My story : I’m a self employed physician, so don’t have a pension, and spent 14 years in university/residency. Due to my long training, I graduated feeling behind in terms of retirement savings—I had none. I’m now six years into practice and have been giving about a 12th of my salary yearly.
There is certainly a tension—should I be saving this money for me/my kids? If I saved more, I could maybe give more later. I think investing in my (2nd gen EA) children is worthwhile and important. When have I saved enough and can I call an amount extra? Being a physician has been a tough gig the last few years but I’m a long way from FI, obviously saving more I could get there faster. If I reached FI, I may be open to partially switching to a higher impact career.
Rationally, I know I’m probably helping more people with my donation than I am through my (rewarding, but ineffectively altruistic) work so that helps.
It looks like there are an increasing number of well paying EA jobs in all kinds of roles. Maybe you need to do some work to find the right personal fit (like 80K hours). As soon as you start working, start investing because compound interest is amazing. A book that helped me learn to invest is Millionaire Teacher by Andrew Hallam.
My story : I’m a self employed physician, so don’t have a pension, and spent 14 years in university/residency. Due to my long training, I graduated feeling behind in terms of retirement savings—I had none. I’m now six years into practice and have been giving about a 12th of my salary yearly. There is certainly a tension—should I be saving this money for me/my kids? If I saved more, I could maybe give more later. I think investing in my (2nd gen EA) children is worthwhile and important. When have I saved enough and can I call an amount extra? Being a physician has been a tough gig the last few years but I’m a long way from FI, obviously saving more I could get there faster. If I reached FI, I may be open to partially switching to a higher impact career. Rationally, I know I’m probably helping more people with my donation than I am through my (rewarding, but ineffectively altruistic) work so that helps.
It looks like there are an increasing number of well paying EA jobs in all kinds of roles. Maybe you need to do some work to find the right personal fit (like 80K hours). As soon as you start working, start investing because compound interest is amazing. A book that helped me learn to invest is Millionaire Teacher by Andrew Hallam.