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: 08-26-2007
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 4:50pm

"What? Adoptions weren't legal then?"


"And don't get me wrong--I believe in choices but I also believe in consequences."


I am sorry, but I think that your two comments above are completely out of line, when it comes to this young lady.

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-10-2007
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 5:45pm

I completely agree with you!


As I told the young mom before, my disagreement with her views have nothing to do with her son, the way she chooses to raise him or any of the above.


Thank you for saying that, you expressed exactly what I was feeling when I read what seemed to me to be a personal attack on the woman for choosing to keep her child.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-31-2008
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 5:45pm

So your opposed to poor wage earners getting tax credits for working when they make less in a year than what the >250K workers make is less than a month? The highest credit they can get is what a high earner makes in less than a week. Shrug, as a relatively high earner, I am far from outraged that the working poor are incented to work with EITC, and I am thankful my income supports me and my family without need for subsidies.

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-10-2007
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 5:47pm

There have been numerous articles in the Wall Street Journal that cite facts and figures.


iVillage Member
Registered: 03-19-2003
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 5:55pm
So you actually have him in daycare/preschool.....not a preschool where he goes a few days a week for a few hours.
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-31-2008
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 6:16pm

As an adoptive mother, I believe your comment

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-31-2008
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 6:19pm
Can you link to them? TIA
iVillage Member
Registered: 05-14-2008
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 6:26pm

That would depend on what view we were debating. I would have to say that's been lost at this point. I will agree that education is helpful. I can't agree that it's always necessary or that it falls somewhere other than on the recipient's shoulders. I guess that is what student loans are for. At least they're required to be repaid and so I have no issues with them so long as it's enforced.

P.S. I'm sure most mother's who give birth fall in love. I don't find it relevant.

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-14-2008
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 6:30pm

You seemed to read too much into my post. I don't believe "sainted" or "rich" is necessary. Stable and secure would be most recommended though. I would want to give that to my child and am well aware not everyone believes it as important as I do.

I think a child is better off starting in a two parent family that is stable and secure and not one that hopes to be that way one day because I tend understand how life gets in the way of plans. Kind of the same way of thinking that made me avoid any thought of adjustable rate mortgages. But that's another topic! Thanks for posting!

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-19-2003
Thu, 10-23-2008 - 6:46pm
I'm an adoptive mom too!

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