Don’t scale up your lifestyle

By Dave Cortright 🔸 @ 2026-03-01T18:37 (+95)

The simplest way to have more impact across your entire lifespan is to scale up your earnings, but don’t scale up your lifestyle.

This is an “earn to give” strategy, so it should apply to nearly every EA. Even if you are working for an effective cause at an effective organization, you should be earning a living wage that includes enough headroom to tithe. (If you're not, I’m sure folks at the Centre for Effective Altruism would love to hear from you.)

My mom’s parents grew up during the Great Depression, and that scarcity mindset heavily influenced my household growing up. I could never understand the 40% food waste statistic; ours was as close to zero as you can get without contracting a foodborne illness.

We never bought clothing at full retail. They were always on sale, and usually from the clearance racks. I am instinctively drawn to the basements and back corners of stores where they keep the markdowns. I've bought the majority of clothing and household items from Ross and TJ Maxx over my lifetime ( B&M and TK Maxx for the international folks).  I also wore a lot of my older brother’s hand-me-downs. I still buy a lot of things on sale from eBay, Amazon Resale, and even Meh.

Every car I ever owned was small, inexpensive, reliable (no costly repairs), and fuel-efficient—Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic, Subaru Forester, and now a used Tesla 3.

All of this while my salary went from $50k USD in 1995 up to >$250k when I retired from the tech industry. So while my income and take-home continued to climb, my expenses rose at a much more modest rate. With the extra money, I started tithing to effective causes mid-career (incentivized by a generous ~$10k corporate match) and invested a large percentage of it in stock and bond index funds.

This can be taken too far; Scrupulosity is the term often used in EA to describe this. And I took it too far at times, too. I lived in a dilapidated^[1] 1-bedroom in-law cottage for 7 years, primarily because the rent was so incredibly cheap while I worked for a nonprofit at a reduced salary. Even though I was saving over $20k USD per year, I wouldn't make that choice today.

If you consider your entire contributions to effective causes over your lifetime, you can make even more impact if you choose not to scale up your lifestyle as your income increases. You can use those additional resources to invest and donate, or even work on a cause you care about later in life without needing to worry about generating income (aka financial independence —FI; See @Rebecca Herbst's Yield and Spread for more on FI in EA.)

1. ^{^}

   Two plug-in space heaters replaced the broken furnace in my 1-bedroom cottage, because the owner didn't want to invest in fixing it. I nearly caught the place on fire one night when a t-shirt fell onto a parabolic radiant heater. I upgraded to safer oil-filled models after that. He razed the lot and built a brand new house and cottage after I moved out.