What to consider before giving away money at the holidays to people and causes

The holidays must be here because I recently felt a twinge of guilt.

It happened when Bess sent me to the grocery store to buy chicken. I’m not what you would call an avid shopper, and I can only be trusted to make very specific purchases.

On this day, my mission was to obtain several pounds of boneless chicken tenderloins. I took along three of my teen children, thereby guaranteeing we would also make impulse buys such as beef jerky, grape soda and Rico’s Gourmet Nacho Cheese.

When we got to the poultry section, we discovered that chicken tenderloins cost more than $6 a pound. This seemed ridiculous considering you can buy 1,000 fast-food nuggets for pocket change.

We noticed that these prices applied to chicken processed at big-brand plants. But then we noticed that hidden under these colorful packages was no-name chicken just as fresh and just as good as the fancy-named chicken.

And on sale for 99 cents a pound.

“Hey!” one of the kids yelled, “Let’s buy up all the cheap chicken!”

We caught a scornful glance from a nearby soccer mom.

Would we be breaking some unwritten rule of shopping etiquette?

“No,” I said in a tone of mild rebuke. “Of course we’re not going to buy up all the cheap chicken.”

Mom smiled and pushed her buggy toward the produce aisle. Then, of course, we bought up all the cheap chicken.

At checkout, after our cashier scanned the first package of chicken, she stopped and let out a hoot.

“Well, you got yourself a deal, didn’t you?” she said.

And then she hollered to a fellow cashier several rows over: “Hey, Bobby! We’re selling boneless chicken tenderloins for 99 cents a pound and I think this guy bought all of them!”

Bobby gave me a long stare. So did everybody else in every checkout line.

Then my cashier looked at me. “This chicken could have fed me for weeks,” she said.

Then she looked at my children. “But you do have some big boys,” she said, “and I bet they eat a lot.”

I shrugged. I had found the chicken on a shelf in a store and I was paying for it. Should she really be deciding out loud whether I deserved it or not?

And should I really be feeling guilty?

Later, I was looking through Holiday Help letters. This is a Ledger-Enquirer program in which people in need request help and people with something to give consider the requests.

Part of the process is deciding whether the person deserves help. This absolutely makes sense. When you’re giving money to a person or cause, you want to make sure you’re being a good steward of what you’ve been given.

But I thought of my 99-cent chicken, and the human instinct to wonder if people deserve what they’re getting.

I know I run through this mental checklist before I give, and I suspect most people do too:

▪  Do they need it?

▪  Do they deserve it?

▪  Will they appreciate it?

▪  Will other people in need notice and expect me to give them the same thing?

▪  Is this going to take me out of my comfort zone?

It’s smart to do this. It’s wise to count the cost. But real giving – and true love – is giving when you expect nothing in return.

Heaven knows that over the years many people in my life have given me things I didn’t deserve.

And I’m not talking about a good deal on chicken.

This story was originally published December 16, 2016 at 5:32 PM with the headline "What to consider before giving away money at the holidays to people and causes."