LDS Cooperative "one heart and one mind...with no poor among us"

On Thursday I caught a few minutes of the graduation ceremony at BYU, and one of the students who got to speak had a few nice comments. He talked about John Huntsman, and his various charitable activities, which, because he's a billionaire, are quite extensive. It was good to express the idea that wealthy people have the obligation to use the money which exceeds what is sufficient for their needs to help other people. As the D&C reminds us, those people who don't use their excess resources to help those less fortunate, will, "with the wicked, lift up their eyes in hell." The student made another great point, however, that we don't have to be billionaires to use our excess resources to help others. Even an average American making $17 bucks an hour like myself is incredibly wealthy compared to others around the world, and definitely has spare money (and time) to try and make other peoples lives better. We need to make it just as much a priority to help others as any billionaire, even though we can't help on the same scale. A lot of financial planners talk about cutting expenses in small ways to save extra money for retirement, since saving just a little extra now can make a big difference in terms of how much money you'll have saved in 20 years. Skipping that $3 cup of coffee from Starbucks each morning means $21 dollars a week, $84 dollars a month, etc, etc, etc. that goes towards your retirement. What if we could use the same concept to think about donating to the poor? If we just cut our expenses a bit we can make a big difference in the amount we can donate to charity.
In fact that's the reason that Brigham Young and the early Saints begin living the word of wisdom strictly. The Saints in Utah were spending the scarce cash then circulating in the LDS community on coffee, liquor and tobacco, because the Saints had to import these items from back East, not being able to produce these items themselves. This left less currency to send to the poor Saints back East or in Europe who needed funds emigrate to Utah (in other words for the Perpetual Education Fund). Now, I don't drink coffee, but I eat out at fast food restaurants a lot for lunch, which is much more expensive than bringing a lunch to work. So lately I've been trying to save money by not eating out, so that I'll have a bit of extra money to give away each week.
One example where just a small amount of money can make a big difference is giving or lending money to a micro credit organization like Kiva (see the microfinance link on this site) or the Grameen Bank. Even donations of as little as $50 dollars can go along way to a give a poor person a loan to get a small enterprise going, allowing them to be self-sufficient and provide for their needs. A charity I really like myself is Islamic Relief, which provides humanitarian relief to places disaster areas like Gaza (under economic blockade and siege by the Israeli, US and Egyptian governments), Iraq, Somalia, etc. I got clued into Islamic Relief after seeing documentary about the LDS Church's humanitarian aid program showing how the Church partners with Islamic Relief in Indonesia.
Anyway, just some thoughts on doing things day to day that can be a big help to others.