Money

Reggie Damone is a low-income worker who receives government-issued food stamps and works in a McDonald's restaurant.

One morning, he was searching for a piece of paper to write a phone number on and came across an envelope that had a cheque for $185,000 in it.

For Reggie, this amount of money could easily have paid his bills for many years and would have changed his life. However, Reggie did not cash this cheque, he simply remembered the wise words his mother had taught him as a child: If you take something, you lose three times that amount —and if you do something good, something good comes back to you.

Bill Gates is the world’s second richest man with an estimated personal wealth of $50 billion.

Although many will judge Bill Gates by how much he is worth, he should be acknowledged with what he does with his wealth.

Bill Gates has pledged $48 billion of his wealth to charity. He is keeping just $2 billion, $1 billion for himself and $1 billion for his wife, Melinda.

Furthermore, after July 2008, Bill Gates will spend the majority of his time working with the charity that he and his wife have set-up, bringing his skills and expertise to this philanthropic organisation.

Throughout history, we have seen men with great wealth do great things with their wealth. Andrew Carnegie had a simple philosophy that he would spend the first half of his life building wealth and the second half of his life giving it away to worthy causes.

In life there are some people that are not liked and some people that are just pitied for creating their own downfall.

Shylock belongs to the latter catergory. His downfall is caused by two main things, his religion and his greed.

In the Merchant of Venice, Shylock is a Jewish money lender. In Venetian society in the 1500's, this was considered against Christian morals as to profit from someone else's suffering was seen as wrong.

Due to this fact, Shylock, and many other Jewish money lenders, were disliked and disrespected.

One day, Mahatma Gandhi was traveling from village to village collecting for the Charkha Sangh fund.

One of the villages that he visited was called Orissa.

Upon hearing Gandhi's speech, an old woman struggled to get to the front so that she could meet Gandhi.

When she got to meet Gandhi, she took out a small copper coin and gave it to him.

The Charkha Sangh fund was managed by another gentleman called Jamnalal Bajaj.

Money is a neutral tool through which we can do either good or bad.

With money, we can build weapons that kill or we can build schools and hospitals. Money itself is neutral, it is how we use it that gives it meaning.

Throughout history, we have been taught that money is a negative force.

We have been taught that money is the root to all evil. We have been told that it is harder for a rich man to get into heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle.