delivering guidance, awareness and an understanding of the healthcare industry
How Do You Budget for Healthcare
I have never seen my neighbor when she wasn’t busily on her way somewhere, usually at just shy of a dead run. She works days as a travel agent, nights as a waitress and on weekends, she belly dances for private parties, street fairs and conventions.
When she comes home, she dog sits as many as five pups at a time in the little home she inherited, tucked behind her one luxury: a beautiful ivy-covered wooden fence that offers her privacy and security for what little time she has to relax.
While she is rich in spirit and life experience, the coins she retrieves from her spangles just barely cover living expenses. Which is why it was just plain unfair when a rare whirligig ripped through our Los Angeles canyon. The day after the hailstones and thunder had wreaked their mischief, there were fallen branches up and down the street, an overturned deck chair and a basketball hoop that had been sent flying half a block away. But the only one who suffered property damage was Annie, whose beloved fence lay in shambles.
The story has a happy ending because a couple of us got together and held a neighborhood fundraiser “slow money” style. “Slow money” is the new hot trend for do-gooders who are micro-targeting projects—the closer to home, the better. The phrase takes its inspiration from the “Slow food” movement, based on the philosophy that the more locally one’s food is grown, the higher-quality it will be. Think organic backyard and neighborhood co-ops and potlucks featuring home-grown food, and you’ll get the general idea.
Applied to money, the idea is to worry less about getting a fast return on investment whatever it takes, and more on investing in building relationships that can nurture lasting communities over time.
When I bumped into Annie the morning after the whirligig and told her I wanted to help out somehow, I didn’t know I was going to be part of any kind of movement. It just felt “right” to know that I had skills, connections and motivation that would make a real difference for someone right down the block.