Excellent! Donated $500. Whether yours is a counter-bluff or not ;)
This is by far the most I’ve donated to a charity. I spent yesterday assessing my financial situation, something I’ve only done in passing because of my fairly comfortable position. It has always felt smart to me to ignore the existence of my excess cash, but I have a fair amount of it and the recent increase of discussion about charity has made me reassess where best to locate it. I will be donating to SENS in the near future, probably more than I have to SIAI. I’m aware of the argument for giving everything to a single charity, but it seems even Eli is conflicted about giving advice about SIAI vs. SENS, given this discussion.
I recently read that investing in the stock market (casually, not as a trader or anything) in the hopes that your wealth will grow such that you can donate even more at a later time is erroneous because the charity could be doing the same thing, with more of it. Is this true, and does anyone know if the SIAI, or SENS does this? It seems to me that both of these organizations have immediate use for pretty much all money they receive and do not invest at all. How much would my money have to make in an investment account to be able to contribute more (adjusting for inflation) in the future?
The logic of donating now is that if a charity would use your money now, it is because less money now is more useful than more money later. Not all charities may be smart enough to realize whether they should invest, but I feel confidant that if investing money rather than spending it right away were the best approach for their goals, the people at the SIAI would be smart enough to do so.
Excellent! Donated $500. Whether yours is a counter-bluff or not ;)
This is by far the most I’ve donated to a charity. I spent yesterday assessing my financial situation, something I’ve only done in passing because of my fairly comfortable position. It has always felt smart to me to ignore the existence of my excess cash, but I have a fair amount of it and the recent increase of discussion about charity has made me reassess where best to locate it. I will be donating to SENS in the near future, probably more than I have to SIAI. I’m aware of the argument for giving everything to a single charity, but it seems even Eli is conflicted about giving advice about SIAI vs. SENS, given this discussion.
I recently read that investing in the stock market (casually, not as a trader or anything) in the hopes that your wealth will grow such that you can donate even more at a later time is erroneous because the charity could be doing the same thing, with more of it. Is this true, and does anyone know if the SIAI, or SENS does this? It seems to me that both of these organizations have immediate use for pretty much all money they receive and do not invest at all. How much would my money have to make in an investment account to be able to contribute more (adjusting for inflation) in the future?
The logic of donating now is that if a charity would use your money now, it is because less money now is more useful than more money later. Not all charities may be smart enough to realize whether they should invest, but I feel confidant that if investing money rather than spending it right away were the best approach for their goals, the people at the SIAI would be smart enough to do so.