THE THOUGHT I have on this topic is from a very interesting financial book called The Richest Man in Babylon. An important aspect of financial success, it explains, is allocating a percentage of any income you earn into different categories. Say 10% paying back DEBTS, 10% into SAVINGS, and 10% into an INVESTMENT FUND, and (the part relevant here today) 10% to charity. Then, the remaining 60% is what you have to live off of. People might complain that it isn’t enough, but one of the things the books also points out is that the average person will always have JUST AS MUCH MONEY AS THEY NEED and nothing more, regardless of if they’re on welfare or a millionaire. WE CREATE A PSYCHOLOGICAL NEED based on what we can afford. So if you don’t put away X% of your income automatically, you will assume you can afford to spend all your money (and not save any) and so YOU WILL. Even if it’s a very small amount, done diligently each month it will ad up to a lot more than if you keep waiting to start saving up. THIS IS ALSO TRUE OF DONATING TO CHARITY. If you think “I can’t afford to right now, I need to save up a bit and then I will” I’m sure you have great intentions but here’s the thing – If you can’t part with $10 when you’ve got $100, it’s not going to be easy to part with $100 when you’ve got a thousand. OR EVEN $50! You might not have the emotional muscle to part from your hard earned cash! But, by the way, any money you put towards a charitable or good unselfish purpose comes back to you in 10 times the quantity! I have had an incidence when I saw this happening LIKE MAGIC, but I’ll save that for another post…
THE QUESTION I want to start implementing this program in my own life today, as I’m launching a personal a website (God willing) to display and sell the paintings I create. From the start I want to start donating a percentage of my profits to a good cause. My question to you is: HAVE YOU HAD ANY GREAT PERSONAL EXPERIENCES WITH A CHARITY, GROUP, ORPHANAGE, NON-PROFIT ETC. who could put my donation to good use? (I’m prone to donate to orphans and children, but open to check out anything that’s doing good in the world.) It’s rather frustrating scouring the internet looking for a small business who would really benefit from a small-medium sized regular donation. All the sites that come up are ALREADY CLEARLY WELL FUNDED and I’m honestly not sure if I’m paying the website designer’s salary or if my donations actually going where I’d like it to go! So please, SHARE WITH ME ANY OF YOUR EXPERIENCES AND LINKS. And if you or your friend runs a some sort of SOMETHING THAT’S MAKING THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE then please share your link in the comments below!
God willing, you guys can help me find an opportunity to do a little good.
~Jones
P.S. – I have a secret that I feel that the time is near to reveal :S
The New New World Order 