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Charity is Selfish

Finance, Life

I try to give 10% of my income to charity.   I don’t succeed every year, but I do try.

I don’t give because I’m generous.  I give because I’m selfish.

If you give to charity, you are too.

I’m not talking about people who give to charity strictly for the tax deduction, though that is selfish too.   I’m referring specifically to the people who give to charity out of the goodness of their hearts.

If I give a thousand dollars worth of clothes to a homeless shelter, I get a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that I helped people stay warm.

If I send $100 to the Red Cross for whatever terrible disaster happened shortly before I made the donation, it makes me feel good to have contributed to saving those lives.

The put-the-inner-city-kids-on-a-horse thing we do?  Makes me happy to get those kids into a positive situation.

Donating blood?  Yay, me!  I’m saving lives!

While it’s nice to help other people, that’s not the ultimate reason I’m doing it.  I do it because it makes me feel good about myself to help other people, particularly people who–for whatever reason–can’t help themselves.

That’s the basis of altruism.   It’s not about helping others, it’s about feeling good about helping others.

The truly selfish, the evil dogooders, are the ones who want to raise taxes to give it away as “charity”.   They get to feel like they are doing something and helping others while not actually contributing themselves and, at the same time, stealing that warm fuzzy feeling from the people who are providing the money to start with.

Evil.

Charity has to be done at  a personal, local level or the benefits to the giver are eliminated while the benefits to the receiver are lessened.  Bureaucracy doesn’t create efficiency.

For the record, if it’s taken by force, by tax, it isn’t charity.  Charity cannot be forced.   Forcing charity is, at best, a fraudulent way for petty politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists, and activists to feel they have power over others.

Again, evil.

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The heat(er) is on! 5 winter home energy saving tips

Finance

This is a guest post.

Turning the heat on can strike fear into the hearts of many a home owner. Rising heating bills are not a thing of the past. They are present and there is no end in sight. Relief for high winter heat costs can be found in every leaky window, poorly sealed storm door, inaccurate thermostats and many other locations in and around your home. Seeking out the cheapest gas and electricity prices from local suppliers can help reduce total energy costs and should include home energy audits and payment plans to equalize summer and winter energy bills.

Top 5 Tips for Year Round Home Energy Savings

1. Obtain a free energy audit kit from your local electric or gas provider. Approach your home energy audit as a family. Involving children is one of the best ways to decrease overall energy consumption. Teach the kids about leaving doors open, leaving lights on and the television on when not in the room. Appoint an energy officer for the house who will be responsible for reminding family members about energy conserving activities.

2. Install a digital thermostat, which can be programmed to automatically raise or reduce home temperatures when the house is not occupied such as when parents are at work and the kids are at school. Lowering temperatures to 60 degrees on mild winter days for just six hours during the work day can save on your heating bills without compromising comfort. By limiting the time not to exceed six hours the cost for bringing the home back to acceptable living temperatures is minimal; much longer and the bounce back time is increased sufficiently to mitigate any daytime savings. Reducing overall temperatures by one degree Fahrenheit can save as much as three percent on the total heating bill. Reduce the household temperature by five degrees Fahrenheit and experience a 15 percent saving which is a number most families can easily live with.

3. Comparison shop for the cheapest gas and electricity from local private energy suppliers. Ask about payment plans, adjustable billing cycles and energy reform programs. State and local governments have options for lower income homes, providing subsidies for high winter heating bills. Grants for home improvement along with energy conservation tax credits, which can be applied to heating costs, are another way to reduce budget impacting heating bills this winter.

4. Close vents, use energy efficient space heaters and alternative heat sources for additional energy savings. Closing vents to unused rooms will reduce energy consumption for the entire house. Heating less square footage will require less energy. When closing vents, be sure to seal those rooms well. Install thermal window coverings to reduce heat loss and temperature fluctuations and reduce air exchange at door thresholds with the use of a draft dodger. Using an energy efficient space heater in cold rooms can improve comfort without increasing overall heating costs. Spaces such as basements and laundry rooms can benefit from temporary use of space heaters to increase temperatures for those rooms temporarily. Consider alternative heat sources such as wood stoves and fireplace inserts. Fireplaces are generally inefficient as heat sources. However, wood stoves using catalytic converters can have energy efficiency ratings that rival high tech heat pumps.

5. Appliance energy hogs such as hot water heaters, washers, dryers, ovens and dishwashers should be evaluated each season. Lowering the hot water heater temperature and insulating the water heater and the pipes can reduce energy consumption of this one appliance by as much as seven percent. Wash clothing on cold water settings whenever possible, reserving hot water for only items needing sterilization, such as sick room bedding or cloth diapers. Never start the dishwasher if it is not completely full. The same amount of water and energy will be used to wash five plates and three glasses and will be required to wash a full meal’s worth of dishes for a family of six.

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Deathbed Relationships

Life, Parenting, Relationships

My great-uncle has been depressed lately.

He lives in the same apartment building and my grandmother, his sister.   They are just down the hall from each other.

Over the holidays, he’s seen a steady stream of people visiting my grandma, bringing cards and pictures, or taking her out to eat.   Over Christmas weekend, she spent far more time away from home, celebrating with her kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids than she did at home.

He’s never met his great-grandchildren.    He’s in his 70s, living in a retirement home attached to the nursing home he will most likely die in, and he’d like to see his descendants.

It’s too late.

He didn’t lose his relationship with his kids and grandkids in a fight.   Instead, he spent his entire life doing his best to avoid all forms of responsibility.   He spent 50 years avoiding supporting his family.  He wasn’t there for them.

Of course they won’t be there for him.

There is a simple way to get your kids and your grandkids to dote on you in your old age:  You spend your entire life being there when you’re needed.

Simple.

Building a relationship that can survive–or even thrive–in the times when you’ve got very little left to give takes a lifetime of commitment.

It starts the day your children are born, when you hold that precious little high-maintenance paperweight and swear that nothing bad will ever be allowed to happen to them.   Then you teach them to walk, and teach them to talk, and kiss their booboos when they fall.   And they will.

Day in, day out, you be there.   You feed them, clothe them, punish them when necessary, and love them unconditionally even when they make it hard to like them.   Every blessed day.

You soothe their pains, manage their fears, help them grow and turn into useful adults.  Every flipping year.

When they are adults, you lend an ear, you lend a hand, you help with their babies, you offer advice, you listen and talk and you are there.   Decade after decade.

Then, when you are old and broke and broken down, you’ve got people who love you, who cherish their memories with you.  These are the people who will drive an hour out of their way to pick you up for dinner.   They’ll carry you up the stairs you have trouble with.  They’ll sit at your feet and listen to you tell stories.  They’ll be there for you because you’ve always been there for them.

That’s how you get your kids and grandkids to visit you in the nursing home.  Simple, not easy.

If you’ve missed their childhood–for whatever reason–it’s still possible to build that relationship, but it’s so much harder.   You start by taking time out of your life to do spend time and be there.  Help when you can with what you can.  Be there.

If you wait until you are old and broke and broken down to start your relationship, it’s too late.   Your kids will know that it’s just another example of your selfishness.   If you’ve never made an effort to give, you’ve got know business expecting to get.  You’ll be lucky to get an occasional phone call and a greeting card for the holidays.

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Insane Incentives

Parenting

Spring is in the air.

Standardized Test
Standardized Test (Photo credit: biologycorner)

At my son’s school, that means it’s time for the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment tests.  These are the standardized tests created by the No Child Left Behind Act that determine if a school is doing its job in educating children.  If too many kids have lousy scores, the school gets put on the “Adequate Yearly Progress” list and will eventually get penalized financially.

That creates a perverted incentive in the school system.   The main metric for a publicly-funded school’s success in Minnesota is the MCA.  If a school can churn out illiterate trench-diggers, they will get increased funding as long as the test scores are good.

For a full two weeks before this test, the school effectively shut down the education program to prepare for the MCA test.   That’s two weeks of studying for a set of standardized tests that focus on reading, writing, and arithmetic.  I’m a fan of schools prioritizing the three Rs over other subjects, but that’s not what they did.

They spent two weeks studying testing strategies, not the material contained in the test.

In science class, they covered essential scientific elements like “Answer all of the easy questions first, so you can go back and spend time on the hard ones later.”

Spanish class covered verb usage similar to “When the time is almost out on the test, answer ‘C’ for all of the hard questions you have left, que?”

They weren’t being educated, they were learning the most effective way to solve a test to gain funding for next year.

For 2 weeks.

That’s not reading practice, or reviewing the parts of speech, or covering the necessary math skills.   It’s “This is a #2 pencil.  This is a circle.  Practice until lunch.”

Is this really what NCLB was trying to accomplish?   Standardized tests to measure school proficiency should be a surprise.   Let’s randomly send in test proctors to take over a school for a day and see what the kids have actually learned.

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How come my back hurts?

Business, Finance, Relationships

My favorite book series is the Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind.  It’s a good sword-and-sorcery, good-versus-evil fantasy.

But I’m not here to talk about that series.  Rather, I’m going to talk about one particular scene in book 6, Faith of the Fallen.

There’s a scene where Richard, the protagonist, ends up in a socialist workers’ paradise, where the government controls distribution and everybody is starving.  Jobs are hard to come by, because everything is unionized and unions control access to work.  That’s a non-accidental parallel to every country that has embrace socialist principles, or even leans that way.  Go open a business with employees in France, I dare you.

So Richard goes out of his way to help someone with no expectation of reward.  This person then offers to vouch for him at the union meeting, effectively offering him a job.

This is the conversation that follows:

Nicci shook her head in disgust. “Ordinary people don’t have your luck, Richard. Ordinary people suffer and struggle while your luck gets you into a job.”

“If it was luck,” Richard asked, “then how come my back hurts?”

If it was luck, how come my back hurts?

Seneca, a 2000-year-dead Roman philosopher said, “Luck is where the crossroads of opportunity and preparation meet.” 

I won’t lie, I’ve got a pretty cushy job.  I make decent money, I work from home, I love my company’s mission, and I kind of fell into the job.

By fell into, I mean:

  • I started teaching myself to program computers when I was 7.
  • I worked in a collection agency collecting on defaulted student loans to put myself through college while I had a baby at home.
  • When I graduated, I went out of my way to help anyone I could, which positioned me for a promotion, getting my first programming job.  The first one is the hardest.
  • I spent 3 years studying the online marketing aspects of what I’m doing, with no promise of a payoff.
  • I launched a side business in the same industry as the company I work for.
  • I built a relationship with an author to include his books in the classes I teach.  He happened to move to the company I’m with.
  • I offered advice–for free, on a regular basis–on certain aspects of his business and his responsibilities with this company.
  • He offered me a job.

That’s 25 years and tens of thousands of dollars spent earning my luck.  How come my back hurts?

I have a friend on disability.  He has a couple of partially-shattered vertebrae in his back, but he keeps pushing off the corrective surgery because the payments would stop after he heals.   He refuses to get a regular job, because his payments would stop.  He lives on $400 per month and whatever he can hustle for cash, and he will make just that until the day he dies.   And he complains about his bad luck.

His back literally hurts, but not metaphorically.  His bad luck is the product of deliberately holding himself down to keep that free check flowing.

I have another friend who made some bad decisions young.   Some years ago, he decided that was over.  He took custody of his kid and started a business that rode the housing bubble.   When the bubble popped, so did his business.   Instead of whining about his luck, he worked his way into an entry-level banking job.

He put in long (long!) hours, bending over backwards to help his customers and coworkers, and managed a few promotions, far earlier than normal.  His coworkers whined about it.  He’s so lucky.  If it was luck, why does his back hurt?  

We make our own luck.

If you bust your ass, working hard and helping people–your coworkers, your customers, your friends, your neighbors–and you are willing to seize an opportunity when it appears, you will get ahead.   When you do, the people around you who do the bare minimum, who refuse–or are afraid–to seize an opportunity, who always ask what’s in it for them, they will will whine about your luck.

When they do, you will get to ask, “If it was luck, how come my back hurts?”

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