Continuing the pledge.

[zestyping]

Last year around this time, I decided to begin an experiment: to match everything I spend on a non-essential purchase with an equal donation to an effective charity

Comments

[ext_37366]

Glad to hear, congrats! Did you end up choosing any new effective charities, or changing the ones you'd picked out?

[zestyping]

Thanks! I did end up with some others on the list. Picking charities seems like a whole other interesting discussion, so the list is in another post. I see you posted your list too-congratulations on your fifth anniversary!

[ext_383810]

For your warmth, depth and generosity (and amongst myriad other reasons), this is why I love you. xoxo

[islandmomma]

Someone linked to your blog via Twitter, and now I can't remember who it was, but this is an absolutely brilliant idea. I lost my job a year ago, and so I've been careful about where I give, basically because there ain't much to go around, but this is perfect, and I'm going to try to do something similar! Thanks for the inspiration.

[zestyping]

Thank you! I'm excited to hear that you like the idea. I'm curious to know what you decide to do-please let me know how it goes.

[ext_384071]

Congratulations for your successes in altruism. I have been playing with the same idea for years, but haven't put it in pratice yet. It's very nice to see that someone has and that it works.

[zestyping]

Hi David, thanks for writing. What kinds of ideas have you been playing with? Any insights on what makes it easier or harder to put into practice?

[ext_384071]

Thanks for the reply, Ping. I'm afraid this is the first time I return to the thread, so I didn't read it until now

so what percentage was it?

[ext_384563]

I'm curious about what percentage of your income you ended up donating using this method?

i'm a member of Giving What We Can (glad you've found the site) and there are some very good arguments for using a percentage - or alternatively giving away everything above the essentials.

i'm not sure why you consider your method less arbitrary - it is also arbitrary but regulated by your criteria for essential/non-essential and your own hedonism essentially. btw, i think it's a great idea and think many people would be able to take it on board.

i guess though, there's the possibility of getting stuck - what happens if you spend more on non-essential items than you can match? or purchase major assets - like a car or house (essential or not).

great to see what you're doing though.

(and thanks for the link to mint)

Re: so what percentage was it?

[zestyping]

Hi David, thanks for writing!

Non-essential spending came out to 21%; I donated 24%.

Glad to hear you're a member of GWWC-which chapter? I applied to become a member when I discovered the site a week ago; no reply yet. I guess Toby or other folks must be pretty busy or on holiday. :)
i'm not sure why you consider your method less arbitrary - it is also arbitrary but regulated by your criteria for essential/non-essential and your own hedonism essentially. btw, i think it's a great idea and think many people would be able to take it on board.
Certainly, of course, this method is arbitrary, like any method that creates artificial causality between some other action and donation. It's just as arbitrary as, say, sponsoring someone to run a race for charity-it makes no logical sense to "run for a cure"-but people do it. So, I don't claim that the offset method is objectively less arbitrary, just that it feels less arbitrary to me. I can make sense out of the 1:1 relationship

Re: so what percentage was it?

[ext_384563]

Thanks for the reply. Thanks for sharing that info as well - afterwards I thought it might be a bit too personal. It's great to see it working so well for you and enabling you to give so much

Re: so what percentage was it?

[ext_384563]

and thanks for clarifying the method. i think it has a lot of merit.