a tbm told me "the apostles and the prophet did work before they got called. they were wealthy and consecrated everything to the church. they don't receive anything from the church other than a minimal amount to provide for themselves/their wives which is pretty much their own savings"

me: "are you telling me that with a teacher's salary, 10 kids, boyd packer saved enough to sustain his family/himself since 1961 when was called as general authority?"

tmb guy: <crickets>

..
how much do they get a month for expenses/limos/girls on the side?

I don't know exactly. I don't think anybody here does, or else people would be talking about it all the time.

However, if the Mission President's Handbook is anything to go by, probably quite a lot. Mission Presidents can even get a free gardener (WTF?), so I can't imagine the kinds of things the Apostles get.

If you look at other big corporations as a comparison, Sales Managers of successful companies are very well paid compared to most other jobs in the economy. The Mission President is probably equal to a sales manager. But top corporate executives can make tens to hundreds of times more than Sales Managers. My guess is that the church president probably makes more than the President of the US.

If anyone's curious, Obama makes $400,000/year.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/white-house-salaries-revealed/story?id=24382955

Michael Dell makes $19 million/year.
http://www1.salary.com/Michael-S-Dell-Salary-Bonus-Stock-Options-for-Dell-Inc.html
Robert Iger (Disney) makes $34 million a year
http://www1.salary.com/Robert-A-Iger-Salary-Bonus-Stock-Options-for-Disney-Walt-Co.html

Verizon's CEO makes $23 million a year
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-19/verizon-ceo-mcadam-s-compensation-triples-to-23-1-million.html

That is 60x what the President of the US makes.

400k for a CEO is a low overhead. The housing and security benefits make it a a bit more than that...but that's life with 2a.

Many charity heads make more than that. Aka NRA, Komen, NFL, NBA, etc.

That's my big beef.
* Congress get's paid at a factor of minimum wage,
* charities can't be charities if their CEO's benefit by some factor of CEO of the countries salary.
* charities can't be charities without public tax returns
* executives and managers of companies on the government dole must have public tax returns, with public overall salary analysis. (aka if you company gets money from contracts, leasing or sweeping the leased buildings we want to know how little they are paid)

To be fair, the gardener is for the mission home, which is church property. It is more than a residence, it is the official HQ of a mission of 150-200 missionaries where meetings are conducted, plans are made and dignitaries received. You cannot expect the MP's wife to raise her family, give all those talks while touring the mission, and caring for a garden at the same time. The churches used to have janitors, until they corralled ward members to do that for free.

Maybe the next step is for ward members to care for the mission home.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/20/2014 08:09AM by axeldc.

darth jesus Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> me: "are you telling me that with a teacher's
> salary, 10 kids, boyd packer saved enough to
> sustain his family/himself since 1961 when was
> called as general authority?"
>
>

Great response. From childhood (50s) I heard that they were wealthy before becoming GAs, and so I took it for granted. (Plus in those days, there were corporate board positions they held.) A couple of years ago I decided to see how 'wealthy' members of the 15 were before their calls. Most were mid-level or upper-mid-level professionals, not 'wealthy' in any true sense. Monson was in newspaper publishing, for instance. The one man I knew personally before he became a 70 was a corporate attorney. Well paid, certainly, but not 'wealthy' in the true sense of the word.

As you said to your friend, they couldn't have socked away enough to keep going all these years since their elevation.
..



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/18/2014 07:02AM by Lorraine aka síóg.

Packer's home is worth over a million. I think he has 2 or three.

Same with Monson. Both have worked for the church their entire lives.

I call BS.

http://mormoninsider.wordpress.com/category/apostles-homes/

There is nothing wrong with top execs getting compensation for their work. What is troublesome is the lies and the tax evasion. Their "living stipends" are enough to live like a king, or at least nobility.

The members think they are not paying for these guys to live 1st class lifestyles while they struggle to stay afloat in steerage. If the church just published its budget, like every other major religion, then there would not be this distrust.

Then again, if members knew what their money was being spent on, they would never allow such ridiculous salaries and investments nor would they agree to give away 10% of their income to an organization that gives back so little.

I looked up Boyd's house. The house was built in 1957. But, I didn't have any links to tell me when Boyd bought the house and for how much. That's key information.

I know he was just a CES employee but that would be helpful if not enlightening to see how much his house value has gone up over the years because of inflation.

I ran into this statement on a forum.

"Utah is a nondisclose state when it comes to real estate; prices are private and are NOT public record so you will not find past sales prices anywhere here---it's illegal to share."

So, unless you are a realtor, the common Joe doesn't have access to MLS or able to see past purchase history. I'm sure some of you rfm peeps know the number.

Bart Pascoal has this infographic about how many homes the FP and Q12 own and their value. It seems that Thomas S. Monson owns four homes. He's a life-long church employee, too. Boyd K. Packer worked for CES. He has two homes valued at well over $1 million.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LM_P5GIvUQA/UoKsgwc3MZI/AAAAAAAAApg/JLdDySiGuvU/s1600/LDS+Apostle+Homes.png

This is actually the issue that started my research journey out of the Church. I was reading the preface to the Gordon B. Hinckley manual that had just come out at the end of 2001/early 2002, which gave enough of his life details for me to conclude that he was raised poor, became a Church employee shortly after his mission, and worked for the Church his entire life. This did not fit the TBM apologetic with which I had been raised (same as reported by Darth Jesus), so I started Googling for more info on GA compensation. Within a few tries, I stumbled across a page detailing problems with the Book of Abraham. What...there are problems with the Book of Abraham?!

what calls my attention is how much the church of the lamb of god has changed. now it seems like a bunch of business men from any corporation rather than helping people.

how can a business man relate to poor people for example? they seem out of touch with most people outside utah anyway but i just don't see that 'jesus' connection that's conveyed in the bible.

and yet, these con men have the nerve to ask for more tithing money on every single goddamn conference. even when they go to poor countries they never fail to tell the congregation how much jesus needs your money. yeah i remember on my mission. many of the poor members gave everything they had to the church and still these fucking leeches asked for more while staying at hotels and wearing expensive suits.

i remember hinckley when he came to hawaii back in 2008 at the waipahu stake...he asked

hinckley: "does jesus need your money??"
<crickets from the audience>
"yes! he does! --he exclamed.
<crowed puzzled and confused but hell, he was the prophet>


so the creator of the universe needs a few bucks. un-real.

There's one thing that I've consistently found throughout my life -- no matter how well-intentioned, it's very difficult for the well-to-do and the rich to remember what it's like to be poor, if they ever knew in the first place. It's like a collective amnesia sets in. They genuinely don't get why you don't go out and buy a new consumer item if you genuinely need it. Umm, because we can't afford it.

Well, we know that the 15 are compensated at least as well as mission presidents, and MPs are very well compensated. Plus, the 15 can sit on numerous boards of church-owned businesses and write books for their adoring public.

Too much.

The Big 15 get paid whatever they want.

They're given credit cards that have no limit, and they can use them to buy whatever they want: food, clothing, restaurant dinners, gasoline, theater tickets, etc. ANYTHING they want, including automobiles, vacations, tuition at universities for children, grandchildren, etc.

If you had such an arrangement with your employer, wouldn't you take it?

LDS Corp pays the bill without question every month. That way, they claim that they are given 'stipends' rather than salary.

Who needs a 'salary' when you have bottomless pit on a credit card that you never have to pay back?

Whatever they make on the side, in the form of royalties and corporation board memberships, etc., is just icing on the cake.

Ragnar Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
Do you have some insider info on these statements?

I have hears similar comments, but was never sure what the arrangement were.

If they don't get an actual salary they don't pay taxes?

Once again, it's not so much the fact that they get money for their "jobs" (and really, how hard do they work?), but that the church touts the fact that they have an unpaid clergy. A half-truth at best. What exactly constitutes the clergy of the church then?

Like axeldc said, if there was transparency in the reporting, many, many members would be completely disgusted and disillusioned.

Churches should not be exempt from filing a 990, which is the tax return for non-profits, and is public.

The facts, as we know them, are that these people are well above average in terms of home value. Now in the case of several of them, some deceased, they were essentially life long church employees (Hinckley, Maxwell, Monson, Packer, etc.). Many have worked for extended periods in positions in which the business was owned by the LDS church...Holland and Oaks as BYU president, Bednar as a BYU Idaho president, Maxwell as a church education executive (and Holland before he was the BYU president). Of course Monson and Hinkley worked exclusively for the Mormon Church. The interesting thing is that there has been a shift towards more wealth among these guys. Spencer Kimball lamented that there were no carpenters or electricians in the quorum. He had been an insurance salesman. Now the education, job experience, and family background of all these guys falls into some very telling categories....generally they are related somehow, they are all white, their families were Mormon royalty, and they have advanced degrees and were very well off before they came into the quorum. Also interesting is who has NOT become an apostle...Jon Huntsman Sr. and Mitt Romney. My belief is that they are required to deed over everything, homes, pensions, etc., to the church upon acceptance into the quorum. By so doing it is guarenteed that they will never leave the church and damage it by telling all. THIS is the reason there really has never been a person come out of the quorum and tell all. A very, very, wealthy person like a Huntsman or Romney would not be willing to deed over all their wealth, and wouldn't because they want it to become "inter-generational wealth", therefore they could not be "controlled" like other well off but not super rich persons like Packer or Monson, etc. The church doesn't just "take care" of these guys, they take care of their kids and grandkids. The leverage they have over them is unbelievable.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/21/2014 03:00PM by elciz.

...good point on the LDS power brokers; Romney, Huntsman, etc. The Church also enjoys having them in their pocket for whatever political or financial lobbying or voting that needs be.

Reid, Hatch, Romney, Huntsman; Masters of LDS tradecraft.

I think they also make a lot of money in book royalties.

The real money is in the power brokering. the deciding of who gets contracts, who is paid for silence, and the kickbacks normally associated in such deals.

No one knows, and we are not likely to ever know. But...it isn't too hard to see that the constant feed of money flow to them from the Morg is substantial.

I had a good friend who worked for OC Tanner, in some loss prevention capacity. He told me they typically found people not through catching their embezzlement outright, but through first noticing their lifestyle didn't match their occupation.

It doesn't take a genius to see that a seminary teacher or CES employee doesn't get a million dollar lifestyle through his occupation alone. I had that conversation with a TBM not long ago. Their "pushed into a corner" response is always that I can't prove it. I told them that no, I can't, but use your damned head on it! These guys all live million dollar lifestyles. Their occupations simply don't support that. Period.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/24/2014 12:32AM by GetTheLedZepOut.

They earn:

+ tithing revenue
+ fast offering revenue
+ missionary fund revenue
+ royalties
+ for-profit church business income (jesus mall, etc.)
+ all other donations
- monthly church expenses

All tax free. Greedy assholes.

Shh...it's a secret! If the public and the morg membership ever found out it'll kiss their lavish lifestyles down the drain!

Also to add to the lists above.
The top execs sit on multiple boards with various companies.
My current boss sits on the board of a small bank and is getting $5000 a month for sitting on the board.

Put that small number with Packard who sits on about 12 boards and you get approximately 5k x 12 monthly.
Even if it's lower it's still a lot of money.

About 25 years ago (or thereabouts) they stopped serving on boards other than Deseret Management (LDS church). No more Zions Bank, etc. No doubt they all received a pay increase to cover the change.

Remember how much it turns out that mission presidents make, and how it is all tax free and not considered by the church as "income." Now think how much their superiors rake in, and how it is probably not considered as "income."

I agree with elciz.

"My belief is that they are required to deed over everything, homes, pensions, etc., to the church upon acceptance into the quorum. By so doing it is guaranteed that they will never leave the church and damage it by telling all. THIS is the reason there really has never been a person come out of the quorum and tell all"


The top 15 can live like kings and feel like they will be able to take care of their families for a very long time. They just need to play the part. A defector would put themselves into financial suicide and be fighting lawyers for the rest of their life. The family would have to leave UT and start over. That's a tough break when you are 65+ or more.

do they get enough for their needs ?

I wouldn't be surprised if the credit card insurer for the lds accounts doesn't get some awesome bonus perks for doing a good job and keeping their mouth shut. That visa / MasterCard knows exactly what is being purchased. So does the nsa. Hopefully the church never gets a phone number that might of been associated with CAIR or ISIS. The data dump would pile up quickly for that individual and all contacts 3 levels down.

Maybe harry already white listed those email addresses, domains and phone numbers from being monitored.