I must admit, when current/former ward clerks posted about wards raking in half a million plus a month and then shuffling it off to the SL coffers pronto, only to get back $5-10,000 to "live on", it just blows my mind. This has to be the biggest scam on the planet! And when was the last time you heard TSCC giving really BIG money to any cause... Homeless? Hunger? Noooooo.... Prop 8!

TBMs are really quick to point out that it costs a lot to finance new temples, wards, missions, etc.

They have no idea of how many millions there are in the 5-8 billion taken annually in tithing. Those expenses are just a drop in the bucket.

TBMs having to clean the buildings and pay for their own missions. Wow, TSCC's overhead just got lower.

Before I came here, I mean. I didn't think of it in terms of hundreds of thousands of dollars per ward.

I know my mom thinks it goes to paying for new churches for the people, so we aren't in debt like other churches. And paying to bring temples to the people who need them. And helping finance church operations in poorer countries. And her idea of how much goes to the poor and needy is WAY, WAY out of touch with reality. I know she thinks all the GAs live humbly and if they have a perk, it's well-deserved and necessary (security details etc.) I think she sees a lot of things like church manuals and stuff given out and think they take up a big chunk of money too.

Personally, I think there is just a big reality gap between what people think is going in and how much is going out .... and where it is going to.

I never really thought about it, at least not beyond what they told me to think. That is, until I became the Ward Finance Clerk. Then I got to work with the ward budget and discovered that my tithing for the year was about the same amount as the wards entire budget. That made me sit up and think. I mean, the ward generated at least 50 times what I contributed.

And if every ward had budgets that were based on only one persons yearly tithing, and assuming that 5 million people are full tithepayers...
that means that about 5 million times the combined ward budgets just disappears into SLC.

JoD3:360 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I never really thought about it, at least not
> beyond what they told me to think. That is, until
> I became the Ward Finance Clerk. Then I got to
> work with the ward budget and discovered that my
> tithing for the year was about the same amount as
> the wards entire budget. That made me sit up and
> think. I mean, the ward generated at least 50
> times what I contributed.
>
> And if every ward had budgets that were based on
> only one persons yearly tithing, and assuming that
> 5 million people are full tithepayers...
> that means that about 5 million times the
> combined ward budgets just disappears into SLC.

Pure guesswork on my part, but I'll bet there are fewer than 5 million FULL tithe payers (might be that many full and part payers).

13 million members...of which, if we're generous 50% attend meetings twice a month. That's 6.5 million.

My experience as a ward finance clerk indicates that 50% or less (I'd say generally less) pay a full tithe. That leaves 3.25 million.

3.25 million full tithe payers, paying and average of, let's say, $4000 per year = $13,000,000,000. That sounds a bit high to me, so I'd be willing to bet that the overall number of full tithe payers is significantly lower. (1.5 million full tithe payers x $4000 = $6,000,000,000 - probably more likely).

A couple years ago there was a pretty good exchange on RfM about the amount each ward got for its budget. I seem to recall that 5000 is the average budget. Ours was 5000, some smaller and some larger appeared within that range as well. To be very generous, I figure we'll give each ward 6000, and according to the church there are somewhere around 29,000 wards and branches.

Out of the 6B dollars that are taken in, only 174M goes out.

That's only 2.9% of the church income that gets allotted to each ward.

At the closer reality of a 5500 budget, only 159,500,000 goes out at about 2.6%

I was closely associated with the grandson and son of two GA's. The grandson was from a very prominent 1st presidency member and nephew of a political candidate. These two were in the same district with me at the same time, and I would hear them chat about their many many exotic vacations, luxuries, motorocycles, ski boats, gadgets, shopping sprees at paushe stores, expensive cars, SUV's, lavish homes, etc). I then learned what each of the corresponding GA's made per year.

I was a farm boy from a mid-western town. I had looked forward to a mission my whole life, being isolated and sheltered in the morgbot paradigm that I was in. It was mind blowing for me to hear these guys talk up their riches. I would listen intently, and show very little reaction because I wanted them to keep talking and talk they did. I began thinking how unfair this was that my parents worked themselves to death to pay their tithing but also in sending me on an expensive mission. Dad worked six days a week, plumbing and farming. Mom worked at a factory. I couldn't believe that these idiots were living off poor people like my parents. It planted a seed in me that grew until this present day..just like the BOM says, if you plant a seed, it will grow.

I began to question the money trail. I remember mentioning my concern to a YBU economic's professor as an aside in our conversation. He looked at me like I was a budding apostate, and I remember him saying, "well even if the GA's made that much money, they deserve it because of all their sacrifices."

for these big boyz to play around and live like Kings (or Gods). When I joined the cult at 20, my nevermo Dad said, "They just want your money", and shook his head. He was soooo right. It is a ponzi scheme that has many people hooked while controlling every aspect of their lives.

Thanks for posting.

THe way I see it, most of the tithing money comes from the U.S.A., so lets look at the U.S. dollars:
There are 10,700 wards in the US, plus a few thousand branches. Say there are 100 people in each ward that pay tithing. Assume a mean annual income of $50,000 per year.
Thats 100 people times $5000 a year times 10,700. Thats $5.35 Billion dollars a year in tithing income. That doesn't include the $600 plus or minus million per year that comes in from the church-owned businesses, or the tithing income from the rest of the world. The church doesn't need our money.