TL;DR: spend some time noticing how much other people and let that inform your budget, but don’t try to pay attention them every day, because you probably can’t go around powered by guilt forever.
That advice was written at a time when I thought of donation as basically the only path to impact, at least for myself. I do think it’s worth seriously considering whether other paths are viable for you and not committing to a level of donation that will seriously reduce your ability to pursue other things. This probably won’t be surprising coming from the person running Giving What We Can, but I think something like 10% is a level that’s both significant and also compatible with, for example, working for a nonprofit.
I find the upside of deciding annually on my donation budget is that I can then make all the other decisions the way everyone else does. Vacation? Lunch with a friend? Donation to friend’s fundraiser? They’re all in the “stuff that will enrich my life” category, so I can trade them off against each other however I think will be best for me.
I think guilt is a powerful & fragile motivator that should basically be considered harmful, at least for people whose psychologies are shaped like mine.
My advice on how to decide the pots of money is basically in this post: http://www.givinggladly.com/2012/03/tradeoffs.html
TL;DR: spend some time noticing how much other people and let that inform your budget, but don’t try to pay attention them every day, because you probably can’t go around powered by guilt forever.
That advice was written at a time when I thought of donation as basically the only path to impact, at least for myself. I do think it’s worth seriously considering whether other paths are viable for you and not committing to a level of donation that will seriously reduce your ability to pursue other things. This probably won’t be surprising coming from the person running Giving What We Can, but I think something like 10% is a level that’s both significant and also compatible with, for example, working for a nonprofit.
I find the upside of deciding annually on my donation budget is that I can then make all the other decisions the way everyone else does. Vacation? Lunch with a friend? Donation to friend’s fundraiser? They’re all in the “stuff that will enrich my life” category, so I can trade them off against each other however I think will be best for me.
Thanks, Julia.
I think guilt is a powerful & fragile motivator that should basically be considered harmful, at least for people whose psychologies are shaped like mine.
This all reminds me of stuff that Raemon has been writing recently, as well as this part of the EA jobs are really hard to get thread.