Have you ever felt guilty about not being able to give enough to worthy causes or charities? Do you find yourself short on time and money and fail to find a way to give back to the community?
As a person who has been in school for six straight years, I know this feeling all to well. The title, ‘poor college student’ has described my life for the past several years. I am limited in the ways that I can give, but have started a new journey to fix all of this.
Different Ways of Giving
People often say that you can give in two ways: money and time. While money is given a high priority in our culture, I still believe that both are valuable. Giving your money to a cause is great, but taking time out of your day to work alongside the people in the trenches shows a different level of support.
Yet, I have found myself limited in both aspects. My mediocre salary and costs of school have long prevented me from being able to contribute financially to any worthy causes. Moreover, trying to stay in the black by working full-time while going to grad school, I find that time is limited as well. When I began to see that my life was not really going anywhere and I was always busy trying to achieve some lofty goals, I decided to re-consider my life’s plan.
New View of Life
Instead of continuing on this path in order to work a job for forty years, at which point I will retire and literally do nothing, I have decided to shoot for a different goal. In my early retirement plan, I detail how I want to re-orient my life so that I can give back NOW.
I hope to create enough passive income from online and real estate efforts in order to quit my day job in 2-3 years. I know that blogging and maintaining these income streams will not be truly “passive” and will take time to manage. Since I am young, I don’t just want to sit around all day anyway. I want to stay active. Thus, I estimate that I will need 3 days to keep these income streams going. Can you imagine only working 3 days a week starting at age 27? I can’t imagine it either, but that is my goal.
The most important aspect of my new view of life is that I hope to gain what I have been missing: time and money. I hope to earn enough money to live a normal life. Since my wife will be earning enough money for us to live off of, I hope to use the money from my passive income streams to contribute to society. Since I will only be working 3 days each week, I will have 2 extra days to offer my time to worthy causes. I believe that in achieving this goal of mine, I will be able to make the world a better place. While this goal is about me and my life’s direction, it is also about the community that I live in.
Do you find yourself wishing you could give back more?
This was an article from Corey at Passive Income to Retire, where he writes about his plan to “retire” by the age of 27.
Are you doing SOMETHING, and, are you doing what God told you to do? If you can answer “yes” to both questions, then you don’t need to worry about the amount or method.
I completely understand where you’re coming from when it comes to giving – not feeling like you have enough time or enough money to give. I’d encourage everyone to at least try to find at least some time or money to give. Studies have shown that people who give are happier!
At our house our giving is a line item in our budget, and it’s one of the necessities at the top. Even if you don’t have extra money to give, everyone can find at least a little time to give to volunteer.. Certainly once you get to that semi-retirement state you’ll have a lot more time, but even now I’m sure we can all find at least a little time.
I also have been using my “passive income” from my blog to help increase our giving. Through my blog income I’ve been able to increase our giving amount to causes we believe in -and our church. So as far as having side jobs/side hustles to help increase your giving – it works!
@ Emily, thanks for the advice! I agree – doing something is often the first step.
@Peter, thanks for the detailed response. Yes, I plan to do the same thing with my blog income. Having it as extra money right now allows me to give it away freely. It has already changed my mentality to be honest. My wife and I were able to help raise money for a friend’s trip to Africa. We made Christmas ornaments and sold them. I used money from my blog to buy supplies and we spend our nights sawing, cutting, etc. I think we will raise close to $1k for her. :) Who knew blogging could do so much for you, right?
Giving is truly a wonderful thing and is essential in being a good steward of the resources that God has entrusted to us.
However, I could argue that while giving financially is necessary (and is the standard of giving in this country), the gift of your time is invaluable.
Money is infinite, while time to have impact on this world is limited.
It is great to give both, but if you can’t give financially, then the gift of your time is certainly a close 2nd.
I really love your idea of limiting work so you can give more of your time, but I’d just challenge your thought of “retirement.” The standard for retirement in this country is to stop working and literally do nothing (as you stated). However, being able to retire simply means that you accumulated enough assets so that you do not have to earn a paycheck. This means that you can now free up your time to work on countless passions and charities without the necessity to earn income.
Yeah, I definitely struggle with this all the time. I often feel guilty about pursuing a career or work that doesn’t directly help others (I work at a nonprofit that does for now). At the same time, I always tell myself I’ll do more in the future when I can afford to. I think there’s something to be said for considering that in the future as long as you don’t let the idea get away from you. At the same time, I do what I can for now.
Yes, with both time and money.