Money Won't Solve Every Problem

I was once approached by a panhandler while walking along Court Street in downtown Cincinnati. I was feeling generous that day, so I gave the guy a twenty. He was appropriately grateful, and I continued on my way, smugly content with my good deed.

But as I walked on, I started to think. What impact was that twenty going to have on that guy’s life? What would he do with it? Could twenty dollars possibly be enough to make a difference?

Maybe I should have given him fifty dollars. Or perhaps a hundred. Wouldn’t that buy him a few more days of food or a place to sleep? Couldn’t he use it to clean up and find a job? Or would he just waste it on drugs or booze? In any case, a hundred bucks probably wasn’t going to change much of anything.

So what if I had given him a thousand or ten thousand or fifty thousand? Would that make a difference? For a while, absolutely. But we hear stories all the time of people who win millions in the lottery, then wind up broke a short time later because they lack both the discipline and training to use the money wisely. Would this guy have been any different? I have no idea.

The reason there is no way of knowing is because money is a tool, not an answer. How that tool is used depends upon how prepared the person is to handle it. Give a hammer to a skilled tradesman and he can build a home. Give it to an untrained child and he can destroy one. The same is true of money. Give it to one who knows how to use it and they’ll build a future. Give it to one who doesn’t and too often they’ll dig a hole.

But we so want to believe that money is the answer that we continue to hand it out, whether as cash to a person on the street or as a check from the U.S. government. We use it as a way to keep score on our compassion. No doubt it is a measure of our generosity. In that regard, we are a compassionate people. But is money the best tool at our disposal, or simply the most convenient to dispense? Isn’t there something even more precious that we could offer?

I’m talking about time. What if instead of twenty dollars, I had given the panhandler twenty minutes of my time, just to learn about his circumstances, to see how I might help? Maybe it would have been fruitless, but what if I gave him twenty minutes every week? Simply acting as a mentor, guidance counselor or friend. I have little doubt that it would have been far more effective than my throwaway twenty.

Twenty minutes a week works out to 17 hours a year. If just one in five adult Americans made that commitment, it would be the equivalent of putting 275,000 people to work full-time with the sole purpose of giving people the tools they need to move forward in life. Imagine the difference we could make.

It’s so simple. But not as simple as handing a guy a twenty. Which is why we so often find ourselves throwing money at problems that don’t go away. But if more of us threw ourselves into solving them, perhaps they would. All it takes is time.