I have been a university student for over a decade and have, for that whole time, lived at a subsistence level. In undergrad I survived on summer jobs and student loans. As a grad student I have been able to avoid piling up more debt by a combination of part-time work, scholarships, and my spouse’s income. (No, book sales don’t help. At all.) Before I went to university, I lived in a family that was always in danger of losing our home due to overwhelming debt. I cannot remember a time when there was extra money around for anything. In fact, I have recently realized that I did not really know what the term “extra” could mean with reference to money. It was completely outside of my experience.
I am currently in an awkward situation. I expect to finish my doctorate in about a year and, whether I finish or not, it is guaranteed that my funding will run out in a year (if not sooner). In the current economic climate, many colleges and universities have undertaken hiring freezes. The number of PhDs applying for a given job opening has increased several orders of magnitude in the last 5 years. There is a bottleneck of 4 years worth of newly minted PhDs applying for every job. All of which means that my odds of landing reliable full-time work in the first year after I graduate are slim.
In this situation I have been extremely fortunate to have come across an unlikely business opportunity. My hometown is going through a mining boom. A new shaft is being drilled and itinerant workers from all over Canada and beyond are flooding the place. They don’t want to move their families and buy houses because they know that once the shaft is drilled, the jobs will be gone. There is a 5-10 year window to work with. What this means is that the rental market is inflated relative to housing. You can buy or build properties for very cheap and rent them out for huge returns. My Dad still lives there and is a handy fellow. He is also a very congenial fellow. In other words, he is a perfect landlord.
In this fortuitous conglomeration of circumstance, I am trying to secure enough rental income from properties in my hometown that my family could survive without incurring any debt should I fail to land a job straight out of grad school. If we are blessed with another child in the meantime, we shall need to secure enough income to replace my wife’s income as well. It looks like it just might work. We are very lucky.
But with this blessing come many questions that have never occurred to me as I lived at subsistence level. For the first time in my life, I am able to imagine what “extra money” means. I don’t have any yet, but it is now at least a theoretical possibility. For instance, I could have everything lined up in terms of rental income and then be one of the lucky ones who lands a job. Or, I could secure rental income that more than replaces what we would lose should I end up unemployed. Or both.
Apart from idle dreaming about what I would do if I won the lottery, I have never really considered what I would do if I had more money than I needed to simply pay the bills. But now I am considering that. And I find it very morally confusing. Should I raise my standard of living? Should I give more money away? Should I reinvest any surplus so as to have more surplus later that I can then use to raise my standard of living further and donate more to causes of concern to me?
Making this more confusing for me is the fact that rental income is a different kind of income than I’ve ever had before. I have always punched the clock. I have always known that I needed x number of dollars to survive this month and that I can make y dollars per hour and so I must work z number of hours to survive. Money is quite simple to think about in such circumstances. But rental income is a whole different animal. Now instead of investing time and energy, I have invested risk and (hopefully) prudence. When I get a rent cheque at the beginning of the month, it feels a bit like free money. The amount of actual work I put in is minimal compared to the return.
But what does one do with free money?
I must say that, even though I don’t really have any prospects of striking it rich, the combination of money that makes itself and (at least potentially) having more than needed to pay this month’s bills, changes the way I think about money. I can appreciate, for the first time, that the wealthy simply do not think about money in the same categories that the poor do. How could they?
I can also appreciate, also for the first time, the temptation to make ever more money. If 2 rental properties make me $x, then 4 rental properties will make me $2x. And why wouldn’t I want that? If I can donate more to my Church and help my extended family more and give more to charity and save for my kids education and pay off my student loans and take my wife out to dinner, why not? These are all good things in themselves, right? Heck, why not 6 rental properties and $3x? Why not 10?
But the Catholic in me starts to get nervous with this logic. Where does it end? How much is enough? What does it mean if I make 10 times the amount of money that I need to survive? Who doesn’t have this money because I have it? Am I really just a leech on the system? What am I contributing to the common good by collecting rents? On the other hand, these people were going to pay rent in any case, and quite likely to someone with more money than me.
It becomes much easier to see how the super-rich can justify making ever more money. The system leads to it almost inevitably. “Look, if I don’t take this opportunity, somebody else will. And who do I trust to do what is best with the money? Why me, of course. I’ll give it to the right charities. I’ll give my kids the best money can buy, no one can begrudge me that. I’ll use it to make the world a better place. And surely I deserve to live a little higher on the hog than those who aren’t such productive and generous members of society, don’t I?”
I don’t know the answers here. I just know that I can see in myself, for the first time, the temptation that comes from (at least potential) wealth. It is confusing and disturbing.
What about you? What do you think a Christian should do with wealth? At what point does a Christian say, “I don’t need any more.” How should Christians think about the tension between greed and the will to do good with money?
Brett Salkeld is a doctoral student in theology at Regis College in Toronto. He is a father of two (so far) and husband of one.
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