Tentmaking Tips

In many parts of the country, you’ll be getting your Notice of Appraised Value that will be used to determine the property taxes for your home.

I’ve written about the importance of protesting your home’s value here and here, and I’d encourage you think through your plan for this year.

The steps I typically recommend:

1. Contact a real estate agent for all the comps in your area from Jan 1, 2025 until now

2. Review those comps, look up pictures on Zillow, and determine how much you want protest that your home is worth

3. Submit a protest to the county with the documentation you’ve compiled

4. Negotiate with the appraisers on the value of your home

5. If necessary, appear before the Board with your evidence

I protest each year and often find that they’re willing to negotiate on your home’s value, which lowers your property taxes. They’ll usually do this before you get to the Board in order to reduce

I wanted to give you an update on my current health insurance situation for those of you considering a similar path.

Last year I had insurance through a small group plan for my real estate business. It has become increasingly expensive and our family of 4 was paying over $2,200/mo for a PPO plan. I knew I needed to make a change.

I went back to an idea I had in the previous newsletter I wrote about this.

The idea was to stack two types of health plans.

1. An ACA HMO Bronze insurance plan with premium tax credits (low cost)

2. A ministry health sharing plan (broader network)

The reason I didn’t do this last year is because the ACA plans didn’t offer an HSA option. That’s been very important to me over the years because I contribute the maximum to an HSA each year and then let the money grow tax free. Just the growth of the HSA ha

Ok, back to planning a dream trip.

So you’ve got your flight & hotel booked, what next?

Well, the Caymans is super expensive.

Here are some of the other costs you’ll incur:

• Resort fee at the Kimpton of ~$100/day (this includes a number of fun activities the resort offers)

• Food - this is expensive pretty much everywhere you go

• Transportation - we use the public taxis and they’re relatively affordable (first time we went we did activities around the island but second time we just hung out at the resort because it’s so amazing)

• Activities - they have many excursions & other activities on the island

Here are some of the ways you can cover these costs as well:

• Redeem some of your Chase points for cash (easiest) and if you don’t have enough, grab another Chase card in the process and get the welcome bonus

• Use travel credits you may have
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We went for the first time in 2024 and took the kids. I wrote about that trip here.

While we’ve traveled to many amazing places, my wife thinks the beaches at the Caymans are the best she’s seen, so she was eager to return.

I want to spend the next two newsletters explaining how we booked this trip with points & how you could do the same.

The cost of this trip, if you were paying cash, is likely more than you would be comfortable paying. It certainly would’ve been for us. But points allows you to splurge in ways you likely wouldn’t do otherwise.

Let’s start with flights.

Flying to the Caribbean can be expensive. One of our flight attendants told us that they get paid for an 8 hour trip on only a 3 hour flight because of where we’re going. That’s why they like to fly this route.

American Airlines has a direct flight to the Caymans from our

I wanted to share 3 more lessons I’ve learned along the way.

Lesson 4: Not trading time for money allows for more flexibility to do ministry

There’s a variety of ways to do tentmaking.

Some require you to report to a certain place at a certain time & you get paid based on the length of time you’re there. Nothing wrong but that, but it certainly is less flexible than some other tentmaking options.

I intentionally tried to choose income sources that would free me up for ministry. I wanted to make income in ways I could hire employees to manage so that I could replace my ministry income in a few hours each week.

These kinds of tentmaking approaches can take more time to develop, but in the end they provide much more flexibility to pursue your ministry goals.

Lesson 5: Lowering your expen...

I raised support for the first few years of our church plant and then I was on the payroll for about 9 years after that before transitioning off.

Looking back on these years, I wanted to share some lessons I’ve learned. I hope these help those of you thinking of starting a tentmaking journey of your own. I also hope it encourages those of you already on the adventure.

Lesson 1: I wish I would’ve started sooner.

I was just sharing this with my cousin over lunch this past week. We were talking about business and I mentioned to him that after these years of tentmaking, I wished I had started sooner.

There were some opportunities that the Lord brought into my path in the early days of ministry that I didn’t seize because I thought everyone in ministry was supposed to get paid by the ministry. I assumed I shouldn’t pursue those because I was going to event