Hi,
I've been donating 10% of my biweekly paycheck recently, but I'm starting to reconsider. I graduated from college a few months ago and just began working at a job that pays $60.10 per hour.
I live in the Bay Area, which, as you know, is an expensive place. While I’m currently living with my parents and paying $700 per month in rent, I’ve been thinking seriously about saving more aggressively now that I'm just starting my career.
So here's my dilemma: does it really make sense to stick to the 10% pledge at this point in my life? Part of me wonders—why not wait until later in life, or even until after I die, and include a 10% donation in my will? Wouldn’t that have a similar impact, or maybe even a greater one if I invest wisely now? For example, long-term investments like certificates of deposit or other vehicles could grow significantly over time, allowing for potentially larger donations later.
I also have some concerns about the structure of the 10% pledge itself for pre-tax income. Depending on your tax bracket, you might end up with less money by earning more, which seems counterintuitive.
The pledge also doesn’t seem to adjust for cost of living or personal financial circumstances, like whether someone is trying to build up savings early in their career. Shouldn’t it be based on disposable income instead?
Since I live in the U.S., I’m also unclear about how tax deductions for donations work. I think tax laws changed under Trump’s administration, so I’m not even sure if my donations are deductible anymore.
On top of that, I'm skeptical about charity effectiveness. Some nonprofits have a reputation for inefficiency. For example, I’ve heard that only about 30% of donations to the Red Cross actually go to helping people, with the rest covering salaries and overhead. It's not that I don’t care—these are important causes—but I worry that even well-meaning organizations like effective altruism non profits might suffer from similar inefficiencies. How can I know for a fact that these charities are actually effective, rather than just reading random nonverifiable statistics that it costs X amount to save a life? How do I know the data isn't made up?
I've also read troubling stories about corruption, particularly involving aid in certain countries. In some cases, governments stage photos of aid being distributed, only to confiscate and resell the supplies for profit. How can I really be sure that so-called “effective altruist” charities are truly effective? Saying that "$5,000 saves a life from malaria" sounds compelling, but how is that number calculated? If a net costs $6 and lasts for two years, wouldn't that translate to around $240 per life saved, not $5,000?
Honestly, I’m just feeling a bit overwhelmed. I’m at the beginning of my financial journey and still figuring out how to budget, especially with taxes and the high cost of living here. Committing to a large, ongoing donation feels like a big step when I don’t even fully understand my own finances yet.
I’d love to hear thoughts on my concerns.
Thanks for reading.
Just to address some of the valid points you raise:
(1) On charity effectiveness: At least in global health & development, GiveWell is considered the gold standard, and they are extremely rigorous in their evaluations - whether in terms looking at the scientific evidence or consulting experts or surveying beneficiaries or crunching the numbers in cost-effectiveness analysis or monitoring and evaluation.
I strongly suggest taking a look at their intervention reports (e.g. on mosquito nets to combat malaria: (https://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/insecticide-treated-nets) and their CEAs (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18ROI6dRdKsNfXg5gIyBa1_7eYOjowfbw5n65zkrLnvc/edit?gid=1364064522#gid=1364064522), to see just how meticulous and thorough they are, and to judge whether they take into account the concerns you have on corruption etc.
To provide some examples of what GiveWell adjust for, in their typically obsessive way - they adjust for (i) risk of wastage from double treatment/ineffective goods/goods purchased and left in storage till expiry, (ii) risk of misappropriation and of false monitoring, (iii) risk in the charity changing priorities or having non-funding bottlenecks or funging funding between more vs less effective programmes; (iv) % of mosquito nets actually used, (v) coverage years lost due to use of residual nets from previous distributions, (vi) program not having impact because it simply moved distributions closer together, (vii) internal & external validity issues with the randomized control trails used as evidence etc.
(2) On giving now vs later. I think it generally comes down to the following considerations.
(a) Value drift: I do think it's a real risk that by not donating, you lose the motivation to do so (it's easy to come up with excuses to put it off, not unlike exercise or dieting or quitting smoking/drugs/alcohol etc) and just end up not giving at all.
(b) Reduced cost-effectiveness over time: For most top GHD interventions available to the public, their cost-effectiveness will decline over time, because economic growth makes countries richer and reduces poverty and disease burdens over time - so if you give later, some of the cheapest ways of saving lives or reducing poverty will no longer exist (e.g. think of how expensive it is to save a life in America vs in the Congo, as an extreme example).
(c) Interest rates - as you point out, saving allows for your donation pool to grow (whether you invest in stocks or bonds or whatever).
Overall, (a) + (b) probably outweigh (c), making it more optimal to give now rather than later.
Point (c) regarding interest rates is quite tricky & subtle. At least, you should probably take into account something like the real interest rate instead of the nominal rate, because ceteris paribus it's much more plausible that only real (ie inflation adjusted) growth of your donation pool matters.
I would go even further and claim that, in expectation, you need to outperform the real risk free rate in order to generate a net benefit by donating later.
This means that unless you're happy to take some investment risk and aim to ouperform in real terms point (c) doesn't matter much.
However, imo if you're at an early point in your career, investing in your future career flexibility by having savings can have extremely high returns, which can outweigh all the other points.
On taxes, you can deduct charitable giving from the amount of income used to figure your federal taxes if you "itemize." The alternative to itemizing is claiming the standard deduction, which in 2025 is $15,000. That means that, as a practical matter, the first $15,000 in itemized expenses don't help you on your taxes, but anything over that does. A very general explanation of itemizing is here.
Major categories of itemized deductions include state/local taxes (capped at $10K), mortgage interest, and charitable giving. I'm not from California, but it looks like your state/local taxes may be ~$7K based on your income. That means that, as a practical matter, the first ~$8K you donate in a year may not help you on your taxes, but everything after that will. The usual (partial) workaround is to save up your donations in a separate account and donate them every few years for more favorable tax treatment. That's what my wife and I do.
I believe most people consider the amount of their income on a post-tax basis to the extent that their donations are not tax-deductible. For you, that would involve considering some taxes (e.g., Social Security/Medicare, maybe state) and part of your federal tax.
You're absolutely right that the pledge doesn't adjust for personal circumstances, cost of living, and other factors. In my opinion, it's overdemanding for some people, and underdemanding for others. I would consider 10% as both a community norm and as the specific ask of GWWC's flagship pledge. I think GWWC would primarily explain the use of a flat percentage ask as based on something other than it being the fairest / most philosophically sound ask in an ideal world.
I'll talk here about the community norm, which is more flexible than the pledge. As to specific factors:
By definition, most people have fairly typical personal circumstances on net, with some factors enabling a higher donation percentage and others inhibiting it. Some have significantly more challenging circumstances than average and some have significantly more favorable circumstances than average. It sounds like you have some factors that are relatively favorable (e.g., no kids, some family support, developed country, relatively high income by US standards) and some factors that go in the opposite direction (e.g., very high COL area, just starting out). I think it's best to read the community norm as commending 10% to people in fairly typical personal circumstances, with the understanding that this may not be reasonable for people in less-than-average personal circumstances.
Just to expand on this, GWWC say
Tangentially, my own introduction to the EA 10% pledge was via Scott Alexander's old (2014) essay Nobody Is Perfect, Everything Is Commensurable, in particular this passage, albeit aimed at a very particular audience:
Other answers are very much on point, but I want to flag a point others are not focused on.
You should absolutely be doing this, and it should be a focus. I don't think it's a reason not to donate, but this has been discussed several times before.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZXQ53du9sBjLZs5XB/how-to-balance-personal-savings-and-giving
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/psvQMXEgQsT5RMDTu/consider-financial-independence-first
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/w9ENDad268PT9KnWn/thoughts-on-personal-finance-for-effective-altruists
And on donating now vs. later,
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/7uJcBNZhinomKtH9p/giving-now-vs-later-a-summary
Two benefits of giving now rather than in your will in 80 years:
1. It's one small step in normalising giving. People are more likely to consider donating their money if they have people around them that do. You will nudge people.
2. Doing good accumulates compound interest. Empower someone to live a better life today rather than 80 years from now and they have and extra 80 years to be a productive member of society and help themselves, their family, their community.
Regarding donating 10% of your wealth in your will, as others have said, your donations will likely be more cost-effective now versus decades down the line. Moreover, 10% of your wealth upon death can be a drastically different amount of money than 10% of your annual income.
There are additional tax and other considerations like you’ve mentioned, but some simple math:
$60.10 * 2,080 (hours in a year assuming 40-hour work week) = $125,008 annual salary
If we assume a 3% pay increase each year, and that you work another 40 years:
0.10×125,008×((1.03)40−1)/0.03=$942,576
Under these assumptions, a 10% pre-tax donation rate until retirement will mean you've donated $942,576, so in order to match this amount by donating 10% in your will, you would need to have an estate worth at least $9.4 million. Your savings rate, investments, and a myriad of other factors could make a 10% donation in your will a much higher or lower number, therefore you may need to allocate a significantly higher or lower percentage of your estate to match the amount from annually donating.
If you haven't found this resource yet, the 10% Pledge webpage from Giving What We Can has an FAQ section that discusses a number of the points you brought up, and I would highly recommend reviewing it.
Congratulations on your recent graduation and good luck on your journey!