(to be clear, I do donate I just haven’t signed the pledge, and I’m confused about how much I am already donating)
I think the main things are:
whilst I think donating now > donating in the future + interest, the cost of waiting to donate is fairly low (if you’re not worried about value drift)
I can think of many situations in the past where an extra $10k would have been extremely useful to me to move to more impactful work.
I don’t think that it always makes sense for funders to give this kind of money to people in my position.
I now have friends who could probably do this for me, but it has some social cost.
I think it’s important for me to be able to walk away from my job without worrying about personal finances.
My job has a certain kind of responsibility that sometimes makes me feel uneasy, and being able to walk away without having another reason not to seems important.
I think I’ve seen several EAs make poor decisions from a place of poor personal finance and unusual financial security strategies. I think the epistemic effects of worrying about money are pretty real for me.
Also:
If I were trying to have the most impact with my money via donations, I think I would donate to various small things that I sometimes see that funders aren’t well positioned to fund. This would probably mean saving my money and not giving right now.
(I think that this kind of strategy is especially good for me as I have a good sense of what funders can and can’t fund—I think people tend to overestimate the set of things funders can’t fund)
I don’t see why the GWWC 10% number should generalise well to my situation. I don’t think it’s a bad number. I don’t weigh the community prior very strongly relative to my inside view here.
(to be clear, I do donate I just haven’t signed the pledge, and I’m confused about how much I am already donating)
I think the main things are:
whilst I think donating now > donating in the future + interest, the cost of waiting to donate is fairly low (if you’re not worried about value drift)
I can think of many situations in the past where an extra $10k would have been extremely useful to me to move to more impactful work.
I don’t think that it always makes sense for funders to give this kind of money to people in my position.
I now have friends who could probably do this for me, but it has some social cost.
I think it’s important for me to be able to walk away from my job without worrying about personal finances.
My job has a certain kind of responsibility that sometimes makes me feel uneasy, and being able to walk away without having another reason not to seems important.
I think I’ve seen several EAs make poor decisions from a place of poor personal finance and unusual financial security strategies. I think the epistemic effects of worrying about money are pretty real for me.
Also:
If I were trying to have the most impact with my money via donations, I think I would donate to various small things that I sometimes see that funders aren’t well positioned to fund. This would probably mean saving my money and not giving right now.
(I think that this kind of strategy is especially good for me as I have a good sense of what funders can and can’t fund—I think people tend to overestimate the set of things funders can’t fund)
I don’t see why the GWWC 10% number should generalise well to my situation. I don’t think it’s a bad number. I don’t weigh the community prior very strongly relative to my inside view here.