What do you think about this situation regarding charity?

Here’s the background:

I was talking to a friend of mine who tends to lean towards the right politically, and as you know I lean more left. The conversation went all over the place but one point he raised was that Republicans give more money to charity than democrats, I have no idea if that is true, but I have heard it before.

This led to my friend saying that even though he grew up with little money his mom always gave to our local charity St. Jude’s hospital (I’m sure you are familiar with the great work they do). Eventually he was talking about social programs and started to say that he was never given anything, never expected anything from the government; if he wanted to be able to eat and have shelter he knew he had to work. He gave an example of how black students he knew from school got a free ride for college and he had to pay for it himself. That he had to work crazy jobs while in school, and in the end he never finished his degree.

My response was, “maybe your mom should have helped you with tuition instead of giving to St. Jude’s?”

What do you think about this? If there are very limited funds is it more important to do the best for your family or to give to charity? Generally, I think there can be a happy medium and do both, I think both are important, but I do admit I feel very frustrated when I hear someone who can barely afford to live gives 10% to their church and they are stressed because they can’t afford college or vocational school for their children; I have seen this more than once where I live. It does seem that these people don’t even expect to pay for college for their children in many instances, maybe it is not even in their mind as part of their expenses?