Enough - Part 2

I still like the 10% giving game I formulated a few weeks ago (10% of my disposable income rather than gross income), but a few hitches have arisen. One is that the advertising source that brings in nearly all my business is undergoing a major overhaul and, while I'm benefiting from it at the moment, I can see how it could all go wrong for me within a few weeks. Two is that I've never been through a down-swing in the economy before, and I have no idea how it will affect me.

So I'm tweaking the plan slightly...10% is still earmarked for charity, but only half of it will be distributed immediately. Then, if things are still going well in a few months, I'll use the other half to sponsor something bigger. I mean "bigger" in a relative sense, relative to my current $5-100 dribbles.

I've had my eye on Outreach Asia's scholarship program in the Philippines, sort of in memory of my father. He was placed at a bank in Manila for half a year when I was 4 years old - old enough to remember quite a bit about monsoon season, nursery school, the China Sea beaches, the fruit markets, the monstrous cockroaches, and even half of the national anthem in Tagalog. I would call that the high point of my father's life, though he lived 30 years beyond that. Anyway, we had two Filipino nannies (at $20/month each, why not have two for three kids?), who were working to put their brothers through college and occasionally asked for an additional $5 to help them. I think it would be a fitting memorial to put up $210/year to put one of these sidelined girls through college themselves.