Your Wine:Charity Spending Ratio

What is your $ ratio of wine:charitable giving

  • 1:1
  • 2:1
  • 3:1
  • 5:1
  • 10:1
  • 25:1
  • Pure Scrooge Wine Hoarder

0 voters

Mine was quite embarrassing and so I’ve set my 2022 rule at $1:$1 with monthly settlements.

My 2021 ratio was 10:1

Got me thinking about kids, especially, who have not enough (or enough decent) to eat in my own city and neighborhood. How many days would a single $100 bottle feed that kid?

In my view, religious/political/art/public radio does not count here. But that’s my personal decision to exclude it.

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I think the same is true of virtually every hobby. People spend tons per year “working on” old cars or collecting baseball cards. I do think it’s good to keep perspective and commend your holding yourself accountable.

Useful metric and something to think about especially as wine people are considered so “generous” by their peers. I’m not sure I would exclude religious charities, because they can do a world of good, such as Catholic Relief Services and the American Jewish World Service.

I’ve never consciously reviewed this ratio. When younger I had to peg wine purchases to a percent of income to rein spending in, then fine-tuned it by tying spending to a percent of $ invested that year to accomplish what I really wanted.
Something to look at.

You’re assuming wine spending is only equal or higher than charitable giving. I’m sure this is not always the case, even on this board.

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True! Feel free to include your own ratio that is less than 1:1!

Yeah I immediately recalled one church my parents briefly engaged in where they spent 80% of all money on feeding and housing for the poor. The exclusion on my part was based more on the weekly church donations at all the other churches they’ve attended for 65 years… where that line item on the budget was under 3%. So yea, I would certainly include religiously affiliated charities that have a primary mission of helping the poor!

Mine was about 10:1. Kind of embarrassing now that I’m forced to think about it.

I’m probably in the neighborhood of 1:2.

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I’m in the “don’t let the left hand know what the right hand is doing” camp when it comes to charitable giving (where others besides my wife are the left hand) and wine buying (where the left hand is my wife!!).

Over the last two to three years, it has been about $1 wine to $3 or a little more charity.

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That’s something to aspire to for me! Hoping that the conscious 1:1 reduces (thoughtless) wine spend, but if it doesn’t, at least there is some potential good to be done!

Some of this has to do with the fact that due to the combination of my age and Burgundy prices my wine buying has been way down in recent years, but I cannot remember the last time $$$ of wine purchases were higher than $$$ of charitable contributions.

Mine is less than 1:1. Although in 2021 it was closer to even than I’d prefer.

Anyone willing to own up to their status as Scrooge? The number one answer and no comments from them…

The topic is a great question. Thanks for starting it!
As to the above, I am curious as to where you put educational donations (ie. to one’s college). Personally, if we are excluding the above rubrics, I would exclude educational giving, too, since I would bet the greatest recipients are already quite wealthy institutions. That said, I am responding to your personal breakdown. In my mind, charitable giving is more or less equivalent to what is tax-deductible, so religious, art, public radio, educational, healthcare, food and shelter charities, etc. all count in my book. Poltical donation would not.

Last year was 1:1. This year was not. That said, I raised more money for charity than I spent on wine…but doesn’t really count since not my money. Good poll, thought provoking. Time to get back to giving.

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Last year was 1:3 for me. It used to be about 1:15 before I started frequenting WineBerserkers. My giving hasn’t changed but my wine spend has gone up 5x. blush

Going with the thread drift here, I would probably distinguish between money donated to something like Catholic Relief Services, which is pretty much another version of the Red Cross or something like that even though it’s Catholic, versus donating to my local Parish which I attend. I think my Parish does some good charitable things, but I can see that being a different category than CRS or the Red Cross.

Same thing with education. If you donate to a charity that is to help underprivileged people get education, that’s different than donating to the rich kid private school your kids go to.

My first answer involved TMI, but it is something I strive to maintain a good ratio with.