I’ve made a decision. I need to give more to charity.
My concern about how much I give is voiced in an indirect way on Page 221 of my book, “Passion Saving: The Path to Plentiful Free Time and Soul-Satisfying Work.” Following a table showing what my family spends on all of our various spending categories (the amount shown to be allocated to the Charity category is $75 per month), the following words appear: “For the past few years, we have been able to make an additional amount specified above.”
$75 times 12 is $900. Add $500 to that, and you have a $1,400 annual amount for contributions to charity for the Bennett household. Is that enough?
Focus on the fact that I had zero income in 2004 (I was finishing work on “Passion Saving” and researching my second book, which will be on what we learned from The Great Safe Withdrawal Rate Debate) and that I bear financial responsibilility not only for myself but also for a stay-at-home mom and two small boys who I would like to see go to college, and it sounds like maybe that is all that my wife and I can afford to give at this particular time in our lives. Focus on the fact that we enjoy a net worth large enough to permit me to spend a year polishing and researching books while there are no wages coming in, and I think a good argument can be made that it is not.
Should the Needy Pay the Price?
The charity question is a paradoxical one. When you are pursuing a saving goal that you care about intensely, the natural tendency is to cut spending on goods and services to the bone. You incur no real sacrifice doing that because it is the person giving up the goods and services who gets to enjoy the financial freedom benefits tapped into as a result. If I cut back on the amounts that I give to the needy, however, I am havingthem pay the price of me seeking quicker realization of my Passion Saving goal. Is that right?
To some extent, I think it is. If I am able to make a success of my writing business, I will be able to make contributions to charity in the future far larger than those I was able to make in my free-spending days, when I was giving a good bit more than I give today. Anything I earn above $10,000 is essentially “free money,” so I can give a lot without it hurting much at all. So I think it makes sense for a Passion Saver to cut back on contributions to charity for a time as a means of speeding up the transition to a time when he or she has greatly reduced his or her dependence on a corporate or government paycheck.
It’s dangerous to take this sort of reasoning too far, however. Passion Saving works because it is not a miserly approach to money management. Following the conventional Sacrifice Saving approach to money management makes most of us feel small and cheap and tight. That’s why our vows to follow the conventional rules don’t usually take. Passion Saving is different because it is a money management approach in tune with the generous spirits that most middle-class workers either actually do possess or at least aspire to possess. Our goal is to live richer lives, not cheaper ones!
The Miser Trap
Get too carried away with the “I’ll give to charity later, when I can afford to do so” line of thinking, and you risk falling into the trap of thinking like a miser and not too long after thatfeeling like a miser. That’s not the way to go.
What is it you “buy” when you make a contribution to charity? There’s no material good you enjoy. There’s no service provided to you. What you “buy” is a feeling, a feeling of being connected to others in the world less fortunate than yourself, a feeling of doing your part to keep the human project going forward not just for yourself but for your fellow travelers through this valley of tears. You can get along just fine without a lot of the goods and services that a lot of us enjoy in this consumer wonderland of ours. I question, though, how well you can get along without that feeling of connection that comes from reaching into your pocket for the benefit of those who haven’t had quite so many of God’s blessings handed to them in this life.
The Charity category is not like most of the other budget categories we rework when putting together an effective saving plan. With most of the others, we can make serious cuts without feeling any real sense of self-denial. With the Charity category, however, because it is not spending directed at the upkeep and pleasure of the self, even temporary cuts that go too deep can lead to losses (spiritual for sure, and perhaps even financial if the spiritual losses grow too large) of a serious nature.
A Rich Life
I believe that I have created a pretty darn rich life for myself. To make sure it stays as rich as I want it to be, I need to do some work getting that Charity number up a bit. Otherwise, I run the risk of over time becoming a true miser and coming to feel not rich at all.
I’m not taking the chance!