My philosophy is to earn like upper middle class, live like middle class, and donate like upper class. One can typically accomplish this by roughly maintaining the consumption per person that one has earlier in life (e.g. college or grad school). Sure, there is temptation to have consumption creep as is happening in most of one’s peers, but it is not technically difficult like rock climbing, or nearly as bad as living with hunger on a diet. An exception for this being effective may be if one’s consumption is visible to those who determine how fast one advances in one’s career, and they don’t appreciate one’s choosing of charity.
My philosophy is to earn like upper middle class, live like middle class, and donate like upper class. One can typically accomplish this by roughly maintaining the consumption per person that one has earlier in life (e.g. college or grad school). Sure, there is temptation to have consumption creep as is happening in most of one’s peers, but it is not technically difficult like rock climbing, or nearly as bad as living with hunger on a diet. An exception for this being effective may be if one’s consumption is visible to those who determine how fast one advances in one’s career, and they don’t appreciate one’s choosing of charity.