Joey, am I right in thinking your don’t count work expenses in your estimate?
Your circumstances seem quite unusual for a couple of reason.
It seems you work in your home, and so don’t commute to work. Most people don’t get to move their office to suit their preferences. In general, if your office is in a city, you either pay to commute to it, or you’d pay more rent if you move closer, both of which are more expensive than your set up. (You could cycle, but you’d expect to you pay more to live within cycling distance).
I’d also be curious to know how you spend as part of your work and whether you count those trips in your budget or class them as business expenses. Just to push the point, if I spent 52 weeks of the year on business travel I claimed from my organisation, my personal expenditure would be tiny. I think there’s also something in that travelling abroad for work will be a partial replacement for holidays (at the least, it’s a change of scenery), which I don’t see in your budget either.
Maybe the other thing is you’re living with a partner. This isn’t something one can guarantee, and if you doubled your rent, utilities and internet numbers (leaving aside, for the moment, the normal costs of dating!), because I’m assuming you split those, that adds $3300 dollars-ish, around an extra third, to your total.
I think what you’re doing is admirable, but my concern is that because you run your own organisation and live with a partner, which not all EAs can or will do, you’re able to reduce your own expenditure in ways that are hard to recreate. Hence I’m not sure how practical a standard this is, even leaving aside all the concerns you might be able to spend more to save time.
It depends on the work expense. I would guess I generally err on the side of covering it under personal expense (e.g. using our home as an office space we do not get compensation for, or the free food we provide in Van comes out of our personal budget.). But we do put some things under it (e.g. my next flight to India will indeed be under work costs). I think in general our work expenses budget wise follow a similar pattern of lower cost than comparable organizations, so I do not feel my personal budget is offset by it any more so than the average EA org/earning to give job, probably a little less.
It’s true I have no specific budget for travel (although this would go under “other spending”). I generally find there are less money and time consuming ways to maximize novelty and life satisfaction. I wish I could count my trips to India as holiday travel and I guess they are novel. Overall though the locations we are going to (low income cities in north India) would not count as a vacation for most people. Certainly that is the way I feel, although I can imagine other people enjoying travel as a whole more than I do.
I definitely think you’re right it’s hard to cross-apply any specific rule, and there are things that could pull in both directions (I do think living with a partner makes this possible where it would otherwise not be). Of course there are other things that would pull in the opposite direction (there are cities cheaper than Vancouver for example). As mentioned in first comment, this was the number we felt we could both be comfortable and optimally effective at. If it was different circumstances we would have picked a different number.
We do not think we are so atypical in terms of skills and life circumstances in the EA movement that some EAs wouldn’t benefit from this post. Of course we believe that many people will have different life circumstances that prevent it, but there are also many who could do something more like this. Many people cannot donate 10%, but I still think it’s very worthwhile to talk about and I expect many people that hear about folks donating 10% increase their net donations. I think the same applies to stronger commitments (e.g. 50% or more).
Joey, am I right in thinking your don’t count work expenses in your estimate?
Your circumstances seem quite unusual for a couple of reason.
It seems you work in your home, and so don’t commute to work. Most people don’t get to move their office to suit their preferences. In general, if your office is in a city, you either pay to commute to it, or you’d pay more rent if you move closer, both of which are more expensive than your set up. (You could cycle, but you’d expect to you pay more to live within cycling distance).
I’d also be curious to know how you spend as part of your work and whether you count those trips in your budget or class them as business expenses. Just to push the point, if I spent 52 weeks of the year on business travel I claimed from my organisation, my personal expenditure would be tiny. I think there’s also something in that travelling abroad for work will be a partial replacement for holidays (at the least, it’s a change of scenery), which I don’t see in your budget either.
Maybe the other thing is you’re living with a partner. This isn’t something one can guarantee, and if you doubled your rent, utilities and internet numbers (leaving aside, for the moment, the normal costs of dating!), because I’m assuming you split those, that adds $3300 dollars-ish, around an extra third, to your total.
I think what you’re doing is admirable, but my concern is that because you run your own organisation and live with a partner, which not all EAs can or will do, you’re able to reduce your own expenditure in ways that are hard to recreate. Hence I’m not sure how practical a standard this is, even leaving aside all the concerns you might be able to spend more to save time.
It depends on the work expense. I would guess I generally err on the side of covering it under personal expense (e.g. using our home as an office space we do not get compensation for, or the free food we provide in Van comes out of our personal budget.). But we do put some things under it (e.g. my next flight to India will indeed be under work costs). I think in general our work expenses budget wise follow a similar pattern of lower cost than comparable organizations, so I do not feel my personal budget is offset by it any more so than the average EA org/earning to give job, probably a little less.
It’s true I have no specific budget for travel (although this would go under “other spending”). I generally find there are less money and time consuming ways to maximize novelty and life satisfaction. I wish I could count my trips to India as holiday travel and I guess they are novel. Overall though the locations we are going to (low income cities in north India) would not count as a vacation for most people. Certainly that is the way I feel, although I can imagine other people enjoying travel as a whole more than I do.
I definitely think you’re right it’s hard to cross-apply any specific rule, and there are things that could pull in both directions (I do think living with a partner makes this possible where it would otherwise not be). Of course there are other things that would pull in the opposite direction (there are cities cheaper than Vancouver for example). As mentioned in first comment, this was the number we felt we could both be comfortable and optimally effective at. If it was different circumstances we would have picked a different number.
We do not think we are so atypical in terms of skills and life circumstances in the EA movement that some EAs wouldn’t benefit from this post. Of course we believe that many people will have different life circumstances that prevent it, but there are also many who could do something more like this. Many people cannot donate 10%, but I still think it’s very worthwhile to talk about and I expect many people that hear about folks donating 10% increase their net donations. I think the same applies to stronger commitments (e.g. 50% or more).