Maybe it’s that I’m 42. Maybe it’s that I read lots and lots of SSC essays before discovering EA. But to me it always seemed like the EA community (as expressed on EA forum and 80000 Hours) wasn’t as hardcore as Tyler describes. So I signed up for the GWWC pledge and never thought that I should give more than 10%. I understood pretty early that to seriously cut down on one’s quality of life for the sake of effective giving would be bad for the movement as a whole (as I recall, there were essays specifically explaining this), because other potential EAs wouldn’t want to go down that same path. Not only would your excessive self-sacrifice make the movement as a whole suffer due to people saying “I’m not hardcore enough to be an EA”, but it would harm your own mental health which, in turn, could impair your ability to help others.
I do currently live modestly impoverished though; the 10% GWWC pledge can be a bit tough at low incomes, especially for someone like me. For one thing, I’m really insecure about the possibility of financial ruin, so I tend to save money aggressively (net worth now $200K CAD, which doesn’t feel that high when I have a family to take care of). So each year I put 10-30% of after-tax income into retirement savings and then over 10% in GWWC.
But this year the inflation on food and fuel has been really high, I’m currently earning minimum wage (not bad, it’s $15 CAD/hr here), I was scammed into buying a lemon car (albeit it was only $1550 CAD), and I was just sued for $100,000 because I rear-ended someone on an icy road at 3 km/h (2 mph, and maybe the insurance will take care of it, we’ll see), I’m struggling to get work done while helping take care of our newborn baby, struggling to use Twitter less, I don’t have any EA or rationalist friends IRL, and…
...and I just wish the GWWC pledge was a bit more flexible. Because while technically I’m doing fine, and technically I have lots of savings so I’m not forced to eat this much Ramen… still, I prefer not to deplete my savings (especially as it’s so heavily invested in equities and bonds that are way down this year) and not to break my pledge, rather than to have nice food, have a car that isn’t likely to die permanently in the next year, and occasionally have some fun activity to please my family… though they’re not really happy having a belt this tight.
So it would’ve been nice if the GWWC pledge had a relief valve for low-income-earners, e.g. it could say “10% of my income after subtracting the cost of basic needs for myself and my dependents.” No doubt it was designed to be as simple as possible, but that simplicity will be a bit burdensome for us in 2022-23.
(Also, kind of a stupid technicality… since long before signing the pledge, I have always preferred to give a percent from my post-retirement-savings income rather than before-tax or after-tax income. This way, I will still be able to give money during retirement by giving 10% of my retirement savings. I look forward to that. But the GWWC pledge says to give 10% of “income” which I guess may be pre-tax or post-tax but not post-retirement-savings, and there’s no provision for delaying the giving, so… rather than reconfigure my spreadsheet, I normally just give 15% post-retirement-savings to make sure I’m above 10% post-tax (and usually above 10% pre-tax). Maybe I’ll tweak the spreadsheet this year to cut my giving down to the minimum.)
Maybe it’s that I’m 42. Maybe it’s that I read lots and lots of SSC essays before discovering EA. But to me it always seemed like the EA community (as expressed on EA forum and 80000 Hours) wasn’t as hardcore as Tyler describes. So I signed up for the GWWC pledge and never thought that I should give more than 10%. I understood pretty early that to seriously cut down on one’s quality of life for the sake of effective giving would be bad for the movement as a whole (as I recall, there were essays specifically explaining this), because other potential EAs wouldn’t want to go down that same path. Not only would your excessive self-sacrifice make the movement as a whole suffer due to people saying “I’m not hardcore enough to be an EA”, but it would harm your own mental health which, in turn, could impair your ability to help others.
I do currently live modestly impoverished though; the 10% GWWC pledge can be a bit tough at low incomes, especially for someone like me. For one thing, I’m really insecure about the possibility of financial ruin, so I tend to save money aggressively (net worth now $200K CAD, which doesn’t feel that high when I have a family to take care of). So each year I put 10-30% of after-tax income into retirement savings and then over 10% in GWWC.
But this year the inflation on food and fuel has been really high, I’m currently earning minimum wage (not bad, it’s $15 CAD/hr here), I was scammed into buying a lemon car (albeit it was only $1550 CAD), and I was just sued for $100,000 because I rear-ended someone on an icy road at 3 km/h (2 mph, and maybe the insurance will take care of it, we’ll see), I’m struggling to get work done while helping take care of our newborn baby, struggling to use Twitter less, I don’t have any EA or rationalist friends IRL, and…
...and I just wish the GWWC pledge was a bit more flexible. Because while technically I’m doing fine, and technically I have lots of savings so I’m not forced to eat this much Ramen… still, I prefer not to deplete my savings (especially as it’s so heavily invested in equities and bonds that are way down this year) and not to break my pledge, rather than to have nice food, have a car that isn’t likely to die permanently in the next year, and occasionally have some fun activity to please my family… though they’re not really happy having a belt this tight.
So it would’ve been nice if the GWWC pledge had a relief valve for low-income-earners, e.g. it could say “10% of my income after subtracting the cost of basic needs for myself and my dependents.” No doubt it was designed to be as simple as possible, but that simplicity will be a bit burdensome for us in 2022-23.
(Also, kind of a stupid technicality… since long before signing the pledge, I have always preferred to give a percent from my post-retirement-savings income rather than before-tax or after-tax income. This way, I will still be able to give money during retirement by giving 10% of my retirement savings. I look forward to that. But the GWWC pledge says to give 10% of “income” which I guess may be pre-tax or post-tax but not post-retirement-savings, and there’s no provision for delaying the giving, so… rather than reconfigure my spreadsheet, I normally just give 15% post-retirement-savings to make sure I’m above 10% post-tax (and usually above 10% pre-tax). Maybe I’ll tweak the spreadsheet this year to cut my giving down to the minimum.)