A “maximum consumption” pledge has the advantage that it lets you use your income for things like saving money or exercising stock options (like I discuss in OP), it just doesn’t let you spend money on yourself instead of donating.
One possible concern there is what happens if you move to an area with a more expensive cost of living, or if you want to buy a more expensive house close to work to save commute time—which costs a lot, but could help you be more effective by giving you more free time.
Jeff and I used to talk about how much we spent—as opposed to saving, taxes, and giving. At least for public communication, this got pretty confusing (because it’s really easy to misremember “these people spend x%” as “these people keep x% and give the rest away.”) Then people could very reasonably be annoyed that we were being presented as keeping less than we really do, once you include savings.
Now we instead talk about how much we keep (although that includes taxes) vs. how much we give.
Another potential problem with a maximum-consumption pledge is that it acts as an effective 100% marginal tax rate, and so may reduce self-interested motivation for doing things that will increase one’s salary.
A “maximum consumption” pledge has the advantage that it lets you use your income for things like saving money or exercising stock options (like I discuss in OP), it just doesn’t let you spend money on yourself instead of donating.
One possible concern there is what happens if you move to an area with a more expensive cost of living, or if you want to buy a more expensive house close to work to save commute time—which costs a lot, but could help you be more effective by giving you more free time.
Jeff and I used to talk about how much we spent—as opposed to saving, taxes, and giving. At least for public communication, this got pretty confusing (because it’s really easy to misremember “these people spend x%” as “these people keep x% and give the rest away.”) Then people could very reasonably be annoyed that we were being presented as keeping less than we really do, once you include savings.
Now we instead talk about how much we keep (although that includes taxes) vs. how much we give.
Another potential problem with a maximum-consumption pledge is that it acts as an effective 100% marginal tax rate, and so may reduce self-interested motivation for doing things that will increase one’s salary.