Heaven is not a solid retirement plan. Especially for those who aim to live forever.

A colleague of mine just sent me this article about the particular challenges faced by the clergy in retirement. It seems that while we may see preachers and ministers as “wise and frugal,” and therefore assume they’re responsibly saving away for old age, many are in fact in more trouble than their secular counterparts.

Let’s just say that getting into heaven isn’t the kind of retirement plan we’ve been talking about. There’s nothing wrong with having that kind of plan (Universal voluntary eternal rewards, or UVERs?) too. But an unfortunate combination of attitudes and practices has made those who try to save souls less able to save for old age.

For one thing, clergy often have no home equity- they’ve traditionally lived in homes owned by the church. And they have modest, enough-to-get-by salaries to start with, and pensions far lower than Social Security. Thirteen percent have no pensions at all.

And then there’s this: “A pervasive attitude toward retirement within the profession has long been that God will take care of it,” the article states. They say it themselves:

When White was being ordained 40 years ago, his bishop told him, ”Bert, you won’t ever make any money as a clergyman but you’ll always have a great retirement plan.” 

”I said, ‘Oh, really?”’ the minister recalls. ”He said, ‘Yeah, it’s eternal life after you die.”’ 

It makes sense, if you look at it this way: We – the non-clergy, general American public – love money, we spend our lives pursuing it, and yet still we can’t accumulate piles of it for retirement. Why would we expect people who essentially avoid the stuff to do so? They’ve dedicated their lives to the pursuit of non-earthly rewards, and often see money as a source of temptation and problems.

Recognizing this reinforces a lesson about money matters in general. What does the “frugal, wise,” modest-means pastor entering retirement without savings have in common with the two-income working family trying to fill the gas tanks and send the kids to college? They both generally lack access to financial education and planning resources. Different situations, same needs.

(Interesting proposition: Hook up religious advisors with financial experts. The preacher gets financial guidance; the financier gets moral guidance. Just imagine the benefits this could have to both worlds.)

“Get to heaven” is an especially imprudent retirement plan if you don’t die. Another colleague of mine, Joel Garreau, covers all kinds of possibilities that most people won’t accept as possible in his book Radical Evolution.

Joel interviews the first person to receive a degree in Molecular Nanotechnology from MIT, who believes technology will advance far enough for humans to become immortal. (Though it “depends on what you mean by immortal. There is such a thing as proton decay.” Meaning, once technology can direct matter at the molecular level successfully enough to make us essentially immortal, our protons will decay at some point after we’ve outlived the universe.)

Didn’t expect that, did you? Joel also focuses on the scenarios proposed by the co-founder of MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab who says there’s nothing certain but taxes. And the much-decorated inventor and artificial intelligence expert who predicted the World Wide Web, who’s hoping to be able to support himself for the next 1,000 years.

These people and theories are real, and since it’s impossible to examine them fully in a blog post, merely consider for now the act of saving. Research has shown that we’re not good savers because we’re not good at thinking about the future. Research has also shown that once people trick themselves into saving, or get hooked on it, the act of saving improves their “future-orientedness” – the capacity to think about the future.

So maybe you can’t conceive of near-immortality due to radical changes in technology because you aren’t saving enough. Maybe you aren’t saving because you think retirement will be short and brutish. As far as those loathe to abandon their UVERs are concerned, it might be some consolation that the scientists mentioned above are predicting Heaven-like conditions here on Earth.

I say, be prepared. Find out how to save, somehow. You might need your money for longer than you think.