Financial Advice for Students

[This only applies to US students...]

A GREAT piece of advice I got from a friend just before moving to England was to convert any IRA’s (401k’s/403b’s) you have into RothIRA’s while you are a student, and the money WILL NEVER BE TAXED! How is that possible, you ask?  It must be a scam.  Nope.  Here’s how it works…

1. A regular IRA is funded pre-tax (that is, you exclude the amount paid in from taxable income), but you are taxed when you withdraw it.  A RothIRA is funded post-tax, but you are never taxed when you withdraw it.
2. If you are a full-time student you are likely to have very little taxable income. This is especially true if you are studying internationally and your income is excluded from US taxes (after the first year).
3. The US tax system allows you to exclude a portion of income from taxes.  Last year this amount was $3,400/person in the family plus $10,700/$5,350 (married/single).   So, for a married with 2 kids (4 ppl) the exclusion was $24,300, and for a single person it was $8,750. 
4. The amount converted from an IRA to a RothIRA counts as taxable income in the year of the conversion, but since it is now a RothIRA, you won’t ever pay income tax on it when you take it out. 
5. So if the amount you convert in any year is less than the income exclusion, that money WILL NEVER BE TAXED! 
6. Most companies will allow ‘partial conversions’ so you can keep the conversion below the taxable exclusion if you have too much in total to convert. 

An example: You are married (no kids) and you or your spouse has $20,000 in an IRA or 401k/403b from an old job. 

1. If you already have the money in an IRA, your good.  If not, convert the 401k/403b to an IRA.  It should only take signing a few forms.
2. Determine your taxable exclusion.  Married no kids should be about $17,500 ($10,700 for being married + $6,800 for being two people [$3,400x2] for 2007).  This will be slightly higher each year.
3. Subtract out any income you might have that will reduce this.  E.g., Taxable interest, foreign earned income*, etc.  [*--NB: Only applies to your first year overseas.  You have to pay taxes in the US on foreign earned income until you meet the residency rules, which takes about 9-12 months of living somewhere outside the US.]  We’ll say you have $1,000 of income.  So that leaves you with $16.500 of exclusion.
4. Convert $16,500 of your IRA to a Roth in year 1.  Convert the remaining $3.500 in year 2.

If you have a large IRA amount that will take more than a couple of years to convert tax free, convert stocks when the market is down because it will allow you to convert more, sooner. 

 

Bruce McCormack on Theosis

Bruce McCormack gives an analysis here of Westminster’s response to Peter Enns.  In a nutshell, McCormack argues that WTS gives a Lutheran or Eastern Orthodox reading of Chalcedon, which leads directly to theosis as an appropriate soteriology.  He clearly doesn’t think that’s appropriate for Reformed theology.  Here’s an interesting quote (especially the last part):

I have to say that this is the last thing I expected to discover in a report issued by Westminster Seminary theologians.  I live in an ecclesial world in which those who value Christian orthodoxy as a concept seem invariably to drift towards either Rome or Constantinople or some amalgamation of the two which is represented by no existing church.  The last thing most of my friends want is a truly Protestant theology (whether Lutheran or Reformed); theosis is the hot topic in soteriology and both Lutheran and Reformed theologians are struggling mightily to find something akin to a theosis doctrine in their own church fathers (in Luther but also in Calvin - as Todd Billings’ recent book amply demonstrates). Mind you, I am not accusing the theologians of Westminster of abandoning Reformed soteriology!  But they do not seem to realize that in advocating the version of Chalcedonian Christology they do, unreconstructed by Reformed sources, they have taken a most important step in that direction.  After all, which soteriology do they think the Chalcedonian Definition was originally designed to support?

He indicates that the framers of Chalcedon would only have assumed theosis and that only later interpretations have corrected this original errant position.  I would agree with the former, but question the latter.

HT: Euangelion

 

Durham-Duke Symposium: Identity (2)

I gave all the official details in post 1, but I thought I’d give a few of my impressions and experiences here.  This was quite an experience. 

One of the most exciting parts was the first NT paper given by Francis Watson on ‘Beyond the New Perspective’.  Watson challenged many of the NPP ’doctrines’ and said this would be the last of his works on the NPP.  As Nijay noted, the audience included Richard Hays, Tom Wright, Jimmy Dunn, Joel Marcus, and John Barclay, among the rest of us.  It wasn’t unlike SBL, but just a more intimate environment.  Joel Marcus asked a probing question for Francis that still hangs in the air: Was Paul’s characterisation about Judaism right, or was it just a caricature?  I don’t think that was adequately answered, but on the whole Watson’s critique of the NPP showed its weaknesses without turning back uncritically to the old perspective.

As one of the organisers, I got the opportunity to chat with all of the Duke people at one time or another.  The best meal was that at Bishop Tom Wright’s home at Auckland Castle at Bishop Auckland.  I had the fortune to share the table with Tom Wright and Richard Hays and several others.  But even cooler was going into the chapel at the castle.  It was awe-inspiring to see the lists of bishops dating back to 900 AD or so.  Two of England’s greatest NT scholars and also bishops in Durham–JB Lightfoot and BF Westcott–were buried there.  It gives a sense of the ancient faith that has been carried along by the leadership of the church. 

The end cap of the weekend was the opportunity to drive Richard Hays to the airport because his flight was too early to catch a train.  He was gracious enough to let us bend his ear for a couple of hours.  He had good things to say about my thesis topic and that it is timely.  He mentioned specifically that 20+ years ago hardly any in the NT guild would ever think we could learn about Paul from patristic writers, but now the field is ripe for studies like this.  That was encouraging.  He also mentioned the need to have a manageable scope–like not trying to do all of Paul.  That will be harder advice to take since the patristic writers don’t focus on just one passage when talking about theosis.  So somebody has to do the big picture stuff, right?

At the castle dinner I heard Tom Wright comment that he would have benefited in his postgrad days to have participated in an event like this.  It was good to see scholarship at its best and also to get to know people personally as well.  It will be one the highlights of my time here.

 

Updates

Sorry for the sparse posting for the past couple of weeks.  I’ve had a few things going on such as…

At the end of March I turned in a second chapter for my 18 month review.  It’s on Cyril’s view of deification.  He’s got interesting stuff on 2 Pet 1.4 and particpation.  I hope to do a couple of posts about it.

Last week I spent a few days down at Tyndale House (Cambridge) with Mark Mathews, another Durham NT student.  It was a good trip, and Mark’ a great traveling partner. 

• My main task was to think about ‘methodology’, or rather how to make the jump from patristics back to Paul, so I read mostly about hermeneutics theory–one or two meanings in the text, theological interpretation, postmodernism, Gadamer, wirkungsgeschichte, history of interpretation, etc.  Again, the topic’s worthy of a couple of posts.  If any of you have good recommendations I’d appreciate it.
• We checked out Galloway & Porter, which has a decent variety of biblical studies/theology monographs, especially LNTS.  (They’re better stocked on gospels stuff).  They specialise in seconds and returns so most volumes are £6-9, and I got one for £1. 
• We stumbled upon a place for great burgers–Revolution.  We had to go back the next day.

Hmmm…what else.  I found out that both of my SBL proposals got turned down.  That’s a bummer.  I knew the Paul one was a long shot with the competition, but was hoping for the Irenaeus on to pan out. 

We’ve been getting snow off and on for the past couple of weeks, though it’s not been cold enough for it to stick.  Last night it stuck so we got to have a nice snowball fight this morning–a little different for this Texas boy.

We’re leaving today to go visit Inverness and Loch Ness for Easter (aka spring break) for the week, so it’ll be a bit before I post again. 

 

Update

So maybe my prior post was a little premature.  I am still working on my Irenaeus chapter.  I’ve got it drafted but I need to cut it down by a couple of thousand words and add a section at the end.  True editing is time consuming but helpful.  It is crazy how much slack was still in the chapter even after being edited before.  The other project of the past few weeks has been reading more in the French and German sources.  In the midst of this, we had discussions about PhD study space and a trip to Tyndale House (Cambridge).  My parents have arrived for a visit, so the pace of life is slower and I have more time and energy to write.  Hopefully, I’ll post more than once a month.  Happy Christmas.

 

Hiatus

Sorry for the blogging hiatus.  Jet lag knocked me out when I came back from SBL and then demands of my time for my current chapter have also caught up with me.  But I’ll jump back into the blogging world again soon.  However, it is iteresting how much time I found that I spent blogging and reading blogs.  It’s definitely a useful task, but it’s also been good to have a break.

 

Online Books and Articles

I’ve come across this link before, but I found a booklet by Oscar Cullmann on resurrection recently that reminded me about this site: Religion Online

 

Goethe in Berlin

I’m headed to Goethe in Berlin for the month of June. Hopefully, I’ll have easy access to the internet, but if not I’ll be taking a blogging hiatus. Cheers.

—-
Update: I arrived with no problems, and have a very nice place to stay for the month. My host has wireless internet, so I’m good to go!

 

Watch out Billy Graham

I preached this morning at Carrville Methodist Church here in Durham. As with Woody Allen, my opinion of this church is less because they let people like me preach there. Actually, there is always a steady stream of different preachers here in the Methodist churches because all the churches, whether they have FT pastors or not, rotate preaching around the local circuit.

I’ve now preached on 3.5 continents–North America, Australia, Europe, and Central America (Belize)–not sure how that fits into the continent scheme. I went with the lectionary passage of Acts 2, and I think it went alright. I can say that the whole experience is much better than the ole’ preaching class days.

I went a few minutes longer than the manuscript version of my sermon was but hopefully not long enough to bore people. I talked with a guy afterwards and he mentioned that with my different accent he had to focus on what I was saying the whole time, which he said helped him to get more out of it. I did notice a little better eye contact with the crowd than some times in the states.

 

Mother’s Day

In the UK we celebrated ‘Mothering Day’ in March, so my wife will get two days this year, which she more than deserves. Anyhow, this classic video is so funny, and it reminds me of the good ol’ days with my brother.