Giving Thanks and The 6 Gifts That Keep On Giving

Dear beloved readers, we want to give thanks to all of you who have supported our blog:

The readers

The subscribers

The personal finance blogging community

The personal finance community

We are very thankful to y’all.

Even though they probably won’t read this, we are also thankful to our families, friends, colleagues and business associates.

Gifts that Keep on Giving

During the holidays and throughout the year, we always try to give gifts that keep on giving. They say give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

Thus, here are 6 gifts we typically enjoy giving:

1)Investing in someone’s education

Contributing to RESP/529 education plans for our nephews, nieces, friends ‘kids; is our number one go to gift as it’s truly a gift that keeps on giving. For every dollar you contribute, the (Canadian) government matches 20% up to $500/year.

Thus, if you contribute $100, the kid gets $120; if you contribute $300, the kid gets $360; and if you contribute $2,500, the kid gets $3000.

We also all know that education is one of the best tools you can offer a kid, hence the reason why we want to also open a school for kids, especially underprivileged kids.

In addition, together with other family members, we have sponsored 6 kids’ education. Four of them have graduated and are now fully independent and able to take care of themselves. And the other 2 are still in school.

2)Investing in someone’s business

We have also invested in a few of our family members’ business such as helping one family member buy a taxi, and another one build a rental property.

A word of caution though: Mixing family and business can be risky and damaging should the money not get properly managed which sometimes does happen, thus we only invest/give money we are willing to lose and consider it a gift.

If you also want to extend your reach and help other people outside of your family, check out Kiva, a nonprofit organization with a mission to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty around the world.

By lending as little as $25 on Kiva, you can help the borrower start/grow a business, go to school, access medicine or clean energy…

Kiva does the due diligence, thus all you have to do is choose people/stories that move you the most, and invest in them. However, it’s recommended to diversify your portfolio by lending smaller amounts, to more people.

You can cash in the interest earned or better yet, use it to help even more people.

3)Investing in someone’s career

Each year or two, select at least one new person you would like to mentor or coach. Whether it’s someone fresh off college, or a new immigrant, or a woman in a male-dominated industry, or someone going through a career change…reach out, and offer your mentorship.

4)Investing in someone’s knowledge

A book is one of the best gifts you could give someone. A book can change someone’s life.

Growing up poor and also not having any one successful to look up to or guide us, it’s by reading that we were able to form our ambitions and paths to our success. See here our recommended list of personal finance books.

5)Investing in someone’s health

We love Fitbit and a couple of years ago, we decided to buy them for all our adult family members. We bought them on Boxing Day (the day after Christmass) for a steal.

Fitbit is a gift that keeps on giving because it encourages people to stay active and healthy by doing at least 10,000 steps/day. We also get to participate in daily and weekly challenges with the family members and have some fun, friendly competition.

6)Investing in someone’s talent

For some reason, a lot of our nephews and nieces are actually musically talented. Thus, we give them gifts that help develop the talent even more such as:

Pianos

Guitars

Drums

Karaoke machines

How about you guys? Care to share your tips on giving gifts that keep on giving or any other gifts you like to give? What about a gift you would like to receive J? Please share with us. Sharing is caring .

On that note, here are a few other personal finance bloggers who have shared their favorite acts of kindness/gifts to give:

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