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Americans Spend More on Mother’s Day than the top 50 Poorest Nations Entire GDP

May 25, 2010 By 1 Comment

I found this fascinating. A few weeks ago we celebrated Mother’s Day here in the US, and when I was watching the news they reported that Americans will spend $2.5 Billion on jewelry, and another $3 Billion taking moms out to eat. And there was more money to be spent in other categories too ($Billions).

When I saw that, it kind of floored me. After all, we’re talking about $5.5B on food and entertainment in a single weekend. Which is actually more money than the 50 poorest nation’s entire annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Seriously, if you head over to Google’s public data explorer you can graph out these GDPs and see just how excessive things are.

So, next time you’re whining about how crappy our economy is right now, let me remind you that you probably spent like $300 on food and a gift for Mom – and that is more money than people in Afghanistan earn in a year. So quit your whining and get back to work!

Filed Under: Finance, News Tagged With: , , ,

Focus on the Positive – Opportunities for Charitable Giving

September 29, 2008 By 2 Comments

Chinese Girl with Donated DuckOk, there has been a lot of bad financial news lately, and it can be a real downer and a non-productive waste of time to worry about it. Instead, I would like to focus on some organizations who are using their power for AWESOME and who demonstrate that the power to do good is stronger than the power to do bad. (Keeping in mind that not all charities are good.)

When we focus on what is most important we can make a real difference, so to get us started, here is a little video to put things in perspective. For any of you who have not yet seen it, it starts sad and then makes you truly grateful for what you have by demonstrating the power we really do have over the world around us.


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Filed Under: Finance, Food, Philanthropy Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Colombian Kids Slide Down 1,200 Foot Cable …to School

September 8, 2007 By 16 Comments

Colombian Kids Ride CablesIt sucks to be poor in Colombia.

So, here we have a small village that is so remote it takes a 2 hour hike through a jungle, and over a river to get to it. Or, you can grab a rusty pulley, strap it over a 1/4 mile long steel cable and fling yourself over the whole thing at 30 MPH for the one minute death-defying journey to the other side.

The government has stated that they won’t build a bridge because the community is too small, and too remote.
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Filed Under: Videos Tagged With: , , , ,

Indian Woman Works Her Family Out of the Slums

June 22, 2007 By 2 Comments

Fatima and SalarySurprise! Here is an excellent article from Al Jazeera! I know… hard to believe.

Most of the high-paying jobs in India’s $50bn information technology industry go to India’s privileged elite.

But, with the help of her husband, one woman has managed to earn her university degree as well as a job at on of India’s top IT companies. Rajesh Sundaram traveled to Visakhapatnam to meet her.

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Filed Under: News, Videos Tagged With: , , ,