Nathan Dungan:
Generosity & Financial Sanity 3-1-1
“Living in a Generous Community”
When it comes to financial planning, we don’t often hear the question, “What does it mean to live in a generous community? Yet, that question is critical for these times,” says Nathan Dungan, founder and president of Share Save Spend and author of Prodigal Sons and Material Girls.
In his presentation at MFC’s Annual General Meeting, held this year in Calgary, Dungan encouraged the audience never to underestimate how a conversation may change the money trajectory of a young person’s life. That is why it is critical to see money as interaction (stories, values, morals relationships, and so on) in order to develop thoughtful choices for “doing money” in our culture.
With that insight, Dungan shared a framework for conversation he calls “Financial Sanity 3-1-1.” Using the approach of save, share, spend, he encourages families, friends and any accountability networks to do this exercise. Each person is invited to write down his or her top three goals for the year (share, save, spend). Then they should list one thing about money of which they want to do less and what one thing of which they want to do more. Individuals are then asked to share these 3-1-1 ideas in conversation to gain support to “do money well.”
As people develop values and skills in this way, Dungan believes that the capacity for generous community will continue to exist (or increase), even in these challenging economic times.