As we look back on 2020, this year more than ever before has made us thankful for everyone and everything we have in our lives. In addition to working with our clients and helping them take control of their finances and grow their wealth, we’ve also had the opportunity to look inward and reflect upon our personal relationship with money. We’re all about practicing what we preach here at Good Capital! It’s a continual learning experience for us and while it might feel satisfying to watch bank accounts and investment accounts increase in size, once our needs are met, once we’ve reached our savings and investment goals, what more does a growing account give us? At the end of the day, account sizes are just a number on a screen. It’s not about how much you have in an account, it’s what you do with it that matters.
We’ve been reflecting on our life goals and our ultimate end game. For us, it’s all about contributing to the future we want to live in, the future we want future generations to inherit. We are so incredibly thankful for the lives we lead and acknowledge that we owe a lot of that to our parents and every privilege we were born into. We want to do our part in giving back and giving others the privilege and opportunity we’ve been so lucky to experience.
Our goal is to give away an amount that is significant to us. For Good Capital that means giving away 10% of our profits a year. We would encourage everyone to think about your giving in relation to not only your income, but also as a percentage of your personal spending. Here’s an interesting statistic, in the U.S. earners in the top 10% on average give away 1-2% of their yearly income while people with lower income on average give away 8% of their yearly income.
All this to say, we'd highly recommend you go through the heartwarming activity of creating a giving plan for yourself. We thoroughly enjoyed it and felt like it was well worth it and had to share. Here’s how you can get started.
Reflect on why you want to give.
How much do you want to give? Choose an amount that will make you feel proud. You can start by doubling the amount you gave away last year if that feels good to you.
Decide where to give. If you need help figuring this part out, check out this helpful resource from Resource Generation.
Start giving! Keep track of your giving in a spreadsheet to make sure you stay on target in reaching your giving goal.
We hope this inspires you to create a giving plan so you can be more intentional about your giving. Similar to how we feel about investing, invest early and often, we feel the same way about giving, give early and often!
