7 ms·

I talked about this on HN a few years ago, but my friends and I planned to be this guy. In college we talked about all the money we'd make and how much we'd be

I talked about this on HN a few years ago, but my friends and I planned to be this guy. In college we talked about all the money we'd make and how much we'd be able to donate. We all had a job offers for $32 - 42k/year. That was amazing! We were living on less than $1k/month in college. We had plans to give away 20%, 30%, or 50% of our income. We would barely even notice. Some of us even managed to do it for a few years. The world got to us, though. You start to notice that the coworkers that dress nicer and go to happy hour get promotions. One guy married a social worker and had four kids. One guy got tired of living in a studio apartment in New Jersey. One guy became a junior high science teacher. Twenty years later, I suspect that our average charitable contribution is down to around 5% of our income. It is really hard to be counter-cultural like Mr. Wage. Especially when your plan requires you to remain completely immersed in the culture. It feels like there's a constant friction to overcome--like every choice takes a bit more willpower than it should. I think this is part of the reason that truly counter-cultural people and movements tend to segregate themselves from the rest of the world. I don't mean to degrade Mr. Wage and his project. I hope this works out for him, but it's a very difficult road.

willmacaskill 12y ago
I think this is a really important concern. Btw, 5% is still quite a bit more than the average, so good work! We're attempting to overcome this worry through community and behavioural economics hacks. E.g. I take every opportunity that I can (like this one) to say publicly that I'm planning to give away the majority of what I earn, which makes it a helluva lot harder for me to back out. Similarly for Matt - it would be embarrassing for him to renege on his commitments when he's been so open about it. And it feels like a much smaller sacrifice (if it's even a sacrifice at all) when most of your friends are doing the same thing - and some, like Jeff and Julia in Boston (http://www.givinggladly.com/2013/06/whats-it-like-to-give-half.html http://www.givinggladly.com/2013/06/whats-it-like-to-give-ha...) are doing much more.
- hkmurakami 12y ago
  Not only is 5% of one's income a rather high number, even the average amount that people give in the United States is far higher than the corresponding amount in other countries (ex: Japan). It may be the country's Christian leanings that contribute to this, but to be charitable is seen as a virtue and absolute good in this society. This is not necessarily the case in other societies.
  - kendallpark 12y ago
    > It may be the country's Christian leanings that contribute to this Maybe so. I was taught to tithe 10% of everything I earned starting with my grade school allowance. 10% to God (which could go to a church or charity) and 25% to the bank. Everything else got spent on Legos and whatnot. Fast forward twenty years (I'm 25) and I still siphon away 10% of my income into a separate account that I save for either church donations or charitable causes. At that point the money isn't really "yours" or at least that's what is typically taught in Christian culture. Makes it a lot easier to spend it on others.
    - willmacaskill 12y ago
      Yeah, I seem to recall that the US gives a similar % of income as other countries once you subtract out donations to churches and to universities, which are both a much bigger thing than in other countries.
      - hkmurakami 12y ago
        You're probably thinking of other Western countries. Remember that most Western countries have moral code derived from Christian morals. What I mean is that if you look at countries with say top 50 GDP, many of them will be much lower than the "other western countries".
  - Tenhundfeld 12y ago
    I'm not trying to make this political, but I sometimes wonder how much of our charitable exceptionalism is related to the US having a weaker social safety net than many industrialized countries. Whereas an American might donate to a food bank, homeless shelter, disaster relief, etc., a European might consider those activities the proper role of government and expect their (higher) taxes to go towards remedying the situation. So, it might be that all industrialized nations share the belief that we should take care of our fellow man, help the needy, etc. Some believe it should be mandated and codified in the laws and policies of a nation; others believe it should be optional and driven by individuals.
jimbokun 12y ago
The muscles you use for giving are the same muscles you use to save or pay down debt. Know what your expenses are and how much you are spending. Know which of the things you spend money for are really important to you, and what you wouldn't actually miss that much. Know how to keep your spending in check as your income grows, not just increasing spending because the money is there. People tend to react emotionally to the teachers of these principles, like Dave Ramsey or Mr. Money Mustache. But it's not personal. It's just math. You can choose to cut way back on your spending if you want to retire really early, if that's what's most important to you. Or you can choose to spend more extravagantly and retire later (or not at all). Or instead or retiring early, maybe you want to live really frugally but keep earning as much as possible, so you can give as much as possible. The underlying principles are the same.
- betenoire 12y ago
  You are saying it's just as easy to save/donate as it is to spend because the muscles and underlying principles are the same? I wish I'd heard about this sooner.
  - jimbokun 12y ago
    I was comparing saving to donating, and contrasting with spending. So the exact opposite. Was I really that unclear?
    - MaulingMonkey 12y ago
      I did have to read bch's sub-reply to grok the metaphor. I'm not sure why.
    - enraged_camel 12y ago
      No, you were clear. I sometimes feel that some people on HN make a real effort to misunderstand people.
    - betenoire 12y ago
      To me you were. They are nothing alike to me. Different states of mind, different objectives, different strategies. Donating and saving are two entirely different activities in my life, and the only similarity are the numbers on the ledger. (one has an immediate payoff (donating feels good) while the other is not satisfying at all (just helps me sleep)). You're advice sounded a lot like the financial version of, "stop eating less and you won't be fat." ... but I guess that does work for some people ...
krstck 12y ago
The Effective Altruism community is working really hard to combat this. It's definitely a real problem. Jeff Kaufman has written a lot about this, and one argument that stood out to me was making very public commitments to charitable giving. You'll feel more compelled to keep donating if a large part of your public identity hinges upon it.
- ceras 12y ago
  Do you know how well this actually works for people in practice? My friends, acquaintances, and coworkers know I'm frugal, but I avoid telling them it's because I donate a lot of my money. People can become very defensive and judgmental hearing about people who donate or are otherwise "do-gooders," and I just don't like that kind of attention.
  - krstck 12y ago
    Yeah - it's helpful to make public commitments about charitable giving if, e.g. you have a blog where you have enough space to explain the philosophical underpinnings of your need to publicly broadcast how much money you're giving away. Without that context, it can look like you're bragging about how much money you have. We spend a lot of time agonizing over how much to tell "normal" people about what we're doing and the cost of being "weird". This isn't so much of a factor if you live in a nice EA hub like Oxford-Boston-San Francisco, but for those of us that don't....we're stuck with the internet.
cmdrfred 12y ago
I completely agree. It seems to me that this is a problem of nationalism more than anything. In the United States we give many people many thousands of dollars a year in benefits, most for legitimate reasons. That said, If your end goal was the biggest net cut in human suffering wouldn't you get much bigger bang for your buck in the third world? I make exactly the low end of your range there and yet the government takes nearly 30 percent of my income each paycheck. Wouldn't the solution be for me not to give more(I can't really, my asthma medications wipe me out each month), but for the money I do give(taxes) to be used more effectively?
- Mickydtron 12y ago
  It would certainly be great if tax money were used more effectively (for whatever value of effectiveness). Causing that to be the case, though, is most likely out of reach for most of us. We can really only look at the best thing that we can do, rather than the best thing that someone else could do. Sometimes the best we can do doesn't involve being able to give to charities in the present.
Shivetya 12y ago
still you can start out simple and build from that. I give to two charities, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta and St. Vincents. I started out with a good amount per month automatically taken from my account. I became acclimated to that "bill" much as one does their car payment or home payment. It is in the range of a small car payment per month now and I only chide myself for not boosting it more. The idea is to make it a routine expense so that you don't consider it a burden. The danger is forgetting to raise it or give to other good charities thinking you have done your part. I do not mind people who do not give, I only mind the ones who speak up at charity drives at work with any number of excuses or complaints. It is not hard to find a charity to give money too, its hard to give
- jtbigwoo 12y ago
  That's a good strategy. Anything you can do to reduce the willpower it takes to give is a good thing.
- cbr 12y ago
  I became acclimated to that "bill" much as one does their car payment or home payment. It is in the range of a small car payment per month now and I only chide myself for not boosting it more. The idea is to make it a routine expense so that you don't consider it a burden. The danger is forgetting to raise it or give to other good charities thinking you have done your part. That's a great approach! It is not hard to find a charity to give money to. Charities vary dramatically in how much good they can do with your money, so I'm not sure why you would say it isn't hard. With the charities you support, how much do you know about what your money does? Did you compare them with competing organizations? Getting into this much detail about charities is more than a full time job! At this point I mostly go by GiveWell's recommendations, but identifying really great charities isn't something I'd say is "easy". (I'm not saying this to discourage you, what you're doing is really good!)
SatvikBeri 12y ago
One thing that really helps is getting involved with the growing Effective Altruism movement. There are several effective altruists at Jane Street (where Matt works), as well as meetups in NYC (and most major cities in the USA) and being part of a community makes sticking to those ideals a lot easier. Also, note that 5% of your income donated to effective charities is still huge, and enough to save many lives during your career.
- ceras 12y ago
  What meetups are there in NYC? I've been really into this topic for years now, but don't really know anyone else who is. Would be cool to change that.
  - SatvikBeri 12y ago
    Here's the main one: http://www.meetup.com/Effective-Altruism-NYC/ http://www.meetup.com/Effective-Altruism-NYC/ The organizer Chris Jenkins is a great guy, you should definitely feel free to sign up and ask him any questions!
michaelt 12y ago
The world got to us, though. You start to notice that the coworkers that dress nicer and go to happy hour get promotions. One guy married a social worker and had four kids. One guy got tired of living in a studio apartment in New Jersey. But in our industry, with salaries how they are at the moment, you don't have to forego nice clothes and happy hour to donate 20% of your income to charity. I mean, the guy with 4 kids is spending way more than 20% of his salary on them, right? As long as you don't have 4 kids, you just need to keep your discretionary spending under control and demonstrate a reasonable amount of ambition in the workplace. Now granted, your colleagues might have more expensive houses and nicer cars, but even giving 20% of my income to charity I have a much higher standard of living than my friends who studied less remunerative subjects.
cbr 12y ago
My wife and I are also trying to do this, and I suspect a big part of why we've been able to stick to it is the growing effective altruism community. We commit to donating 50%, post our income and donations publicly [1], and we know people would hold us accountable if we started backsliding. Still, 20 years is much longer than I have experience for, so I definitely respect people like you who have been working at this much longer! [1] http://www.jefftk.com/donations http://www.jefftk.com/donations
- patcon 12y ago
  Yay! Thank you! As someone currently choosing to live very minimally and instead donate as much time as possible to the projects I believe in, I really am grateful to those similarly-minded people like yourselves working from the other end of the lifestyle spectrum :)
andyjdavis 12y ago
>It feels like there's a constant friction to overcome--like every choice takes a bit more willpower than it should. I think this is part of the reason that truly counter-cultural people and movements tend to segregate themselves from the rest of the world You neatly summarized something I have been thinking about lately. My wife and I are "digital nomads". We work on our laptops while traveling the world. Been at it since late 2011 and we spend a lot of time in places like Thailand where nomads tend to congregate, the vast majority of which cobble together a living through various entrepreneurial ventures rather than traditional employment. At the moment we are back home visiting family and friends. "Constant friction" is pretty accurate. Not meaning arguments necessarily but constant little cultural differences, differences in how we see the world that can become contentious as ideas about how things should be done inform everything we do. Meanwhile if you remove yourself to a community of similar people all of those little points of friction go away. Its pleasant if a little group-thinky.

willmacaskill 12y ago

I think this is a really important concern. Btw, 5% is still quite a bit more than the average, so good work! We're attempting to overcome this worry through community and behavioural economics hacks. E.g. I take every opportunity that I can (like this one) to say publicly that I'm planning to give away the majority of what I earn, which makes it a helluva lot harder for me to back out. Similarly for Matt - it would be embarrassing for him to renege on his commitments when he's been so open about it. And it feels like a much smaller sacrifice (if it's even a sacrifice at all) when most of your friends are doing the same thing - and some, like Jeff and Julia in Boston (http://www.givinggladly.com/2013/06/whats-it-like-to-give-half.html http://www.givinggladly.com/2013/06/whats-it-like-to-give-ha...) are doing much more.

hkmurakami 12y ago
Not only is 5% of one's income a rather high number, even the average amount that people give in the United States is far higher than the corresponding amount in other countries (ex: Japan). It may be the country's Christian leanings that contribute to this, but to be charitable is seen as a virtue and absolute good in this society. This is not necessarily the case in other societies.
- kendallpark 12y ago
  > It may be the country's Christian leanings that contribute to this Maybe so. I was taught to tithe 10% of everything I earned starting with my grade school allowance. 10% to God (which could go to a church or charity) and 25% to the bank. Everything else got spent on Legos and whatnot. Fast forward twenty years (I'm 25) and I still siphon away 10% of my income into a separate account that I save for either church donations or charitable causes. At that point the money isn't really "yours" or at least that's what is typically taught in Christian culture. Makes it a lot easier to spend it on others.
  - willmacaskill 12y ago
    Yeah, I seem to recall that the US gives a similar % of income as other countries once you subtract out donations to churches and to universities, which are both a much bigger thing than in other countries.
    - hkmurakami 12y ago
      You're probably thinking of other Western countries. Remember that most Western countries have moral code derived from Christian morals. What I mean is that if you look at countries with say top 50 GDP, many of them will be much lower than the "other western countries".
- Tenhundfeld 12y ago
  I'm not trying to make this political, but I sometimes wonder how much of our charitable exceptionalism is related to the US having a weaker social safety net than many industrialized countries. Whereas an American might donate to a food bank, homeless shelter, disaster relief, etc., a European might consider those activities the proper role of government and expect their (higher) taxes to go towards remedying the situation. So, it might be that all industrialized nations share the belief that we should take care of our fellow man, help the needy, etc. Some believe it should be mandated and codified in the laws and policies of a nation; others believe it should be optional and driven by individuals.

jimbokun 12y ago

The muscles you use for giving are the same muscles you use to save or pay down debt. Know what your expenses are and how much you are spending. Know which of the things you spend money for are really important to you, and what you wouldn't actually miss that much. Know how to keep your spending in check as your income grows, not just increasing spending because the money is there. People tend to react emotionally to the teachers of these principles, like Dave Ramsey or Mr. Money Mustache. But it's not personal. It's just math. You can choose to cut way back on your spending if you want to retire really early, if that's what's most important to you. Or you can choose to spend more extravagantly and retire later (or not at all). Or instead or retiring early, maybe you want to live really frugally but keep earning as much as possible, so you can give as much as possible. The underlying principles are the same.

betenoire 12y ago
You are saying it's just as easy to save/donate as it is to spend because the muscles and underlying principles are the same? I wish I'd heard about this sooner.
- jimbokun 12y ago
  I was comparing saving to donating, and contrasting with spending. So the exact opposite. Was I really that unclear?
  - MaulingMonkey 12y ago
    I did have to read bch's sub-reply to grok the metaphor. I'm not sure why.
  - enraged_camel 12y ago
    No, you were clear. I sometimes feel that some people on HN make a real effort to misunderstand people.
  - betenoire 12y ago
    To me you were. They are nothing alike to me. Different states of mind, different objectives, different strategies. Donating and saving are two entirely different activities in my life, and the only similarity are the numbers on the ledger. (one has an immediate payoff (donating feels good) while the other is not satisfying at all (just helps me sleep)). You're advice sounded a lot like the financial version of, "stop eating less and you won't be fat." ... but I guess that does work for some people ...

krstck 12y ago

The Effective Altruism community is working really hard to combat this. It's definitely a real problem. Jeff Kaufman has written a lot about this, and one argument that stood out to me was making very public commitments to charitable giving. You'll feel more compelled to keep donating if a large part of your public identity hinges upon it.

ceras 12y ago
Do you know how well this actually works for people in practice? My friends, acquaintances, and coworkers know I'm frugal, but I avoid telling them it's because I donate a lot of my money. People can become very defensive and judgmental hearing about people who donate or are otherwise "do-gooders," and I just don't like that kind of attention.
- krstck 12y ago
  Yeah - it's helpful to make public commitments about charitable giving if, e.g. you have a blog where you have enough space to explain the philosophical underpinnings of your need to publicly broadcast how much money you're giving away. Without that context, it can look like you're bragging about how much money you have. We spend a lot of time agonizing over how much to tell "normal" people about what we're doing and the cost of being "weird". This isn't so much of a factor if you live in a nice EA hub like Oxford-Boston-San Francisco, but for those of us that don't....we're stuck with the internet.

cmdrfred 12y ago

I completely agree. It seems to me that this is a problem of nationalism more than anything. In the United States we give many people many thousands of dollars a year in benefits, most for legitimate reasons. That said, If your end goal was the biggest net cut in human suffering wouldn't you get much bigger bang for your buck in the third world? I make exactly the low end of your range there and yet the government takes nearly 30 percent of my income each paycheck. Wouldn't the solution be for me not to give more(I can't really, my asthma medications wipe me out each month), but for the money I do give(taxes) to be used more effectively?

Mickydtron 12y ago
It would certainly be great if tax money were used more effectively (for whatever value of effectiveness). Causing that to be the case, though, is most likely out of reach for most of us. We can really only look at the best thing that we can do, rather than the best thing that someone else could do. Sometimes the best we can do doesn't involve being able to give to charities in the present.

Shivetya 12y ago

still you can start out simple and build from that. I give to two charities, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta and St. Vincents. I started out with a good amount per month automatically taken from my account. I became acclimated to that "bill" much as one does their car payment or home payment. It is in the range of a small car payment per month now and I only chide myself for not boosting it more. The idea is to make it a routine expense so that you don't consider it a burden. The danger is forgetting to raise it or give to other good charities thinking you have done your part. I do not mind people who do not give, I only mind the ones who speak up at charity drives at work with any number of excuses or complaints. It is not hard to find a charity to give money too, its hard to give

jtbigwoo 12y ago
That's a good strategy. Anything you can do to reduce the willpower it takes to give is a good thing.
cbr 12y ago
I became acclimated to that "bill" much as one does their car payment or home payment. It is in the range of a small car payment per month now and I only chide myself for not boosting it more. The idea is to make it a routine expense so that you don't consider it a burden. The danger is forgetting to raise it or give to other good charities thinking you have done your part. That's a great approach! It is not hard to find a charity to give money to. Charities vary dramatically in how much good they can do with your money, so I'm not sure why you would say it isn't hard. With the charities you support, how much do you know about what your money does? Did you compare them with competing organizations? Getting into this much detail about charities is more than a full time job! At this point I mostly go by GiveWell's recommendations, but identifying really great charities isn't something I'd say is "easy". (I'm not saying this to discourage you, what you're doing is really good!)

SatvikBeri 12y ago

One thing that really helps is getting involved with the growing Effective Altruism movement. There are several effective altruists at Jane Street (where Matt works), as well as meetups in NYC (and most major cities in the USA) and being part of a community makes sticking to those ideals a lot easier. Also, note that 5% of your income donated to effective charities is still huge, and enough to save many lives during your career.

ceras 12y ago
What meetups are there in NYC? I've been really into this topic for years now, but don't really know anyone else who is. Would be cool to change that.
- SatvikBeri 12y ago
  Here's the main one: http://www.meetup.com/Effective-Altruism-NYC/ http://www.meetup.com/Effective-Altruism-NYC/ The organizer Chris Jenkins is a great guy, you should definitely feel free to sign up and ask him any questions!

michaelt 12y ago

The world got to us, though. You start to notice that the coworkers that dress nicer and go to happy hour get promotions. One guy married a social worker and had four kids. One guy got tired of living in a studio apartment in New Jersey. But in our industry, with salaries how they are at the moment, you don't have to forego nice clothes and happy hour to donate 20% of your income to charity. I mean, the guy with 4 kids is spending way more than 20% of his salary on them, right? As long as you don't have 4 kids, you just need to keep your discretionary spending under control and demonstrate a reasonable amount of ambition in the workplace. Now granted, your colleagues might have more expensive houses and nicer cars, but even giving 20% of my income to charity I have a much higher standard of living than my friends who studied less remunerative subjects.

cbr 12y ago

My wife and I are also trying to do this, and I suspect a big part of why we've been able to stick to it is the growing effective altruism community. We commit to donating 50%, post our income and donations publicly [1], and we know people would hold us accountable if we started backsliding. Still, 20 years is much longer than I have experience for, so I definitely respect people like you who have been working at this much longer! [1] http://www.jefftk.com/donations http://www.jefftk.com/donations

patcon 12y ago
Yay! Thank you! As someone currently choosing to live very minimally and instead donate as much time as possible to the projects I believe in, I really am grateful to those similarly-minded people like yourselves working from the other end of the lifestyle spectrum :)

andyjdavis 12y ago

>It feels like there's a constant friction to overcome--like every choice takes a bit more willpower than it should. I think this is part of the reason that truly counter-cultural people and movements tend to segregate themselves from the rest of the world You neatly summarized something I have been thinking about lately. My wife and I are "digital nomads". We work on our laptops while traveling the world. Been at it since late 2011 and we spend a lot of time in places like Thailand where nomads tend to congregate, the vast majority of which cobble together a living through various entrepreneurial ventures rather than traditional employment. At the moment we are back home visiting family and friends. "Constant friction" is pretty accurate. Not meaning arguments necessarily but constant little cultural differences, differences in how we see the world that can become contentious as ideas about how things should be done inform everything we do. Meanwhile if you remove yourself to a community of similar people all of those little points of friction go away. Its pleasant if a little group-thinky.