The Freedom to Help Others
The ability to improve other people’s lives is one of the top perks of being wealthy, whether in terms of tangible assets, intangible assets, personal liberty, or, preferably, all of the above.
As the old saying goes: you cannot help others before you help yourself.
While one can always find exceptions, I think we can all agree that helping others gets much easier if you get yourself to a good place first.
Let’s look at some of the best ways wealthy individuals can help other people.
Money
There are many worthwhile causes out there. In my humble opinion, two of the best are:
- Education of girls and women in poor countries (e.g. World Education)
- Offset of your carbon footprint (e.g. Carbon Calculator)
People reading this have most likely won big at the lottery of birth. It’s only right to support those who were not so lucky by fighting the vicious cycle of poverty and climate injustice.
Skills
Freely applying your intangible assets to worthwhile causes is another great way to give back.
The ideal is if this application of your skills to a truly worthwhile cause turns into your purpose.
This will often blend with your payed occupation, but there are ways to offer your services to a truly worthwhile cause for a lower price. My sustainability research falls in this category.
Time
Once you attain true personal liberty, you’ll likely find that you become busier than ever before. But the big difference is that you control your own deadlines.
In other words, you have the freedom to prioritize other people whenever it’s really needed.
Of course, you can also dedicate your time to worthwhile causes by volunteering. It helps to give your time to causes where your skills can really make a difference.
Win-win
Humans have evolved a strong need to help each other. Without this instinct, our species would have died out many millennia ago.
Building the wealth needed to fulfill this instinctive drive to help others is an excellent avenue to long-term life satisfaction.
This makes generosity a true win-win. The recipients of your generosity obviously win, and you get rewarded with plenty of feel-good hormones.
However, this awesome win-win scenario requires you to give from a position of abundance.
If your giving puts you under great pressure or strain, generosity can easily backfire. And this will slow or even reverse your progress towards abundance.
Thus, be sure to patiently build up your personal wealth to a comfortable level, and only then start to share it.