Spending --> Donating

This is an idea that I have worked on for a while, but never fully fleshed out. I was either too scared, too busy, or too poor.

I'm not sure that any of that has changed, really, but I'm noticing that I tend to justify whatever it is that I spend money on. That, and there are a couple of causes that I would really like to support, but don't ever get around to doing.

The basic gist is that for every dollar I spend on unnecessary items, I will donate a portion to a good cause.

I am using slightly lax parameters for "unnecessary" and "cause" to support the people and programs I think deserve it and to help rid of bad habits.

Here is a preliminary list of items in each:

Unnecessary/Leisure: Soda, Candy, Video Games, Movies
Causes: UCCE, Save the Children, Tzu-Chi, Musicians that I Know (MP, CL, MT so far... feel free to add to the list!), Community Art/Theater/Music

I'm clearly not going to cut all the leisure activities out of my life, but I can more evenly distribute my money towards the better causes if I have to spend more than the sticker price on the leisure activity.

Friday is a new month, hopefully, I'll have some sort of system worked out by then!