But what will my friends think?

This week I talked to some students about what life is like for my husband and me as people who give away a lot of our income.  Some of them seemed worried about the social consequences: what happens when your friends all have expensive houses and cars? Won't you feel left out? Won't people think you're strange?

I don't remember exactly what my answer was at the time, but here are some better-thought-out ones:

A lot of our friends are also on small budgets.
The bartender? The grad student? The novelist? The one whose job you can't really describe, but it involves postmodernism?  They're not rolling in cash. Unless you actually reach a point when all your friends are corporate lawyers, you probably won't be the only one living frugally.

A lot of our friends are a little weird, too.
We have a friend who commutes to work by unicycle. Another friend believes bacon is a health food and eats it in according quantities. Another friend is a professional blacksmith. Maybe it's just living in the neighborhood of Cambridge, MA, but there are a lot of eccentric people around. I don't mind being one of them.

You can have fun with your friends for cheap.  

• A lot of our friends are from the folk dance scene.  It doesn't cost much money, and participants tend to come from a wide variety of income levels.  It's not that easy to pick out who's a psychiatrist and who's an art teacher.  
• I enjoy cooking, so we often have people over for dinner rather than going to a restaurant.  
• Jeff and two of his college roommates have a standard arrangement whenever their wives are out of town: the bachelor-for-a-day invites the others over, and they play board games their wives don't like.  

Your friends aren't always into conspicuous consumption.
Jeff works as a computer programmer, and in his thrift-store work clothes he actually looks less scruffy than most of his coworkers.

There are lots of metrics to compare people on.
I have a partner I love. My parents are alive and healthy. I have all my teeth. There are lots of ways you can compare yourself to other people  — you'll come out ahead on some, and behind on some. That's true no matter your income.

Some of your friends will follow you.
We've heard friend say they admire us for following our principles.  And some of them say they've changed because of us — looking for more effective charities, giving more, or asking people to donate instead of giving them birthday presents.  I love hearing that.

We've met some awesome people through giving.
Since we started meeting other people who are interested in effective altruism, we've really clicked with some of them. After college I missed being able to talk ideas with people, and effective altruism has brought that back into my life.  (The downside: you have to get over your stage fright about talking to people with impressive credentials. It turns out most of them are regular people.)

Cheerfully

As a young person, I was extremely struck by the realization that my choice to donate or not meant the difference between someone else’s living and dying. A lot of decisions started to look very starkly wrong.

I remember telling my dad that I had decided it would be immoral for me to have children, because they would take too much of my time and money away from better causes. “It doesn't sound like this lifestyle is going to make you happy,” he said.

“My happiness is not the point,” I told him.

A few years later, I was deeply bitter about the decision. I had always wanted and intended to be a parent, and I felt thwarted. It was making me sick and miserable. I looked at the rest of my life as more of an obligation than a joy.

So Jeff and I decided that it wasn't worth having a breakdown over. We decided to set aside enough for our personal spending that we could reasonably afford to raise a child. Looking back at my journal entries from before and after the decision, I'm struck by how much difference it made in my outlook. Immediately after we gave ourselves permission to be parents, I was excited about the future again. I don't know when we'll actually have a kid, but just the possibility helps me feel things will be all right. And I suspect that feeling of satisfaction with my own life lets me be more help to the world than I would have as a broken-down altruist.

I've attended Quaker meeting for the last ten years. The founder, George Fox, gave his followers this advice in 1658: “Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations wherever you come; that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone; whereby in them you may be a blessing.”

Quakers have tended to emphasize the part about “that of God in everyone,” with its implication about equality: how can it be right to keep slaves, for example, if the slave has an element of the divine in her?

But my favorite part is that word “cheerfully.” Fox was a man who had been jailed and beaten for his religious beliefs – surely he had a right to be bitter. Quakerism later developed a stern and dour style, but George Fox was not about that.

Some things I can do cheerfully. It turns out that giving up children was not one of them. Other people would have no problem giving up parenthood, but I suspect that everyone has something that would cause an inordinate amount of pain to sacrifice.

So test your boundaries, and see what changes you can make that will help others without costing you too dearly. But when you find something is making you bitter, stop. Effective altruism is not about driving yourself to a breakdown. We don't need people making sacrifices that leave them drained and miserable. We need people who can walk cheerfully over the world, or at least do their damnedest.

Does giving make you happy?

Psychology has traditionally focused on mental illness and other problems.  The field of positive psychology focuses on how to be healthier and happier.

One example is the study "Spending Money on Others Promotes Happiness". It looks at how personal spending (paying bills or buying things for ourselves) and prosocial spending (donations or gifts for others) affect us differently.  The findings:

• People with higher prosocial spending report being happier than those with low prosocial spending. The amount of personal spending, on the other hand, has no effect on happiness. Of course, this could just mean happy people are more generous, or they're happy and generous because they're rich.  But the second half of the study addresses that. 
• Researchers asked people to rate their happiness in the morning, then gave them either $5 or $20 and told them to spend it by 5 pm.  Half the participants were told to spend the money on themselves and the other half were told to use the money for a donation or gift.  When the researchers called participants that evening, the people assigned to prosocial spending reported greater happiness.¹

• Participants predicted that personal spending would be more enjoyable than prosocial spending, and that $20 would make them them happier than $5.  They were wrong on both counts - they were happier after prosocial spending, and the amount didn't matter for either kind of spending.

For me, the takeaway points are:

• Our intuitions about what will make us happy are sometimes wrong.
• If a transaction (spending or giving) makes us happy, but a larger amount doesn't make us happier, we should go for smaller transactions.  In my experience, this is true - I like buying things, but buying a pastry or a few flowers makes me as happy as a larger purchase.  And I enjoy two small helpings of dinner more than a single large one.
• Giving $5 is not the same as giving $5,000.  And it may be more fun to give researchers' money than your own.  Does the pleasurable effect still apply?  Maybe.  I know I get pleasure out of giving large amounts, but probably not as much as spending them.
• It's most efficient to give large amounts every year or so, so that the charities don't have to process a lot of small donations.  But it's probably more enjoyable to donate small amounts often.

1. Someone's probably going to ask, "What's the effect size on that?" and the answer is "[F1,41 = 4.39, P < 0.04, effect size estimate (ŋp2) = 0.10]". Unfortunately, I have no idea what this means. If you know, do tell.

Fear of poverty, part 2

There are lots of ways to measure poverty. In the US the poverty line is $10,890 for one person. The global figure often used is $2 a day. There are a host of other ways to measure it, either in absolute terms or compared to other people.

Numbers can help us approximate what people's experiences are like, but ultimately what matters is the experiences themselves and not the numbers.

Jeff and I together spend about $20,000 a year. If we actually earned that much, we would be below the United States poverty line and would have more spending money because we'd get free health insurance and food stamps. On paper, then, our spending makes us look like poor people.

So how does our subjective experience compare to actual poverty?

The World Bank did an interesting study on the experiences of poor people around the world. Their findings:

"Experiences of illbeing include material lack and want (of food, housing and shelter, livelihood, assets and money); hunger, pain and discomfort; exhaustion and poverty of time; exclusion, rejection, isolation and loneliness; bad relations with others, including bad relations within the family; insecurity, vulnerability, worry, fear and low self-confidence; and powerlessness, helplessness, frustration and anger. . . . Illbeing includes mental distress, breakdown, depression and madness, often described by participants to be impacts of poverty."

If that's what poor people experience, what about us? Does spending like poor people carry the same effects as actual poverty?

No. Jeff and I experience a few of the inconveniences of a small budget (mostly related to not owning a car). But we have most of the benefits of the money we earn without actually spending it all. We always have plenty of good food. We never worry about whether we can make our rent. We enjoy good relationships with family and friends. We have savings. We got good educations and have similar social status to what we would have if we kept all our money.

Some people are afraid to give because they're afraid of being poor. Which is a reasonable fear – real poverty is an exhausting, humiliating, painful experience. But it is not what you will experience as a result of giving away a lot of your money.

Real poverty is not a choice. Living frugally is a choice Jeff and I make freely, and one we find worthwhile.

Fear of poverty

Last spring, my husband Jeff found that walking to work barefoot helped his knee problems. Once he built up callouses, walking on city sidewalks was no problem. One day as he was walking a pair of teenage girls, perhaps Brazilian or Cape Verdean, shouted, "Where are your shoes?"

"They're at home," he answered.

"Aren't you ashamed?" they asked.

This story still stuns me. Jeff and I grew up in situations where going barefoot was a marker of summer relaxation, not poverty. But to these girls, who had perhaps grown up in places where not everyone had shoes, going voluntarily barefoot was crazy.

People have told me, "You obviously didn't grow up poor." It's true - I might not want to live on a small budget if I had always had to do it. In a way, it's easier for Jeff and me to live simply because for us it's always been a choice, not a necessity. We grew up knowing that our parents could provide for all our needs, so we don't have a built-in fear of deprivation.

Here's the thing: you don't have to care about the same status markers other people do. Other people can be ashamed about secondhand clothes or whatever they want, but they can't choose what you feel ashamed of.

I know this confirms me as a total sap, but I love Dolly Parton's song "Coat of Many Colors." She describes her classmates' scorn for the coat her mother had pieced together from rags:

And I couldn't understand it
For I felt I was rich
And I told them of the love
My momma sewed in every stitch
And I told them all the story
Momma told me while she sewed
And how my coat of many colors
Was worth more than all their clothes.

Although Parton is now a multimillionaire, she really did grow up in a mountain cabin with no plumbing or electricity, and the coat story is apparently true. I find her message - that family love mattered more to her happiness than material goods - an important one.

Happy thought for the day

Today I learned that Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, inventors of the polio vaccines that saved millions of people from paralysis and death, refused to patent their inventions. They could have made an enormous profit, but instead the vaccines were their gift to the world.

When asked who owned the patent, Salk answered, "No one. Could you patent the sun?"

I'm totally charmed.

A day in the life

Recently Anatoly Vorobey asked his audience for opinions on the essay I wrote for Bolder Giving. Surprisingly to me, it got hundreds of comments. (If you don't read Russian, you may find a rough translation helpful.)

Commenters' opinions ranged from “Commendable” to “Excessive fanaticism” to “Behind such altruism usually lurk serious problems, lack of meaning in life, and great tension” and, my favorite, “Most likely the extreme result of brainwashing or disease.”

The part they found most shocking was that I said Jeff and I weren't sure about having children. This, apparently, indicates a really twisted mind. Someone nominated us for a Darwin award, commenting that at least we wouldn't pass on our altruistic sickness. Some were more pragmatic (“If you give birth, let's see you deny your child ice cream for higher goals.”)

I found this all pretty amusing. And so I want to give you a taste of the twisted life we fanatics lead. Yesterday, for example:

Saturday, January 7

We lay in bed for a while and then took down our Christmas tree. I made blackcurrant muffins for breakfast.

Later in the morning, some of Jeff's musician friends came over and they played music for a few hours. I made lunch and we ate with them.

In the afternoon, Jeff went to the grocery store while I took a long bath and read a novel. (Like most people in the world, we don't have a car, so we chose an apartment within walking distance of a grocery store. We carry the groceries in a wire cart.)

We took a nap.

In the evening, Jeff's parents came over to dinner. We spent a while admiring our housemates' baby, then we ate and talked for a few hours. After dinner we had tea and tiramisu.

After they left, Jeff did the dishes while I read aloud from a book of Sherlock Holmes stories. Then we lay in bed reading for a while and went to sleep.

Yes, it is into this perverse life of self-deprivation that we may someday bring a child!

Counting our blessings

Several studies have found that if you get people to write down things they're grateful for, they report better mood and more satisfaction with life. (This is compared to people who wrote down gripes, or people who did some other unrelated task.) One study assigned people to write and personally deliver a thank-you letter to someone who had been kind to them but had never been properly thanked. The letter writers reported increased happiness for a month afterward — and I imagine the recipients felt good, too! A gratitude journal, in which participants daily wrote down three good things and what the causes had been, had even greater effects. The journal writers experienced increased happiness and decreased depression for six months afterwards.

You don't even have to be some kind of naturally grateful person. Counting your blessings makes you happier even if you do it just because some researcher asked you to. It doesn't have to well up spontaneously — make it a habit. Part of the childhood bedtime routine I had with my parents was listing things we were thankful for, and now that Jeff and I are married we do the same before falling asleep.

And what does this have to do with giving? If you enjoy what you have, you're less likely to clutch at more. It's easier to let go.

It being Thanksgiving Day, I'll close with a table grace that's popular in my family:

Thank you for this food, this food
This glorious, glorious food!
And the animals
And the vegetables
And the minerals
That made it possible.

In which we begin

"Philanthropy and the good life"? What's that about?

My husband doesn't like the word "philanthropy". He says it sounds like something fancy people do. But I like to look at the origin of the word. It's from the Greek philos, “love” and anthropos, "human being". The love of people.

Giving is one of the most important things in my life. I do it because I believe people – all people, even far-away people – should not have to suffer and die needlessly.

And "the good life"? Doesn't giving away money make your life, um, worse?

Not in my experience. For the last several years, my husband and I have been giving away between 10% and 50% of our income. That leaves us with less cash, but not less enjoyment of life. The things we love most – spending time with family and family, making music, dancing, cooking, reading - are all things we can do on a small budget. If we gave less, we would spend more on ourselves but probably wouldn't be noticeably happier.

This blog is about how to do the most good you can. It's about the ways giving can be satisfying, even exciting. It's about the intersection of generosity and joy.