Make this your "random act of kindness" holiday season.
You won't find any other investment that yields such a guaranteed positive (and tax-free) return - and one with the potential to compound exponentially.
One of my students created a "kindness card" to be given to the recipient, encouraging that person to give a similar gift.
"If you were to pass along three random acts of kindness in the next week, giving each person a copy of this card," she said, "and if that person did the same, and on and on. .. in four months 4,782,969 people would have received random acts of kindness."
Here's a list of just a few gift-giving ideas to enrich your life as well as someone else's:
- Buy dessert for somebody who is sitting alone in a restaurant.
- Leave money in a vending machine.
- Pay for the meal of the people in the car behind you at a drive-through.
- Put movie tickets (or vouchers) in a random mailbox.
- Pay the bill for an "obviously in love" couple at a restaurant.
- Put some money into an about-to-expire parking meter.
- Send flowers to somebody in long-term care at a hospital or in a retirement home - ask the receptionist for the name of a person who never gets any flowers.
Jane Schwartzberg, who has stage four incurable cancer, asks: Would you have a different attitude to giving if you knew you had a terminal illness? She suggests the best gift is love ... which is what random acts of kindness are all about.
"In some ways, I wish everyone could have a taste of terminal, if that's what it takes," she said. "But I hate the thought of goodness coming at the expense of so much suffering."
Schwartzberg added the holidays are a great time "to cultivate a spirit of gratitude and to refocus on the things that are the most meaningful."
Mike Grenby is a columnist and independent personal financial advisor; he'll answer questions in this column as space allows but cannot reply personally. Email [email protected]
