Be A Tightwad, Help Haiti

Posted on by Forest in General, Saving Money & Finances

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Haitian women outside refugee camp after Earthquakes

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/8462908.stm

I must admit I heard about Haiti but here in Egypt I didn’t see a whole lot of news about it. Last night a friend reminded me over dinner that thousands and thousands of people had died, the UN also said 80-90% of buildings have been destroyed….. I was overcome with the feeling that I was being irresponsible by kind of ignoring it or rather just being quietly sad and not doing anything.

So today I donated $20 via Paypal (one of my favorite ways to send money) to Unicef. They were the main charity that I could find accepting paypal donations. The link to donate can be found here: http://www.unicefusa.org/donate/other-ways-to-give/paypal.html

$20 isn’t a lot but I don’t have much right now so it was all I could spare today. I may find more later next week and will send some when I can.

Many of you reading this are frugal tightwad’s in many respects but I am sure you do splash out here and there…. Here are some ideas how you can use your tightwad tendency’s to find a little spare change to send to Haiti for the relief help…. We can all get together here and hopefully give some relief to these poor soles …. They had it rough before this disaster hit so we really need to extend our hands and show our support.

Here are a couple of tips:

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Skip your morning coffee at Starbucks on Monday and send the $1-3 straight to Haiti relief.
Try and have a day without using electricity at home… Use a couple of candles and kick back with a book when you get home from work… Send the $2-5 you would have normally spent on the electric to haiti.
Cancel the weekend dinner or drinks and invite your friends over for a potluck and some beers… Work out the difference between what you spent on the night at home and what you would have spent going out and donate that.
Work out what you need to buy this week and only shop at places donating to the appeal… Still shop at the cheapest one.
Don’t give your kids any pocket money this week and tell them / educate them as to where the money is going. They may hate you for it but at least they will get some idea that some people are not so lucky!
If your workplace is not donating to Haiti then take some toilet paper home over the course of the week… Offset the few dollars of toilet paper money saved and send that to the relief (ok this may class as stealing and may get you sacked so I don’t fully condone this! But you get the idea!).
Ask your company to pay for lunch for a few days so that workers can donate to Haiti, or ask the company to do it.

Anyway these are just a few ideas, let me know if you have anymore.

What If You Have No Cash?

Sometimes we really have no cash to give but there are other ways and Headmistress, Zookeeper wrote an excellent post about other ways to help here: How To Help Haiti When You Have No Money.

Places to Donate

If you do have a little cash then there are an endless amount of places to donate but here are a few:

Google Haiti Donate Page

Unicef Haiti Disaster Relief

Doctors Without Borders Haiti Disaster Relief

Here is a song to remind us what we should be feeling for each other, I have been reading people writing some horrible things about these poor Human Beings….