I’ve recently been thinking about the concept of setting a personal “savings ceiling.” In other words, figuring out how much I need to live a happy, fulfilling life, and then giving the rest away. Now, before you start thinking that I’ve lost my mind, I want to say a few things…
For starters, it’s important to [...]

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I’m guilty of buying small gadgets and/or books that I don’t really need. On the surface, many of these items look like they’ll save me time or money, but I either rarely use them or otherwise find that I don’t want to keep them around. Not only does this waste money, but it also results [...]

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Every year around this time, my wife and I sit down to figure out our charitable giving. I’ve mentioned in the recent past that times like these can be tough for charities, as monetary giving often dries up. Fortunately, we’ve had a good year, and are planning on increasing our giving this year as compared [...]

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Tough economic times are a sort of double whammy for many charities — the need for services spikes, but donations shrink. Not a good combination. While we’re in the fortunate position to be able to maintain (if not increase) our donations over years past, that’s not the case for everyone. With that in mind, I [...]

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This is just a quick note to let you know that FiveCentNickel readers donated a total of $2879.84 to their local foodbanks. Adding in my match ($1000) as well as that of a reader named Noam (another $1000), that brings the total to $4879.84!
Thanks to all who donated, including: jim, C, Andrew, Jesse, Cap, Rachel, [...]

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This is just a quick note to let you know that my offer to match food bank donations last week resulted in $783.84 in contributions by readers to their local food banks. Now for some exciting news…
A reader wrote in over the weekend and said that they wanted to extend the program by offering to [...]

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This is just a quick not to update you on the matching donations for food bank contributions. So far, readers have contributed a total of $528.84 $628.84 to their local food banks. Including our matching contribution to our local food bank, that’s a total $1057.68 $1257.68, and we’re not quite done yet…
There’s more than $450 [...]

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For those of you that don’t keep up with this sort of thing, today is Blog Action Day. If you’re not familiar with Blog Action Day, it’s a day when upwards of 10k bloggers (myself included) band together to write about a topic that needs greater attention. Last year’s topic was the environment. This year, [...]

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Now that Presidential election season is in full swing, I thought I’d highlight a recent article from CNN/Money about political donations. In case you’re not aware, your political donations are subject to a variety of limits and, thanks to post-Watergate reforms, you also can’t give anonymously. Oh, and guess what? You won’t be getting any [...]

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As Tax Day draws ever closer, I thought I’d write a bit more about tax deductions… I’ve written in the past about common income tax deductions, as well as commonly missed tax deductions. This time, I thought I’d tackle some of the lesser known charity-related tax deductions.
Mileage Related to Volunteering
While volunteering does not, in and [...]

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