345. Charity

Give to charity. Give wisely. Pick charities that are important to you and support them. A part of all you earn is yours to give away to charity. You should allocate your income as follows : -

Income %
€100

Full 100
Tax 30
Debt 30
Expenses 21
Savings 9
Charity 10
Investment 9

When you give to charity you should give 10%. This is one tenth. The meaning of the word "tithe" is to give 10%.

Give to your charities with an open heart. Give gladly. Do not resent your gift. Operating on this basis, be careful about where you choose to give. Everywhere there are people who have plans for your money. It is yours until you give it and only you have the right to plan for its use.

Everywhere there are "charities" that spend more on administration than on the causes they claim to support. You should be clear in your mind that this is nothing more than exploitation of the cause for the benefit of the organisers and is nothing short of fraud. Have nothing to do with these organisations.

Another form of exploitation is the phenomenon of "chuggers". This is a portmanteau word made up of the "ch" in charity and the "uggers" in muggers. It is the practice of mugging people on the street for charity. When you put money in a collection box you have no guarantee that the person holding it will ever return the money to the cause. Avoid them like the plague that they are.

When choosing a charity to support, do not be swayed by emotional appeals. Check out the bona fides of the charity and only give if the money is going to the cause and not the organisation. Demand to see their latest audited accounts before you give and only give if you are satisfied.

Build giving to charity into your budget. That way, at the start of each year you will know how much you intend to give and when you intend to give it and to which charity. Then you have made the decision once and for all and can forget about it until you are preparing your budget for next year. This is basically a mind-clearing sytem. Do not entertain appeals for anything else during the year (but keep the appeals on file for your next budget.) If you wish, you can budget for emergencies like floods, volcanoes etc. and keep money in a fund for that, earning interest.

2. On Exploitation

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A WELL ADJUSTED SLAVE.

There is a legal doctrine called Quantum Maruit which is simply Latin for "The amount earned." It simply means that the labourer is worthy of his hire. You may be asked to do voluntary work for the sake of a good cause. This is a good and generous thing to do. Do it with an open heart and as a gift, expecting no reward or else refuse if you cannot do it in that spirit. If you feel you are being exploited, the chances are that you are picking up some subliminal signals that your generosity is indeed being plundered for the benefit of someone else's bank balance. As the anti-drugs campaign says : "Just Say No !"

Exploitation takes many forms but it is usually in the form of low or absent wages. The person who is insisting that you should work for free is usually very well paid on a regular basis themselves. Ask what the monetary value of whatever is being offered in exchange is. You should have some idea of what the hourly rate for your labour is and refuse to work for less. When I was 14 years old, I was offered the princely sum of £5 per week working in a dusty factory. I refused because I already had a job paying me £22.10 per week plus all the adventure I could handle at sea. Indeed you should realise that exchanging your labour for cash is really a poor bargain. It makes much more sense to exchange your labour for assets which will in turn provide you with cash for years to come.