{"id":3941,"date":"2015-04-01T14:06:28","date_gmt":"2015-04-01T18:06:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/?p=3941"},"modified":"2015-04-30T11:21:44","modified_gmt":"2015-04-30T15:21:44","slug":"36594-lent-5-cheating-justifying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/36594-lent-5-cheating-justifying\/","title":{"rendered":"365+#94: Lent 5-Cheating? Justifying?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Did I spend any money that did not comply with my\u00a0Lenten resolution \u00a0(only food, housing, and gas) during the last two weeks? I\u2019m not sure.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>$5 \u2013 Fish Fry:<\/strong> I justified this as both simple food (which is allowed) and a donation since it supports an inner city school<\/li>\n<li><strong>$10 \u2013 Donation:<\/strong> Since construction prevented my usual donation to the sidewalk panhandler, I gambled the money at the Fish Fry\u2019s \u201cSplit the Pot.\u201d If I had won, I planned to donate the winnings back to the school.<\/li>\n<li><strong>$50 \u2013 Donation<\/strong> to my professional association which needed extra money<\/li>\n<li><strong>$250 \u2013 Professional expense:<\/strong> Registration for World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia in September. I would lose the early bird discount if I had waited.<\/li>\n<li><strong>$65 \u2013 Professional expense:<\/strong> Dues to another professional organization.<\/li>\n<li><strong>$15 \u2013 3 Fish Fry meals.<\/strong> (See #1. We had 2 guests that I treated.)<\/li>\n<li><strong>$4 \u2013 Contra dance admission:<\/strong>\u00a0I could have stayed late and cleaned up thus getting a free admission but Jim didn\u2019t go this week and I knew he would appreciate me coming home earlier. Does marital harmony count as a justification?<\/li>\n<li><strong>$10 \u2013 Postage:<\/strong>\u00a0An out-of-town friend left some belongings here. I mailed them back. He said he would reimburse me. Does that make it a non-payment? If I were really poor, waiting for reimbursement may be a bigger deal.<\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Days-365-94-Whoopie-cushion.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-3945\" src=\"http:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Days-365-94-Whoopie-cushion.gif\" alt=\"Days 365+94 Whoopie cushion\" width=\"98\" height=\"93\" \/><\/a>$6.81 \u2013 Whoopee Cushion:\u00a0<\/strong>Now don\u2019t laugh. A friend is in the hospital with a bowel obstruction. Without going into the gory details, suffice it to say that she needs to poop or fart before she will be released from the hospital. In addition to prayer I thought a little humor might lighten her spirit. It makes me feel good to be thoughtful like this but would a really poor person feel that a gag gift was too much of a luxury.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Total non-allowed expenditures for 2 weeks: <strong>$415. 81<\/strong>.\u00a0 ($80 could be justified as donations and $315 as professional expenses. BUT $4 for marital harmony? \u00a0$6.81 to humor a friend? I keep measuring myself against what a very low income person would be able to do. My decisions these 2 weeks show that I have a choice. They might not. \u00a0What do you think is justifiable? Fair?<\/p>\n<p>In addition to my expenditures I noticed that I received the equivalent of 5 free meals because of eating with others who provided the food. I wasn\u2019t going to a soup kitchen, but I was the beneficiary of other\u2019s cooking.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How do you feel about taking charity? About being able to treat other people?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Did I spend any money that did not comply with my\u00a0Lenten resolution \u00a0(only food, housing, and gas) during the last two weeks? I\u2019m not sure. $5 \u2013 Fish Fry: I justified this as both simple food (which is allowed) and a donation since it supports an inner city school $10 \u2013 Donation: Since construction prevented [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[15,24,17],"class_list":["post-3941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buy-nothing","tag-humor","tag-money","tag-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3941"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4012,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3941\/revisions\/4012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}