Lazy Man and Money

Should You Have an Emergency Charity Fund?

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[Editor’s Note: I published this originally in June of 2008. It’s helped me save money to give Haiti, Japan, Hurricane Irene victims, and that Sandy thing that people are talking about today. Even if you put $3 to $5 aside a month for charity disaster relief, you can make a big difference.]

It’s no secret that one of my favorite blogs is Get Rich Slowly. Yesterday there was an article about how to coping with financial disaster. (My short answer see #14 of 16 Thoughts on Oprah’s Stanford Commencement Speech… Grieve properly, attend to the situation at hand, and get back to what was important before the crisis.)

With more and more natural disasters striking the United States, it occurred to me… should I have an emergency fund to donate to charity? I typically focus my charitable efforts on one effort… the American Cancer Society… in honor of my dad. Perhaps that doesn’t make sense anymore. Perhaps I should “plan” for one or two disasters each year… whether it be wild fires, flooding, hurricanes, or tornadoes.

I think in the future, I’ll look to divide my charitable contributions in three ways… I will still support the American Cancer Society, I don’t see that ever changing. However, I will divide the other half of my charitable contributions to charities are more directly observable by me. I’m thinking that one of those sites is Kiva.org. The other would be this emergency fund for natural disasters.

I suppose there’s no right or wrong answers when it comes to charity and giving, but as always I’m curious to hear what you think. Do you have an emergency charity fund?

Lazy Man Politics Policy (and personal finance links)

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You may have noticed that I didn’t mention much about politics in the last few weeks. My reasoning for this isn’t that it doesn’t effect your personal finances. It’s just that I believe people can be financially successful in any kind political environment in the United States.

I hear a lot about one candidate’s tax plan vs. another. People like to make a big deal about it. I believe that to some degree we are all going to pay similar taxes. The government needs to have it’s money to run and they are going to have to get it from somewhere. You might see some candidates take more from certain people, but I don’t see big differences between them.

Sometimes I wonder if Kodos said it best, “It’s true, we are aliens. But what are you going to do about it? It’s a two-party system; you have to vote for one of us.” Anyone let’s get on to the links. I just thought I’d clear that up in case you were wondering.

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