Today I gave a pretty large sum of cash to charity, divided roughly between adopting some Chilean jungle, a regular donation to the WWF, an annual pledge to the EFF and one-off donations to Amnesty, FOE and Oxfam. A nice balance of the trees, the animals and the people I think. The animals lost out a bit because the WWF doesn’t accept one-off payments, but hopefully the FOE will help them a bit and other people will give more because animals are fluffy.

To be honest I feel shell shocked. The money is a tenth of what I got from the sale of my Dad’s company, but the effect on me is very different. Grabbing money was easy, it was instantly acceptable and soon it was like it was nothing special. Giving it away however was hard. Louise made me feel sad because she will earn less than the amount I’ve given away today in weeks of marking papers. The fact that the money will maybe prevent some other people from having to work so hard is small consolation when somebody so close to me is sad because her hard work seems in vain. If there’s one cause I should give money to, it’s her.

In addition to positive spending I’ve recently been indulging the shameless materialist in me, though I don’t feel very proud to say that right now. I’ve spent a lot of money on things like a new mobile phone and insurance in the last few days, as well as levelling debts. I paid Louise back a very large amount that I owed her credit card as well as settling up with Rob for previous work and Mum for the loan she gave me at the end of last year. I also had to pay off the Inland Revenue, I haven’t paid any NI for about a year and a half and they billed (and fined) me for that a couple of weeks ago. I’ve spent almost as much in the last two weeks as I earned last tax year! My income has also been high due to my stock sales. My poor debit card is practically on fire and I’m feeling almost out of it. I still owe the house bills account some cash so I can’t quite cut my card up yet, but believe me, it’s on my mind.

Crazy crazy.