- whether you can do more good continuing to work and donating the extra funds, or FIRE-ing and doing some more hands-on charitable work personally - William Macaskill has done some very interesting work in this area, and has suggested that you can do more good working on Wall Street and donating your earnings than by doing hands-on work for charities. (See more on earning to give.) The answer to how you can do the most good depends on (1) how much good (or bad) you do in your current job; (2) how much extra you can donate from the funds at your current job; (3) how much good you can do for a charity after FIREing. This is something I am still trying to work out for myself, and there are still a lot of unknowns. I don't do much (if any) good in my current private sector job, but I am planning to change to a job in public policy that will hopefully benefit society in a year or two and I could potentially do a lot of good in that job (I may possibly be overly idealistic for thinking this, though). I will probably earn a decent amount at that job to give to charity, but it won't be tons - I could give more ($) to charity by staying in my current job but I suspect more good would be done by moving into policy. And I do think I'll be doing some work that is beneficial to society after I FIRE also, though I'm not sure what form that will take yet.
Earning to give is awesome. That's exactly what we're talking about in this thread.
We've been considering going back to work once our kid(s?) is a bit older. Very few people do this, which is why you hear about the few who do.
Edited to respond to this:
You and I both know 99% (probably higher) of the people working "OMY" are doing it out of greed (wanting to spend more) or fear (what if I run out of money, what if the 4% rule isn't safe enough, what if healthcare, etc. etc.).
I don't know that that's true at all. I think there are many people continuing to work even when they don't need the money (i.e. I'm not just talking about people on these early retirement forums, but also the many, many people in the world who are FI/wealthy already) not out of greed or fear, but because they find their jobs fulfilling and/or think that it benefits society - either directly, or because it enables them to earn to give. I would hope that it's more than 1% of the population who are already FI, but I really don't know - I think I have had the good fortune of having known a decent number of altruistic and civic-minded people who are motivated more by a desire to give back to society than by money. Certainly they have demonstrated that in their career choices.
You'd be surprised.
How many do you actually know that are earning to give, i.e. working past FI to donate all of their salary to charity?
I'd bet not more than one or two, if that.
And even if you know a handful of people earning to give, that's probably still only about 1% of the people you know, or less.
She decided to go back to work in engineering so that she could devote the money to funding some 529's for her (then very young) nieces who would not have had any college funding from their families otherwise (she and her spouse had no kids of their own). She got laid off after a couple of years, but was unfazed by it--"because I worked those two years," she told me, "my nieces will be able to go to college; the money has years to grow and by the time they need it it will be there for them."
Here's a great example.
This is total bullshit.
I mean, I'm sure it's true. But let's look at the problems with this:
1) She's earning an engineering salary, yet only funds 529s to the limit that they can "grow in time" for the money to be there? That means she saved or spent the vast majority of it.
More importantly:
2) She's not actually giving any to charity! She gave some money to relatives who she says couldn't afford college otherwise. If this is truly the case, there would have been plenty of grants and scholarships available for them.
Giving some money to relatives (and only a small fraction of what she earned, based on the information given) instead of actually helping dying children, and then getting credit such that someone uses her as an example of earning to give, and altruistic behavior? What horse *.
I'm sure your friend is a nice person, I don't mean to degrade her personally. But going back to work to put a little aside for your relatives? ...okay? That doesn't earn you a lot of altruistic credit in my book. I'd say it's roughly equivalent to adopting a dog that would have been put down. No doubt a nice thing to do that costs you some money, but not that praiseworthy versus average charitable behavior. It's not the going above and beyond earning to give.
It's incredibly, incredibly rare to actually see OMY for altruistic purposes. You all can cite that one person you know, or have heard of, but that's probably under 1% of the people you know. And I'd wager much, much, much less.
The truth is, OMY strikes the rich the hardest, because they're used to piling up money, and don't want to give it up. Not because of some magical "How much could I have helped with this watch"-Schindleresque mindset.[/list]
