giving or luxury?

[mek42]

My wife and I went to a spaghetti dinner to support a charitable organization today. Now I'm trying to decide whether to enter this in my spending spreadsheet as giving or dining-out. What do you think about whether to classify these sorts of events as giving or as dining out luxury?

[Samigirl]

Personally, I would count it as charitable giving.

[Liane]

I agree charity all the way. It was very nice of you to go to a dinner like this. Good karma to you

[Thevail]

Yeah... a trip out for a nice meal because you want to is a luxury... since the money goes to charity, this is just an extremely pleasant way to give!

[daughter of pearl]

That's a great thing to do! I work for a charity and I know how much impact these kind of events have.

For me, it depends on the amount (some of these events are expensive) and I might split it:

For example, say the tickets to the dinner cost $50. I would take the average cost of a spaghetti dinner out, maybe $20, and put that in the groceries column, then the remaining portion would go under "giving".

But hey, that's just me!

[mek42]

Thank you for all the replies. While mulling this over in the midst of tossing and turning I think I'd come to the conclusion to call it giving if and only we wouldn't have otherwise gone out to eat, but luxury if we decided to go out to eat and decided to go there instead of a restaurant.

[nuisance26]

~With those kinds of things, I split the cost between two categories. My reasoning is the group I'm donating too will only get a portion of the money and the rest is a benefit to me.
One example, my DH buys a shopper's savings card from a friend every year to support their high school sports team. We use it to buy Dunkin' Donuts at 50% off. So I split the cost of the card between charity to the high school and food since that's where I'll benefit from the savings.
Another example is a silent auction I go to every year to benefit missionary families. The dinner costs around $15 but everything I buy at the silent auction is a charitable donation since all items are donated to the event.
Of course, these are just my little guidelines. If you're planing on itemizing your donations for tax purposes you need to be very clear on how much of your events and purchases for charity are actually deductible.~

[Debbie-cat]

Right away when I read your post I thought charity and then I read nuisances' post and I have to say I think it is a great idea to split it between the two.