Tl;dr:
I identified 15 pieces of advice that I wish knew earlier in my animal advocacy career, and provided personal stories to show how they were relevant in my life. This article will be most useful for early career professionals, especially those considering roles in animal advocacy, and people who like reading personal accounts.

Choose work experience over post-Bachelor’s education when possible
Start doing relevant work, even if unpaid, to showcase skills and test fit
Be open to changing jobs for better opportunities, but consider financial security
Use current jobs to build career capital for future animal advocacy roles
Consider earning to give as a way to support the movement financially
Offer concrete skills to solve specific problems when seeking roles
Network actively, including with senior people, and learn to ask good questions
Seek growth opportunities beyond what your employer provides
Don’t be afraid to be ambitious, and critically assess other people’s advice
Don’t take rejections too personally; persistence often pays off
Invest time in improving your productivity
Prioritise relationships with family and friends: there will always be more work to do
Take care of your physical and mental health
Plan for long-term financial security (pension, savings, housing) even on a low salary
Learn to budget and save money effectively

Who is this post for?

Early career professionals, especially in animal advocacy. People who like reading personal accounts.

Disclaimer:

Please note that this wasn’t intended as comprehensive career advice, it’s just my own personal take on what mistakes I think I’ve made and what I could have done better during my 6+ years in animal advocacy so far. This is the advice I wish I heard in my early twenties. I started my journey at Veganuary, then volunteered and was a contractor for a number of charities, then worked at Animal Advocacy Careers, then started Hive, a community building charity for farmed animal advocates.

Depending on your life and work circumstances all or some of this advice may not apply to you. What worked for me may not work for you, as my journey is the result of a unique combination of my strengths, opportunities and weaknesses. I think overall I’m quite risk-tolerant in comparison to an average advocate, and I spent all my twenties with no significant financial commitments, so that’s worth taking into account. Do critically assess whether this advice will actually apply to your situation (see Should you reverse any advice you hear). This advice may apply to other causes, not just animal welfare, but since I am working in animal advocacy, I give resources and examples for this cause area only. There may be some hindsight bias because I have been working in the movement for over 6 years and forgot what it’s like to be an early career professional. These lessons and tips are in no particular order, but I’ve tried to organise them in themes.

Acknowledgments:

Thanks so much to Allison Agnello, Constance Li, Kevin Xia, Hayden Kessinger and Cameron King for reviewing this post and providing valuable suggestions. All mistakes are my own.

Getting work:

Choose work experience over post-Bachelor’s education

I feel like pursuing post-Bachelor’s higher education (e.g. a Master’s) may be the default option for people to go, but in many career paths in animal advocacy it is far from obvious that an advanced degree would benefit you. I considered doing a Master’s in 2020 and even tried a module. But I’ve soon realised that direct work experience is considerably more valuable for my career than the formal education I was looking into. I do think that some career paths, such as policy and technical careers, can certainly benefit from a Masters.

It’s important to always upskill, and I have taken courses and read a lot of work-related books, but you learn much faster by trying things. I think there are very few cases where education is worth it to get a job in the movement and make counterfactually more impact. I always tell people that a year doing your master’s is an extra year of experience you could have had under your belt (not even mentioning the impact you can make and the money you can earn).

I’d like to caveat this piece of advice by saying that this is my experience coming from Belarus, where you’re generally encouraged to continue studying beyond a Bachelor’s degree, and by also now living in the UK, where a Masters is generally viewed as a career asset. In your country this may be different, and if a Master’s degree is the only thing that will get you a foot in the door for your first job, by all means consider it.

My biggest tip here is to talk to as many professionals as you can who are currently doing a job in animal advocacy that you want to do and ask them how they got there. Ask hiring managers what they are looking for, see if a certain qualification keeps popping up on the job descriptions, etc.

Sometimes you just have to start doing something

I always say that some of the best jobs are never advertised and are found via networking. But another thing I’ve learned is that networking alone may not be enough. What you sometimes have to do is just start doing the job anyway in a limited capacity (I appreciate that this advice comes with a lot of privilege as not everyone has time to do things on the side. It’s not essential that you do this). This will help you test your fit on a small scale and showcase your skills and ambition.

As an example, we recently hired a Slack manager because he kept suggesting ways to improve our workspace (without our prompting) and we offered him a work trial. Also back in 2022 I just started running the Hive newsletter because I felt there was a gap. No one asked me to do it and I wasn’t paid, but it did help test my fit and provide proof of concept for Hive.

Here is a testimonial about how this principle works from Hayden Kessinger, an early career professional, The Humane League volunteer and a new Hive community member who kindly agreed to read this post and give me feedback:

“Even as someone basically brand new to this space, I just sort of took it upon myself to play a large role in connecting with volunteers and organizing events with THL. My field organizer noticed my ambition very quickly and encouraged me to continue and today we’re meeting to discuss a job opening within the organization. The same thing goes for taking initiative with conversations. People in this space are very kind to help but I’ve found that it makes a huge difference to reach out to people individually, offer your help when you can, and join things like donut meetings [1:1 online coffee meetings on Hive community] to spark new connections”.

One mistake I see people make is they spend too much time waiting until they’re “ready”, until they have all the knowledge and resources before they start doing something. Of course you should be thoughtful of your actions, but unfortunately you will never have everything you need—you will always have constraints. Rather than placing conditions on when you will be ready to do something, it may be helpful to think about a smaller and more doable action you can take right now and go from there. Often by completing the action, more opportunities will open up for you (like for Hayden above) that you wouldn’t have had otherwise.

For example, when Cameron was giving me feedback on this post, he gave this example: “if I wanted to start Animal Advocacy Africa [Cam’s current charity], maybe a preliminary step is doing African animal group meetups. Any project can be scaled up or down and it’s excellent experience/learning”.

This piece of advice may be confusing for people who are new and unsure what they can do. It may also be for people who are more entrepreneurial. If you’re keen to do something, but are out of ideas, it may be useful to double down on your networking and learning. Getting involved in your farmed animal advocacy community may be especially useful as ready-made opportunities can come up (e.g. advocates often ask for volunteer help in our Hive #help-requests channel). You can also read more about volunteering in my older EA forum post.

Don’t be afraid of leaving your job for other opportunities (with caveats!)

I liked my first animal advocacy job (Veganuary) so much that for three years I was ignoring all the other opportunities because I wanted to be loyal to the organization and I enjoyed it a lot. While of course, it’s okay to stay at one organization for a long time, it’s very important to consider your counterfactual impact over time – and that may mean remaining open to other opportunities. As an example, Karolina Sarek from Charity Entrepreneurship messaged me in 2020 inviting me to apply to the CE programme and I ignored it because I thought I was already happy with my job. I could have started a charity much sooner if I hadn’t ignored this opportunity! Some caveats to this point though:

Take your financial security into account before you leave a job
Changing jobs involves a degree of risk: your next opportunity may not work out like you expected, and you may need to leave that job sooner than you think. So always have a plan B and some savings/support to help you potentially job hunt again!
It seems like being able to reduce your expenses drastically can help you create a safer environment to explore your options. Some options may include living with your parents, finding housemates, staying in a lower cost-of-living city, or being supported by your partner(s). I appreciate that this is a very privileged position, so it may not be available for everyone, but both myself and my co-founder Constance lived with our respective parents to save money. I also house sat for two years to minimise my expenses.

The goal in early career is to explore your options and find a fit: it’s ok if some jobs don’t work out. I remember when I was about 23 and by that time I’ve tried 5-6 different jobs. I felt embarrassed that it came across as poor judgement with so many jobs not working out. I also felt that when I applied for jobs, (non-EA) recruiters increasingly told me I had a jumpy CV and I was afraid it would jeopardise my future options.

My mentor at the time said: “At your age it’s your job to try different things and fail fast. The more things you try, the better”, which I found very comforting.

My friend and fellow activist Steven Rouk summarised this point really well in his recent article: “In the early phases, exploration of your options has more greater value than early committing. This is because when you have lots of time left in front of you, it’s worth spending more time up front to identify better opportunities. If you’re going to be working on a project for the next two years, it’s probably worth a few weeks up front exploring all of your options before committing to one (maybe even a few months).

Likewise, if you pick a path that ends up really not working out, sometimes it’s the right thing to do to quit and change trajectories—[David] Epstein [the author of the book Range] calls this “strategic quitting,” and it could help you get onto a better path faster in the right situation”.

This advice is tricky to follow though in a balanced way. The more things you try, the more “jumpy” your CV gets. In my experience, it hasn’t stopped me from being able to continuously find opportunities that were a good fit. However, it is plausible that I also missed out of some opportunities because employers weren’t sure how committed I’d be. I eventually spent 3.5 years at my job at Veganuary, and now I’ve been running Hive for over two years, so I don’t think my CV comes across as jumpy anymore.

My overall advice here is if you’re thoughtful about which jobs you apply for and accept, actively networking and honing your job application skills, it’s more likely than not that switching jobs won’t be a problem. For some employers, a jumpy CV may say that you’ve tried enough jobs to know what is right for you, but for more corporate and traditional employers it may mean that you are too risky of an employee.

If you want to learn more about when might be the right time for your to quit your current opportunity, check out the book Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away.

Your current/next job can be for career capital

Jobs in our movement are very competitive—I speak to many frustrated community members who struggle to obtain a role helping animals. If you’re an early career professional and don’t have as much experience, don’t be afraid to take a role outside the movement to build your experience. When I became aware of factory farming, my first couple of roles weren’t related to helping animals. I took a job at a marketing agency, then as a business admin at a telecomms company, then at as a marketing coordinator at a transport charity. But these jobs eventually helped me to get my first animal job at Veganuary. Recently Elliot published “Maybe let the non-EA world train you” which is related to this point.

In my early twenties I didn’t think big picture enough when choosing my opportunities. For example, when I took that business admin position, caught up in a day-to-day, I failed to see how that job will help me to eventually start a charity. Looking back now I can totally see how every role was important. People often overestimate what they can achieve in one year but underestimate what they can achieve in 10 years.

How do you figure out what jobs to do for career capital? Imagine your animal advocacy dream job. What skills and experience does it require? When considering outside job opportunities, look for ones that specify those skills in the position description so that you can strategically build career capital. If you struggle to get a perfect stepping-stone position, choose one that has one or two related skills, or can build towards those skills.

I used to be frustrated at how slowly I was progressing in my career – I thought I could make more impact if only I could move faster or work more. I’ve since learned that it can take years to build your reputation, gain experience, build your network, try different roles and organisations, and grow into a leader. This is also relevant to funding for your own projects: in my experience, funders like to see you around doing consistently good work for a while before they are happy to fund you. So by all means, be ambitious but also realise that it does take time to find a role working in the movement.

Consider earning to give

Earning to give (ETG) might be one of the most impactful things you can do at the moment and beyond. The animal advocacy movement is extremely funding-constrained and the money provided by foundations and individuals isn’t enough to grow the movement at the rate we have the capacity to grow – and to keep up with the global expansion of factory farming.

A big caveat to ETG: it isn’t so impactful unless you donate to cost-effective charities. If you’re interested to learn more, check out some organizations that focus on effective giving, such as Farmed Animal Funders, Giving What We Can, Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE), Ark Philanthropy etc. If you’re not sure where to donate, you can just donate to EA Animal Welfare Fund or ACE, who will distribute your money among some of the highest cost-effective charities.

Also, you can kick-start a small charity with as little as $5-15k (this bears more risk than just donating to already cost-effective charities but also may bring more “reward” in impact). For example, one of the reasons we could start Hive was because a community member Constance Li (now my co-founder!) was earning to give and offered to seed fund us for 30k and backstop fund us for a year. Thanks to Constance, I was able to leave my job and focus on Hive full-time. If not for her, Hive may not be the strong community it is today!

Just like Constance, as an ETG funder you can have a huge counterfactual impact. You can speed up the formation and the growth of charities, and very often you can have an opportunity to be an advisor too. You can always come back to work in the charity world later with your newly gained skills and assets. ETG can be a very good career capital option (e.g. Constance’s business acumen and entrepreneurial skills). If you’ve earned enough, you won’t even need a salary, or would need a smaller salary, which will widen your job prospects and career options.

If you’re interested in how Constance got into ETG: she had an intern position at THL when it was a small new organization, but her parents encouraged her to study to become a doctor to increase her earning potential. At that point, ACE also encouraged her to ETG. Constance also had the opportunity to pursue a position at THL at the time. Who knows, maybe she’d have been a senior THL leader by this point if she took that path, but instead she devoted nearly a decade to learn and practice medicine. After residency, she came up with an idea of a telehealth business, where she would use her medical skills to help people online. She eventually hired other doctors to do consultations for her, which freed up her time almost entirely to be able to focus on animal advocacy while still maintaining a business income. Thankfully this is exactly when she joined the Hive community and started getting involved in our work. Now she is a leader in the movement, but she is also a funder and she doesn’t need a salary, which means she can make even more impact and has more freedom when choosing what to work on.

Offer a concrete skill or solution to those who need it

Advocates often approach me and say “I just want to help animals. Please help me help animals”. The problem with that is we are a professional movement and we solve real problems in real organisations. We don’t just need passionate people, we need skilled people, or people who can upskill at lightning speed. Whenever you want to help an organisation, whether via a paid job or volunteer, make sure you offer your concrete skill to solve the organisation’s concrete problem. Some skills like video editing or social media can be learned in a relatively short period of time.

To give you an example: once a volunteer contacted my organisation and asked if they can help with communications. They told us all their skills and sent their CV. We spent some time thinking how they can help but struggled: to do our comms well you need to have so much context and it may require more training than the potential benefit we will get.

Had this person approached us with this offer instead: “Hey, I’ve noticed you don’t post your newsletter content as much on social media. I have XYZ ideas for how to do this. Would you like me to do this for you on a trial basis?” it would have been so much easier to say yes to this.

I appreciate this advice is tricky to follow, especially for less experienced folks. But if you can make it work, it makes it much easier to get involved.

This is related to my previous tip above about starting to do the job before someone offered it to you. If you offer something to the organisation (like our Slack manager offered us tips) and if it’s good, it’s hard not to engage further with this person. In the future, they may recommend you to someone because they’ve already had a good experience with you, and you can put this experience on your CV.

You can view more tips like this in my Creative EA job hunting post and Why you should consider skilled volunteering.

Maximising your growth

Speak to people outside of your organisation and learn what’s going on in the movement.

I made the mistake of putting the opinions of those with whom I worked, especially in senior positions, so high that I didn’t even check to see what other opinions were there on those topics. I think that junior people should defer to more senior people on many subjects (e.g. what’s impactful, or what my career path should be like and when), especially at the beginning, but it’s also important to practice your own critical thinking skills or at least expose yourself to more points of view. There is a good article about this (deferring).

It’s very important to place yourself outside your bubble often, especially learning about organisations, theories of change and worldviews that are different from yours.

If you want an easy passive way of learning about what’s going on in the movement, I suggest (first two are shameless plugs!):

subscribing to our free Hive Highlights newsletter, we send informative updates every two weeks.
joining our Hive Slack, where you can ask questions, find opportunities, connect with collaborators, and get in touch with people in the movement.
reading forums like the EA Forum and the FAST Forum
listening to podcasts like How I Learned to Love Shrimp
attending conferences or listening to previous recorded talks.

Here is from Hayden as well:

“really like that you emphasize this. I’ve been learning a lot from different perspectives from people in my life and the Hive slack which I think will absolutely make me a better advocate. For example, someone recently recommended a podcast episode with two farmers and Kerri Waters from Vegans Support Farmers. It really helped shift my mindset and opened my eyes to another possible avenue to join the movement!”

Some more general tips in this section:

Surround yourself with people who you admire. I feel like “you are the average of five people you spend your time with” has been true for me in my twenties.
Get a mentor: the easiest way is through mentorship programs like Magnify Mentoring.
Mentor others: just being 6-12 months ahead of someone’s journey can mean that you can give advice. I find that I’ve learned as much from my mentees as I have from my mentors.
Switching your mindset to “I’m a life-long learner” can be helpful because it takes the pressure of “knowing it all” and encourages you to upskill continuously.

Start building your network as soon as possible (including very senior people) & learn to ask good questions

I remember when I was very junior, I was absolutely terrified of speaking to CEOs and Executive Directors. If people had a senior title, I’d think “Oh maybe not just yet, I’m not senior enough to speak to them, I don’t need this for my job”. I was surprised to find out that those senior people are often so lovely and friendly, and very keen to help. Many leaders see it as part of their job to cultivate talent in the movement and provide advice. So firstly, don’t be afraid of senior titles.

Secondly, always be building your network. It can be a valuable tool that you can use to do your job well and make more impact. Why? Knowing people who work in the movement means being aware of each other’s work and potential opportunities to get involved further. For example, I got more jobs via networking than via traditional applications. You can also increase your ability to bring people together for various initiatives. When I started Hive, many people joined because they knew my co-founder and I personally.

After 6 years in the movement and significant effort intentionally networking, I still wish that my network was larger than it is now! My mentor advised me to start building it early because many senior management roles need people with an already established network – and that can take years to build. If you speak to someone new every week, you’ll be ahead of the game in a couple of years!

Thirdly, learn to ask good questions. Many new advocates are afraid of talking to more seasoned colleagues because they are self-conscious of how the knowledge gap will be too obvious and make things awkward. Believe it or not, you don’t have to speak a lot in these meetings. But you do need to learn to ask good open-ended questions! It’s much easier than you think. You can start with something generic, such as “what are some things you’ve learned as a leader in the movement” and go deeper by asking “what is something you wish you knew at the start” or “what would you do if you were in my position”, and then learn some good questions about animal advocacy as you familiarize yourself with the movement. You can make a note of a good question when you hear it.

If you are ever asked a question, you can give pretty short answers, and then bounce the question back at the person: “What do you think about this?”.

Someone pretty senior in the movement recently told me they rated another more junior advocate highly because the advocate asked good questions.

If you’re not sure where to start with building your network in animal advocacy, join our Hive community! We have multiple ways you can connect without leaving your home, including our Hive Slack space, virtual events, and 1:1 online coffee chats with other community members. If you’re prepared to venture out, consider attending conferences like EAG, EAGx, AVA Summit (see a bigger list on the Hive conference database).

Ask your employer to help you grow. If they don’t, help yourself.

I think I relied too heavily on my employer to provide me with connections and skills in the first couple of years of my first job in the movement. They rightly connected me with people I needed for my job, but not necessarily the people and the resources I needed to become the most impactful advocate I could be. Now that I’m an employer myself, I can see that this makes sense, so no hard feelings! This is a lesson that the onus is on you to ask for introductions, mentorships, connections, conference attendance sponsorships, etc.

When I volunteered at Equalia (now Observatorio de Bienestar Animal), my manager there encouraged me to attend an EA Global for the first time. That conference has changed my career because of the people I met there! Arguably I could have found out about it myself if I had been more proactive from the start by asking for professional development opportunities from my employers.

As a start, here are some resources we’ve put together for animal advocates, which include courses, career resources and personal development resources.

Don’t be afraid to be ambitious (if you want to be) and you don’t always have to follow other people’s advice

I have always wanted to achieve more, even when I was in my very first junior roles. My ambition is fuelled by my desire to end factory farming and reduce animal suffering as much as I can.

Some of my managers told me to grow slower, to take my time and to be happy in my roles and not ask for promotions and growth. However, I don’t think that with the size of the problem, I can take my time and chill.

Now, if anyone tells me to be less ambitious, I’ll listen to their reasoning. But I have a strong prior that supports being ambitious and am cautious not to over-update based on their advice. If you’re ambitious and want to do more, find a way to do it.

This generally applies to all advice. One mistake I made when I was younger is thinking that some people know the exact right way to live, work, and that they can tell me what’s right for me. But when you are more experienced, you realise two things. Firstly, that other people don’t always know what’s right for them either. Secondly, I am the only person who knows me the best and is living my life. So by all means listen to people as it may be useful for you, but take their advice with a pinch of salt.

Being more ambitious doesn’t mean that leaving your job and seeking a higher-level position is always the answer. You can do more things on the side. Anyway, shoot for the stars and land on the moon!

Check out this 80k article: Be more ambitious: a rational case for dreaming big (if you want to do good).

Don’t take rejections too seriously or personally

I have made the mistake of over-updating on my rejections, meaning that I was rejected from opportunities and took it as a real indication of how good my skills were. We do have a very competitive movement with greater demand for jobs/funding than available roles. Being rejected, even multiple times, doesn’t mean that you don’t have the right to make an impact. It only says how well you’ve put your application together or how well your specific skills fit in the employer’s wishlist. I remember I applied for jobs for half a year and thinking “wow maybe I’m just not as good as I think I am” but half a year is not a long time, considering a hiring round lasts for an average of 3 months.

Here is a graph based on survey data by Animal Advocacy Careers on how long people search for animal advocacy jobs (please see their posts about how to cope with rejections where this image is referenced)

It’s always up to you how long you’re prepared to persevere, but I have met people who applied for over three years until they found their ideal role. I speak about succeeding despite rejections in my recent interview on the How I Learned to Love Shrimp podcast.

This can also apply to funding rejections. I think I may have over-updated after my first grant applications were rejected. Rejection doesn’t always mean that your idea is bad or not impactful. It’s a complex combination of factors, some of which aren’t within your control (in no particular order):

how well you’ve put the application together
whether your project fits in the funder’s theory of change
how much the funder trusts in the organization’s leadership (which is not personal, by the way!)
how much money the funder has to give in this round (which is often affected by the economy and the funder’s source of money)
how many other projects the funder wants to fund
whether you have experience executing a project like this
whether the funder thinks the project is cost-effective.

When I talk to my older friends about rejection, most of them say that it’s common to take rejections super personally when younger, but with age and experience, it’s easier to view them just as data points.

Invest in improving your productivity

I’ve seen professionals of all ages and industries neglect to consider how productivity improvements can significantly enhance your ability to create impact. I spent time improving my productivity throughout my teenage and early twenties, and now it has already started reaping benefits. Productivity isn’t about just doing more, but achieving more in less time and still having time to lead a fulfilling life with time for personal activities and relationships. There are many ways to learn how to be more productive. You can take my productivity course for free, and/or read books such as:

the Productivity Project -good all-rounder
Time management for mortals -good for time management philosophy
Getting Things Done—a somewhat aged and a bit too prescriptive but a useful and well-known classic nonetheless.

Logistics and “boring stuff” I wish I knew starting out as an animal advocate

Spend more time with your family and friends: there is always more work to be done

I’ve done quite a bit of research into what makes a happy life, and repeatedly keep finding that high quality relationships with our friends and family is what makes us happy long-term (e.g. see this study). So this is quite significant to get right early on.

I love this graph from Our World in Data on how much time people spend with their family across their life.

As you can see, there is a significant drop during the twenties, but it’s still higher than the subsequent years. For many people, their twenties are the last opportunity to spend time with their older relatives.

This is a sad realisation I found too, but for me it was even worse: I moved countries when I was 22, so after that I literally saw my family a couple of times, in many ways because of visa restrictions and the political situation in my country which meant I can no longer go back there safely. My grandfather, with whom I was very close, passed away a couple of years ago, and I still feel a lot of regret for not going back to spend more time with him, or even finding more time to talk to him.

One of the reasons I didn’t spend as much time with my family and friends was work. I guess many of you can relate to this because we are all very passionate about making as much impact as possible, so it’s worth telling my story here.

Back in 2018, I tried to take time off to see my family back home in Belarus. I ended up working three out of the 10 days because there was a lot of work to do. I felt really driven to succeed in my task and being a good team member at my first EA job. Looking back, I should have created a boundary and focused on being with my family – this was literally the last time I saw my grandfather alive. Now, I do my best to call my family once a week and send them regular updates on what’s going on in my life.

I also neglected some of my friendships. Instead of intentionally cultivating relationships with friends, I chose to spend the weekends and evenings working or studying. While it helped me progress in my roles, I wish I spent more time with my friends.

You remember experiences with your loved ones for the rest of your life, and it is those memories that contribute to maintaining a happy life.

If you want more illustrations and data on this, check out this Wait But Why blog.

Prioritise your physical and mental health

At the risk of sounding like a broken record… please always put your physical and mental health first before making an impact. I’ve made the mistake of putting my work first many times, which led to two burnouts. It significantly reduced my ability to work for about 3 months. So always putting work ahead of your health is counterproductive.

While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to staying healthy, here are some things that helped me stay mentally and physically healthy (please note this is not medical advice):

Exercising regularly (even if it’s just for 10 minutes a day) and ideally getting out of the house every day (e.g. for a short walk)
Prioritising nutrition and hydration during the day
Taking regular breaks, both short and long
Making sure you’re getting enough sleep
Getting medical help and support when you need it (e.g. CBT or other support such as medication)
Minimising adverse effects on my health, such as moving too often, toxic relationships etc.

I found The Mind Manual helpful in making small but meaningful improvements to my mental health.

You can also request a free subscription to Waking Up, a leading meditation app.

The overall conclusion is that as long as we live in this world and strive to improve it, there will always be more work to do. But you can only do a limited amount of work. You are also a human who needs to be happy to continue living a fulfilling life, and prioritising your happiness and health is essential if you want to make an impact long-term. As my previous boss, Ria Rehberg, told me about making an impact for animals long-term: “This is a marathon, not a sprint”.

Even if your salary is low, consider putting money towards your pension, emergency fund, buying a house and other big purchases

Please note that I’m not a financial advisor and this is just my personal experience, not financial advice! I only have this experience in the UK, so I will try to separate general experience from my own UK-specific experience.

Pension

It’s recommended to have financial savings for your post-retirement years, since the state-issued pension may not be sufficient to cover your expenses and lifestyle.

In my early twenties, I was so convinced about climate change related existential risk that I didn’t plan to need a pension. I opted out of my then-employer’s pension contributions (401k in the US). This basically meant that I turned down “free money” that the employer put in my pension pot without affecting my salary. I remember they sat me down and asked if I was in my right mind, because I only had to contribute 5% pre-tax salary for them to give me 15% on top.

As I entered my 30s, my opinion towards pensions changed. There is a high chance that I could live into my 80s – and a financial safety net can help me live comfortably at that age when I’m unable to work.

You definitely need to do more research, but here are some of the most compelling pieces of data that helped me make a decision to invest a part of my income in my private retirement fund:

I’ve found is that if you start contributing, say £200 a month (pre-tax) when you’re 20, and continue to do so for the rest of your life, you are likely to get the same amount of money that, say a 30-year old starter who puts in £300 (similar concept in this video)
Pensions, at least in the UK and the US, are one of the most tax-efficient ways to build your wealth because the money is deducted before paying tax. In the UK, even on low to medium income you get tax advantages and can get about 25% saved on tax.
One anecdotal piece of data: I met up with my activist friend who has been in the movement all their career and was close to retirement, and they only had $50k in their pension pot (if this number says nothing to you, this is not enough for a livable income in the UK, you need at least 10 times that amount in your pot). They didn’t have any rich relatives or inheritance they could rely on. While of course it was their choice and they should have invested more money, I also felt that it seemed unfair that they gave their whole life to animals and now in their relatively old age, they have no money to rely on.

I think this piece of advice is warranted here because a lot of jobs in EA are contractor roles where your employer doesn’t provide pension contributions, and unless you opt into a SIPP (self-invested private pension in the UK), you won’t get a private pension at all. When negotiating salaries, you might be inclined to only ask a charity for what you think you need, and your pension is unlikely to be included there unless someone advises you.

It seems to me that this isn’t talked about a lot in EA, because many people in our community are either financially educated or have wealth. But people who don’t have any of this need to take care of this themselves, preferably starting in their twenties to maximise their pension pot with minimal contributions.

Buying a house

When I was in my early twenties I didn’t have much money, so I didn’t think buying a house was possible.

Thankfully when I was a bit older I spoke to a money mentor from my bank who recommended that I use some of the UK’s help-to-buy schemes and start putting money away for later life or a house (in the UK, it’s called a Lifetime Instant Savings Account or LISA). At that point I didn’t need a house and didn’t think I would ever need one or be able to afford one. However, I went for it anyway because the mentor told me I could use this money when I turned 58 for anything I’d like.

I’m glad that I opened the account. When I turned 30 I wanted to have a permanent base with my husband. Thanks to those early savings (even though I could only save a little each year), I managed to buy a house!

There are many debates online that will compare like-for-like renting vs buying, and it depends a lot on where you are based and what your preferences are. You may choose to rent for now, it’s largely agreed by financial experts that owning a home (eventually) is an overall good financial decision. Why? Because it means that once you’ve paid your house off, you only need a small income. This means that you can take lower paid but impactful jobs, survive on less when you are out of work, or increase your donations. Historically, property prices have always been going up, so it’s more likely than not that if you wanted to buy a house, say 20 years from now, it will be harder to afford. Here is a video from Dave Ramsey on this topic.

I appreciate that many people don’t want to geographically and financially tie themselves down, especially early on in life, so this absolutely depends on you and your lifestyle. But it’s wise to at least save a chunk of money towards potentially buying a house, even if you decide to spend it on other things instead later on (or donate it).

Having a solid emergency fund

This may be obvious for many people but in case it’s not: you should always have 6-24 months’ expenses saved up in a current account (actual number depends on the nature of your job, your family situation and your risk tolerance).

This is especially useful in the animal welfare movement where funding is precarious and jobs can be temporary. If you lose your job today, you are unlikely to be able to find a job in the movement immediately after. More likely than not, it will take you at least 3-6 months to get another job (likely longer). Even if you’re on a low income, consider saving up this amount so that you can remain resilient in case the funding environment changes. Even if you’re young and in good health, you may have to take an unexpected health break, or help your family member for a longer period of time.

Budgeting and learning how to save money

Budgeting is an activity that can help you get the above three points right. I didn’t really know how to budget when I was in my early twenties. I highly recommend this video on how to budget, or just learning to plan how you spend your money, how to save and invest on a regular basis in any way that’s accessible to you. Some I recommend include:

Dave Ramsey’s YouTube videos—financial basics in a US-context, but I’ve benefitted a lot too
According to Nicole YouTube videos—topics include saving money, minimalism, using purchase comparison tools as well as psychological techniques to make you buy less or buy cheaper
Money Saving Expert (UK-based) or similar websites

In case you didn’t grow up frugal, it may be helpful to learn more about the benefits of a frugal lifestyle and how to do it in practice.
Depending on where you live, you may also have access to various government support programs that can help you supplement your income. For example, apparently in NYC low income earners can qualify for SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) which provide over $200 towards groceries. In the UK, we have unemployment benefits, Universal Credit, as well as Help to Save programmes. There is no shame in using these programmes, because it’s likely that eventually you will contribute more in taxes to compensate for them.

I love this comment from Hayden Kessinger that was left on our Hive discussion about how money makes you happy/unhappy:

“…getting into effective altruism made me start tracking my spending and create a budget, which has resulted in me accumulating more money, despite donating >10% of it. It helps me orient my spending around something that’s very important to me, making it easier to avoid spending on unnecessary things”.

So budgeting can make it easier for you to donate too! But that’s another topic:)

That’s it from me! Thanks for reading. Let me know if any of this resonated with you, and if you are also past your very early career and have advice for others.

What I wish I knew when I started out in animal advocacy