Are you generous or more of a self-supporter advocate?

Just wondering where you all fell on this spectrum. I was challenged tonight to look at my beliefs around giving to others, how, when, why, etc. And I'd love to hear how you all fall on this spectrum.

i help in little ways, buy someone a book or lunch or give them my time with babysitting or whatever. i don't donate to anything though. i would if i had more money. right now it isn't a priotity

this was tougher for me than i thought it would be. first of all, we tithe, so i consider that in our giving, but it wasn't an option. then, if ever we have friends/family in need, we would absolutely give to them. also, daniel is constantly giving money to different charities (st. jude, etc), even if sometimes i think that extra money should go to savings/some else for our family. does that make any sense at all?? i'll come back and clarify in a bit...

Alicia...I should have clarified. We just started tithing regularly and generously for the first time ever, so I actually don't consider tithing a part of being generous. I think of it as something else. But that is just my take...that is why I chose the In the middle...because I think my tithing is on the Too generous side, but my giving outside of that is not. :bag

Alicia...I should have clarified. We just started tithing regularly and generously for the first time ever, so I actually don't consider tithing a part of being generous. I think of it as something else. But that is just my take...that is why I chose the In the middle...because I think my tithing is on the Too generous side, but my giving outside of that is not. :bag

yea, i do consider tithing as part of our giving-i guess what i mean, is that part is a non-negotiable giving...but we still give outside of our tithe to the church. oh i don't know what i'm trying to say! i'm too tired to be coherent i guess. :dunno sorry!!

I put In The Middle...if I felt really led to, I totally would, but usually don't have money to, and bills gotta come first...lol

i think that i meant what you said...tithing is regular and consistent, whereas giving is needs-based...make sense

I answered for our family. We give pretty regularly. We have a few missionaries we support and different charities we give to. We also will buy meals for the homeless if they ask for money. We never just give money in that situation. (Side note, that's been a great way to teach Haley about how blessed she is).

i help in little ways, buy someone a book or lunch or give them my time with babysitting or whatever. i don't donate to anything though. i would if i had more money. right now it isn't a priotity
Same here. I give of my time mostly since we have very little money.

So tithing does or does not count? That will make a difference in how I vote.

Very generous. Almost TOO generous. :lol I love to help people out. I love to be nice. I love to surprise people.

For the first time in my 32 years of life I have money to give. I grew up SO poor that all I want to do now is help others. However, I don't really pick and choose who I help. I buy people things they may need. I pay for cars in drive-thrus. We do donate to charities.

I use to give WAY more of my time before I had kids for two reasons...1)I didn't have any money and 2) I didn't have any kids who took my time. So maybe in a way I am making up for the time I use to give by giving monetary things instead? Hmm, what an epiphany this early in the morning. Something to think about.

And we do not go to church, so we do not give tithe.

i give a lot of myself, my time, my energy to others, sometimes too much.
i don't give very much monetarily because we don't have it to give, but i do pick up dinner tabs and buy unexpected gifts for people pretty frequently.

i chose 'in the middle', i use to be very generous with my time before i got married and inherited 2 stepsons (who are more mine than their mothers.) unfortunately, we our busy schedules with two very active pre-teens, my schedule doesn't allow the time i'd like to volunteer. we now donate yearly to a specific charity and i donate money through work to a charity.

We have a few charities and causes that we donate to yearly (would love to be able to support them more if our circumstances improve). I don't have a lot of 'disposable' time right now, but as Fee gets older I'm hoping we can do some volunteering together. For now I try to be as generous as possible with my friends and family and help out if I can!

And I gave a family $10 for gas a few weeks ago at the gas station. It broke my heart that they even had to ask for it.

We also donate generously to our church. I also donate to CCA and other like organizations about 3 to 4 times a year. We do little things here and there to help out others as they come up as well. I put in the middle. :)

i give a lot of myself, my time, my energy to others, sometimes too much.
i don't give very much monetarily because we don't have it to give, but i do pick up dinner tabs and buy unexpected gifts for people pretty frequently.

:yeah

I try to give as much of myself as I can.

We donate time more than money. We just don't have a lot of money to give to others right now. As far as my beliefs, I am a big believer in being generous, but when I do give, I try to be careful of who I give to.

We tithe, but I don't really count that either. I do give to some charities as well. We also serve a lot at our church, so we give a lot of our time. We're in leadership in a home team, DH is Captain of the Medical Team and I'm a Captain in the coffee bar (we have Captains, Lietenants, etc). I also call our first time guests every week. I love it!

i give a lot of myself, my time, my energy to others, sometimes too much.
i don't give very much monetarily because we don't have it to give, but i do pick up dinner tabs and buy unexpected gifts for people pretty frequently.

Ditto.

I votes Self-Supporter but I didn't count time in that. I am very generous with my time. However, not so generous with my money. I learned to be self sufficient and feel that people need to be self sufficient. I do help and donate from time to time but don't help the same people over and over as I feel that will come to expect it. With that said, I also don't have alot of money to spare so if I did I might feel differently. I do tend to volunteer for casserole crews in our area if I feel there is a true need.

I am very generous with my time. I am a brownie and daisy leader for my girls troops, am on the service unit team for GS, volunteer on the PTO board, volunteer in our community, and will soon be one of the advisors for our hoa for our community. During the school year, I am extremely busy.

I give my time. Because we dont have any extra money right now especially w/ dh's pay cut coming up *sigh*\
but I do volunteer w/ my kiddos school , scouts, cheer ,baseball. (we dont pay for their extras-the grandparents do,we are very grateful for that). This next 2 weeks Ill be cranking out cheerleader bows for the girls on 2 squads. Im planning on gifting them to the girls since I know 2 of the parents are actually grand parents raising their grand kiddies and I know that gets hard on the pocketbook.
so that will be awesome :)

We're in the middle. We give - in money, time and "objects" - to charities where we can actually see the result in what we've given. There are too many charities out there that use a majority of donations for "overhead" instead of for the work it's meant to support, and I won't give to those types of organizations at all.

With family and friends, we've shut the door. For a long time, we were lending money to various people, putting time and effort into helping with any variety of tasks from babysitting to home improvements to whatever, and even taking people into our own home where they didn't contribute at all. Then we took a step back and realized that (a) we were doing it to the detriment of our own quality of life and (b) everyone was taking advantage of and when all of sudden we need help, no one was around/willing/able. So that door is shut.

So middle - we'll give in support of genuine needs where we can have a direct impact and that's it.

since the hubby and i give both time and money, i chose very. but i always feel like i can do more so that doesn't really feel right. one of the hard things about being pregnant right now is accepting that i can't keep up with all my volunteer stuff. it made me sad to have to pull out of some things... of course i'm much, much happier about my two little bundles of joy that are on their way!

I picked 'other' because I'm not sure we fall into the other categories. I don't feel that we are VERY generous simply because we don't have enough resources to give a lot. We tithe on our income and give offerings and to some charities.

We like to bless others when we can with time/labor/gifts but I don't think of that as 'supporting' someone, it's blessing someone.