Fee-only · Fiduciary · Serving ministers nationwide
Fee-only financial planning for pastors and ministry leaders.
You have spent years telling other families that God provides. And somewhere around three in the morning, you have wondered whether you have done enough for your own. That question deserves a real answer from someone who already understands how a minister gets paid.
Paid by you. Only you.
No commissions. No products. Nobody pays us to put you in anything. Fee-only is a structure, not a slogan.
A fiduciary, in writing.
We are a Registered Investment Adviser. We are required to put your interests ahead of our own, and we are happy to be held to it.
Ministry is the whole practice.
Not a niche page on a generic firm's website. Pastors, ministers, and ministry staff are who we serve.
The problem
A minister's pay package does things almost no other paycheck does.
They mean well. They are just solving the wrong problem. A minister's compensation does things no salary does, and an advisor who has not worked with clergy will miss most of it without ever knowing they missed it.
The housing allowance has rules, and timing is one of them.
It has to be designated in advance and in writing by the church before the pay period it covers. A board that votes it in December for the year that just ended has not designated anything. And the exclusion is capped by more than one limit, so the number on the minutes is not automatically the number you get to exclude.
The Social Security opt-out has a Medicare tail most people miss.
Under current law a Form 4361 exemption is irrevocable, and the ministerial earnings it covers build no Social Security or Medicare credit. That does not mean Medicare is gone. It means the credits have to come from somewhere else, usually other covered work or a spouse's record, and where neither covers it Part A can still be bought at a premium set each year. The pastor who opted out at twenty-eight and has never held a secular job is the one who needs to see this early. There is usually more room than people assume, and it works better with twenty years of runway than with two.
Money that leaves the church plan may not be able to come back.
A 403(b)(9) church plan can do something an IRA cannot. Move the money for a good-looking reason and that feature may be gone for good. It is one of the few genuinely irreversible decisions in retirement planning, and it is routinely made in a single phone call.
Your spouse may not inherit the benefit you are counting on.
A housing allowance is tied to ministerial service. When the minister dies, the surviving spouse generally cannot keep excluding it unless it is for ministerial services they perform or performed. Households plan for decades around a number that does not survive the first funeral.
This is general education, not advice about your situation. Clergy tax rules turn on specific facts and individual circumstances vary. We will point you to a qualified tax professional where your situation calls for one.
Start here
The Pastor Retirement Checkup
One focused engagement. You bring your situation, we tell you in writing where your retirement actually stands, and you decide what happens next. No ongoing commitment.
$599 for an individual. $799 for a married couple.
How this works
Everyone starts in the same place.
Most advisory firms give you one door, and it is a big one. Book a call, sit through a pitch, and decide whether to hand your financial life to someone you have met twice. We start smaller and more specific, and we start there with everyone.
A conversation
Half an hour. No cost, no pitch. You tell us what is on your mind and we tell you honestly whether we are the right fit. Sometimes we are not, and we will say so.
The Pastor Retirement Checkup
A focused, paid engagement with written findings. Everyone starts here, whether you are still deciding or you already know you want help. It is how we get to know you and what you are actually building toward.
Ongoing planning and management
We manage your accounts, you get a planning meeting and a written review of your tax return every year, and the short questions get answered as they come up. Scoped and priced in writing before anything starts.
Where you are
The decisions change. They do not get easier.
A minister's financial life has seasons, and what matters in one of them is not what matters in the next. Find yourself here.
The first ten years
The Form 4361 exemption is a declaration of religious conviction, not a financial strategy, and we will not tell you to take it or to skip it. What we will do is make sure you understand what it does to everything else. Then the rest of it. A housing allowance that may never have been designated the way the rules require. How much goes into the church plan while time is still on your side.
The cheapest season to get right. The most expensive one to get wrong.
The middle years
Twenty years in. Maybe a second church, maybe kids looking at college. A spouse with a 401(k) from a job outside the church. Stay in the parsonage or buy. And the quiet one nobody says out loud, are we behind.
Nobody drifts on purpose. Twenty years is a long time to drift.
The last ten
When to draw and from where. What the church plan can do that an IRA cannot. Whether the housing allowance follows you into retirement, and how much of it. What your spouse would be left with if you went first.
Most of this is still workable. Some of it stops being workable.
Who you would be working with
A pastor who happens to be a fiduciary.
Todd Hukill has pastored, planted churches, and served for nearly two decades as Finance Director for the Tennessee Assemblies of God Ministry Network, where roughly two hundred churches and their ministers sit on the other side of the desk. He holds a degree in finance with a financial planning concentration and first worked in advisory in 2000.
So the housing allowance conversation does not start with you explaining what a housing allowance is. It starts about four steps in, where it should.
Common questions we get asked
Where pastors usually start reading
Retirement planning for pastors
What changes about retirement when your pay includes a housing allowance and your largest account is a church plan.
Clergy housing allowance planning
Designation, the limits most pastors have not heard of, and what happens to the allowance after you stop serving.
What a clergy-fluent advisor does differently
The specific things a generic advisor gets wrong, and what to ask before you hire anyone.
For ministry leaders and church staff
Worship pastors, executive pastors, missionaries, and staff who may or may not have ministerial status for tax purposes.