I live pretty rural so there's hardly any beggars or homeless people around besides 1-2 camped at the grocery store in the nearby city.
I never give money to homeless people, you just never know what they'll do with it. I don't want to feed their bad habits should they have any such as alcoholism.
They're usually sitting infront of grocery stores etc so rather than giving them money I buy a sandwich or water for them.
In larger cities I've actually had beggars turn down food and straight up tell me they need alcohol.