From Monk to Money Manager

Why It's Okay to Be a Little Bit Wealthy---and How to Make It Happen

Doug Lynam

• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780785223887
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Finance

Build a better financial future for yourself and the world. Former monk turned financial advisor, Doug Lynam, shares the rules of money management that will change your approach to earning, saving, and investing.

From Monk to Money Manager is an entertaining and self-deprecating journey through Lynam's relationship with the almighty dollar—his childhood in a rich family, the long-haired hippie days running away from materialism, time in the Marine Corps looking for selfless service, and his twenty years in the monastery under a vow of poverty that led to his current profession as a financial advisor. In this unique look at wealth from a spiritual perspective, Lynam shares his belief that God doesn't expect us to live in poverty. The truth is, we need financial peace so we can help others. When money becomes a part of our spiritual practice, used in love and service, it can bring us closer to our highest spiritual ideals.

With humor and humility, Lynam uses stories told through the lens of his own money mistakes, and those of counseling clients, to understand how our attitudes about money hold us back. He also provides clear, step-by-step guidance on how to grow a little bit wealthy. His insights include how to build a compassionate relationship to our finances; some of the good, bad, and ugly truths about money; and the tricks to unlocking financial freedom.

PART 1

WHY WE ALL NEED TO BE A LITTLE BIT WEALTHY

CHAPTER 1

MY HATE AFFAIR WITH MONEY

Ironically, most of my money troubles occurred because I tried to escape worrying about money. I didn’t want to deal with any of it. I grew up in a rich family where money was abundant but weaponized. Like a common virus engineered to be a weapon of mass destruction, money was the tool we used to hurt, control, manipulate, and dominate one another. It was horrible.

Growing up, I learned through the behavior of those around me that money and materialism were evil. So when I started studying philosophy and religion in high school and read the words of Paul the apostle, “For the love of money is the root of all evil,” I believed Paul was right.

Throw a Jesus quote into the mix and you have a proto-monk in the making. That would be Matthew 19:21: “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” This seemed like the answer I was looking for.

I was a long way from becoming a monk because, at the time, I was an agnostic and a teenager. So I became an anti-materialist wannabe hippie instead. I covered my car with rain forest murals, peace signs, and rainbows. I grew out my hair, wore ratty clothing, and tried to drop out of society. It seemed like a clever idea at the time, plus it annoyed my parents. The only problem was that many of my new liberal brethren were just as selfish, self-centered, and materialistic as my conservative parents. They just wanted different stuff. They didn’t want to be told what to do, and their anti-establishment attitude was often ego in disguise. They wanted the freedom to be as self-centered as possible and seek as much personal pleasure as possible without any responsibility. Despite the “one world” rhetoric, which I greatly admired, they didn’t seem to give a darn about anyone but themselves. That wasn’t much of an improvement.

So then I tried to find selfless service in the military—the perfect egalitarian meritocracy. Excellence is rewarded, but your pay is fixed. In college, I ended up at Officer Candidate School with the US Marine Corps and loved it. I graduated near the top of my class, and I almost stayed to make a career out of the military (I did not go active duty), but I realized that my real job as a Marine was to kill people. I’m not a pacifist, but the Marines taught us to enjoy killing, and that freaked me out a bit. I found the idea of killing people for a living disturbing, but mostly because the adventure part of it thrilled me. Unlike some, I didn’t quit the Marines because I hated soldiering. I quit because I got good at the soldiering part and enjoyed it too much. There is a reason many men and women like hunting and playing shooter video games: it is a heck of a lot of fun.

If I was going to quit the Marines and do something better, what could be a higher calling? Where else could I find a life of service and avoid the “greedy capitalistic corporate world”? Just then, I began to have a religious reawakening and started to explore the possibility of becoming a monk.

It seemed a perfect solution. In the monastery, I would have all the structure and discipline I liked about the Marines along with comradery, or esprit de corps, but with an even nobler purpose. God comes before country. Best of all, I would take a vow of poverty and be free from the grip of money and materialism forever.

Or so I thought.

A Surprise Twist

I entered the monastery when I was twenty-two years old and fresh out of college. My original intent was to try it out for a little while, like taking a gap year, as a break before my life started. It was also a rebellious adventure or the “road less traveled.” I was looking for the meaning of life, and I decided that if I was ever going to find it, a monastery was the most likely place to do so.

I wasn’t disappointed. Being a monk was everything I’d hoped for, and much more. I discovered a remarkable community filled with lovingkindness and wonder at the grandeur of the universe. Each day was rich with meaning, even if poor in spirit.

In my early years at the monastery, it was a struggle to pay the bills and keep the household running smoothly. I was the junior monk by almost thirty years, so I was the lowest person in the pecking order. I had very little power or control over daily events. I was just a happy grunt, trying not to screw up.

Since the other brothers were older, wiser, and smarter, I assumed they knew something about finance and bookkeeping. Sadly, that was not the case. Within a few years it was clear that something was desperately wrong with the community finances. We were all working full time, but somehow there wasn’t enough money to pay the bills.

Eventually we hit the breaking point. Calls were coming in from creditors, and I was using my personal credit cards to cover living expenses. I didn’t understand what was going wrong. I finally insisted on taking responsibility for the household finances so I could see what the problem was. I had no idea if I would have better luck than the other monks at figuring out a solution, but I had to give it my best shot.

What I stumbled into was a Pandora’s box of troubles. I learned that the community had been running in the red for years. There were medical bills, car repairs, student loans, insurance payments, and all the living expenses required for any home. There were also retreats to Rome and help given to those in need. Most importantly, there were several years of underemployment and below-subsistence wages for some of the brothers, along with a failed business venture when finding meaningful work seemed impossible. There wasn’t enough money coming in the door. So credit cards became a necessary survival mechanism. Even when our income level improved after we all landed good teaching jobs, it was too late. We were under an avalanche of debt.

Moreover, we were not supported by the church and never accepted any donations. Part of our charism (the style of our religious order) was a commitment to being self-sufficient and to never rely on outside support. Why should someone else donate money so we could live the lifestyle of our choosing?

How did our financial problems get so bad? For two reasons. First was the hope that prayer alone could solve our money problems. If prayer alone was ever going to solve a big money mess, we were first in line. The second reason was we all played an insidious game of hot potato with the community finances. We viewed money as evil and didn’t own up to our individual or collective responsibilities. Somehow, everything was going to work out for the best, or it was someone else’s responsibility to fix. We could always find someone else to shift the responsibility onto, another brother or, worse, God.

The quest for blame is always successful. And “giving everything to God” doesn’t mean pushing our responsibilities into his lap. God shows us how to live, but God can’t do the living for us. We each have responsibilities to ourselves, our families, and our neighbors. In fact, we have a universal responsibility to all humanity and nature.

Hope and blame are not strategies. Prayer that leads you to the right action is great. Prayer that leaves you sitting on your backside isn’t. And prayer used as a form of denial or blame isn’t real prayer. I believe in the power of prayer, but praying for the bills to get paid without taking right action is a guaranteed path to failure. You won’t have enough money for retirement if you don’t put any money into your account or buy lottery tickets as your financial plan.

One of hardest truths for the community to face was the reality that God was not going to magically pay the bills. It didn’t matter that we were doing good in the world. It didn’t matter that we lived a life of love, service, and self-sacrifice. Visa wanted their money back, with a lot of interest, and they wanted it by the end of the month.

After many months of trying to untangle the financial mess I’d just uncovered, there was only one course of action available—bankruptcy. The community was insolvent, and since much of the debt was on personal credit cards, personal bankruptcy for each monk in the community was the only solution. It was a horror and a logistical nightmare. The process took over two years to file and discharge all the bankruptcies. My part-time job, in addition to teaching full time, was to organize, file, and track all the paperwork.

However, there was an upside. Since we were broke and lived in relative poverty, we had nothing to repossess and nothing to lose. Bankruptcy immediately improved our credit scores and left us with a completely clean slate, able to start over and build anew. In the end, it was a huge blessing. Fortunately, we filed for bankruptcy long before the laws changed in 2005, which made filing harder and more complex . . . as if it was easy before.

After surviving that ordeal, I made it a point to learn everything I could about personal finance. If I was going to be responsible for the community money, I was going to do it right. Determined never to repeat past mistakes, I went to our local bookstore and purchased every credible book on personal finance I could find. The depth of my ignorance on the subject shocked me. I had no idea how the world of money worked. Finance was one of the most crucial aspects of life, and I knew nothing about it. Most schools don’t teach it, most parents don’t teach it, and most adults are financially illiterate to some extent. Even people who have money often lose it due to poor planning. Financial illiteracy causes untold amounts of suffering.

Over the years my knowledge of money management deepened, then took another unexpected twist. Monasteries have regular guests, and we were no exception. Friends and visitors frequented our dinner table, often pouring their hearts out, seeking solace and support during troubled times. Since I was the most junior monk, I wasn’t encouraged to give spiritual counsel to guests. That was for the prior. I mostly just watched and listened during conversations with visitors. And as I listened to those conversations unfold gradually, I realized that almost every visitor who came with a spiritual problem also had a financial problem lurking in the background. More importantly, I could help. So I did.

I started working pro bono with guests to solve their money problems. If guests could afford a real financial planner or lawyer, I sent them to an appropriate professional. I took the clients who were too poor to get attention from anybody in the industry. I knew that I wasn’t good enough, yet, to charge anyone, but I was steadily developing my skill set.

The most unusual problems fell into my lap. I probated estates, helped file more bankruptcies, worked out long-term debt repayment, helped with child support, student loans, and identity theft, to name a few.

Financial problems are often entangled with spiritual problems. The financial problem is sometimes a root cause and sometimes a byproduct—and sometimes they’re so tangled together it’s hard to know where one ends and the other begins. For example, when one client was dealing with the death of a loved one, their grief and loss were the primary concern. But there was also an estate to probate and no one to help. Trying to navigate probate while mourning the loss of your dearest loved one isn’t practical.

One terminally ill client was dealing with their end-of-life grief process, but they also needed to write a will, assign someone to have power of attorney for health care and finances, and create a Do Not Resuscitate order. Focusing only on the spiritual grief would have been a travesty. Some suffering in life is unavoidable, especially from unforeseen financial catastrophes, but the suffering that poor estate planning produces is avoidable. If I could help avert the lesser tragedy that dying without a will (intestate) produces, I felt a moral obligation to do so.

Frequently guests would ask me to pray for them to get relief from their money crises. I always did, but I also insisted we make a budget. As I have said, we must make real change happen for ourselves. God has given us free will and agency—and the responsibility to use them. God is not going to work a miracle to solve a problem that you have the power to fix.

A New Source of Suffering

The greatest irony of my life is that I joined a monastery, in part, to escape the world of money, and I ended up spending more time worrying about money than almost anyone in the outside world. Another irony, directly related to the first, is that I learned I’m good at helping people with their financial problems.

From these experiences, I learned several rules about money and life. Here are two:

Rule #1: If you ignore money it will always bite you in the backside.

Rule #2: Bad things happen to good people. (Remember that nice guy called Jesus? They nailed him to a tree for saying that we should all be kind to one another.)

Around 2005, my life took another unexpected turn. I was working as a math and science teacher at a private seventh-through twelfth-grade school, and serving as chair of the mathematics department, when the school’s statistics/economics instructor left un expectedly. In a moment of crisis, I took the course on as an overload. I wasn’t the most qualified person for the job, but I was good with kids and was familiar enough with the material. Most importantly, I was also the only person available.

Surprisingly, it became my favorite course to teach. I loved it. I was in my element and, unbeknownst to me, on my way to realizing my true calling. The first thing I did was throw out the horribly dry textbooks and teach through projects and real-world examples.

After several years of teaching economics and personal finance, as well as helping countless monastery guests, my colleagues at work began asking me for financial advice. I gladly helped them, free of charge. As a monk I never billed clients. It was just my form of service. And that is when I took one big step closer to where I am today.

Do you ever have “bookmark” moments in your life? Events so profound there will always be a before and an after for that event? Here’s one of those moments for me.

I have a good friend and colleague with whom I worked for decades. Around 2008, she asked me for help planning h...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Author’s Note
• What Is It About Money?
• Part 1: Why We All Need to Be a Little Bit Wealthy
• Part 2: You and Your Money
• Part 3: Get Out of the Red and Into the Black
• Part 4: It’s Time to Become a Little Bit Wealthy
• Part 5: Help Others Become a Little Bit Wealthy Too
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• About the Author