[caption id="attachment_1151" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="----Young Haitian men, carrying water to those in need----"][/caption]

When moments of disaster strike close by, near in geography or near to our hearts, it’s fashionable to give and talk about how much we should be doing for the people affected by the disaster. It’s hard to find reasons not to give our time, money and effort towards our hurting human family just a short distance away.

We feel good about ourselves when we retweet something, share a post on facebook, publicly question why our governments or big companies aren’t doing more. We tell ourselves that Haiti needs more advocates like us on their side. We might even silently compare ourselves to others who aren’t doing as much as we are to advocate aid for the tragedy. But the main reason we all aren’t giving more, is that we simply don’t have more to give.

According to Barna Research, the average American gives a shade over 1% of their income away. According to this article on MSN, 43% of Americans are spending more than they make each year.

But what if you knew the earthquake was going to strike Haiti. What …

Maybe the people of North Dakota have figured out the circles.  At the end of the fiscal year they will have a $700 million surplus (see the full story here).

In a bad economy.

Like North Dakota you must figure out how to manage three circles. What are the circles?

Despite the seemingly endless things you could do with your money, there are really only three choices:

Consumption
Contributing to Others
Contributing to the Future.

That’s it.

You must decide how much money you are going to consume, use up, burn. Each of us has to live, and to do so requires consumption. You must also decide how much to contribute to others. How much of what is yours will you send to help those in need around you. Finally you must decide how much to contribute to the future. In today’s economy, many people are wishing they would have paid more attention to this last, critical category.

The sizes of the circles vary from person to person and you don’t get to tell someone else how to manage their circles.

How are you managing your three circles? How much goes into each one? No one will move from consumer to contributor without having an understanding of their personal …