Pledge Highlight Week

Personal reasons why I wished I delayed donations: I started donating 10% of my income about 6 years back when I was making Software Engineer money. Then I delayed my donations when I moved into a direct work path, intending to make up the difference later in life. I don't have any regrets about 'donating right away' back then. But if I could do it all over again with the benefit of hindsight, I would have delayed most of my earlier donations too.

First, I've been surprised by 'necessary expenses'. Most of my health care needs have been in therapy and dental care, neither of which is covered much by insurance. On top of that, friend visits cost more over time as people scatter to different cities, meaning I'm paying a lot more for travel costs. And family obligations always manage to catch me off-caught.

Second, career transitions are expensive. I was counting on my programming skills and volunteer organizing to mean a lot more in public policy and research. But there are few substitutes for working inside your target field. And while everyone complains about Master's degrees, it's still heavily rewarded on the job market so I ultimately caved in and paid for one. 

Finally, I'm getting a lot more from 'money right away' these days. Thanks to some mental health improvements, fancy things are less stressful and more enjoyable than before. The extra vacation, concert, or restaurant is now worth it, and so my optimal spending level has increased. That's not just for enjoyment. My productivity also improves after that extra splurging, whereas before there wasn't much difference in the relaxation benefit I got from a concert and a series of YouTube comedy skits.

If I had to find a lesson here, it's that I thought too much about my altruistic desires changing and not enough on everything else changing. I opted to 'donate right away' to protect against future me rebelling against effective charity, worrying about value drift and stories of lost motivation. In practice, my preference for giving 10% has been incredibly robust. My other preferences have been a lot more dynamic. 

In honor of Pledge Highlight Week, here’s a list of some resources we recommend for people who are considering taking a pledge.

Articles/FAQ related to pledging

Why pledge (even if you already donate)

5 things you’ve got wrong about the Giving What We Can Pledge

Can money buy happiness? A review of the data (newly updated!)

Pledge FAQ

Videos featuring @Luke Freeman 🔸 :

Why make a public giving pledge? 

How change happens 

How much to donate to charity: Finding a good standard for giving

Pledgers sharing their experience

Case studies page

“People who give effectively” video playlist

Giving What We Can blog

Introductory videos about effective giving & the ideas behind the pledge

The story behind the 10% Pledge (featuring Toby Ord and released last month!)

You’re richer than you realise (Grace interviews people on the streets of London!)

And of course, our “How Rich Am I” calculator tool where you can see where your income puts you on a global scale. 

I took the 10% Pledge earlier this year, but was contemplating it a lot for a while before. After taking the pledge, I noticed a couple of insights that I think would have probably made me pledge earlier. I think these insights most directly apply to people who were in a similar situation as I was^[1]-  but they might be useful for others as well:

• You don’t have to donate 10% right away. Today (!) I learned that "while studying or unemployed, it is within the spirit of the Pledge to give 1% of spending money instead of the income-based pledge amount" and the 10% kicks in once you start earning a stable income. When I first learned about the pledge, I was still at uni and thought I should wait until I had a full-time job and some comfortable savings. However, even if I were already full-time employed at the time and wouldn’t donate at all for the next 4 years, I’d only have to donate ~11%^[2] for the rest of my career to compensate for the lack of donations over my lifetime. As someone having a ~median income in a high-income country, I believe that 11% is very doable. In fact (hot take!) I believe that 15-20% should be the norm for people in my situation. 
• 10% is not as much as you might think. I think for me, there was a strong anchoring effect here - in my city, most people I know donate something like 30-50€ a month, so 10% (100+ €/month at the time I learned about the pledge) felt like a huge step. Instead of pledging, I decided to just donate what I could “easily miss”. This included instances in which I surprisingly saved money, birthday and Christmas gifts and occasionally deliberate decisions to not purchase “luxuries”. Tracking all of these was a bit tedious, but it showed me how I could easily donate more than 10%, by reframing my donations around what I could genuinely “easily” give away, instead of seeing it in relation to what other people give.
  • Nowadays I'd recommend people to take the trial pledge, but doing so at 10% for say 6-12 months. My impression (out of my social bubble) is that many people take the trial pledge for 1%; which isn't bad, but it doesn't really give you a "trial" of what the 10% pledge would practically look like.
• Probably, the earlier you pledge the better. I have always been a bit of a nerd for social psychology and social norm-setting; and I think there is a plausible case to be made that the earlier you can help cultivate a norm, the more important it becomes to do so. I think Misconception #4 in this post (strongly recommended read!) summarizes the case quite well. Relatedly, as you move through life, you’ll probably always find a reason not to pledge yet - whether you are waiting to enter your first full-time career, building up your safety net, facing a career transition, saving for your first own house, etc. 

My tentative conclusion from all of this is that, assuming you expect to have a ~normal salary for the majority of your career and live in a high-income country, it is probably not too early to pledge.

1. ^{^}

   Part-time student in a high-income country, no real financial risk, because parents are sufficiently well off, expected to earn at least a median income over my lifetime.

2. ^{^}

   Assuming a forty-year career with the same income - but likely, your income would increase throughout your career and it would be less than 11%.