Journey to Give Away $1 Million
Welcome! This is a blog (or at least a journal of sorts) about philanthropy and intentional giving from a FIRE perspective.
Purpose #1: Questions that Need Answering
I’m not writing this blog to tell you what to do, but rather to work through and document my learning about how to give to charitable causes intentionally and in a way that has a real impact.
I have a lot of questions about how I can do charitable giving in a more intentional way and this blog is my way to explore those questions and find some answers to better guide my own giving.
Questions I Want to Understand
Why should I give to charitable causes and what real-world impact does it have?
How much should I give each year? Should it be a % of income or a % of wealth? What are some guidelines for how to decide?
How do I give in an intentional way instead of random, token amounts here or there?
How do I choose which areas (like poverty or education) and individual charities to give to?
Should I only give to the “best” or “most effective” charities that have the highest measurable impact per $1 like what’s espoused by effective altruism?
How do I balance giving to my community vs. giving to world needs?
How can I differentiate between effective charities and wasteful ones?
If a charity has a high % of funds going to “overhead” is that necessarily a bad thing?
Can giving to charity improve my life and my connection with the community and others?
I don’t have answers, but I do have questions. Questions that need answering.
Beyond writing about charitable giving, the other main purpose of this blog is to document my own charitable giving in an open way and to track my progress towards my goal of giving away $1M by age 45. Yes that’s right, I want to give away $1M within about 10 years and you get to be my accountability buddy!
Purpose #2: Give $1M away by age 45
Give away $1,000,000 in lifetime giving by the time I hit age 45.
At the start of this blog (age 36), I had already given away $167,000 over the prior 13 years since college. To hit my goal, I need to give away ~$100,000 per year. Obviously, that’s a LOT. I think I can do it because I recently hit FI (financial independence) and am still bring in a high income from a business I started in 2015, which is pretty sweet. Since I’m FI and live well below my means, I have a large margin that I can freely give away as opposed to piling on an already large ‘stache.
Of course this isn’t an unbreakable vow.
If my business implodes for some reason or I come down with cancer and need to pay for chemo, I certainly will make adjustments!
Why Give away $1M
I want to do my share to improve the well-being of my community and the world at large. I don’t like the idea of giving token amounts here or there to give myself a little pat on the back while I’m well off.
I’d like to have an impact to help my community and others in the present moment and near term, NOT 30 years down the road or after I die leaving a giant bequest and have a nice news article saying things like:
“weird FIRE dude used a bike instead of a car dies, leaving $10M to charity.”
Secret purpose
To be an example for people in the FI community, especially those who have reached FI, of how to give ~significantly~ more than the average person in an intentional way to better their community and the world.
What you can expect
If you want to follow along, you can expect a new post once or twice a month with my thoughts and learning about charitable giving in the context of the FIRE movement.
More specifically, here are some of the types of topics I plan to write about:
Quarterly updates of my personal giving and tracking my lifetime giving
Personal updates about some of the great nonprofits I give to and how I got more actively involved
How to create a “Giving Policy Statement” similar to an Investment Policy Statement
How I decide how much to give - I have evolving thoughts on this
Thoughts on a framework for how to allocate your giving to areas, community vs. world needs
How to identify great charities that fit your goals
Thoughts on the “Effective Altruism” movement (teaser: I don’t ascribe it)
How to use Donor Advised Funds the right way to get a nice tax break as a side benefit of giving
How active giving can not only improve our communities and the world, but improve ourselves as well (ugh, that sounds so do-goodery to read that)
I’m excited to explore these topics further. I’m writing this blog as much for myself as I am for others. Ultimately, my goal is to document my learning on how to give more intentionally and I hope it helps you think through how to give better in your own life as well.
At this point, you’re probably wondering, “Who is this guy and what’s his background with all this?”
Great question! In the next post, I share my history with giving.