How much should you give up?

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-21-2008
How much should you give up?
352
Tue, 10-21-2008 - 8:35pm

My mother wrote an angry reply to a post on this board. It was deleted, from what I read in her email. I know you will ask how I got into her email, well, I have the password in case something happens to her. I went into it tonight because I was trying to figure out why someone as lovely and kind as my mother tried to take her own life today. In her email, I found a reply to her post. In that reply, she was asked how much this person should have to give to her out of her $250,000 a year. This isn't an attack, it's an answer from someone who knows and loves my mother more than anything in the world. No doubt this will be deleted as well, but here it is until then.

First off, none of what you will be "giving up" out of your $250,000+ dollars will come to her or to anyone like her. It will be going to pay off the deficit for your children, and hopefully for mine, so that they will not get to a point where they would rather die than lose everything they own at the age of 56.

You were talking about losing 12% of $250,000. That is more than my mother made every year. She lost her job, and is about to lose her house. She never had much, but what she had she has lost over the years due to having a chronic illness. She has no retirement, and has watched her home value plummet. If she sold her house tomorrow, she would make less than $30,000 on it. We all know that's not even a year's income, and she cannot collect SS for 6 more years.

So here's my answer to you. You should be willing to give anything necessary to save people like my mother. You should do it because you have it to give. You should do it because it's the right thing to do. You shouldn't begrudge anyone your 12% who has worked so hard, and given so much of her time and energy to others free of charge when they were in need.

My mother taught us to give. Every Christmas, we had to take one gift off of our "want" list (which wasn't very long, since we were poor), and give that money to charity, or to someone with less than we had. There weren't a lot of people who had less than we had, or so I thought. I learned from my mother that I was wrong. She took me to homes where single mothers who had been abandoned by their husbands sat shivering with their children, wrapped in blankets, because they could not afford heat. We gave her a used kerosene heater and a gift certificate for $30 for kerosene. It wasn't much, but she cried when she got it.

Our next stop was to an elderly black man who was blind from cataracts, and had lost his wife just a month before Christmas. My mother brought him a homemade mincemeat pie, because he had loved his wife's so much. She apologized to him, saying she knew it wasn't as good, but it was filled with love.

We gave shoes to children who had none, clothes to women in battered women's shelters so they could go to work, gas money to people struggling just to get to work, and food to families when the food stamps didn't last out the month.

My mother gleaned fields every year after harvest and donated the food to a soup kitchen, and she also drove over 100 miles around our county giving it to the poor and the elderly. She never asked for anything in return. She has literally given the clothes off her back, well out of her closet, to someone she thought needed them more.

Now she lays in a hospital room, fighting for her life, because when it came down to it, nobody would help her. We kids did as much as we could, but it wasn't enough, because we don't have much either. Social services turned their backs on her because she didn't have a job to go back to. She lost her car, and her utilities were going to be cut off. And nobody...NOBODY cared about this woman who has done so much for others during her lifetime.

You obviously don't understand the spirit of giving. That's sad, with Christmas coming up. Too bad you didn't have a mom like mine.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 05-14-2008
Tue, 10-21-2008 - 9:25pm
You mustn't have read the link which makes the point so very well and is hardly heartless. Then again I am a fan of freedom in general.
iVillage Member
Registered: 07-24-2006
Tue, 10-21-2008 - 9:29pm
Your right I did not read the link.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 05-14-2008
Tue, 10-21-2008 - 9:32pm
Gosh darn it. For some reason I was confused and thought this was a debate board. Typically I'd expect messages vying for support to be in the OT section or on another board altogether. Especially ones that contain disparaging remarks about entire groups of people simply because of their income level. Someone has to stand up for the wealthy who are being bad mouthed. I tend to support those in the minority when I feel they're being unfairly treated or judged. My apologies. Not to mention the whole post sounds like some sort of hypothetical story created to take a jab at anyone who isn't jumping up and down to pay more taxes merely because they might earn $250,000 or more. Otherwise why would it be posted on a debate board?


Edited 10/21/2008 9:36 pm ET by delphine88
iVillage Member
Registered: 07-03-2008
Tue, 10-21-2008 - 9:33pm

Oh my, I am so sorry for you and your Mom! That is terrible. For the life of me I have never seen so much whining coming from people who make more than enough to live a comfortable life, yet STILL aren't happy.

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-16-2008
Tue, 10-21-2008 - 9:37pm

This was no request for PPT, this was a "how dare you" type of post.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 05-14-2008
Tue, 10-21-2008 - 9:45pm
That was exactly how I interpreted it! Kind of like that famous letter to "Virginia".....
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-24-2005
Tue, 10-21-2008 - 9:50pm

Sure it's fine and dandy to be charitable and a good neighbor, follow the golden rule etc....we have no idea what someone who is wealthy does with their earnings--and the thing is it's not our business. It's not our money. We have no right to it.


You can't simply lay claim to what someone else has because you decide you need it more than they do. (And I mean you--in general--we in general.)


I totally agree with you.

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-24-2006
Tue, 10-21-2008 - 9:50pm

If you read the OP then you would have seen that she got to this spot by response in her mothers email, and being a first time poster may not have understood, that posting here would result in bringing out the skeptics, and attacks on her.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 10-10-2008
Tue, 10-21-2008 - 9:54pm
I was about to post pretty much the same things that you said, so no need to now.
iVillage Member
Registered: 10-10-2008
Tue, 10-21-2008 - 9:58pm
Wow, I couldn't disagree with you more.

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