S/o Do you give exactly maaser or just tzedakah?

seeker

Mon, Mar 20 2017, 1:44 am

amother wrote:

When I was single years ago I gave double maaser. Back when I was young and idealistic. When we got married my husband always had one reason or another to obsessively worry about money and wasn't hugely into giving maaser. At this point I'm too burnt out to fight with him about anything so even tho we make ends meet and live decently, I wouldn't even bring up maaser. I give small amounts when I can and just hope tuition is counted because that covers it. It could be if we sat down with a rav he'd say it's ok not to give exact because I think my rav holds that you give what you can within your means, but still I can never get over how not generous my husband is when I was quite the opposite. Sorry, getting carried away.

I give maaser on my earned income and I leave DH to his own devices.

amother

Teal

Mon, Mar 20 2017, 3:00 am

We give maaser, calculated fairly accurately by my DH, on both our salaries.
Additional donations is an extra.
For yizkors for my mother I give extra. When people come collecting or call, I give very little amount, but it's also above maaser.

amother

Violet

Mon, Mar 20 2017, 8:12 am

We keep exact records on earned income and then give dollars that are not part of that chesbon seperately.
We don't consider tuition maaser.

Reesa

Mon, Mar 20 2017, 8:17 am

when we first got married we felt poor and didn't give maaser. when we started being careful, my husband started doing much better in business. we saw a direct connection of our giving to getting.

amother

Lavender

Mon, Mar 20 2017, 8:22 am

It was easier for us to give maaser a few years ago. Our income was less but our expenses were less. I took 10% off every month no matter what. Since then our income and expenses both went up bh but not equally so the expenses are cutting into maaser. These days I put aside tzedaka whenever I can and hopefully we'll work our way back up to maaser again.

amother

Aquamarine

Mon, Mar 20 2017, 8:28 am

Reesa wrote:

when we first got married we felt poor and didn't give maaser. when we started being careful, my husband started doing much better in business. we saw a direct connection of our giving to getting.

Interesting. To me, for something to have meaning or value, the connection has to be clear. Maaser has always been confusing to me because there are to many people who give maaser who are suffering financially which makes it difficult for me to see anything from the people that are seeing success while giving maaser.

Ruchel

Mon, Mar 20 2017, 8:29 am

We don't give maasser as we didn't take the neder. I know some dislike this, but this is so. BH. Now tzedaka is absolutely a different mitzva and bh we are very full of mitzvos.

amother

Mustard

Mon, Mar 20 2017, 8:49 am

We keep track to make sure that we give at least ten percent, but we usually end up putting the about 30% of our income to tzedakah.

amother

Mint

Mon, Mar 20 2017, 8:55 am

op here- interesting... it seems we aren't the only one who figures out an exact number but that there are probably enough people who don't give an exact number, based on the responses that the marketing is worth it.
just curious the amother who gives around 30% are you wealthy? do you have savings? Feel free not to respond, that's just a large percentage!

Ruchel

Mon, Mar 20 2017, 9:39 am

You can't give more than a certain percent, halacha wise.
Whether you need to give maaser, or are even allowed to, is a shaila.

amother

Forestgreen

Mon, Mar 20 2017, 9:54 am

Ruchel wrote:

We don't give maasser as we didn't take the neder. I know some dislike this, but this is so. BH. Now tzedaka is absolutely a different mitzva and bh we are very full of mitzvos.

Same. Maaser ksafim is a minhag and it's not mine. When I was a teenager, my dad used to occasionally remind me when giving maaser not to "accept that minhag" on myself (so as not to obligate myself in the future).

amother

Green

Tue, Mar 21 2017, 1:38 am

We asked a rav about giving maaser and were told that we should give 10 percent of what is left of our income after expenses. I know that this wasn't the OPs question but posting because this psak made me feel better about not having calculated maaser exactly in the past.