Dan Peck

Hi, I’m Dan Peck. I live in the Seattle area and work as a CPA. One thing people might be surprised to know is that I grew up in Italy.

I discovered that giving was fun when I was young…around 8 or 9 years old. Around Christmas and my mom and dad would come up with a sum of money that they wanted to give to charity or to missions that was over an above their tithe. They would bring us kids together and we got to participate in choosing where it went. It was fun.

God is very generous. He gave us his Son. He gave us his only begotten son. He generously came after us when we weren’t worth anything. He loved us enough to come after us and rescue us.

As a CPA I deal so much with people and their finances. I see the results of how wealth can corrupt and ruin people. I have a new client whose dad passed away late last year. He told me his dad made tons of money throughout his life, but left his family in debt, owing a lot to the IRS for back taxes. They blew through tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars with nothing to show for it and no charitable giving. You know a lot of people get wealthy, and live for right now. They don’t plan for the future. They aren’t really charitable. It’s very rare that I find clients who give more than $5,000 a year. It’s very very rare to see clients give more than $10,000.

I’ve come to know and understand that I have nothing but for God’s grace. The wealth I have is not mine, it’s his. God has blessed me with it. And sometimes I do foolish things with it, but its his money, not my money. The more I go along, the more I see the reason why people are in the mess they are in financially and it boils down to personal decisions. Most are always thinking of themselves not others. But when it’s all God’s money, that changes everything.

When I was 25, the seeds of generosity had already been planted. What’s changed is our ability to give more as God has blessed us with a successful business and finances. When I was young my goal was to be a millionaire, but now I think, “Really? That’s a stupid thing to do.” I see a lot of young people these days, young and dumb. I’ve been there and done that. I’m wiser now by God’s grace. But how do you tell someone who’s 25 that you’re just wasting your money and wasting your time? Serving God is a better pursuit.

A new habit for me has been to listen to the audio Bible. The YouVersion App allows me to play it on my phone and listen while I drive. Recently, I ran through a bunch of the prophets. And you know they are short and you can listen to them in one sitting. I did Habakkuk and Malachi. I did three or four back to back. And then I thought lets start back at the beginning so I went back to Genesis.

I grew up on the mission field and my wife was a missionary for a season so we tend to give with a mission focus. A lot of people and churches nowadays don’t have the vision for missions and don’t have the will to support missionaries. So we certainly take up that flag and let others take care of other things.

God has given me an ability to use my work to help people…even people in hard times who can’t repay me. I want them to see that God cares about them, that God is generous to them through my generosity.

If I could choose 3 words to be remembered by I’d go with generous, fun-loving, and always willing to share a kind word.