Year-round giving as a lifestyle
MEDIA, Pa. -- Travel company operator Hal Taussig buys his clothes from thrift shops, resoles his shoes and reads magazines for free at the public library.
The 83-year-old founder of Untours also gives away all of his company's profits to help the poor -- more than $5 million since 1999.
He is content to live on Social Security.
Taussig takes a salary of $6,000 a year from his firm, but doesn't keep it. It goes to a foundation that channels his company's profits to worthy causes in the form of low-interest loans. (About seven years ago, the IRS forced him to take a paycheck, he said, because they thought he was trying to avoid paying taxes by working for free.)
If he has money left at the end of the month in his personal bank account, he donates it.
His decision to give away his wealth stems from a moment of clarity and freedom he felt when he wrote a $20,000 check -- all of his money back in the 1980s -- to a former landlord to buy the house they were renting. It didn't work out, but the exhilaration of not being encumbered by money stuck with him.
"It was kind of an epiphany," he said. "This is where my destiny is. This is what I was meant to be."
He and his wife of 61 years, Norma, live simply, in a country house in suburban Philadelphia that's nearly a century old, with two bedrooms and 2½ baths. It is neither luxurious nor sparse, but a comfortable home filled with photos and knickknacks with wraparound views of trees and clothes drying on a clothes line. To cut energy use and help the environment, they don't own a dryer. They have three children, five grandkids and five great-grandchildren.
Taussig said the house -- purchased for $41,000 in 1986 and owned by his wife -- is paid for and so is her 12-year-old Toyota Corolla. Taussig has his bike for transportation, which he faithfully rides to and from work every day, three miles round trip.
He calls consumerism a "social evil" and "corrupting to our humanity" because of what he said is the false notion that having more things leads to a richer life.
"Quality of life is not the same as standard of living," he said. "I couldn't afford (to buy) a car but I learned it's more fun and better for your health to ride a bike. I felt I was raising my quality of life while lowering my standard of living."
In 1999, Untours won the $250,000 Newman's Own/George Award for corporate philanthropy, given by actor Paul Newman and the late John F. Kennedy Jr., publisher of the now-defunct George magazine. The awards event was held in New York City but Taussig balked at paying the city's high hotel prices. He stayed at a youth hostel while he donated the quarter-million-dollar award to his foundation.
Kennedy's reaction to his hostel stay? "He stared at me blankly," Taussig said.
The Untours Foundation loans money to groups or businesses at around the inflation rate. Hal Taussig is the president, and his wife is the vice president. They don't get salaries.
"I try to make the poor into capitalists," Taussig said. "They should be self-sustaining. You give them money and they run out and you have to give more. But if you give them a way to make a living, it's like teaching them how to fish rather than giving them fish."