Giving in the Personal Finance Community
Over the past few months, I’ve found myself embroiled in twitter conversations about giving. Should we give? Is it important to give? Why aren’t we talking about giving? Who is talking about giving? What’s your philosophy on giving? The list of questions goes on. But it’s given me time to reflect on my own giving (and occasional lack thereof).
Personal finance is a space where we generally grow wealth. It’s easy to hoard money, especially when you have debt. I know this all to well. Letting go of that money is hard, but necessary. So let’s talk about the giving that I do, and that I don’t do. And why I struggle to find balance between the two.
My History of Giving
Picture me, some sort of messy, short hair because it kept breaking off, in a cute dress that I was absolutely NOT thrilled with, in a pew of a church, clutching onto pennies, on the edge of my seat waiting for the offering plate to be passed around. I plopped in a few coins and service continued. My whole childhood was like that. Any allowance I was given was divvied up into categories, one of which was tithing, and every Sunday, I faithfully shoved my pennies into the bucket.
As the money I earned increased, so did my giving. I learned to give in percentages, not dollar amounts. Because that way, you always account for the raises you earn. It was a helpful lesson. One that I’ve carried with me, maybe not always consistently, but thoughtfully. And that bares evidence today.
During college, like most people I know, my wages were all over the place, so I decided to donate to something regularly and let it average out. I picked a child off of a Compassion International table freshman year of college, and knew that paying for this little dude would roughly be my 10%. I also started making more one off donations to things. Mostly, if friends went on Missions Trips, I donated. Normally it was a $50 here, a $20 here. But one year, for Lent, I went on a spending fast, saved $300, and gave it to a friend who was $300 short of being able to go on his trip.
That was when I simultaneously experience the joy and hardship of sacrifice. It’s a feeling that stuck.
Giving During Adversity
It’s all good and well to talk about giving when you’re a child or in a decently okay part time job at college. That’s basically money your parent’s funneled you (and whatever you get from a part time W2 job). Life, even in troubling situations, is generally okay. It’s a complicated time, to be a child or coming into adulthood, but in some ways. It’s simpler. Mostly, you’re not worried about the bills or running out of money. Hopefully, you’re childhood was more blissful than mine, and that money didn’t come with a scarcity mindset attached.
But what if it didn’t? Or what if college wasn’t a walk in the park? I get that. There was a serious portion of my senior year of college where I had a job, but I was living in a tumultuous housing situation, and I decided to move out and couch hop for a bit. At that time, I wasn’t making enough money to afford an apartment by myself, and the roommate situation I set up fell through. It wasn’t easy to be me. Did my giving count then?
I cut back on giving, a lot. I stopped giving to my church (although I still attended regularly, and the pastor put me up for a few of the coldest nights) and I stopped giving to friend’s missionary journeys. But, I didn’t stop giving money to my compassion child. Those $38 dollars mattered to me, in part because of the relationship you develop with your child, and in part because giving mattered to me. I didn’t want to be a person who didn’t give at all.
When I was in high school, my family found ourselves in a shelter. It was a pretty scary time, but I remember driving some ladies to the store because my mom was the only one with a car, and they needed groceries. While there, one of the moms, who had less than we did, offered to buy me some chips. I declined. But I’ve never forgotten that moment. When she had nothing, she had two dollars to spare to make my day better.
And that’s how I feel about the time where I couldn’t give well. But I could still give. It was a sacrifice and a choice. It was a hard one. But I made it in good faith, because it mattered to me. Giving should matter. It should matter regardless of how affluent you are.
Because at that time, I wasn’t affluent. At all. I was hopping around dorm rooms, crashing on couches, and spending a few nights in my car, saving up money to be able to have a place. It wasn’t fun. I don’t miss it. (Although, I do have a strange love of urban camping that confuses my husband, now).
Giving when I had nothing was just as important as giving when I have everything.
The Balancing Act Between Wealth and Philanthropy
Although, ironically, giving when I have more is now harder. Taking a break from giving, a needed break, caused me to go from a mostly abundance mindset to one of scarcity and fear. It broke that pattern of 10% and caused me to hoard cash. At that time, out of necessity, now, out of habit. It’s the moment that spurred me into FI, but also deterred me from giving while chasing FI. Not entirely, we still give. But there’s a new twinge of frustration attached. I used to open my hand freely, and now, I pause. Not willingly, I want to give freely, but the pause is there. Would this money do good here? Would keeping it help me more than giving it away?
That is to say, finding a balance is not easy.
It is much easier to say, I will give my time. Which I do. I volunteered every Wednesday for ten years through high school, college, and our first year of marriage. But that does not change the effect money has on a situation and how much more effective your dollar can be than your presence.
It’s much easier to say, I lopped off all my hair this weekend. I have a pass this month. While St. Baldricks (which my husband did and raised $600 in the process) and donating to Wigs for Kids (which I did in honor of Uriah, you can find out his story on Uriah.Life) is important meaningful charity work, it does not replace a steady sense of funding a mission. It alone is not enough.
It’s much easier to say, I will give when I have more. Even if that is a yellow belly lie. Habits tend to beget more habits, and the longer I stay stuck in my “Thou Shalt Not Give Lest Thou Shalt Be Homeless” monologue, the harder and harder it will be to give willingly.
It’s much easier to forget about giving entirely. Much easier, that is, until it comes up in the discourse of the personal finance space. And it becomes less and less avoidable.
But those are excuses. Volunteering your time is not enough. Your hair is a nice gesture, but not sustainable. Giving when you have more only works if you practice giving now. Autopay helps you un-forget to give.
My Philosophy of Giving
So where does this leave me? With a developing philosophy of how I want to give as an active member of the personal finance community. And with a goal. Ultimately, I want to reach that 10% giving mark. It’s a lot, and it feels unachievable right now. But we give about 4% of our annual income right now, and it’s a jumping off point. We have our toes in the water.
And, the giving I do is thoughtful, actionable, and consistent for causes that I think are worthwhile. $100 one time might make a difference, but not as much as $10 monthly over a lifetime. So we pick smaller, more sustainable amounts to be able to give consistently. We still have the @compassion child that I sponsor, he’s turning 10 this year. And we give to our church monthly. These I both maintain via auto payments. It keeps me honest about the giving I’ve already committed us to. The consistency is important to me.
We also want to up our giving. I have been talking to my husband about starting a monthly donation to RAICESTEXAS and/or the ACLU because the border camps incense me. But we haven’t decided on an amount yet. In the meantime, I’ve chucked a $10 bill their way. Not a lot. But I’m putting my money where my mouth is, and that’s an important first step.
One off donations aren’t foreign to me, although I tend to avoid them in favor of consistency. The less I touch our budget, the happier I am. But when I haven’t used all my coffee money, I send it to Uriah and his family. We’ve given to random church offerings and fundraisers before. And I’m thinking to adopt Penny’s idea of $20 giving. To have $20 rumbling around for when inspiration strikes and the money can be put to good use.
Generosity is Infectious
The desire to give is fueled, for me, in part by other’s contribution to giving. So much recent dialogue has been about giving that I would be remiss if not to check my own privilege and explore the ways I could be contributing more.
The voices of this community, some of whom are Matt Lane, Tanja Hester, and Penny, (these are the ones I mention regularly; there are plenty others), speak deeply about the need to give.
I’ve also been blessed by our community. Several bloggers messaged me privately when I posted about our house being 90* inside, and a week later, I had fans, black out curtains, and a humidifier shipped to my doorstep. It was amazing.
And I felt the need to pass that sense of community on. So we upped our giving, and we set a goal for ourselves.
I have a lot of work I can do to improve my own spirit, and to give more. But it’s important. It always has been, and it always will be.
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Giving is super important to me. It was one of my big goals when pursuing FIRE.
Now about 30% of my expenses are for giving, which includes regular donations to certain causes I support, but also a few random acts of kindness and help I choose to give on a personal level.
30% sounds like much, but I am LeanFIRE, so although my percentage was much lower when I was still working, the total $$ amount was quite a bit higher.
This is something that bugs me, I am still trying to find ways to give more, because I discover new causes worth supporting pretty much on a daily basis.
WOW! 30% is AMAZING! Talk about personal finance goals!
It’s always hard to strike the right balance between an amount and a percentage, especially when you find causes that are important. It’s something my husband and I are sitting down and talking through right now.
Thanks for writing this. We experienced something very similar. We’ve always been givers and have kept giving. (It’s hard not to when you work in schools and see the needs daily) But as our income increased and our lifestyle inflated, our giving didn’t grow with it. We were shocked last year when we calculated it and realized we were down to only giving about 3%. We’ve also set a goal to get back to 10% by increasing at least 1% a year. We’re on track for 5% this year, which in straight amount is more than we’ve ever given. But still low as a percentage. Our FI plan includes being at 10% and we’ll definitely give our time and energy when we retire – it’s part of our purpose.
That 4% you’re giving matters a lot – and I love your goal!
I love that you’ve noticed a shift in your budgeting and are actively working on correcting it! We’re doing the same, and I’m excited for the change. I love the idea of increasing a percent a year. Right now jumping from 4% to 10% would be a bit much, but slow increments would help soften the blow, for SURE!
I love this! I’ve really questioned my giving a lot (it never seems like enough when I read about what people in the big leagues donate!), but I think about my nana often. She never got out of poverty, but she was easily the most charitable person I know with her time and her money. She might not have been able to afford a lot, but she enriched so many lives. Thank you for writing this post and for giving me a big smile and some renewed motivation this morning!
Your Nana sounds like a gem! I was lucky that I grew up with a lot of people who gave often and gave well. It helped frame how necessary it is to give, even though it’s hard for me.
I’m so glad my words touched you. That’s always a lovely thing to hear as a blogger. <3
You are right Moriah, when money is tight, giving is more difficult. Lee and I have found in all of our years of marriage that when we gave, we still had enough to cover bills. Sometimes, I don’t know how it happened and it was often just when it was due. But a bill never went unpaid. We have never had a set income and that made it harder sometimes also to budget giving. We gave the first 10% and trusted God to make the rest stretch and it always did. One thing we learned that is both of us had different opinions about what to give to and how much. So we have a system that if we agree on who or what to give to we each put our amount down, add them together and divide by 2 and give that amount. God isn’t concerned with amounts but what kind of heart we have toward giving.
My mom said that about her early marriage, too. I’ve also heard other people say they choose between tithing and bills. I really think there’s not one solid answer to giving while poor, except to do it.
I love your system though. We haven’t come to a place where we’ve disagreed about giving yet. It’s helpful to have a partner who’s values are so closely aligned with my own. But that’s a good compromise in the future.
It’s so good to make giving a part of our normal financial thought process. We have sorely neglected giving over the past few years and need to make it a priority again. Currently we support friends who are overseas missionaries, and an occasional donation to local causes. I know in general, orgs need regular, consistent donations coming in, so I want to really focus our giving a bit better. Even if we give a smaller amount, at least it would be a steady amount each month that the organization could count on. Thanks for bringing up the conversation! So many of us tend to feel helpless because we can’t solve all poverty and other issues, but I still believe we are meant to be generous, doing our part to help others.
Kate, it’s so hard to make giving a priority sometimes. I’m learning not to treat it like an afterthought right now. Everything else in my budget we either automate or I make pains to take care of on payday. With giving, this hasn’t been the case. And we’re slowly changing that. It’s been hard, but good. And while I don’t feel like my extra $15 or so a month makes a huge difference, it definitely helps alleviate some of the huge guilt I have about people who have nothing, and me who has everything. There’s a huge emotional side of giving which I think you’ve captured well. The overwhelm of poverty can be stagnating. We want to give, but feel we can’t because we won’t make an impact. I definitely am battling with some of that right now. But the act of giving is helping me get over my overwhelm. Funny how that works.
I think this is a much needed conversation for the FI community generally. We’re wealthier than most people (globally) and can do a lot of good, but obviously we’re people who struggle to part with money…
YES! I’ve even seen arguments against giving, which… don’t make sense to me, but they’re there. I saw your recent article on charity and taxes, I need to do a more thorough read later when I have time, but it looks so good! I’ve seen an insurgence of people talking about giving lately. It’s been refreshing. It’s also made me realize that I’m not giving enough, and I could (should) be giving more.
Yeah I was kind of thinking that the idea of effective altruism (doing the most good with your donation) could be a really powerful one with FIers, but there’s perhaps a psychological burden of ‘but I need that money because I’m poor (because not fire yet)’ that needs to be crossed first…
Yes! That’s the burden that I’m encountering myself. Giving away money, money that you could use later, is scary. Esp for me since I came, in some ways, from poverty. BUT that in and of itself is not an excuse to refuse to give. Especially now that I have a steady job, income, and spouse and we’re working toward a common goal. I’m hoping that as I work towards change in myself, I can identify, explore, and break down road blocks other FI folks might encounter.
Well I must say I’m looking forward to following your journey! Maybe collectively we’ll all find the answer because I do think doing is good is just as important in making a good life as having financial independence
Thanks, I’m excited for the change in focus during our FI journey, that’s for sure!