I believe that donating is better than saving, but I also believe it is wise to have some savings. There are some related posts, but as far as I can tell not about these questions:
- How much money do you save, and why? (E.g. 6 months of your usual costs of living, anything that doesn't go into my 10% donation, nothing at all)
- What do you do with your savings? (E.g. savings account at bank, cash in a vault, ETF, real estate)
I would like to learn how other effective altruists are handling this, and maybe change my behaviour if I hear better alternatives.
Here are my own answers as an example, and in case others are interested in the same information:
How much money do you save, and why?
I donate 10% of my income, and save whatever is left after regular costs. I keep those savings because I might want to become the owner of a house in the future and I probably can't get a mortgage that covers the full costs of the house, furthermore there might be times when I don't have any income.
What do you do with your savings?
50% is in a regular bank savings account, 30% is in investment funds from Triodos (the most ethical bank I could find), 20% is in loans to people in developing countries through Mintos (as far as I know regular banks in developing countries are not very good at helping people start businesses, which I believe would help their development).
Good questions! Curious how other EAs do this too
I donate 20% post tax. I also set a spending limit for myself ot 2k USD per month. Besides that I save everything.
With that savings I max out my retirement account savings each year (5500 USD in the US). That all goes into an index fund Rest of my savings mostly goes into index funds unless I have one off exciting investment opportunities (eg if my startup is raising a round. They were last year and I invested 10k)
The savings is basically earmarked for "giving me financial security and doing some good in the world later in life". I don't know if I will donate a large portion of it later, invest in a company I think will do good or give me a great return, finance any ventures I start myself. Maybe I would use it to pay for a house or something, but I would have to think very hard about that. My 2k per month spending cap is to prevent myself from having lifestyle creep so if I was to make a big purchase I would need to make sure I wasn't just indulging in luxury because I have money lying around.
I just invest in s and p 500, and in vanguards recommended retirement account. I don't try to take into account hoe much good or bad they do, partially out of skepticism of the counterfactual impact of impact investing, and partly out of inertia. If anyone knows of ea-principled work on this I'd be happy to change my approach