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 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.