What would you do with a $1 billion bailout?

Hmm…this is a tough one.  I’ll bet I know who came to your mind first.  You.  Would you con­sider oth­ers, or giv­ing to char­ity?  If so, how much, or what per­cent­age?  Of course, we all have a few press­ing needs that a bailout could eas­ily cover, but what about the rest?

Here’s my idea…pay off the debts we owe, keep a lit­tle in sav­ings, then be very gen­er­ous.  If I were get­ting $1 bil­lion, I’d pay off my stu­dent loans, pay my rent through the end of the lease, buy a mod­est car, put some in sav­ings and still have $999,940,700 left over.  Nat­u­rally, 10% of the total goes to my church (the preacher wouldn’t let me for­get tithes!), and after that, there’d be a lot of mak­ing other peo­ple very happy.  I could take myself and a cou­ple friends on an over­seas mis­sion trip, help­ing out in another coun­try, then fol­low that up in my home­town in a few com­mu­nity projects.  Finally, there’s always my areas of min­istry at church and in my community…the pos­si­bil­i­ties are endless.

This would rep­re­sent a per­fect exam­ple of how giv­ing to oth­ers would bring so much more joy than spend­ing on your­self.  sure, you get to pick what over­seas coun­try, and the bailout pays for expenses, but as long as you bud­get an appro­pri­ate — or bet­ter yet, gen­er­ous — amount of time in the actual out­reach, it works!

Think about it.  Let me know what you think at bailout@kennethbaucum.com (start the sub­ject line with [BAILOUT]) or leave a com­ment below.