Podcast and Transcript: Allan Saldanha on earning to give.

Me and Allan recorded this podcast on Tuesday 10th December, based on the questions in this AMA. I used Claude to edit the transcript, but I've read over it for accuracy. You'll be able to listen to the podcast by clicking the speaker icon above, or searching for the EA Forum Podcast (Curated & Popular) on your podcast app. The recording will be under the same title as this post.  Note that it may take some time after posting for this podcast to be up on podcast apps.  

You'll be able to find the podcast here, once it has uploaded. 

Transcript

Toby Tremlett: Hey Allan, thank you so much for agreeing to do this forum AMA. For the listeners, Allan Saldanha works as a compliance testing manager at an investment bank, but he's also been a Giving What We Can pledger since 2014. Allan started off donating around 20% and now gives away 75%.

The first question I'd love to ask is, how did you first get interested in giving? In one of the AMA questions, @Denise_Melchin points out that Giving What We Can as of 2014 was skewed towards students and young professionals. How did you hear about Giving What We Can?

Allan Saldanha: I read a piece about Toby Ord in a newspaper around 2012, and my reaction reading about this academic who was giving away everything above a certain amount was "wow, that's incredible." But it literally didn't cross my mind that I should take the pledge - it just seemed like a great thing for somebody else to do.

Regarding my background with charitable giving - I'm of Indian origin and we go back to India regularly. I would see the poverty there and knew it was on a different level of absolute poverty compared to anything we see in developed countries. I knew that charities focused on the developing world and global health would achieve a lot more with donations.

I had the maximizing instinct that many in effective altruism have. I would wait for Christmas giving appeals where newspapers would do donation matching. I'd look for ones linked to charities focused on the developing world, like Sightsavers or WaterAid. At work, I'd leverage matching - I would triple or quadruple colleagues' donations by taking advantage of both newspaper matching and my firm's matching. Sometimes it would multiply up to 16 or even 24 times people's donations, but the total amount was maybe up to £1,000 a year. I knew I should probably give more but kept deferring it, thinking I'd give more later in life or in my will.

Then around Christmas 2013, I saw another matching appeal and made a donation to Against Malaria Foundation. It seemed like a very effective charity - I saw an Oxford matching opportunity for AMF. After donating, I was contacted by Rob Gledhill from Giving What We Can. He sent me research by Toby Ord about effective charities and asked if I'd consider taking the pledge. I read the research and information about Giving What We Can and thought, "I can't actually think of good reasons not to do this."

At the time I was between jobs - I'd been made redundant a year earlier, but before that I was in finance as an investment manager for 14 years, earning well and had saved quite a bit. I had financial security and had saved for my kids, so I thought I was in a good position. When I got back into work, I couldn't think of a reason why I shouldn't take the pledge. I got back into work in May 2014 and started donating 20% in my first year.

Toby Tremlett: If we focus on the moment when you made that decision and couldn't think of reasons not to - how did you get there? Were people around you donating? Was it normal to talk about donations? Even £1,000 a year compared to your current level doesn't seem like much, but to many people that's substantial, including those with high salaries.

Allan Saldanha: It derived from seeing poverty levels in India and things like the Ethiopian famine and Band Aid. It seemed to me that I should give to charity, which is why I was giving £1,000. My firm matched donations up to £40 a month, which anyone whose firm offers matching should take advantage of. Sadly, my current firm doesn't match donations.

The tax incentives were good - as a 40% taxpayer, £40 of gross salary was costing me £24, and with the firm's matching, that £24 would result in an £80 donation to an effective cause. That seemed like an obvious choice.

I felt strongly about people in poverty through no fault of their own - being of Indian origin, my parents immigrated but you could go back a couple of generations and find relatives not living well. You can easily picture yourself in that situation. If I was in that position and knew someone else had surplus income and didn't give at all, that would be very sad.

It's true that people around me weren't giving much - maybe the odd fiver when someone was doing a marathon, very ad hoc. But I've always been someone who, if something seems right, isn't too influenced by peer pressure. That hasn't always worked for me, but in this case it did.

Toby Tremlett: In the comments of your AMA, several people were very supportive of what you're doing, saying it's amazing and inspiring. Do you get feedback like that from people around you? Do they know that you donate so much? Does that support your continued giving?

Allan Saldanha: I get kudos from my family because they're aware of it, but I don't mention it much. I was interviewed by The Guardian a few years ago about my giving, so some people at work and old school friends read that and said it was impressive. My hope was that it would influence others - one or two people did say they were going to give more as a result, which was nice to hear.

Toby Tremlett: It's definitely a weird thing to talk about since it's not culturally normalized. The marathon fundraising is one of the only times where you can discuss it, but you still wouldn't want to be too flashy about it.

Allan Saldanha: I did run appeals at work for a while after taking the pledge. I was in internal audit - not the best-paid area of investment banking, but we're still very well paid compared to most people. In a department of 200-300 people, I would send emails about effective charities, mentioning how you could save a life for what Give Well estimated was $2,000-3,000, and explaining why I'd taken the Giving What We Can pledge.

I only got three donations as a result. One was my boss who donated £250, and one was from an executive assistant who was relatively poorly paid. The social embarrassment and self-consciousness didn't seem worth it. After that, I only discussed it with people who seemed particularly altruistic. For instance, there was a colleague who founded an Islamic association at work and was interested in refugee causes - I spoke with her about it and she came to some EA London events.

Toby Tremlett: How did you increase your giving? What motivated you to give a larger percentage of your income?

Allan Saldanha: It was largely outside of the community. There was an EA finance group in London that met quarterly, which I attended when I could, given family commitments and hobbies. I found it useful seeing so many young people who'd taken the pledge, many on much smaller incomes than mine and at earlier stages in their lives without much financial security. That led me to increase my donations because it was impressive.

The age distribution in Giving What We Can is strange - there should be more people in the latter half of their careers when earning power is often higher and they have more savings. To someone in my mid-40s category, it's very impressive that there are so many young people who commit to this.

I don't know if I would have taken the pledge right after university - there's so much more uncertainty now, you don't have jobs for life like you might have 30-40 years ago. As I got more confident in effective altruism from meeting others and as the community grew, I became more comfortable increasing my giving.

After the first couple of years back at work, I went up to 40%. The step up to 75% came when I realized that during my working career as a 40% taxpayer, the multiplier effect means that for every pound donated, the charity effectively gets £1.70. That seemed like the best time to donate.

I discussed the increasing donations with my wife. She was initially concerned, but through repeated conversations, I explained that we have growing savings and investments, plus my pension contributions - I wasn't jeopardizing our financial security. She tolerates it and respects my choice. My wife, while not agreeing with the amount I donate, is naturally frugal and not materialistic. It might have been more difficult with a partner who wanted to spend more of our income.

Toby Tremlett: I think that relates to whether it's actually easier to commit to this as a student or when you're older. Once you've been earning a high income for a while, it's easy to accumulate extra costs and spending patterns that feel necessary, making donations feel like a major lifestyle downgrade.

Allan Saldanha: There were times when I was conscious of my spending and tried to reduce it, but those were exceptions. My spending has probably increased over time - I've become less frugal. I was always more of a saver than a spender by nature, which has made it easier. I'm not into luxury items like cars and expensive holidays.

Other people's higher spending doesn't make me feel I should do the same. As a family, we eat at restaurants weekly, have takeaways, and live in a nice house. Our spending is probably in the top 10-25% range - we don't want for anything material. My kids sometimes complain, but they respect what I do and are proud. One has talked about taking the pledge themselves.

Toby Tremlett: Could you talk about where you donate currently? You had an interesting path through different causes.

Allan Saldanha: Like many who take the pledge, I was initially motivated by the fact that you could save a child's life by donating to Against Malaria Foundation or the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative for $2,000-3,000. I thought I would just donate to whatever GiveWell said was most effective.

I'd never had pets and animal welfare seemed remote to me, but through the EA community and reading about the degree of suffering among farm animals, I started giving some donations to animal welfare charities. I realized I'd need quite a high multiple of human life value compared to animal life to justify not giving to animal welfare.

Then, seeing the importance of growing the effective altruism community, which is still smaller than we'd like, I started giving to meta-charities and EA organizations.

Reading Toby Ord's view in The Precipice about a one-in-six chance of human extinction really shocked me. The arguments about at least 150 million future generations - if you conservatively expect Earth to last 500 million years and multiply that by 10 billion people - give you an astronomical amount of human life. If you see no reason why future lives should be worth less than present lives, and given that experts were writing about these risks, that persuaded me to change almost all my giving to longtermist organizations or funds.

I was curious why this wasn't a more popular allocation, as it was a minority view despite The Precipice and other writings. When I asked people about it, they gave various reasons. The most compelling to me was the tractability argument - that with very little idea of effective interventions in these areas, there's a possibility of doing harm.

Toby Tremlett: I was wondering about the value of certainty in your giving. It's a long way from GiveWell's approach, where they try to be very precise about impacts and costs. When we talk about longtermism, there's a lot of uncertainty - the money might not achieve anything, but there's some chance it could be astronomically valuable. How do you feel about that?

Allan Saldanha: I try to be risk-neutral rather than risk-averse. I'm comfortable with this hits-based giving approach. Part of me does miss the warm feeling you get from being pretty certain that $5,000 is saving a child's life. But if longtermist interventions could be hundreds or thousands of times more effective in expectation, I'm willing to give up some of that warm feeling.

When I started giving, I hoped for more warm fuzzy feelings. I think most of us in EA have this perfectionist, optimizing streak that leads us to donate more or work in EA organizations at lower salaries for impact. That probably means we don't get as many warm fuzzy feelings as we'd like.

Toby Tremlett: That's part of the value of the EA community - people rewarding you for things that other communities might not recognize as exciting. Hopefully we can calibrate together to socially reward each other appropriately.

Allan Saldanha: Yes, without it becoming a mutual appreciation society. I remember reading in one of Peter Singer's books about someone who made an altruistic kidney donation that enabled a chain of three or four donations. When Singer asked if they felt proud, the person said they were glad they'd done it, but someone could achieve the same impact by donating $10,000.

That gives me a warm feeling because while I wouldn't compare my giving to such an incredible self-sacrifice, I'm in a position where I can have the same impact by giving something that doesn't affect my quality of life.

Toby Tremlett: Do you expect you might change your giving drastically in the future? Are you actively looking for new research?

Allan Saldanha: I probably don't look for research much, but I'm open to changing my opinions as I have throughout this journey. I'm comfortable donating to funds - EA Funds was wonderful for me because having experts in different areas donate their time and knowledge to make better decisions than I could is valuable.

I've ensured I have enough time for my hobbies and family. I did briefly look for a more directly impactful career, but I've been somewhat selfish in wanting time for my hobbies and family, and enjoying my free time rather than spending as much time as others in the community do on research or career advancement. I don't want to pressure myself and impact my mental health.

Toby Tremlett: I don't think it's just selfishness versus altruism - there are many rational places to draw the line between maximizing impact and maintaining the various goods involved in a good life.

Allan Saldanha: I find it very impressive that people are impact-maximizing, but I'm comfortable at my current level. Before hearing about Giving What We Can, I knew I wanted to give more but had no framework for thinking about it. The pledge gave me that framework.

Toby Tremlett: Do you have any advice for people interested in starting to donate? Both for people in a similar position to you and for younger people signing pledges?

Allan Saldanha: For people in a similar position - reasonably well-paid professionals in finance or other fields - I think about the economic life-cycle hypothesis. Early in life, you have high spending relative to income and should focus on saving. Your giving can start low while maintaining interest. As you get older and become a 40% taxpayer in the UK, that's the sweet spot for giving due to tax incentives. After retirement, your income drops and tax incentives for bequests aren't as good.

The 10% pledge is a wonderful concept and a good level. In my case, it was a process of discovery and discussion with my wife to decide where I felt comfortable, while ensuring financial security and savings for my kids.

For young people starting out, it's impressive that anyone is considering it at all. Starting to save and build a pension is important, and giving can take place over your whole life - you don't need to start immediately with the full 10%.

Toby Tremlett: The pledge is technically 10% over the course of your life, so you don't have to give at the start.

Allan Saldanha: Exactly - like the life-cycle hypothesis, it can be smoothed out over your life with a level of consumption, and the same could apply to giving.

Toby Tremlett: One last question - @Christoph Eggert  commented about his journey trying to figure out if paying 50% of his bonuses post-tax , and 10% of his pre-tax earnings (with a 65k euro salary) is the right amount for him. Sometimes it feels too much, sometimes too little. Do you have any advice about the emotional journey with giving?

Allan Saldanha: I can empathize with that feeling. As I increased my donations, there were times when I felt I should be giving more, and times when I felt uncertain - particularly when my mother was alarmed about the 75% level. For me, it was a process of discovery to find what I felt comfortable with. When I started at 20%, I knew I wanted to increase over time, and that approach of gradually increasing to a comfortable level worked for me.

Toby Tremlett: Thank you so much for your time and obviously for your donations.

Allan Saldanha: Thanks for your time.