Give It Away
The fastest way to change your perspective about money is to give it away. To those living from paycheck to paycheck, saving money is at best optimistic; giving is nothing less than unrealistic. But giving could just be the best thing that ever happened to your checkbook.
Christian tradition (and others as well) includes a tenet of giving 10 percent of our income to a local assembly. This tithe does not only keep the lights on at the local church or enable it to invest in local charities, it does a number on the giving person’s heart. This act acknowledges that all we have and everything we are comes from God.
Giving changes our perspective on money by helping us see a bigger picture. We set priorities and make sacrifices in order to give to a cause we believe in. Giving opens our eyes to needs that are everywhere. It increases our capacity for compassion. “It connects us to the world and that lets us see past ourselves,” Mary Hunt writes in Debt-Proof Your Marriage. “Giving develops our faith and pulls the plug on our greed and compulsive money behaviors. Giving calms down that thing that lives inside some of us that says ‘I want more and more and more!’”
Hunt suggests developing a habit of giving by treating it like a regular bill, with the same urgency. If you feel that 10 percent is too much to start with, try 2 or 3. Your heart will become enlarged through the act of giving.