Antioch Road

One Paragraph Review: The Church Treasurer’s Manual by Bruce Nuffer

The Church Treasurer's Manual: A Practical Guide for Managing Church Finances by Bruce Nuffer

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Bruce Nuffer's The Church Treasurer's Manual is short and unlikely to be of much help to church treasurers who have served in that role for any amount of time and have some bookkeeping and accounting background. The book largely just compiles information available online from a number of denominations and Internal Revenue Service guidance. There are some practical suggestions and some forms that come on a CD, but I do not anticipate referring to this book much, if at all, when questions arise. For the amount of money (list price: $49.99, though you should be able to find it cheaper), I expected more. It addresses too few topics. It addresses some topics in a cursory manner. For example, the section on "How Do You Determine the Annual Budget" contains less than a page of any real substance. Here is the problem, I think: the back cover indicates the editor is "a freelance writer" and a "marketing manager." There is no evidence that he is or has been a church treasurer. For church treasurers that use QuickBooks, Kathy Ivens' Running QuickBooks in Nonprofits is a much more helpful resource.

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SmartMoney.com’s 10 Things Not to Buy in 2010: Why No Love for the Compact Digital Camera?

SmartMoney.com gives us 10 things that are heading into the obsolete category and thus we should not buy in 2010. (Link via TruePravda.) Most items on the list make sense.

CDs: While providing better sound quality than alternatives, it’s clearly more convenient to listen to online radio. When I want a track permanently on my computer, Amazon's MP3 store usually provides what I need.

External Hard Drives: Ones I’ve owned have been so fickle and unreliable that I don’t plan on owning another. Backups on CDs or DVDs, networked computers in the house, flash drives, and online solutions work for me. I highly recommend paying Flickr’s relatively cheap yearly fee for online photo backups.

Smartphone Also-Rans: It’s down to Blackberry, iPhone, and Android. I love my Blackberry. My wife has less affection for it.

Newspaper Subscriptions: I’ve never had one and I would say a lot of people my age have never had one.

But then SmartMoney.com’s list includes this curious one: compact digital cameras. They say Digital SLRs are increasingly popular and, impliedly, what to purchase going forward. Digital SLRs may be the tool of professional photographers, but for most people, compacts meet our needs and are more practical and economical. The bestselling digital SLR on Amazon right now is the Canon EOS Rebel T1i. It costs $664. It is 8 x 12 x 7 inches and weighs 1.6 pounds. Compare that with the Canon PowerShot SX120IS, which costs $200, takes fine pictures for amateurs, and is much easier to transport with dimensions of 4.4 x 2.8 x 1.8 inches and one-third the weight of the Rebel. It’s hard to see how SLRs are the better option for how most people use their cameras.

On Tithing

Free Money Finance has a good series of posts up on the importance of Christians tithing, at least. See here, here, and most recently, here. (Hat tip: Evangelical Outpost.)

Cell Phones for Children?

I saw a commercial this afternoon for Cingular. It was a choir with teenagers on one side and parents on the other, singing back and forth. The teenagers, in their singing voices, were asking for cell phones. The parents were saying no way. The teenagers replied that you can pre-pay, thus alleviating the parents' concerns of their children incurring outrageous charges, not to be discovered until the bill arrived in the mail. The parents thought this was just great.

My first question: On what planet is it a good idea for parents to buy their teenaged children cell phones and to pay for their monthly bills? My second question: How long--my daughter is just about 20-months-old--before I eat my words?

A Million Dollar Judgment Call

Nothing like having your financial mistakes (in hindsight) published on the front page of a major newspaper. From a Page One article in Monday's Wall Street Journal (Kevin J. Delaney & Ann Grimes, "For Some Who Passed On Google Long Ago, Wistful Thinking," 8/23/2004):

Five years ago, Ms. Cikovsky took cash instead of Google stock. She and an associate moonlighted for Google, preparing PowerPoint slides and speaking notes that co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page used to announce their first venture-capital funding. They were willing to pay her in stock options, she says. Instead, she sent them a bill for about $4,000.

Her associate, Abbe Patterson, did take Google stock options for this and related public-relations tasks. Forgoing a $5,000 fee, she took options for 4,000 shares. After two stock splits, she has 16,000 shares. They're now worth $1.7 million.