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Another reason to first secure financial independence is to mitigate conflict of interest risks.

If one’s ability to provide food, shelter, and healthcare—to themselves /​ loved ones—depends on whether they’re doing/​publishing impressive things about anthropogenic x-risks, they can easily end up doing impactful, net-negative things (due to being biased /​ self-deception).

Even without conflicts of interest, complex cluelessness is a common phenomenon in the domains of anthropogenic x-risks and meta-EA (due to an abundance of crucial considerations). It is often very hard to judge whether a given intervention is net-positive or net-negative. Conflicts of interest can thus easily influence decisions catastrophically.

On the other hand, advocating for many people to secure financial independence and then go work independently in anthropogenic x-risks domains can exacerbate the unilateralist’s curse problem and make coordination harder. (Relative to a situation where there are few EA orgs that employ those people.)

I’m going to disagree, and suggest a modified program that I think is more compatible with norms in effective altruism, for two reasons, on substantive, one social. Of course, people can do what they want, and I’m certainly happy to hear that people plan to give later, rather than not giving at all.

But first, the modified program I’m suggesting is to take a giving what we can pledge, and donate 10% of your income, and then dedicate the rest of your disposable income to FIRE. This will lead to a slower achievement of financial independence, but is fully compatible with EA goals and norms, instead of requiring “special dispensation” to do FIRE. Again, there are two reasons I think this is a better plan.

First, I think that those who want to cultivate a norm of caring need to address the immediacy of global needs. Whether you are interested in mitigating global catastrophic risks, or interested in global human welfare, or reducing animal suffering, all of the problems are urgent. The difference between achieving full financial independence in 15 years versus 20 is far less than the difference you make by donating—that’s the entire point of EA. And if you in fact plan to continue working to donate after you achieve financial independence, and to donate even more than 10% to EA causes, you can do this regardless of whether this takes 15 years or 20 to manage. But if you aren’t saving lives or reducing suffering now, you lose the opportunity to affect things in the meanwhile, and for anyone earning a significant enough income to be able to retire in a couple decades, I don’t think that this is an unreasonable tradeoff.

Second, there is a problem that culturally, it’s hard to stay involved in EA without actually doing the things EA suggests. Value drift is common, and problematic, and involvement in the FIRE community is great, but it certainly isn’t reinforcing any of the EA ideas. The immediacy of the giving pledge and the engagement with the community is a mentally healthier way to engage with the problems you care about. Of course, people can and will do what they want. But “I’ll give once I’m comfortably able to not worry about retirement” is a very easy slippery slope to slide down, and the uncertainties of the future will always provide easy justification for waiting longer.

Pursuing financial independence first assumes that the world and financial markets remain stable for long enough for you to achieve it. What basis do you have for that assumption though? Or for your assumption that most x-risks are ten years out? It’s possible that climate change, for example, is accelerating and may lead to civilisational breakdown before then. The possibility of nuclear war has also increased recently. These are only two of a whole host of x-risks we face. A better option, therefore, might be to adopt what Taleb calls a barbell strategy: to devote part of your time to achieving financial independence and the rest to working directly on existential risk mitigation. Putting all your eggs into the one basket of ‘achieving financial independence’ does not seem rational to me in view of our current complex and interconnected risk landscape.

I was FIRE before I become EA. My original plan was to do exactly what you suggested and reach financial independence first before moving into direct work. However, depending on what field you want to move into, it’s also possible to make decent money while doing direct work as well—once I found that out for AI alignment, I decided to go into direct work earlier.

That said, I definitely agree with some of your claims. I donate 10%, and am not currently intending to donate more until I have enough money to be financially independent if I wanted to. I’ve taken a pay cut, but I am still actively saving money towards my goal—just expecting to hit it slower. (Which is fine, since I’m not planning on retiring early any more)

In addition, full financial independence requires ~25 years worth of investments. You may not need that much, but having even 5-10% of that gives you an absolutely enormous runway in case you want to try something new, your grants run out, and so on. There’s a huge difference between no runway and a year or two of runway, so I definitely think that doing this early on is a good idea. Also, you know that way that you can make money outside the EA ecosystem, which is important—EA is still a very young movement. It’s gotten a lot of momentum, but I wouldn’t recommend anyone commit to a course of action where you have no useful skills if EA dies out in 10-20 years.

I believe there is a world in which you can pursue both FIRE and regular donations starting today. Assuming you are financially secure and actively working towards FI, I believe that one can take a pledge today, and still donate their estate upon their old age or death. And that these two acts of giving are not mutually exclusive. Per @Davidmanheim comment “it’s hard to stay involved in EA without actually doing the things EA suggests”. I agree that building this uphill habit up today is important so that it grounds you to give your nest egg tomorrow. I’m deeply interested in this space, and recently created this “Fi-lanthropy Calculator” per this EA Post. It allows people to explore their options of giving today vs. tomorrow in line with their timeline to FI.

Else, on the whole, I agree and think all EAs (and most people) should make FI a priority in order to assure their security and comfort in old age. (I genuinely don’t like the term RE as much because it involves negative connotations).

Strong upvote! Did you see this recent comment thread about FIREA (Financial Independance and Retire EA)?

I’d be excited to see a community of EAs focusing on high saving rates for later donation or direct work. Would you be interested in being around on a Discord for that if I set it up?

At the higher earning level (FANG SDE’s) a consideration to keep in mind is that in the US only 60% of income can be written off as charitable giving each year.
The US and CA Gov takes ~43% percent of your income each year in taxes so it may be a better idea to spread out giving over as many years as possible to bypass that.