Lately, I have been asking some of my friends how much money they make each year. Only one has told me.

I understand why.

The question can sound intrusive or judgmental. It might feel like the beginning of an ask, or an invitation to compare lives that are difficult enough without attaching numbers to them. Even among close friends, we have learned that income belongs behind a closed door.

Nonetheless, I find the silence interesting. Friends know things about us that do not appear on a tax return. They know when a child is struggling, when a marriage is under strain, when work has become unbearable, or when grief makes getting through the day feel like enough. We share meals, celebrations, prayers, doubts, and losses. We say we are in this together, but money, which touches nearly every part of that shared life, often remains outside the friendship.

What we Leave Outside the Friendship

I am not sure the point is that all of my friends should tell me what they earn. Honesty is not the same as unlimited access, and trust cannot be forced. I am wondering about something beneath the number: Can we really share life if we cannot talk about money and what our lives cost, what we have been given, what we fear losing, and what we may need from one another?

Christians often say that everything belongs to God. Saying we are stewards, not owners is a familiar confession, but it can remain safely theoretical. We can affirm that God owns everything while continuing to treat money as the part of life that belongs most completely to us.

A Place Called Plenty

The Apostle Paul will not let the church remain that abstract. In 2 Corinthians 8, when believers in Jerusalem are in need, he asks the church in Corinth to complete a collection for them. One community’s hardship becomes the concern of another community with resources to share. Distance does not release them from belonging to one another.

“At the present time,” Paul writes, “your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need.” Then he names the hope plainly: “The goal is equality.”

Those words make room for a life together. Today I may have what you need financially. Tomorrow you may have what I need. Neither of us is permanently the helper or the person being helped. We are friends learning to receive life from God and from one another.

We hear a great deal about scarcity and abundance. Scarcity tells us there will never be enough, so we hold tightly to what we have. Abundance can sometimes sound as if there will always be more. I have come to prefer the word the New International Version uses in this passage: plenty.

Plenty is quieter than abundance. It does not promise that everyone will have everything they want or that real hardship will disappear. Plenty asks whether what God has entrusted to us can become enough when we are willing to share it. Paul reaches back to manna in the wilderness, where the person who gathered much did not have too much and the person who gathered little did not have too little.

Sharing the Whole of Life

That kind of plenty requires honesty. Someone has to be able to say, “I am doing well financially right now.” Someone else has to be able to say, “I am not.” We need room to speak about a medical bill, a salary increase, a season without work, an inheritance, a debt, or the quiet fear that there will not be enough at the end of the month. 

I learned some of this while raising support during my years with Young Life. Henri Nouwen helped me see that asking for money could be an invitation rather than an act of begging. But the more important lesson came through the friendships themselves. People who supported our work shared far more than money with us, and we shared far more than ministry reports with them. We showed up in one another’s joy and suffering. Giving and receiving became part of the friendship because we were sharing life, not managing an exchange.

This is what I hope money among friends can become. It does not require everyone to reveal a number or give us a subtle way to decide who should give and who deserves to receive. It is a willingness to let our financial lives become human again, connected to the people who know and love us.

Perhaps the better conversation does not begin with, “How much money do you make?” It might begin with, “What feels plentiful right now? What feels thin? What are you carrying alone financially that feels to heavy to carry along?” Those questions leave room for money, but also for time, food, wisdom, a spare room, a needed introduction, or the courage to ask for help.

There is something beautiful about a community that can share both financial joy and suffering this honestly. We do not have to make every need public or solve every problem. We can begin by refusing to let the people we love carry their financial lives alone.

Maybe being in it together means allowing money into the friendship without allowing money to define it. We tell the truth about what we have and what we need. We trust that the direction of giving will change over time. And somewhere in that honest life together, we may discover what plenty really means.