The Joy of Giving

“It is more blessed to give than to receive – Acts 20:35.” I don’t know about you, but I love giving gifts! I usually go overboard for my kids’ birthdays, Christmas and sometimes friend’s birthdays. My favorite gift to give however, are those that people aren’t expecting, like the Pay-it-Forward gifts. It brings me joy to pay for the person’s coffee behind me in line or for someone’s groceries without them knowing it. It takes the focus off ourselves and directs it towards other’s needs. When our spending gets out of control and we buy stuff we don’t need, it becomes difficult to bless others. One of the reasons we want to pay off our debt is so it frees up money to give more.

This week I had the opportunity to bless a person in my life who is going through a very difficult time financially with gift cards for groceries since we did so well last month on our Summit's Climbr budget. That feeling of being able to carry around an extra $20 or $100 to just bless someone else is awesome and brings such joy. Our hope is that once our debt is paid off, we can do more of this. 

There were a couple of reasons why we saved so much last month. First, our variable expenses include school lunches and since the kids are not in school that is $120 per month that can go into savings. Second, Steve is not driving to track practice and meets every week so we saved a ton of money in gas. Third, we cut going out to eat as much and made sure we stuck to our grocery budget. Again, being able to immediately check how much money is in those budgets just by opening the Summit Credit Union app has been life-changing. I used to have all of that written down on paper and it was difficult to track. We were basically going back after the month to see how much we spent here and there and feeling defeated because we pretty much blew all of our “budgets” for our variable expenses. Now, we are on the forefront of our expenses and there are no surprises at the end of the month.