4 Ways to Maximize Your Charity Donations

An important aspect of having well-rounded finances is charity. Giving is generally accepted by many personal finance experts as an essential part of good money management. Your giving, however, should be like other aspects of your financial management – an effort should be made to ensure that you are getting the best value for your […]

How to Find Charities that Spend Donations Wisely

Giving is an important part of cultivating well-rounded finances. Donating to charity can be a good use of your money, and it can help you feel good about what you’re doing to make the world a better place. Unfortunately, just giving your money isn’t always enough. There are few things in this world more disappointing […]

Helping Those Without Insurance or Health Care

I’ve written a lot lately about health insurance and health savings accounts. Sometimes I get so caught up worrying about health care costs that I forget there are many people in the world that don’t have health care, let alone health insurance. Addressing this global health need seems like such an enormous task, it’s hard to know […]

Charitable Donations to Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps has always been one of my favorite charities and is where we’ll be sending our year end charity donation.  I like contributing to Mercy Corps because I feel I’m a global citizen and they work in about 40 countries around the world where people are in dire need of assistance. Their mission is […]

What Can You Do to Address Global Poverty?

I have been somewhat disconnected from the financial blogosphere lately and I missed an important event, Poverty Awareness via Blog Action Day. As the income gap continues to grow, wealth distribution in this country and around the world follows the idea of the 80/20 rule; a small percentage of the world has the majority of the […]

How to Choose a Charity

Choosing a charity should be easy. You find a cause you support, and you send you in your check. However it is a little more complicated than simply picking a group for your donation. Unfortunately, like everything else in this world, unscrupulous people are out there taking advantage of kind hearted individuals. For example, anybody […]

A Kiva Loan can Change a Life

“Loans that change lives” is Kiva’s tagline. Based upon the testimonials I have read, I believe they are keeping their word. So, how can they make such a claim? Kiva is a peer to peer lender with a charitable mission. Unlike their counterparts who pay interest to the lenders, Kiva matches small business owners around […]

What is the Most Effective Way to Donate Money?

Do you ever wonder how much of the money you donate actually goes to the people that need it? Overhead Costs Companies that solicit contributions on behalf of charities get some type of payment for their services. A co-worker once told me that some of these organizations get a percentage of all the money they […]

Take Nothing for Granted

We think we have it bad with credit card debt, crappy health insurance, and high gas prices but in reality we’re living a life others only dream about. A Different World My parents make bi-annual visits to Central America to provide health care for some of the poorest people in the Americas. They recently returned […]

Are Girl Scout Cookies Tax-Deductible? It Depends.

I’ve had a lot of people asking if the purchase of girl scout cookies is a valid tax deduction. I consulted my tax friend and he pointed me the answer on the Girl Scouts website. Basically, if you take posession of the cookies then you can’t write off the purchase because you received something in […]

Next Page »