My wife, Andrea, gets credit for this idea. She was inspired by another donation and wanted to do our part to help those struggling. I’ve been there myself… in my 20s and early 30s a small medical bill would financially destroy me. I would avoid going to the doctors for fear of a financial crises. It’s heartbreaking to think of the fear, shame, and depression this unforeseen and unwanted debt can bring. I’m hoping many of those 1,600 people feels some relief getting the letter with the good news!

I also want to address the “write-off” aspect of this. Sometimes there’s some angry commenters who say something like “Oh, he’s just doing that for the write-off. He doesn’t even lose any money.” Well, NO. That’s not how it works. We STILL HAD TO GIVE ALL THE MONEY AWAY. In our case our $25,000 donation was money (stock in our case) we gave away. On our taxes, that will count against our income. The net result is our tax bill may drop by $5,000 or so. So we’re still down net $20,000 that could have been in our pocket. And since we’re donating anyway, OF COURSE we’re gonna try to correctly mitigate our tax bill by the $5K.

To put it in more concrete terms, yesterday, I flew home on 2 flights from Michigan with a 5 year old and 1 year old. The second flight was pretty rough as the baby was uncomfortable, crying, etc. He was a lap child as the four of us were sitting three across in coach. Do you know what $20K could have bought me??? FOUR FIRST CLASS TICKETS SO THE BABY HAD HIS OWN SEAT, PLUS ANOTHER FIRST CLASS TICKET AND A NANNY TO TRAVEL WITH US AND HELP WITH HIM FOR THE 5 DAY VACATION. And we’d still have about $5k leftover. So don’t give me “oh he just did this for the write-off” bs. I SUFFERED to make that donation. (I mean, it obviously wasn’t a 1:1 trade and we would have flown coach anyway, but still).

As always, reminding you to build wealth by following the two PFC rules: 1.) Live below your means and 2.) Invest early and often.

-Jeremy