A Spending Finish Line is Just the Beginning

THERE’S A TRANSFORMATIVE impact when you define a lifestyle finish line by capping personal spending to prioritize generosity and acknowledge God’s ownership of all resourc­es. You can set your first finish line in three different ways: a maintenance finish line (keeping future spending to your current level), a benchmark finish line (using an objective benchmark to determine appropriate spending), and a fo­cused finish line (re-evaluating your expenses for alignment).

As you work toward setting your first lifestyle finish line, you will undoubtedly have questions. Let’s tackle some of the most common ones.

Can you change your finish line?

In helping others set finish lines, I routinely describe the pro­cess as setting your first finish line. Thinking that your finish line is set in stone for life is enough to deter many from setting one at all. What a loss, considering that a lifestyle finish line is one of the most liberating financial decisions you can make!

In several situations, it is worth re-evaluating your finish line to ensure that it is still accomplishing its purpose.

These include:

• Annual review: Some givers adjust their finish line annu­ally to keep in line with inflation.
• Family changes: Any change in the number of people you are financially responsible for will likely affect the cost of maintaining the same lifestyle.
• Moving to a new region: The cost of living can vary considerably. Any move should prompt a second look at your finish line. In some cases, the same lifestyle may cost even less than it did before you moved.
• Major life events: Some major events, such as a child heading to college or a prolonged change in health, may temporarily affect household spending.   What about savings, retirement planning, real estate, and investing?

In the last issue, we discussed that all resources you control are ultimately divided into four major buckets: (1) personal spending, (2) planning for the future, (3) taxes, and (4) building God’s Kingdom.

A lifestyle finish line guides your personal spending month to month. Longer-term plan­ning, such as emergency savings, retirement planning, and investing, fits into the planning for the future bucket. However, your lifestyle finish line does not govern these types of assets. Instead, planning for the future is best managed with a net worth finish line. A net worth finish line is simply a maximum limit on the total assets you are willing to keep in your name and is a direct counter to the bigger barns mentality of the Rich Fool in Luke 12:13-21.

There are three points of spiritual wrestling required to set a net worth finish line:  

1. Lifestyle finish line: Knowing your lifestyle finish line makes it easy to know what you will need to live on in the future because you have already protected yourself from lifestyle creep.
2. Wealth transfer: Knowing how much you will leave to any heirs helps you plan for the future now. Think about establishing a wealth transfer finish line by limiting how much you intend to pass on. Consider executing much of that transfer during your lifetime, ideally in the years your children could use it most.
3. Conservative margin: The future is never certain, and it can be wise to plan for the worst. However, many people plan for far more margin than they could ever need out of fear. Your advi­sor likely has many tools to help you put this particular part of the equation into perspective.   Once you have wrestled through these three ques­tions, you and your advisor should be able to deter­mine a net worth finish line together. If you begin to accumulate assets beyond your net worth finish line, you must ask yourself: Why are you keeping it at all?

How Does Giving Work With a Finish Line?

Even if you haven’t reached your spending finish line yet, I recommend that you still make giving a priori­ty and a habit by giving a percentage of your income or setting an annual giving goal. However, the real fun begins once your income passes your spending finish line. You will soon witness your giving grow exponentially—and with it, your capacity to see God at work.

What’s Holding You Back?

At its core, setting a lifestyle finish line isn’t about restriction—it’s about freedom. It’s about freeing yourself from the endless pursuit of more so that you can experience the joy of enough. It’s about breaking the cycle of lifestyle creep so that generosity becomes your default rather than an afterthought.

It’s about choosing to trust God’s provision instead of clinging to wealth for security.

If you’re still on the fence, start small. Set a spending finish line for 90 days and see what happens. Watch how your mindset shifts, how your contentment grows, and how your ability to give expands. You may be surprised to find that in sur­rendering control, you gain far more than you give up. And in doing so, you step into the greater calling of faithful stewardship—living not just for yourself but for the glory of God and the good of others.

I can tell you from personal experience that it may be one of the most impactful financial deci­sions you will ever make.

---

This article was published in our Faithful Steward magazine, a quarterly publication filled with encouraging stories, biblical teaching, and practical tools to help you grow as a wise and joyful giver. If you'd like to begin receiving Faithful Steward, consider becoming a FaithFi partner.