Celebrity-endorsed charity

English: Pamela Anderson attending “The 6th Annual Hollywood Style Awards” Beverly Hills, CA on Oct. 10, 2009 – Photo by Glenn Francis of http://www.PacificProDigital.com (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From memory, I’ve never quoted Pamela Anderson before, so this is a new experience for me. Not as special as I thought it would be.

Anyway, at a recent rainforest charity reception at the House of Lords she said:

Sometimes I wonder if I am making it worse, or making it better…Am I legitimising these causes? Or the opposite? Who knows?

Well, luckily for you, the UK Public Opinion Monitor carried out a survey asking that very question, and it turns out that:

50 per cent of respondents indicated they take no notice of the message presented when celebrities promote charities and organisations and 14 per cent were put off their message.

…At the same time, 55 per cent felt that others pay more attention to such campaigns than they do themselves.

So it would turn out that when you’re watching Children in Need or whatever, and you think ‘if these celebrities genuinely supported this surely they’d give a whole bunch of cash, but I’m sure someone else will give instead of me,’ you’re pretty much thinking the same as most other people watching.

What was more interesting for me to find out, however, is that there are actually awards for celebrities who make a big difference in charity work – A Good Thing, you might say. Of course Angelina Jolie’s won five gongs.

But do the actual charity workers get anything like that? Of course not.

I wonder. In our celebrity-saturated post-modern culture, how do we balance the ethical issues of capitalism, not-for-profit charities, sports stars earning more in a week than many will earn in a decade, with simply ‘how much should I give’?

Live Like You Mean It: the 10 crucial questions that will help you clarify your purpose, live intentionally, make the most of the rest of your life by T. J. Addington

Never has a book title so well summed up its contents! This is a typical ten-point book designed to help you re-engineer your life. It’s written in a compelling manner and is very logical as you read through it. The guidance is practical, biblical, and very easy to understand – I find it hard to imagine someone struggling to read through this.

This book is aimed almost exclusively at those desiring the American Dream. I’m not that big a fan of the American Dream, so I wasn’t that big a fan of this book until about halfway through, where Addington pulls off the perfect bait ‘n’ switch and starts chucking real Bible truth at you.

That’s my biggest compliment, yet my biggest concern about this book. If I had read only the first half I’d have a different opinion of it, and if a reader only reads the first half I think there’s a danger they could walk away thinking that the American Dream is a good one to have. That being said, I love so much that Addington pulls you in only to then say, ‘think you’re getting the hang of how to plan your life? Good. Now realise it’s not actually yours, it belongs to Jesus.’

I’d thoroughly recommend this book to someone who liked to dabble a bit in the prosperity gospel, cessationists, and more liberal Christianity. If you’re more evangelically-minded, the more practical application here may be useful but I doubt the content will be massively different to a Sunday sermon.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from NavPress Publishers as part of their Blogger Review program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Mind Your Own Mortgage by Robert Bernabé

This is a practical book about shopping for and looking after a mortgage. To be honest, that’s pretty much it. Bernabé knows his stuff, is passionate about the subject, and writes well.

The whole point of the book is pretty much: get a mortgage the same way you would any other commodity, based on price rather than the monthly payment. It takes nearly 300 pages to say it, but that’s really it. The majority of the time is taken stripping away all the complexity that hides the true costs behind mortgages, and does it well.

The book seems to be aimed certainly at Americans, and primarily at Americans who are tempted to refinance their mortgage in order to ‘save’ money in their monthly payments. As a Brit without a mortgage yet this was sometimes annoying – it was never clear where things were specific to America. Also, for me, ‘pay off your mortgage rather than taking out a new loan to install a swimming pool’ sounds more like common sense than financial advice.

Overall, the concepts presented here and the numeric evidence that sits behind them are all good – I’d certainly recommend this book to anyone thinking about mortgages, particularly Americans.

That all being said, there is one particular downside. The website, mindyourownmortgage.com, apparently has all sorts of useful resources on it including the book’s appendices, but there’s additional subscription fees for them! It would have been nice to have the appendices included as part of the book, particularly as the whole subject is about saving money.

I got this book for free from BookSneeze.com. I’m not required to give a positive review.