Sadly, my circumstances have changed such that this was no longer possible without significant work-productivity trade-offs. Specifically, I moved to London, UK (due to work) and have only intermittently been living with a partner. I now am living off a range between £20k-£30k depending on year. I still have the view that a higher salary would not significantly increase my productivity beyond that and have, if anything, more concerns about the current spending habits of EA for reasons described pretty well here.
Thanks for your response! I’m glad I found your post – had been thinking about this topic in very similar ways for a while but hadn’t seen anyone else discuss it this way (or attempt it).
I do think that living with world GDP per capita is potentially an underestimate of how much one’s share should be when living in a very expensive place (e.g. London). Clearly everyone should have right to housing and housing in London isn’t that much more expensive to build than anywhere else (?), but world GDP per capita can’t cover that.
I think that adjusting one’s yearly budget from that ideal point to compensate for one’s area’s cost of living seems reasonable. Another even more lax approach is to aim to live with 30-50th percentile income of the city/​country one lives in: plenty of people do it, thus it must be possible.
Hey Nescio,
Sadly, my circumstances have changed such that this was no longer possible without significant work-productivity trade-offs. Specifically, I moved to London, UK (due to work) and have only intermittently been living with a partner. I now am living off a range between £20k-£30k depending on year. I still have the view that a higher salary would not significantly increase my productivity beyond that and have, if anything, more concerns about the current spending habits of EA for reasons described pretty well here.
Thanks for your response! I’m glad I found your post – had been thinking about this topic in very similar ways for a while but hadn’t seen anyone else discuss it this way (or attempt it).
I do think that living with world GDP per capita is potentially an underestimate of how much one’s share should be when living in a very expensive place (e.g. London). Clearly everyone should have right to housing and housing in London isn’t that much more expensive to build than anywhere else (?), but world GDP per capita can’t cover that.
I think that adjusting one’s yearly budget from that ideal point to compensate for one’s area’s cost of living seems reasonable. Another even more lax approach is to aim to live with 30-50th percentile income of the city/​country one lives in: plenty of people do it, thus it must be possible.