The Bank of Universal Goodwill

This guest post comes from Ryan at Uncommon Cents. I agree with Ryan. Even though we have a lot of debt, there is one bank we can always deposit to. If you like what you read here, make sure you visit Ryan’s blog for more, or you can subscribe to his feed right here.

As I’ve worked the last few months to get my personal finance blog up and running, I’ve had several opportunities to discuss banking. I’ve discussed Internet banking, online bill pay, Web sites where you can compare rates, the anemic interest rate paid by my local bank on savings… but I’ve forgotten one bank that’s incredibly important:

The Bank of Universal Goodwill.

The Bank of Universal Goodwill is the one in which we make deposits of kindness and favors and hopefully withdraw from someday. I made a few deposits in the last few months: I spent three hours on a Friday night migrating everything from a friend’s G4 Macintosh tower to a new iMac, I ordered a few CDs from the library to play at my friend’s son’s party, and I made a latte for my best buddy at work two weeks ago. I didn’t get a cent of compensation for doing any of that; in fact, they all cost me time if not dollars (and the first two certainly took some gasoline to get to!). But the return on investment will be worth it.

We do things that are like deposits into our karma savings accounts when we do a random act of kindness or thank someone for their hard work and good cheer. Doing so helps to build up our “emergency fund” of goodwill for those times when we need it. So the next time I need someone to help me figure out how to code in PHP or write a Wordpress plug in or grow tomatoes in my back yard, I’m hoping I can make a withdrawal from the same bank.

The best part about The Bank of Universal Goodwill is that there’s no membership fees or money requirements; all it takes is time, effort, and the heart to give to others.

Have you started your account at The Bank of Universal Goodwill? Do it today!

Thanks Ryan for the guest post!

Posted by Tricia on April 3, 2008 at 8:03 AM in Life Experiences | 2 Comments »
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pharmboy responded:
Posted: April 3rd, 2008 at 8:44 am
sounds a lot like the Catholic church’s theology on the treasury of merits.
Tim responded:
Posted: April 3rd, 2008 at 4:31 pm
I think it is a pile of doodoo. You shouldn’t be going around doing things thinking that you can hopefully cash them in later. you do good deeds because you want to as a good person, as a civil person, not because you anticipate goodness returned. What happens when goodness is not returned to you? It is like counting on money before it is earned…on credit. After all, we are talking about karma credit here.