We count money given to non-profits. In some emergency situations, we may give funds to an individual who is in a medical, or housing situation.
No. We view both tips and family gifts as more of a social responsibility than true charitable giving.
We considered it! We try to give time to local organizations whenever we can spare it, but we find it hard to place a dollar value on that time. We do not count time toward our goal.

Often, when we share our goal people are inspired to give more themselves.
If you have caught “the spark” and want to share the details with us, we will count it in the spark totals, and want to celebrate with you!
Read our story about how the very first time I shared our goal publicly, an impromptu live auction and a chain of donations were sparked.
No. We recommend people give funds directly to an effective non-profit.
Check out our giving guide for our recommendations on how to choose a non-profit that aligns with your values.

Yes! We want to retire some day. We have a special needs child that will require lifelong care. We have goals to save for those things too.
We believe that you should have little to no debt, a well established emergency fund, and a plan for the future before giving away significant funds. We actually used the desire to give away more as motivation to get completely out of debt.
We started the goal in 2025 when we realized our goals had more to do with how much we consume rather than how much we contribute. Read the whole story here.
We’ve looked back through our giving receipts and bank statements as far back as we had record. All of that previous giving (as early as 2000) is reflected in our totals.
Spreadsheets and sometimes paper! For personal finance, we have a budget that is rarely updated and a continuous cashflow spreadsheet that we use to track everything.

How we track

Our Story