Why don’t we have more advices / mentions about donating through a last will—like Effective Legacy? Is it too obvious? Or absurd?
All other cases of someone discussing charity & wills were about the dilemma “give now vs. (invest) post mortem”. But we can expect that even GWWC pledgers save something for retirement or emergency; so why not to legate a part of it to the most effective charities, too? Besides, this may attract non-pledgers equally: even if you’re not willing to sacrifice a portion of your consumption for the sake of the greater good, why not those savings for retirement, in case you die before spending it all?
Of course, I’m not saying this would be super-effective; but it might be a low-hanging fruit. Has anyone explored this “path”?
Thanks. Your post strengthened my conviction that EAs should think about the subject—of course, the optimal strategy may vary a lot according to one’s age, wealth, country, personal plans, etc.
But I still wonder: a) would similar arguments convince non-EA people? b) why don’t EA (even pledgers) do something like that (i.e., take their deaths into account)? Or If they do it “discretely”, why don’t they talk about it? (I know most people don’t think too much about what is gonna happen if they die, but EAs are kinda different)
I’m aware of many people in EA who have done some amount of legacy planning. Ideally, the number would be “100%”, but this sort of thing does take time which might not be worthwhile for many people in the community given their levels of health and wealth.
I used this Charity Science page to put together a will, which I’ve left in the care of my spouse (though my parents are also signatories).
Why don’t we have more advices / mentions about donating through a last will—like Effective Legacy? Is it too obvious? Or absurd?
All other cases of someone discussing charity & wills were about the dilemma “give now vs. (invest) post mortem”. But we can expect that even GWWC pledgers save something for retirement or emergency; so why not to legate a part of it to the most effective charities, too? Besides, this may attract non-pledgers equally: even if you’re not willing to sacrifice a portion of your consumption for the sake of the greater good, why not those savings for retirement, in case you die before spending it all?
Of course, I’m not saying this would be super-effective; but it might be a low-hanging fruit. Has anyone explored this “path”?
I agree with you that this is an important area. I wrote a whole essay on the technical aspects of planned giving. https://medium.com/@aaronhamlin/planned-giving-for-everyone-15b9baf88632
I have some more related essays here: https://www.aaronhamlin.com/articles/#philanthropy
Thanks. Your post strengthened my conviction that EAs should think about the subject—of course, the optimal strategy may vary a lot according to one’s age, wealth, country, personal plans, etc.
But I still wonder: a) would similar arguments convince non-EA people? b) why don’t EA (even pledgers) do something like that (i.e., take their deaths into account)? Or If they do it “discretely”, why don’t they talk about it? (I know most people don’t think too much about what is gonna happen if they die, but EAs are kinda different)
(I greatly admire your work, btw)
I’m aware of many people in EA who have done some amount of legacy planning. Ideally, the number would be “100%”, but this sort of thing does take time which might not be worthwhile for many people in the community given their levels of health and wealth.
I used this Charity Science page to put together a will, which I’ve left in the care of my spouse (though my parents are also signatories).