If you’re like me, you know that working hard doesn’t always pay the bills and sometimes you have to pick up hours and such just to make ends meet. For me, I’m still living at home but I do pay rent and I help around the house a lot. I earn my keep here, but I am looking to move out. I do think however, I am not the only one who could use some extra cash every now and then.
That all sounds nice and hey, maybe the money fairy will show up on day (my luck isn’t that good so I doubt it) but in the mean time people need to get smart with their money. I realize there are a great many people who do live paycheck to paycheck and struggle with this every day. I know what it’s like and I know how watching that number go down in your bank is just tearing you to pieces. I’ve been there.
One thing that I don’t like to see and I keep seeing more and more of are these GoFundMe pages. I don’t want to sound cruel here and I don’t want to offend anyone but I do want to just point a few things out. The first, is how much GoFundMe actually takes from these pages. This can be a little enlightening to some people (source here).
- GoFundMe charges a 5 percent fee from each donation received.
- Another 2.9 percent goes to WePay, which processes the transaction, plus 30 cents per donation.
- Basically, GoFundMe gets 8 percent of each donation for processing and handling the account.
Second, there are to be the correct reason. If someone dies suddenly, I get that try to pay for a funeral is hard to deal with on top of their death. However, if someone is holder (I’d say about 50) they should already be planning things for when they are gone. There are plans/payment plans available at almost every single funeral home. You can basically pay the whole thing off before you die and not have to worry about the prices changing. My grandfather and my grandmother on my Mom’s side did this. They planned what casket, what music, what to be said and the tombstone before they even died. They planned ahead. Now if it’s someone younger and they are not sick, then I understand that the money to do this is just sometimes not there and you may need some help paying things off. For that I do welcome GoFundMe but just remember the three bullet points from earlier.
Third, I keep seeing some of my friends (I wont say names) who set up these pages for helping to pay for a vacation or even help pay rent. If you can’t afford a vacation and have to ask, maybe think of doing something different. There are a lot of fun ways to have an affordable vacation without needing to ask for money because you can’t afford it. Now for rent, I get that things happen, maybe you had car trouble or whatever but you should always plan ahead. Set up an emergency fund account where maybe you only put a few dollars a week into to, in the end this will add up and save you in the long run. When I see people asking for help paying rent I get frustrated and I actually think it’s a bit funny. I can’t even begin to think to give you funds because you know that the cash needed to pay your rent comes every month, same day each time. This is nothing new. Plan ahead. Plan ahead. That emergency fund comes into to play right here.
I am not heartless as this pay appear. In fact I like to everyone to have less stress and trouble in their lives, however I think there’s a time and place for everything. I believe that life is a test and sometimes you’re going to fail but it’s how you pick yourself back up that is important. Please, remember the three bullet points from earlier and always be smart with your money. It’ll help you in the long run, trust me.
Tanya Giaimo 