New Testament class. A week ago. Meant to tell you then, but, you know. They saw the story of Zacchaeus, from Luke 19, as him repenting from being rich, giving away half his goods so hey! he's not rich no more, he's a good guy now instead of one of those evil evil rich people (this story comes the chapter after the one about the rich young ruler who went away weeping when he was told he'd need to sell everything he owned in order to get into heaven, leading Jesus to make his remark about camels and needles' eyes.) 

I've always seen the story of Zacchaeus as him continuing to be rich, but the riches meaning nothing to him in themselves; he's using them to glorify God. He continuously offers up half of his goods, recompensing the wrong fourfold and all, each time, is what I'd read into it- which makes his announcing that publicly sound a little boastful, which was always bothersome to me, so maybe they were on to something in saying that he was actually announcing a repentance?

Entrepreneurs see money as a tool rather than a goal, which is how they can get so rich, through investments and such. But the only thing they can think of doing with their money is make more money. Have I told you that I made it a goal a while ago to give 10-15% of my money to charity on top of the 10% I already pay for tithing, because I figured why wait until I'm rich? 

The highest tier at Furry Experience's Patreon page is to offer up $100 a month; most people pay just $1 a month, which to be fair does give you access to some pretty nice exclusive content, but not as much as higher tiers, and especially not the highest. Nobody had snatched up any of the highest tier yet...

Meanwhile there's a recent change in how the plasma center pays you, getting a steady bonus more each time you go in, starting out smaller but adding up larger and larger until it resets each month; the previous system gave a larger bonus for donating twice in a week, the bonus resetting each week. Rather clever of them: they have to pay those who come in infrequently less, ensuring steady patronage (or whatever the word would be) if people really want their money; for me, who already goes in twice a week anyway, it means something like $100 more each month... which I really don't need; I already have more than enough to pay for groceries and anything else that I'd want (not going in once a semester anymore to grab what Zootopia swag would remain at Hastings is certainly helping pocketbook-wise.)

I figured it would be hypocritical of me to offer selling t-shirts without also being a patron.


Yeah, I know. $100 a month is a lot of money. More than $1,000 a year, all told. Counterargument though: she's a widow. A WIDOW.

Since I've taken the screenshot it looks like someone's upgraded their FE tier; Ellen Natalie is now making $961 a month from 95 patrons.

Between my two Patreon beneficiaries (who don't count toward my charity quota) and my subscription to the Adobe Suite, that's $138 a month, just under 1/3rd of monthly plasma income. Subtract the other 1/5th from tithes and misc. offerings, that leaves about half of my discretionary accounts available for foodstuffs and sundry (actually, hold on, what's the Adobe Suite doing in the discretionary category anyway, it's totally covered by tuition.) Put rent on top of that, and that's... well my rent's all paid for the semester, but summer rent here's $250 for the whole shebang, and that's already been paid for.

We'll hash out the details of what my printing FE shirts would mean, once things have settled down over at Chez Natalie.