One of the golden rules of frugality is to use your money where it makes the most difference to you and yours. For example, a box of store-bought cereal costs about a gazillion times what it costs to make my own granola, and it doesn't much alter my breakfast happiness quotient. So I don't buy prepackaged cereals. For another example, Giardia meds for my dog cost about a gazillion times what a box of store-bought cereal does, but having a diarrhea-free dog is sort-of a big deal to me and my kids, so this summer we forked over the money for Metronidazole and Panacur without complaint. We spend our money only where it brings the most contentment or where it alleviates the most pain. That's the frugal mantra.
Ergo (that's math-speak for "therefore"), it makes sense to practice giving our money away to other people.
The reason that it's frugal to give our money away is that there are other people in the world who can make much better use of it, at least in support of creating the world our family cares about. I basically stink at feeding hungry children on the opposite side of the globe or even in my own community, but there are charitable organizations I give money to that have helped to raise entire families out of poverty by feeding and educating their children. Likewise, I am a total incompetent at curing even the most curable of common third-world diseases, so I'm grateful for organizations like Doctors without Borders who bravely go where I myself fear to tread.
My family gives our money away in a bunch of different modes. Monthly, we have money taken out of my paycheck (United Way), my checking account (church), and my credit card (World Vision and my alma mater). Annually, we've started transferring large amounts of money to a Donor Advised Fund, from which we'll eventually direct it to charities when we retire and when we've had even more practice at spending our charitable money wisely. (Because figuring out how to give well does take practice, same as learning many other frugal skills like how to make a yummy no-sugar granola.)
At any rate, here's one thing I've practiced and I'm getting moderately good at. All year long, I save the solicitation envelopes we get. There are a heck of a lot of these solicitations.
This year, my husband and I have refocused our areas where we want to donate money. We've always tried to channel a bunch of it toward feeding hungry people; this year we're paying special attention to the global refugee crisis, affecting over one hundred million people this year. Having a population larger than the size of Russia facing food, water, and health care shortages doesn't get as much media attention as does, say, one particular relative of Trump meeting with a few people from Russia, but the worldwide refugee epidemic is real and it's just going to get worse --- my husband and I want to contribute in our own small way to helping the NGO's that are on the front lines.
But speaking of media coverage, a new area for us this year is to support investigative news outlets. For reasons that I don't need to elaborate on, we feel that these places need grass-roots support more than they have in the past. So there's a new pile of envelopes for us.
And growing in emphasis for us this year is caring for the environment. We've long donated to local conservancy groups, but this year we've added the Environmental Defense Fund, in part because this group seems to have managed to partner with industry in ways that seem to mark it as pragmatic (in addition to being idealistic), which matters a lot to me.
And in the same way that Erika over at NW Edible has decided to start celebrating fall harvests (because that time of year means a lot to her and her family), our family has for several years celebrated the signing of the charity checks. Our annual dOnnOr is tonight. (Here's a post on a previous dOnnOr).
Perhaps I'll have pictures tomorrow.
Ergo (that's math-speak for "therefore"), it makes sense to practice giving our money away to other people.
The reason that it's frugal to give our money away is that there are other people in the world who can make much better use of it, at least in support of creating the world our family cares about. I basically stink at feeding hungry children on the opposite side of the globe or even in my own community, but there are charitable organizations I give money to that have helped to raise entire families out of poverty by feeding and educating their children. Likewise, I am a total incompetent at curing even the most curable of common third-world diseases, so I'm grateful for organizations like Doctors without Borders who bravely go where I myself fear to tread.
My family gives our money away in a bunch of different modes. Monthly, we have money taken out of my paycheck (United Way), my checking account (church), and my credit card (World Vision and my alma mater). Annually, we've started transferring large amounts of money to a Donor Advised Fund, from which we'll eventually direct it to charities when we retire and when we've had even more practice at spending our charitable money wisely. (Because figuring out how to give well does take practice, same as learning many other frugal skills like how to make a yummy no-sugar granola.)
At any rate, here's one thing I've practiced and I'm getting moderately good at. All year long, I save the solicitation envelopes we get. There are a heck of a lot of these solicitations.
Once a year, usually in the summer, I sort through the envelopes (below you see me sitting cross-legged in my 25¢ yard-sale purchased gold skirt, putting the envelopes into piles alphabetically around me).
I cull the duplicates. I've started adding handwritten notes to the worst repeat-offenders, asking them to mail me one solicitation in June or July, and quit with the monthly harangues. That actually seemed to help a lot.
This year, my husband and I have refocused our areas where we want to donate money. We've always tried to channel a bunch of it toward feeding hungry people; this year we're paying special attention to the global refugee crisis, affecting over one hundred million people this year. Having a population larger than the size of Russia facing food, water, and health care shortages doesn't get as much media attention as does, say, one particular relative of Trump meeting with a few people from Russia, but the worldwide refugee epidemic is real and it's just going to get worse --- my husband and I want to contribute in our own small way to helping the NGO's that are on the front lines.
But speaking of media coverage, a new area for us this year is to support investigative news outlets. For reasons that I don't need to elaborate on, we feel that these places need grass-roots support more than they have in the past. So there's a new pile of envelopes for us.
And growing in emphasis for us this year is caring for the environment. We've long donated to local conservancy groups, but this year we've added the Environmental Defense Fund, in part because this group seems to have managed to partner with industry in ways that seem to mark it as pragmatic (in addition to being idealistic), which matters a lot to me.
And in the same way that Erika over at NW Edible has decided to start celebrating fall harvests (because that time of year means a lot to her and her family), our family has for several years celebrated the signing of the charity checks. Our annual dOnnOr is tonight. (Here's a post on a previous dOnnOr).
Perhaps I'll have pictures tomorrow.
Beautiful post. Anti-famine and housing organizations are near and dear to my heart.
ReplyDelete