Depending on your age, the assurance you have of future employment, your health and your country of origin, you just might. In my own informal surveys, I’ve discovered that — these days — essentially everybody is willing to consider retirement, assuming someone will help lead them down the road of that discussion. Again, depending on what your homeland does for retirement funding, you might or might not have much set aside. As a result, it seems to me that this implies a certain burden of responsibility for those of us who are mission agency heads, missionary care-givers, missions ministers, missions committee chairman, and church leaders.

As a young missionary in my mid-twenties, I remember what a nice gesture it was when a medium-sized church in southwestern Louisville took out a small pension plan for my wife and me. They didn’t ask our permission. They didn’t even tell us. They just did it. And one day, we got the first annual statement. Today, that little pension plan is the centerpiece of our retirement planning. It seemed “courteous” and kind at the time. Today it seems mission-critical.

Want to make a big splash in the life of the missionary family you love? Talk to a financial advisor in your church. Ask about some kind of portable pension plan. If you’d like, confirm things with your missionary’s sending agency. (Always a nice thing to do.) But either way, ask. Take some initiative. Your “courtesy” might become “mission-critical” in 30 years. :-)

Want to see some discussions on this stuff? Blogs abound. Check out, for example:
http://www.thinkretirement.com/

Got an opinion about missionaries, retirement, pension plans, savings, social security, or the like? Just click on “Comment” immediately after this item on the web and share your story. Your “lesson learned” just might become someone else’s battle plan. And … thank you for taking time to share.

Doug