Today I received a $20 off coupon in the mail from Staples for purchases of $200 or more. The coupon expires on December 11 of this year and I personally don’t have any need to spend $200 in order to save $20.

It usually does feel like a wasteful thing though to not use it. What I usually try to do as well is give it away to people and vice versa they would do the same for any discount offers that they won’t be using. May as well help someone else to save money. If anyone has a need for this coupon, simply contact me and I’ll give you the code for it. There is only one coupon code just for the record.

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One of my family members today was telling me how she felt bad that a person she knew was constantly struggling with money. Whenever possible, she offers to pay for one of the person’s small expenses. The conflict though is that she believes she should stop doing so since the person is well within a middle age range and is still reluctant to save or plan for the future.

That raises the question on just how far should you go before saying no more to a person? Should you just watch them continually destroy themselves financially or should you persist until something clicks? I am actually going through a similar type of circumstance in terms of trying to help a person I know with his finances.

It definitely is frustrating when you try to help someone and yet they are still reluctant to make the necessary changes in their lives. My situation is a little more interesting as the person specifically asked for help and as a result he began to show me items like his credit card bills. The crazy thing is whenever he knew he did something bad once we made a plan for him to follow, he would be reluctant to show what he spent his money on. It gets even more silly as when he does save money as a result of a change, he then spends what he saved on something else that he tries to pass off as an essential purchase.

Like with that, do you simply say forget it and let them possibly wreck their future since they are not taking it seriously? It’s like a choice between being a good person by persisting to help another despite their reluctance to change or allowing them to continually harm themselves with a good chance that the damage will be permanent. It can be a tricky thing when it comes to generosity.

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It felt like a déjà vu day yesterday as a similar past event occurred in regards to a person asking for money from her friends for a gambling debt. In fact, it was the exact same person that I posted about a little over a year ago in regards to lending money to people when it comes to self-inflicting gambling debts. The story was pretty similar and once again she was denied.

In my opinion, this is a classic example on how just giving people money who are bad or irresponsible with it in the first place isn’t going to solve the problem in the long run as there is a bigger aspect in their life that they need to deal with first. Speaking for myself, I’ve had my fair share of simply giving people money who say that they desperately need it as a result of doing something dumb such as spending so much on non essentials that they don’t have anything left for the true important things. I can honestly say in every case the person never got better and they simply kept pestering the people they knew for more.

I think it comes down to mostly respecting and truly appreciating what you already have and is what I try to tell people who ask for help. With that mentality you are less likely to make impulsive decisions based simply on your urges that could impact you in an extremely negative way. I guess I can use the lottery as an example, which many people participate in. If you are for the most part positive about your life then playing the lottery can be one of those why not type of things where if you win then great. However, if you played it because you think your life is the pits and that this will give you everything that you need to be happy you are just setting yourself up for failure and disappointment in more ways than one.

From my experience, aiding a person with financial difficulties in that type of way is a lot more effective in the long run as once they change their attitude they will change their outcome as well.

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