This is a Devil's Advocate post.

This Devil’s Advocate post will cover something that’s bound to elicit a lot of discussion – here are four reasons why you shouldn’t donate money to charity. That’s right, you read that correctly, I have four reasons why donating your hard earned money to a charity is a bad idea and chances are there is at least one reason here that you didn’t even consider. If there was ever a Devil’s Advocate post to end all Devil’s Advocate posts (don’t worry, it’s not the last one), this would probably be one of them!

Americans are one of the most charitable groups in the world, having donating $306 billion in 2007 according to the Philanthropy Journal, an increase of 3.9% over the year before. While the donation amounts in 2008, a period of economic uncertainty, are not yet known, chances are Americans will still be sending hundreds of billions to philanthropic organizations… so in the face of that, I present to you four reasons why you shouldn’t donate money to charity.

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This is a Devil's Advocate post.

This Devil’s Advocate post comes from my friend Lazy Man of Lazy Man and Money, owner of a timeshare in Aruba.

Almost every personal finance guru will tell you that it rarely makes sense to buy a timeshare. They often cite scary fine print, travel inflexibility, and difficulty in selling the timeshare. These are legitimate concerns for some timeshare owners, but not all. Back before I was heavily into personal finance, I considered a timeshare. And my girlfriend (now my wife) on a trip to Aruba actually bought one. Was it a bad decision? I don’t think so. Why? Well here are a few details that make our purchase seem “worth it.”

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This is a Devil's Advocate post.

This Devil’s Advocate comes straight at you and assails the one last bastion of hope for a prosperous retirement – 401(k)s and IRAs. While it probably doesn’t feel that way with the volatility in the market, conventional wisdom says that the best way to save for retirement is tax-advantaged accounts like 401(k)’s and IRAs. The power of having that money grow tax free trumps all other options.

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This is a Devil's Advocate post.

This Devil’s Advocate post is really borderline Devil’s Advocate because it’s not entirely in the spirit of taking a position against something that’s considered prevailing wisdom. You could say that the prevailing wisdom is that failure is bad, success is good; but as the advocate I’m not advocating that you should try to fail. I’m merely saying that failure itself is not a bad thing, much like success itself is not always a good thing; it’s all in context.

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This is a Devil's Advocate post.

This Devil’s Advocate post attacks one of the of the hallmark money saving ideas for the working professional: bring in your own lunch. The money you save by not buying a $5 – $10 lunch every day amounts to over a thousand dollars a year in savings ($5 x 48 weeks x 5 days = $1200). It’s hardly bad advice and practically unassailable from a financial standpoint, but there are many reasons why you shouldn’t bring in your lunch every day and eat it at your desk.

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This is a Devil's Advocate post.

Screw the experts, screw the planners, screw all those smart people who told you that you shouldn’t the time the market. Timing the market is the name of the game! Why wouldn’t you use all of the available information to your advantage? Why buy shares each and every month if the sky is falling? While I respect the thinking that the averages work out over the long run, reality is that no one lives in the long run and you can’t keep throwing good money after bad. If something is a bad investment, the experts say forget the sunk cost and cut loose. So if the stock market is a bad investment, why do they argue that you should keep investing when the smart money says you should take a break?

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This is a Devil's Advocate post.

One of Peter Lynch’s most famed principles of investing is “Invest in what you know.”

I humbly disagree.

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This is a Devil's Advocate post.

All throughout high school, the importance of going to college was everywhere. If it wasn’t my parents, it was my teachers. If it wasn’t my teachers, it was the guidance counselor. Everyone stressed the importance of college. In fact, they were even more specific. They stressed the importance of getting into a good college, which in guidance counselor terms meant a college that was good in the field you were interested in. In many many cases, that college was a private university. While safe advice, it’s not necessarily true.

Going to a public university gives you a better shot at success than a private university. You don’t have to go to a private university to succeed. In fact, going to a private university gives you no advantage over a public university. To take it to an extreme, going to a private university puts you at a disadvantage in life because you are paying significantly more for your education, thus saddling you with debt obligations, with no benefit.

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