Apr 15, 2009 
Peter Singer is still hiding out in my psyche! I can’t get his essay “On Giving,” his recently published book, “The Life You Can Save” and his public lecture, which I heard from a first row seat where I could not escape the cross-hairs of his probing and penetrating logic, out of my mind. He’s won the argument that our family budget is a moral document, that how we spend our money poses an ethical agenda. He’s inspired animated and at times awkward conversations between my wife and me. Now this is not something new to us. For four decades we have struggled, as people of faith, to clarify our values and principles, and to be as faithful as we are able in manifesting those values and principles in how we live – including our financial management.
This morning, re-visiting scribbled notes from that lecture, my eyes fell on a website he’d named – BolderGiving.com – and next that a reminder of Singer’s insistence that, in this matter of the morality of giving, we need to “go public” in telling our story, especially when it chronicles a process where commitment to giving becomes more and more generous. “That would be boastful and pride-full, arrogant and ego-driven,” a voice in my head argued. A visit to that website only deepened my dilemma: simple stories, most by “everyday folks,” though some by names you’d recognize, sharing their journeys toward extraordinary giving.
So, briefly for now, a first hesitant, halting, significantly embarrassed first shot at “going public.” Betsy and I both came from families, our parents raised by depression-era parents, who “lived beneath their means.” I began tithing in childhood, being from a tithing family – 10 cents of my $1 allowance tucked weekly into my offering envelope. We moved to eastern Long Island at age 25, where I served my first church as a pastor. Two years later the U.S. Air Force hired me as a part-time auxiliary chaplain at a remote radar station for $50 a week. Viewing it as “found money,” we decided to add it to our tithe, so, rather painlessly, we moved to a double tithe. When we were in our mid-forties, we went on a mission trip to Haiti, the poorest country in our hemisphere, face-to-face with devastating poverty. As a family (one of our sons had gone with us), we decided to sell our summer home and give the proceeds to charity. We established a 501(c) 3 charitable foundation to process the money, $85,000 in all, with a commitment to give it all away within five years.
A year ago we made what seemed a “next step” decision. We decided to give away $50,000/year over the next ten years. Recently, as we prepared our income tax return, we discovered that we’d gotten “carried away” in 2008 and given away $75,000 – 75% of our combined, all-sources income of $100,000, or, 13% of our principle, whichever approach we take. Here’s the best part: (a) nothing has brought us more joy this past year than steering that $75,000 toward carefully chosen projects! That 501(c)3 entity I mentioned has established several poverty-focused, empowerment-oriented, grassroots-based projects mostly in Mexico, where our son, the one who went years ago to Haiti, lives and does mission work, and (b) across our lifetime, we have been, typically, “more than a bit anxious” about money and our financial future. This “$50,000 a year giving plan” arguably creates “something to be anxious about,” increasing financial vulnerability, one could argue. Yet any and all anxiety about money has disappeared!
I’m fighting a temptation to click “all” and then “delete.” Except, if someone were to tell me they had a strategy that would significantly increase happiness and well-being and eliminate anxiety about money – then hesitated as some shyness intruded – I’d urge them vigorously to speak up. So, I have done so.
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D. Ranck says: 
Tinny 
Matthai Kuruvila 
Howard 