Considering pledging but haven't? Help us understand!

Hi. I don't think my explanation would take 45 minutes to explore, but I can share the basics of my thought process: I'd feel pretty dumb if I donate a few thousand dollars, and then a year later I don't have enough money to pay for basic necessities. I've never had both A) a feeling of financial stability, and B) the confidence that such stability would continue in the future. Thus, I've wanted to build up a 'nest egg' for myself so that I won't starve or be homeless.

A is pretty easy to explain and understand. That covers times when I've been employed on short-term contracts, or when life has been in flux because I was moving from one place to another, or simply when I earned money that wasn't enough to cover both my basics and my financial goals. B is simply times when I've had a good job, I've known it wouldn't last forever, and I've known that I would eventually need my savings to pay for food, clothing, and shelter. One doesn't know how long it will take to find new employment. If it takes two weeks that isn't a big issue, but if it takes months and months that is something I want to be financially prepared for.

If I had a skillset that was highly in-demand in the job market or if I had tenure at a famous university, then I wouldn't be as concerned about income and supporting myself financially. As much as I admire the Oxford professors who donate a large chunk of their income each year, being tenured means more-or-less guaranteed income, making the decision to donate relatively low risk. If I had a big chunk of guaranteed income, I would certainly donate. Or if I had a life more like some of the earn to give folks I've read about, then I would do the same (attending a well-known and well-reputed school, studying a field that gives good career prospects, meeting a life partner relatively early in life and sharing expenses, living near a supportive family, earning a strong salary for many years, having family and network in a place with plenty of professional opportunities, living in the same city for the whole career and thus building a long-lasting network of professional contacts, working for well-known and well-reputed companies, etc.). But through a combination of circumstances external to me (such as where I grew up and what fields I was introduced to early on) and of my own choices (such as being drawn to fields that tend to not earn much or be highly respected), I don't have those resources and that stability.

EDIT: My current perspective feels a bit extreme or outrageous, but I'd like to save up and have enough money so that I am financially stable/secure/independent, and then donate. But if I had some kind of foreknowledge that I would always be able to secure employment within a month and the employment would always be at least moderately enjoyable and pay me at decently good amounts, then I would probably be comfortable to start donating now.

Not sure if this is the place to post but I'll share. 

I took the pledge about 6 years ago but I hesitated for years. I think my reasons then were:

(1) Legalism
Pledges risk falling into "legalism" i.e. a habit of relying on specific commitments and stated duties at the expense of a broader, all-encompassing spirit of generosity. 

(2) Low Anchor
Related to (1), 10% sounded great but not so radical. Why set a lower bar for myself than I could handle? Speaking for myself, I thought then (and still do now) that I ought to be giving more than 10%. Plus, devout evangelical Christians in the US (one social group I encounter very frequently) already have a weak expectation that people give 10%. All that considered, I think the pledge was communicated that made it sound less radical and less exciting for 19-year-old me (I hadn't heard of the giving further pledge). 

(3) Religious Reasons Against Sharing
I was worried about "sounding the trumpet" and the possible social and spiritual negative effects of that. Quoting here a section of the Sermon on the Mount, one of Jesus' most famous sermons: Matt 6:1-4 "Be careful not to do your `acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." Although this contrasts with Matt 5:16 ("Let your light shine before others"). On the whole, I think contemporary American Christian protestants are less disposed to speak openly about their giving or make public pledges.

(4) Little Social Reinforcement/Encouragement/Support
I wasn't sure what the benefit was of pledging on paper to an online community (unfair, but that's how GWWC seemed to me 8 years ago. Fortunately, I've since met tons of GWWC people by way of 1-on-1 calls and EA conferences.)  

Why I took the pledge:

For reference, I mostly give to GiveWell-recommended global health and poverty charities. I think my pledge saves (in expectation) several lives a year, or accomplishes some roughly equivalent amount of a good thing. Basically, I started to feel guilty that if I didn't take the pledge or talk about giving, fewer people would give to GiveWell and fewer lives would be saved. That cost seemed far greater than my moral scruples about protecting my motivations. 

I also just met a bunch more pledgetakers who were giving over 10%. It became more socially normal and the low anchor point started to matter to me less. 

I know Grace has seen this already, but in case others reading this thread are interested: I've shared some thoughts on not taking the pledge (yet) here.^[1]

Adding to the post: part of the value of pledges like this comes from their role as a commitment mechanism to prevent yourself from drifting away from values and behaviors that you endorse. I'm not currently worried about drifting in this way, partly because I work for CEA and have lots of social connections to extremely altruistic people. If I started working somewhere that isn't explicitly EA-oriented and/or lost my connections to the EA community, I think I'd worry a lot more about drift and the usefulness of the pledge would jump for me. (I plan on thinking about taking some kind of pledge if/when that happens.)

I'll also note that I've recently seen multiple people ~dunking on folks in EA who haven't taken the pledge (or making fun of arguments against taking the pledge), and I think this is pretty unhelpful. I'm really grateful to the GWWC Pledge community, but I really don't think the pledge is right for everyone (and neither does GWWC). Even if you think almost all the people who aren't pledging are wrong and/or biased, dunking is probably a bad way to argue. Additionally, it disincentivizes people from coming out and answering Grace's question, since they might worry that they'll (indirectly) get ridiculed for it. So if you see someone you know ~dunking, consider asking them to avoid doing that (especially if you already know them and/or have been sharing arguments for taking the pledge).

1. ^{^}

   To be clear: I totally believe my conclusion could be wrong, and I'm happy to see (more) arguments about why that could be. (Having said that, I should flag that I don't plan on spending time on this decision right now because I think I have more pressing decisions at the moment, but it's something I want to think more about in the future. So e.g. I might not respond to comments.)

I work in an EA-funded non-profit. It seems inefficient to donate my income instead of taking a salary cut.

It seemed suboptimal ([x] marks things I've done, [ ] marks things I should have done but have not gotten around to).

• [x] Saving donations for years of increased need seems like a better strategy than donating a fixed amount each year
• [ ] Investing donations and then donating with interest seems plausibly a better option
• [x] Having a large amount of personal savings allows me to direct my efforts more effectively by choosing not to take suboptimal opportunities for money. Having "slack", freedom of action, seems very useful.
• [x] My time funges with money, and I will not always want to donate one instead of the other.
• [x] Generally, constraining my future self seems kind of iffy, since my future self will have more information and better models, including information about my own values. I see the appeal of argument in the other direction about screening off becoming more altruistic, though.

I donate 5% of my income and I'm gradually escalating (only two years out of college). I don't plan to pledge because I don't see the need for a commitment device. I don't like the commitment framing - I think it takes a cudgel to an altruistic motivation that to me feels natural right now. Put differently:

I ran a different version of the [drowning child] thought experiment without language around obligation: “Imagine that – somehow – the universe has deemed me unalterably Good regardless of whether I help. Do I still want to rescue the child?”

...

After rewording Singer’s thought experiment, it dawned on me that I’d been using the frame of an “obligation” as a psychological whip to get myself to do what I already wanted to do. Weird.

When I went looking for the force or deity outside of myself that held the whip, there was nothing there. I was the one holding the whip. This was a revelation. The thing underlying my moral “obligation” came from me, my own mind. This underlying thing was actually a type of desire. It turned out that I wanted to help suffering people. I wanted to be in service of a beautiful world. Hm.

Suddenly the words of my moral vocabulary took on new meanings. Was I obligated to save the drowning child? Did I have a responsibility or moral duty? Was it something that one should or ought do? This language seemed misleading. These words seemed to replace my natural impulse to help with an artificial demand imposed by…nothing and no one.

The natural concern is that I'm naively assuming that my future self will share these values. That is correct.

The email address mailto:grace@givingwhatwecan.org doesn’t seem to work.