Donating to a good cause gives immense satisfaction but this is often a dilemma for many people. You may genuinely want to help but your finances may not be a in a great state to support the cause. Tight budgets usually stand in the way, with monthly expenses such as groceries, rent, medical bills, and car payments eating up most of your income. Still, you can find a way if you are serious about making a difference. Here are some useful pieces of advice for people who want to start donating despite their shoestring budgets.
Browsing Tag
generosity
Have you ever stopped to think about how many times you’ve said “I can’t afford that”, but what you really meant to say is that you haven’t made “that” a priority? Of course there really are things you can’t afford, but many times we can afford things but we say we can’t. Why do you think that is?
To me it all boils down to our priorities. We will make sure we can afford the things we make our priorities, but we will offhandedly say we can’t afford anything that we could care less about. For instance, imagine our son tells us he would like to go to summer camp. Would you tell him you can’t afford it or would you be willing to forfeit a few restaurant meals to ensure you could afford to send your son to camp?
If we are honest with ourselves, I hope we will examine our priorities and find out if we are using our money in the best way possible to meet our goals but also to ensure that we are not hoarding all of our financial resources. We need to think of others and not just ourselves.
As a parent, you have a lot of influence on your children’s future behavior. Whether you like it or not, your children are more than likely going to follow in your footsteps, at least partially, so it’s important that you teach your kids about giving starting at a young age.
Whether you are rich or poor, you need to instill a sense of generosity in your children. One way would be to have a family meeting every year and take a vote on which charity or organization your family is going to support that year. By involving your kids and encouraging them to use some of their own money as well, they will feel that they are making a difference in the world. Feel free to change the charity every year based on the decisions of the family as a whole.
Although very few people ever do experience winning a big lottery jackpot, it is always interesting to see what people decide to do with their winnings. It is extremely interesting when people give most of their winnings away.
A recent Yahoo! Article talks about a special couple from a small town in Nova Scotia who generously gave away all but about 2% of their $11.2 million winnings. Their names are Allen and Violet Large and I think their last name truly depicts their personality. They certainly are large in the spirit of generosity.
Do you want to help others financially but you don’t have the resources to do so right now? Well, you still can, and you can do it by simply clicking on a button on a website every day when you go to check your email or read the news online.
The website is called The Hunger Site. When you go to this site, all you need to do is click on the button that says “Click Here to Give- it’s FREE!”. By doing so, the companies who advertise on the site contribute to people in need around the world.
But there’s more, in addition to helping supply food to the needy, The Hunger Site also links to the Breast Cancer, Child Health, Literacy, Rainforest, and Animal Rescue site. They each have a button you can click on and as a result their sponsors will fund those causes as well.
So, even if you don’t have any extra money to give away right now, you can still make a contribution and it’s as easy as clicking your mouse. I encourage you to check it out and to participate in these worthy causes.