Spender, Saver, or Servant?
The following is excerpted from God and Money: How We Discovered True Riches at Harvard Business School by John Cortines and Gregory Baumer.
A person’s mindset regarding money will tend toward one of three possibilities. Your “money mindset” will make you a Spender, a Saver, or a Servant with your financial resources.
A Spender, represented by most people in the Western world, is someone who pursues the greatest possible present consumption, even if mindful of the need to save some.
A Saver, by contrast, strives to limit consumption to some extent, focusing instead on increased wealth accumulation.
A Servant, possessing the rarest mindset of all, orients their life around limiting both consumption and wealth-building, focusing instead on giving the most money they can toward blessing other people.
Your money mindset is driven by two factors: your temporal focus and your view on the highest purpose of money. Temporally, Spenders maximize value today, Savers maximize value in the future, and Servants maximize value in eternity.
These attitudes are driven by your view of money’s purpose. A Spender views financial resources as a way to “live it up,” enjoying every part of the high life that money can buy. Savers have a more complex view of money, viewing it mostly as a tool for security, stability, flexibility, and personal freedom or agency. A Saver’s net worth might become a simple way to “keep score” in life. Servants, by contrast, view their money as a potential blessing to the world in Christ’s name, desiring to make the most of its potential for positive impact.
So where do you stack up?
Take the following quiz, circling the answer that most closely aligns with your heart. This is meant to be a light-hearted and non-scientific exercise, so don’t feel any pressure. We’ll give away the answer key up front: A corresponds to a Saver; B corresponds to a Spender; and C corresponds to a Servant. Our guess is that 99 percent of the population, when being honest, will circle mostly As or Bs. Give it a try:
What excites you more?
A. A four-star vacation across Europe.
B. Maxing out all retirement accounts for the year.
C. Dinner with your pastor, who expresses heartfelt thanks for your sacrificial support of a successfully launched, new, key ministry.
What was your tendency as a child, with regard to new money you received?
A. To buy new toys or spend on experiences as soon as you got it.
B. To save it in a piggy bank or savings account.
C. To spend on or give to others, your church, or charities.
You hear about a man who, at 70, has managed his middle-class income through careful savings, with a current net worth of eight million dollars. Your first thought is:
A. What a waste! Spending it would have been more fun!
B. Wow, he really did well. I hope I can do that, too.
C. He may have missed some opportunities to experience the joy of generosity.
Success looks like . . .
A. Experiencing great food and travel, hosting friends, driving a luxury car.
B. Retiring at 50.
C. Lengthening home payoff and forgoing some luxuries in order to sponsor a missionary family.
Your annual bonus is twice as much as you thought it would be. What do you first think?
A. I’m headed out shopping/ on vacation.
B. I’m putting this on the mortgage.
C. Thank God for this provision. I can’t wait to give a chunk of this away.
The spending in my life is:
A. Effortless—I love it.
B. Bothersome—I wish I could spend less.
C. Controlled—I feel good about the way it’s managed.
The saving in my life is:
A. Bothersome—It’s an inconvenience that gets in the way of having fun.
B. Effortless—I love building wealth.
C. Purposeful—I have healthy and reasonable goals toward which I’m carefully working.
The giving in my life is:
A. Obligatory.
B. Formulaic.
C. Joyfully overflowing.
Tally up your score! The more your answers lean toward the same letter each time, the more you have a clue as to how your heart inclines. If you’re married, it may be worthwhile to see where your spouse falls and compare answers—and this may provoke an interesting conversation highlighting where money conflicts may have originated. There’s nothing wrong with having opposing money mindsets but knowing that this is the case may be helpful in praying and working through the need for alignment on money issues in a marriage relationship. Working together toward becoming Christian Servants can be a unifying pursuit.
Faith & Finance Perspective
How did this exercise make you feel? Rather than being meant to instill guilt or shame, its intent is more self-reflective, instructing us first to be honest with ourselves and then to assess how we feel about where we land.
As citizens of Christ’s Kingdom, we all strive for a Servant-like mindset when it comes to managing our money. But many factors weigh against us, including the mindsets we shared growing up in our nuclear families. (Were our parents primarily Spenders, Savers, or Servants?) Maybe our anxieties about the future push us a little too far into Save mode. Or maybe past wounds cause us to self-medicate through excessive consumerism (a.k.a. “retail therapy”).
Regardless of where we find ourselves, here are six promises to keep us moving in a hopeful, Kingdom-building direction:
God understands our pains, insecurities, and temptations, and doesn’t condemn us when we struggle (Romans 8:1).
He calms our anxieties (Matthew 6:25–34).
He cares for our earthly needs (Psalm 37:25).
He leads us out of worldly temptation (1 Corinthians 10:13).
He loves us just as we are, but too much to leave us that way (Ephesians 4:20–24).
He provides everything we need to live a godly life (2 Peter 1:3–4).
Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy. Let them do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share, storing up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life.
- 1 Timothy 6:17–19 (NKJV)