Thursday, April 14, 2005
Blessing and Responsibility
Earlier this week I took a look at my credit card balance online and found out that I only had $26 (out of $1500) credit available. I was pretty freaked out about it. True, almost $800 of the debt was from the softball diamond fees, but the rest of it was mostly from my anime. Even though I had a pretty decent amount of cash available in my chequeing account, and a slightly larger amount in my "savings" account if necessary for an emergency, I still felt very insecure with only that much credit available on my Visa.
Then I stopped to think about it and realized how amazingly blessed I am that my biggest worry was that my available credit was down to $26, so I had to be more careful with the plastic. I mean, it's not like I was worrying about actually being able to pay my Visa bill or anything, and I certainly had enough ready cash in the bank to be able to make silly little impulse purchases or whatever if I felt like it. The extent of my "financial difficulty" was that I was spending too much on anime!
There are people, probably even right in my neighbourhood, who have to worry about paying mortgages and buying groceries and here I am fretting about buying anime--that's not "financial difficulty", it's a luxury!!
While my family might be considered middle class in Canadian society, from a global perspective we are incredibly rich!
Thinking about this reminded me that this week is the Global Week of Action for the Make Poverty History Campaign, so I went to the Make Poverty History website and did some reading. From what I've read on the site I'm still not too sure what I can do, practically, but I'm going to start with the white band.
Now, usually I'm not too big on things like ribbon/bracelet/whatever campaigns, but I think (hope) that putting a white band (ribbon, in my case) around my wrist and on my keychain will help me to remember that "Poverty exists because of the choices we make" (quote from the Make Poverty History site). Everytime I pull out my wallet to make a purchase, or get out the keys to drive the car somewhere, I want to remember that I have SO much while so many others have so little.
The timing for all of this is really quite amazing. Today in my English 4C (college-level, aka applied) class, in the discussion time (every class starts off with the students reading the Metro and then having a discussion about an article, or articles of interest) a student actually brought up something from the front page of the Mississauga News. She talked about how the Mississauga Foodpath hadn't received very much food for its Thanksgiving and Easter drives and therefore wouldn't be able to provide food to needy families until next Thanksgiving. This sparked quite a passionate and lengthy discussion on how much food goes to waste in grocery stores, McDonald's, etc., and the class also decided to approach the Prefects about running a food drive for the Mississauga Food Path.
After looking over their website, I decided that I would like to make a monthly donation to their cause, and thereby discovered CanadaHelps.org. It's a really great site for people looking to support some sort of local/national charitable organization, because you can do searches by name, keyword, or by location.
But back to Mississauga Food Path. Apparently this is the charity to which the food dropped off at Mississauga fire stations is donated. It also seems like supporting the Food Path is a good, practical, grassroots kind of way to support the fourth aim of the Make Poverty History platform: end child poverty in Canada. A lot of what Food Path does seems to be geared towards children--like breakfast clubs and healthy start programs for expectant mothers. Okay, so maybe it's more of something we can do to help alleviate the suffering caused by child poverty, rather than to actually work on the root cause, but even that is a start, right?
I think I'm finally starting to realize that my need for better financial management isn't about "buying less anime" (or hockey stuff, or books, or whatever), it's about making choices to help people. Like the Make Poverty History Site says:
Poverty exists because of the choices we make.
It doesn't have to be this way. If we choose - if we have the will to act - we can Make Poverty History.
Earlier this week I took a look at my credit card balance online and found out that I only had $26 (out of $1500) credit available. I was pretty freaked out about it. True, almost $800 of the debt was from the softball diamond fees, but the rest of it was mostly from my anime. Even though I had a pretty decent amount of cash available in my chequeing account, and a slightly larger amount in my "savings" account if necessary for an emergency, I still felt very insecure with only that much credit available on my Visa.
Then I stopped to think about it and realized how amazingly blessed I am that my biggest worry was that my available credit was down to $26, so I had to be more careful with the plastic. I mean, it's not like I was worrying about actually being able to pay my Visa bill or anything, and I certainly had enough ready cash in the bank to be able to make silly little impulse purchases or whatever if I felt like it. The extent of my "financial difficulty" was that I was spending too much on anime!
There are people, probably even right in my neighbourhood, who have to worry about paying mortgages and buying groceries and here I am fretting about buying anime--that's not "financial difficulty", it's a luxury!!
While my family might be considered middle class in Canadian society, from a global perspective we are incredibly rich!
Thinking about this reminded me that this week is the Global Week of Action for the Make Poverty History Campaign, so I went to the Make Poverty History website and did some reading. From what I've read on the site I'm still not too sure what I can do, practically, but I'm going to start with the white band.
Now, usually I'm not too big on things like ribbon/bracelet/whatever campaigns, but I think (hope) that putting a white band (ribbon, in my case) around my wrist and on my keychain will help me to remember that "Poverty exists because of the choices we make" (quote from the Make Poverty History site). Everytime I pull out my wallet to make a purchase, or get out the keys to drive the car somewhere, I want to remember that I have SO much while so many others have so little.
The timing for all of this is really quite amazing. Today in my English 4C (college-level, aka applied) class, in the discussion time (every class starts off with the students reading the Metro and then having a discussion about an article, or articles of interest) a student actually brought up something from the front page of the Mississauga News. She talked about how the Mississauga Foodpath hadn't received very much food for its Thanksgiving and Easter drives and therefore wouldn't be able to provide food to needy families until next Thanksgiving. This sparked quite a passionate and lengthy discussion on how much food goes to waste in grocery stores, McDonald's, etc., and the class also decided to approach the Prefects about running a food drive for the Mississauga Food Path.
After looking over their website, I decided that I would like to make a monthly donation to their cause, and thereby discovered CanadaHelps.org. It's a really great site for people looking to support some sort of local/national charitable organization, because you can do searches by name, keyword, or by location.
But back to Mississauga Food Path. Apparently this is the charity to which the food dropped off at Mississauga fire stations is donated. It also seems like supporting the Food Path is a good, practical, grassroots kind of way to support the fourth aim of the Make Poverty History platform: end child poverty in Canada. A lot of what Food Path does seems to be geared towards children--like breakfast clubs and healthy start programs for expectant mothers. Okay, so maybe it's more of something we can do to help alleviate the suffering caused by child poverty, rather than to actually work on the root cause, but even that is a start, right?
I think I'm finally starting to realize that my need for better financial management isn't about "buying less anime" (or hockey stuff, or books, or whatever), it's about making choices to help people. Like the Make Poverty History Site says:
Poverty exists because of the choices we make.
It doesn't have to be this way. If we choose - if we have the will to act - we can Make Poverty History.
