My boss — aka The Best Boss ever — gave me a $3/hour raise this year.
There’s only been one year (out of nearly 11) that he hasn’t given me a raise of some sort, but it’s usually $1 or $2 per hour. Which is more than fine because I’m vastly overpaid anyway. So a $3-per-hour raise was startling, if welcome, news.
But what’s funny is that I only briefly thought about the extra money I’ll be able to throw into retirement. It quickly switched to, “Ooooh, I can raise my donations!”
I haven’t been great
For years, I didn’t donate anything. I always felt a bit precarious financially, since I was trying to bulk up savings to something decent while also dealing with all of Tim’s expenses (necessary and otherwise), home repairs, etc.
But looking back, I could’ve found room in the budget for at least something.
Finances got better after the divorce at the tail-end of 2018, but the next year, despite having more money, I still didn’t do anything.
I was preoccupied with using the freed-up funds to see real progress in my saving accounts. And I was still trying to figure out how much I could throw at retirement.
So I focused on giving to myself, even once I definitely had some money to spare.
Getting started (finally)
It wasn’t until the 2020 stimulus checks that I got my butt in gear.
The checks got split between local businesses and some charities. And I started giving to Feeding America monthly. But I quickly realized the monthly amounts were still pretty paltry.
Unfortunately, I was still panicky about my late start to retirement saving, so while I did raise the amount of my 2021 donations, it honestly wasn’t by that much.
So I’m frankly a little disappointed in my past self.
Wanting to pay it forward
Yeah, yeah, I know: Put your own air mask on first; it’s okay to wait until you’re not panicky about money, yada yada.
But the thing is, I got very lucky when I needed help. Washington has pretty generous assistance programs (by welfare standards, anyway). Even more importantly, my Mom was there to help when I couldn’t cover my bills.
So I’d always promised myself that when I was in a position to give, I’d make damn sure I did.
But I was still plagued by Bag Lady Syndrome. I wasn’t sure how much I could throw at retirement and whether it would even be enough to retire. So I donated very little.
About time!
By 2022, I’d finally seen that my retirement savings will be okay. So I could finally make myself increase my monthly donations.
It was still a bit of a fight against the intermittent and irrational panic, so I ended up slowly increasing donations over the course of the year.
Admittedly, a lot of that increase was because I met a new friend who was struggling to make ends meet while waiting for disability. I remember that awful time, so I started throwing money his way every month.
Thankfully, later that year his husband found a better-paying job that lets them cover all of their bills. Which means I can now use that money toward donations to actual organizations.
So with the notable raise (it’s about $7,400 more a year thanks to overtime), I’ve finally been able to bump it up to 5% of my income.
Big whoop.
I’m keenly aware that many people (plenty of whom probably make less than I do) give more than 5%. I’ve heard some Christians tithe 10%, which… wow.
So this recent increase isn’t exactly impressive by general’ standards. But at least it’s more money going to help people. And I guess it’s also a positive indicator that I’m finally getting comfortable with my financial progress. (Surprise setbacks notwithstanding, of course.)
I’m not sure whether I’ll stay at 5% forever or keep pushing myself to increase. But even if I stay at 5%, my yearly raises mean that I can still keep giving more every year.
A reminder
I know a lot of people are hurting financially right now thanks to this runaway inflation. So I want everyone to remember that there are plenty of ways to give that don’t cost anything.
You can also donate your:
- Time: Volunteering is a great help — and not just at food banks. You can also spend time helping pack boxes to organizations give out physical goods or manning booths that give out information about the organization.
- Clothing: I’m not talking about dropping things off at Goodwill, though that’s also good. Think bigger: homeless shelters, shelters for people fleeing domestic violence, etc. People trying to escape DV often leave with only the clothes on their and their kids’ backs.
- Food: If you have cans or dry goods in your cupboard (that are still before the expiration date), drop them off at a local food bank.
- Couponing skills: If you’re good at combining sales, coupons and store rewards to get personal care items for free — or almost free — consider donating those to shelters. Shelters for the homeless or for people feeling domestic violence (or any organization that helps low-income people get by) can pretty much always use items like deodorant, shampoo, oral care products, etc.
- OTC insurance benefits: Some insurance plans actually provide the insured with a stipend for OTC drugstore items. That can be anything from cold & flu relief to personal care items to even things like compression socks. So check your plan to see if that’s offered to you. It’s a great way to give for free.
- Insurance reward benefits: Insurance companies want us to stay healthy — and to catch anything bad in the early, cheaper stages — so quite a few plans now offer rewards to do things like get your annual check-up, a mammogram, etc. You can then redeem them for certain stores’ gift cards — and they really add up! I ended up with $200 in CVS gift cards. Kohl’s was another option, which would be great for anyone good at gleaning from the clearance sections.
- Points/rewards: Quite a few rewards sites and credit card point programs will let you give your points/rewards to charities.
Some suggestions
If you are in a position to donate money, make sure you check Charity Navigator.
This site will tell you the percentage of donated funds that actually get to the people in need. Some organizations have a surprising amount of overhead. So be sure to choose one where most of the money goes directly to people in need.
Anyway, here are some organizations I like and have donated to at some point:
- Revanche’s Lakota assistance: I still don’t know how the A Gai Shan Life blogger finds the time — two kids, a full-time job, a blog and some health issues — but she uses any donated funds to buy supplies for a Lakota reservation. Some of these people are really in need. Requests are for basic things like warm blankets or socks.
- Feeding America: This organization supplies foods banks all across the country. They can make your dollar stretch pretty far, so they can do some good work.
- Local food banks: If food prices are particularly bad in your state, you can make sure people in your area are the ones you’re helping.
- Go with the Flow: Some people with periods have to miss school routinely because they can’t afford menstruation supplies. Go with the Flow distributed pads and tampons to schools, to make sure no one who gets a period has to lose out on education. This program is in multiple states, but the chapters seem to be run independently.
- Together We Rise: Did you know that when kids are taken into the foster system, they’re given a trash bag to collect their things? This org makes sure that younger kids get a duffel bag (complete with stuffed toy and an activity book) and that older kids are given suitcases. But there’s more — you can buy birthday boxes, things like STEM kits, bicycles, skateboards, and so on.
- Planned Parenthood: I know some people might bristle at this one, but remember that:
- Only a fraction of Planned Parenthood’s funds go to abortions.
- In fact, most of the programs are trying to stop unwanted pregnancy. It offers sex education and low-cost (or even free) birth control.
- So if you’re against abortions, why not help women avoid unplanned pregnancies in the first place?
- NAACP: This organization needs no introduction. (And I need to get back to donating to it again.)
- Local no-kill shelters: Keep in mind that all shelters put some animals down — if they’re deemed too sick to treat. And that determination can vary wildly. So you may want to ask about the particular shelter’s guidelines. Oh, and a couple of years ago I found out that the no-kill org HALO likes to cherry-pick from shelters — specialty breeds, cuter animals, etc. — so that their animals will almost definitely get adopted quickly. And it charges multiple hundreds of dollars for dogs and some cats. So… yeah, HALO no longer gets any of my money.
What are some of your favorite organizations to help out?
I donate to local food pantries. Ours do things like cereal drives and snack drives for after school programs. A couple of churches have 24 hr access pantries. I donate to local animal shelters when someone is matching donations. Will also donate during local emergencies like house fires. I recently donated to a gofundme for my hair stylist’s cat that needed emergency surgery that she couldn’t afford. (Don’t usually support that platform.) During the pandemic I sent money/gifts to people that I knew were hurting financially like my dog groomer and fitness instructor.
Okay, as a quick note: A 24-hour food pantry is amazing. Really gives access to everyone!
It’s so nice that you helped people who were hurting. Both during the pandemic and after. And a sick pet is almost always a must-donate.
Thankfully, not many people around me need donations — healthy pets and such — so I haven’t had to divert funds to GoFundMe very often.
Moriah Chace, another blogger/freelance writer, was involved in a nasty hit ‘n run that caused her to roll her car multiple times with notable damage. She’s out a car, has medical bills and is unable to work for 8 weeks. Even if she weren’t a great person, she definitely needs some help. AAnother blogger set up a GoFundMe — Moriah had initially set up a meal train to make sure she and her mom had food — so I’ll donate again as soon as my next check comes.
(If anyone else knows her and wants to help, here’s her GoFundMe link: https://www.gofundme.com/f/moriah-joy-chace-writer)
I’ve found automating my donations really help me stay consistent – currently I do Feeding America, Donors Choose and a local food bank. I’m trying to add one additional place every year to these monthly donations. I’m not up to 5% yet, but slowly increasing has helped me work it into my budget and stay consistent.
Yeah, I officially have all of my donations automated so I don’t have to worry about forgetting. And hey, there’s no right percentage. Helping where you can is all that matters.
Great article, Abby. I totally feel you on the bag lady syndrome. I wish I could figure out how to shake it for good, but I’m working on it!
I am at all of the above kind of gal when it comes to helping others. We donate monetarily on a regular basis to our church and a couple of charities and then on an occasional basis to other charities.
I am a couponer, so I also donate lots of items I obtain from that. In fact, just tonight I taped up a box to ship some clearance make up and hair color finds to Project Beauty Share.
I also donate items to many local resources such as a food pantry that services my side of town, blessing boxes that are located in area parks that people can just walk up to and get what they need, a domestic violence shelter, a pregnancy and family support organization, and a homeless outreach organization.
One of my coolest donations was when I stumbled upon 90% off Dr. Scholl’s shoe inserts at the grocery store and bought all of them to donate to the homeless outreach. They were super excited to have them. Another time I was able to score free packs of women’s underwear that I donated to that same organization. I’ve also purchased feminine hygiene products to donate to our local school.
I also use my couponing skills to help keep the teacher break room at my kids’ school stocked up on treats. Another example; just before Christmas, on Next Door,, there was a nearby single mom on disability mentioning that she really needed some personal hygiene items for herself and her daughter. Turns out her daughter was the same age as mine, tween age, so just from couponing stock I already had on hand, I was able to give them several gift bags full of nice, brand new items – razors, shaving cream, shower gel, lotion, new toothbrushes, fancy toothpaste. I was also able to give them boxes of fun snacks and things like that., as well as a bag full of home items like the Airwick scented warmers, dish soap, laundry detergent, hand soap, etc. My kids and I went to deliver it to them and it just felt really good.
The third way, I serve my community is by volunteering. I have been volunteering weekly with Meals on Wheels for almost 6 years. I also volunteered enough hours to seem like a full-time job at my kids’ old elementary school by serving on the PTA board and PTA president and I’m currently on the PTO board at their current school. I even still volunteer with our former school district to help stuff prize bags for the kids that are in Saturday school. I also decided I needed to put even more on my plate by beginning to volunteer with the pregnancy and family support organization I mentioned above.
As a family, we volunteer with a mobile food pantry occasionally and we almost always volunteer for the community trash pick ups that occurred several times a year.
My goal is to teach my kids that it’s a bigger world than their daily bubble. They help me do Meals on Wheels during school breaks and in the summer and the residents just absolutely light up and adore my kids. They’ve formed some really close relationships with some of the clients. A couple of months ago, one of the ladies was just dying to get out of the house and asked if I would be willing to take her shopping. So, we took her out to a couple of stores, then brought her back to our house to hang out, and my daughter made her lunch, and then we took her home. She cried and said it was the best day she had had in a really long time and that most young people don’t care about the elderly.
And my kids always work hard at the mobile food pantry, even though it’s in the hot sun and involves a lot of lifting and reaching (and they’re not perfect, there’s definitely some whining, ha ha).
Anyway, sorry for the book. I’m just passionate about people realizing that there’s always some way to do something to help others. Even if it doesn’t feel like much, if everyone did a little, it would add up to a LOT!!!
Wow, you’re really going over and above. And it’s great that you’re instilling that ethic in your kids. I hadn’t heard about Project Beauty Share. I’ll have to check it out!
PS – I meant to say this first, but CONGRATULATIONS on your raise! That is awesome and very exciting.
OK, gah, one more thing!! I forgot to mention that I cashed in some rewards points on the rebates apps to gift that single mom $100 Walmart gift card as well.
Oh, and apologies for any typos. I am doing voice to text on my phone.
Haha it all looked fine to me. And wow that’s really kind of you. I bet it made a huge difference for her.
I buy sanitary napkins and tampons using points from rewards programs and, when possible, combine it with rebates from Ibotta, Shopmium and the like. A high-school nurse who’s part of my Buy Nothing Group is always looking for them; some of the young women who show up in her office don’t have any supplies at all. In some cases the family just can’t afford them; in others, the families have issues that mean parents aren’t being parents.
So every so often I drop off a bag of these things with her. (Have two boxes right now; maybe I should get them to her sooner rather than later, since school will be out in mid-May.)
Mostly I prefer to give cash to the food bank and/or Feeding America. But when I can do sale/coupon/gift card/rebate combos for food, I do that as well.
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Well, it lets you feel extra canny when you hit sales/coupons so that you can donate. So there’s that added bonus.
I donate money when and where I can, I am always dropping off food items that i get good deals on, to my local library’s food pantry. And I donate clothes / household things to a local Church thrift.
Great post! I donate to the National Network of Abortion Funds, Brigid Alliance, Eden Reforestation Projects, Ocean Cleanup, and our local food bank. You’ve inspired me to up my amount to the food bank, thank you!
That’s such a nice compliment, thank you! I’m sure the food bank will appreciate it. For obvious reasons, most are under incredible strain right now.
Those all sound like great causes! I hadn’t even thought about environmental stuff. There are just too many good charities who deserve donations, sigh. But if they exist at least it means some people/corporations are helping them. I’ll try to comfort myself with that — until I get my next raise, anyway.
Thanks for mentioning Planned Parenthood. For the reasons you stated, PP has PREVENTED more abortions than any other agency out there. Also, it provides free gynecological exams. I’ve used PP for this in the past, and the nurse practitioners who perform this service are much more thorough and provide more support and education than any of the gynecologists I’ve been to. A friend of mine, in the days before Obamacare, had no insurance and was going to skip her annual female exam. But a nagging voice inside her head convinced her to go to PP for one. Good thing: they found she had cervical cancer! They were able to set her up with low-cost treatment for same, which she could pay in monthly installments. In short, they saved her life! Sadly, the ugly protestors outside the local PP don’t let up — and this made me too afraid to go for my annuals. After all, I’ve been in menopause 15+_ years, so I didn’t think I needed the annual gyn exam anymore. Then one day, I started bleeding. (A period at my age? Really?) I called my primary care doc. Long story short: I had uterine cancer. By the time we found it, it had advanced quite a bit. Had I gone to PP, like I used to every year before the ugly people started organizing their mass protests, I might have been diagnosed much earlier. Those protests may call themselves Right to Life-ers, but time will tell if they (indirectly) caused my death.
Exactly! But some people focus on the wrong things, and of course it’s hard to see a lack of something happening.
I’m just glad there are plenty of folks who contribute so the organization can keep doing good work.