Frugality vs Charity

This post is an Editor's Pick in the 143rd Festival of Frugality.

This morning I went outside, took a look at my very overgrown lawn and thought to myself, “If some enterprising person were to knock on my door right now and ask about cutting my grass, I would hire them.” I normally cut my grass myself. I enjoy working outside and I’m happy to do it. This past month it has rained approximately 8” here. This is a town that normally only receives about 15” of rain a year. In other words, it’s been wet! Couple that with a busier than average month for me and my yard looks like an abandoned lot. I’m expecting squatters to show up any day.

I got out the mower, cut a 6’ strip of lawn, ran over a huge rock and that was that. I couldn’t get the mower started again. After trying for awhile, I decided to give it up for the day. A little later that afternoon I answered a knock on my door and, sure enough, there was a guy standing there who wanted to know if I would like him to cut my lawn. He was just some random guy in an old beater of a car looking for work. We haggled over the price, came to an agreement and he said he’d be back in the morning.

Normally, after doing something unusual like this, I would be kicking myself for it. The $40 that I agreed to pay him represents almost a week’s worth of groceries for me. I can cut the grass myself and save that $40 for use elsewhere. This time none of those thoughts came to me. I feel really good about the arrangement. Not because I’m going to get my grass cut with no effort on my part but because I think this guy really needed the work. I’m not exactly rolling in it myself but I can certainly afford $40 to help out another human being in trouble, especially one who is willing to work for it. This encounter got me thinking about charity vs. frugality, our moral obligation to help others and where to draw the line.

There is an enjoyable series of novels by Alexander McCall Smith called, “The Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency”. These novels are centered on a village woman in Botswana, Africa, who solves local mysteries. They offer little glimpses of life in a completely different culture than that with which most of us are familiar. Touched upon in one of the stories is the idea of helping each other by hiring each other. In the story the main character, Precious Ramotswe, has managed to make enough money to purchase a small home. She has to hire a housekeeper, even though she doesn’t need one. In her culture, she explains, if anyone gets a little ahead it is incumbent upon them to hire someone less fortunate. Although she was perfectly happy keeping house for herself, she would have been looked down upon in her village as being mean and uncharitable had she not hired a housekeeper.

I have never thought about having a housekeeper or a yard man as a service to the people filling those roles. I have only ever looked at it from the standpoint of my own personal financial situation. I tend to feel extravagant and somewhat guilty when I hire someone to do a job that I could reasonably do myself. As an interesting counterpoint to the Precious Ramotswe stories, there are a lot of people who would consider someone who had a housekeeper and/or a yardman to be getting above themselves.

All these mental machinations have led me to wonder at what point different people decide that they have enough to help someone else. Do you wait until you are debt free, with a fully funded retirement account and emergency fund? Or do you feel an obligation to help your fellow humans as soon as you can feed yourself and pay your bills? I think I fall somewhere in the middle. I try to live as frugally as possible and, current debt notwithstanding, always earmark some of the “extra” for charity.

What about you? What’s your take on giving, especially when you have unretired debt?