“When we give more, we are blessed with more. We have a responsibility to help those around us. Giving more of our time, talents, and wealth leads to long-term satisfaction and life purpose.”
– Kyle J. Christensen
By Kyle J Christensen, Founder, Principles-Based Planner, Unique Advantage
Unique Advantage Monthly Client Email – December 2024
5-6 minute read.
What came first, the chicken or the egg? An age-old question, and one that is similar to the question of whether a rich person becomes charitable or a charitable person becomes rich. It might surprise you to find out that research on this very topic has been. Not only is it true that people that give more get more, but those that give more are also happier (fulfillment). The research on that has been done too!
It really shouldn’t be terribly shocking that those that have a charitable mind, those looking out for the interests of others, would ultimately gain the most themselves. Money follows value. More precisely, money is attracted to people who provide value to others. Think of it this way, the world is cheering on those that want to help them. People are praying for help in their lives, and typically God provides that help through other people. No one is cheering for the selfish person. No one is praying for the selfish person’s success (they might be praying that they’ll change their ways, however).
I think most people think that it’s when people become rich that they choose to give more away to charities, and not the other way around. They think this oftentimes, because they think of the tax benefits of giving. You can write off 60% of your entire Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) in a given year. That’s pretty amazing, and a great example of how the government can incentivize doing the right thing. As good as that is, however, that’s not the main reason rich people give away money. They do it because it makes them feel good. They do it because they understand that real satisfaction doesn’t come from being “Uncle Scrooge” (ref the tv cartoon series called DuckTales – yes, I watched that when I was a kid). Real satisfaction comes from giving and helping other people.
Here’s a link to the article from my alma matter, Utah State University, entitled, Does Giving Make You Happier? Or Do Happier People Give?
It’s actually been well-known research for years that money only makes you “happier” to a certain extent. Beyond that, not really. So, how do people that make more money, above that threshold of income, continue on the path to even greater happiness? It is through helping others. It is through increasing your purpose. Most of you have probably heard of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The bottom the pyramid (the foundation) is being able to support your basic needs (i.e. food, water, shelter,
etc). People aren’t very happy if they don’t have their basic needs met. The top is labeled “self-actualization”. This is signified by increased purpose and meaning. People ultimately don’t feel very satisfied with their lives unless they find significant purpose in it. In life we discover that the man living only unto himself, is most miserable.
Starting in the year 2000, researcher, Harvard economist, and best-selling author, Arthur Brooks, began a research project involving more than 30,000 families across the U.S. His goal? To prove that people became more charitable after they made their wealth. What actually happened? He proved the opposite. In fact, he redid the study over and over again, because he kept coming up with the “wrong” answer. The answer he kept finding was that charitable people became rich. This seemed counterintuitive to him (and probably to most people), which is why he redid the study over and over again. If you want to hear his story from his own mouth, here’s a link to a speech he gave to BYU in 2009.
I’ve always said to my wife and my kids that I believe the goal should not be self-sufficiency. I believe in America, where we have the opportunity to be so much more than self-sufficient, it’s actually selfish to make that the ultimate goal. Yes, it’s good to have self-sufficiency to be an intermediate goal on the way to becoming much more, but to have that be the end-goal, I believe is selfish. We should strive for financial freedom, not just for our own benefit, but for the benefit of everyone we may come in contact with throughout our lives.
We live in a country with incredible opportunity. Opportunity that most people in the world can’t imagine. We are free to study what we want to study. We are free to learn what we want to learn. We are free to choose our professional path. We are free to invest in anything we want to invest in. No one is telling us we can’t. Of course, there are consequences to all of our decisions and nothing is truly free.
So, time, sacrifice, and effort are all requirements for long-term high levels of success in anything we may choose. Those are all principles, required ingredients.
With the blessing of opportunity, we also have a charge to help others. I agree with Andrew Carnegie’s sentiment, “The power to make money is a gift from God… to be developed and used to the best of our ability for the good of mankind.”
So, in this season of giving, let us ponder the benefit of being charitable, not just with our money but also with our time and talents. When we give more, we are blessed with more. We have a responsibility to help those around us. Giving more of our time, talents, and wealth leads to long-term satisfaction and life purpose.
Sincerely,
Kyle J. Christensen
P. S.
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