“There’s no limit to what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.” Bernard Baruch, American Financier
Finding ways to save money to give away can be fun, if you take that attitude.
If you put off giving until you have a big surplus in your checking account at the end of the month or until you think you can afford it, you may never give anything away.
Decide what you are going to do when you finish reading this column and plan how you are going to do it. If you want to give away $5 a month or $50 and don’t know how to work it into your budget, ask yourself “What can I do without? What do I spend money on that I really don’t need?
Another way to do it is to emulate a billionaire. Not just any old billionaire from the Forbes list of the 400 richest people in the world: an elusive one who gave away 8 billion dollars and managed to do so anonymously as well as to stay off the Forbes list for most of his life.
His name is Chuck Feeney and you can emulate him by adopting his frugal habits to get you started developing ones of your own.
Chuck Feeney, who refers to himself as “the shabby philanthropist” typically wears Hawaiian shirts, a $15 plastic watch, flies coach and carries his books in a plastic bag. I don’t know what kind of pants he wears, but he has always said: “you can only wear one pair at a time.”
While I was put off by his obsession with business as described in the first part of “The Billionaire Who Wasn’t,” I was greatly impressed with the wonderful way he treated his employees, as well as with the way Feeney leveraged his donations, and with his commitment to “giving while living.” He explained that commitment saying, “If you want to give it away, think about giving it away while you are alive because you’ll get a lot more satisfaction than if you wait until you’re dead. Besides, it’s a lot more fun.”
Fun? Giving money away is fun? Oh yes, absolutely yes. The satisfaction of knowing what you have been able to accomplish with the gifts you have given with no strings attached is extraordinary.
Few, if any of us, will have billions or even millions of dollars to give away, but the size of our gift doesn’t matter. What matters is that we give it from the heart with no strings attached.
How will you begin that process?
Blessings on your efforts to discover the fun of giving yourself,
Judy Osgood