too poor to pay his church. While he flies private jets everywhere from these poor family's sacrifices.
Assuming the countless anecdotes on /r/exmormon are to be believed, nobody really gets a choice. Your local leaders will browbeat you and try to look over your financials if they don’t feel you are tithing appropriately.
In addition this is the official response of the Church in reply to an almost identical story that ran not too long ago https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/first-presi...
Disclaimer: I’m an active Mormon.
A single human (not mentioning any names) having 100 billion seems crazy.
This $100B is one single fund that is a "secret" fund. It was collected by the church members donating to charity, but asking the church to allocate the funds. So this is in addition to all the other offerings a member is required to make (10% of pre-tax gross income). So the church took money promising to allocate it to charity, and the church members thought they were donating to charity, but the church instead siphoned it off and kept it for themselves in a secret fund that they denied existed. It took a whistleblower from within the fund's organization to reveal it to the public.
So this is in addition to normal money that the church has, or its real estates, or its hundreds of billions in other investments. This is actually a tiny slice of the pie, but it was collected maliciously and wasn't reported to the IRS.
I thought everybody assumed, since the church so frequently taught its members about prudent financial management, that the church itself was doing the same thing.
I've left the church, I have many criticisms of it, but I really don't have a problem with an organization taking the long view and accumulating a large enough reserve to survive on the interest. It's the same approach universities and other large nonprofits use. And it's not like it's particularly neglecting its present-day mission either. Probably is too stingy, though (e.g. using volunteers to clean buildings.)
Technically, legally, the current president of the Mormon church, Russel Nelson, has those 100 billion dollars, and everything else the church owns, because of its corporate structure.
And 16 million members is fools' accounting. It doesn't account for the millions of people like me who don't go to church and yet are still members because I don't want to pay money to hire a lawyer to force the church to take my name off the records.
[0] https://kutv.com/news/local/mormonleaks-says-new-documents-l...
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https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/church-fina...
I don’t see any incongruity with a church that teaches its members to save to likewise have a large savings fund. It’s not like they’re just hoarding money: the Church actively donates billions of dollars to world-wide humanitarian projects. For a religion that believes in the second coming of Jesus Christ and a worldwide crisis preceding that, it only makes sense for them to save so that they can continue to aid people of and not of their faith during that time.
This is not true. Just tens of millions annually. Laughably small sum compared to $7 billion annually in tithes (in 2012).
Insight: Mormon church made wealthy by donations https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-politics-mormons/insi...
How the Mormons Make Money- How the Mormon Church Makes Its Billions https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-07-18/how-the-m...
>According to an official church Welfare Services fact sheet, the church gave $1.3 billion in humanitarian aid in more than 178 countries and territories during the 25 years between 1985 and 2010. A fact sheet from the previous year indicates that less than one-third of the sum was monetary assistance, while the rest was in the form of “material assistance.” All in all, if one were to evenly distribute that $1.3 billion over a quarter-century, it would mean that the church gave $52 million annually. A study co-written by Cragun and recently published in Free Inquiry estimates that the Mormon Church donates only about 0.7 percent of its annual income to charity; the United Methodist Church gives about 29 percent.
They even use volunteer work for for-profit enterprises.
I like how the Mormon church one-upped the Catholic church in this. The Catholic church sold indulgences, one-time absolutions for sin to fund their projects, but the Mormon church transformed it into a subscription service, for the low low fee of 10% of all your income forever.