In the current economic climate, it goes without saying that many people are having to make very difficult decisions, cutting back on spending and going without anything not strictly essential. If you value being able to help others and contribute, you may feel upset or even guilty that you're no longer in a position to do so. The good news is that there are a number of ways you can make a real difference, without much money. Here are two ideas that you could put into practice today, whatever your financial circumstances:

SAVE YOUR SPARE CHANGE: Do your pockets end up full of small change? How about saving up all your nickels and dimes for a month, and donating them to a charity (dropping them into a donation container makes it easy). Since many of us have a jar of coins gathering dust on a shelf, we're very unlikely to miss it!

EVEN $2 IS WORTH GIVING: You might not be able to contribute $20 to a good cause, but how about $2 or $5? Skipping a Starbuck's latte once a month could give you enough for this.

It's like voting — each individual's act may be as insignificant as a single drop of water, but add those drops together and you have a river strong and powerful enough to sweep change across the world.

Remember the following example the next time
you think that your $2.00 won't make any difference:

Comic Relief fundraising this year in the United Kingdom
collected less than £1 (1 pound) per person
— however, with a UK population of about 60.9 million —
they raised a record-breaking total of £57 million!
This huge overall amount came from thousands of TINY donations.