ThatDamnedPanda
Posts: 6060
Joined: 1/26/2009
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It depends on the person and what they need. My family and close friends are fine for the most part, so it's pretty much only the people in the outer circles of my social network who are really being affected by this catastrophe. I gave a boatload of money to a former employee a couple of weeks ago, someone I don't even particularly like, because he had no other way to pay his rent and nobody else who had the kind of money he needed. I gave him enough for a month's rent and a week's groceries, and I know I'll never see a dime of that money again. But he has a family, and has had a ton of medical issues over the last year, and they were desperate. Hopefully that will see them through until he gets his feet under himself again and starts building some forward momentum. I "loaned" 1500 bucks to another employee a few months earlier, for similar reasons. I doubt I'll ever see that again, either. I look at those gifts as a big part of my charitable giving for this year. Some of the causes I typically support, like environmental and various social issues, probably won't get as much money from me this year as I would normally give, because I chose instead to donate almost 3 grand directly to people in my immediate social circle who were in desperate situations.
I know this may not be what you were looking for, Cat, but oftentimes when money's the problem, money's the only solution. I don't feel really comfortable giving people pep talks on how everything's going to turn out fine, because for me it already is fine and i feel like a fraud. I'm not hurting at all; I'm not rich, but I'm doing fine financially, and have no worries at all about whether I'll be able to ride this depression out. The worst that can happen to me is that if it gets a lot worse and goes on a lot longer, I'll have less money at the end of it than I would if it isn't very bad and doesn't last very long. So when I tell someone who just lost their job and doesn't know how they're going to eat next month that they shouldn't worry, everything's going to be fine, and they know I just quit my job last month so I can spend more time traveling, writing, and managing my investments, I feel as though my words are hollow. It's easy for me to say, because we're living in totally different worlds.
So I just do what I can to help people out financially when they need it. I knew last September when this all started to unravel that my charitable giving was going to have to go way up, because that's what people are going to need the most. There's just not much else I can do for them.
_____________________________
Panda, panda, burning bright
In the forest of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Made you all black and white and roly-poly like that?
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