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Comment by paledot | Hacker News Reader

My wife and I both work, but our lifestyle does not require two incomes. So we've tried to find trustworthy charities to entrust my salary to. It's harder than it sounds, and we're only about 60% of the way there, but it has measurably improved the quality of life of many people - not just us.

I also "purchased" a 4-day work week, which has had a substantial impact on my own quality of life.

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While not technically a "purchase", I also must say that this year, no single product even came close to the donations I made to those who protect the environment and fight climate change.

Now, every time I consider a purchase I ask myself: "do I really need this?" and if the answer is no, I forgo the purchase and donate the same amount of money instead.

This "negative consumption" turns my feelings of gloom and helplessness into a sense of purpose and power.

I can only imagine how awesome it must be to be able to donate almost a whole salary!

Can you please share some of the charities you've found to be trustworthy?

Our main causes are environment, poverty and homelessness, and disability. Most of our charities are local, such as each of the major homeless shelters in our city. Medicins Sans Frontières and Sierra Club are our two international-level charities, but I hesitate to offer endorsements. Due diligence is important when donating larger sums.

GiveWell has a really great guide for picking charities. It helped me narrow down where to direct my giving.

https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities/main

Have you looked into Effective Altruism, The life you can save foundation, and/or GiveWell? They are all initiatives to make sure resources are used as effectively as possible when it comes to doing good.

"I also "purchased" a 4-day work week, which has had a substantial impact on my own quality of life."

Can you tell me more about this? What was your strategy for bringing this up with your workplace, did you take 20% salary cut, any other adjustments?

I took a 20% salary cut. All other benefits remained the same. It's not a formal policy at my company, but I was able to negotiate a reduced schedule during my annual salary review.

I don't know that I did anything clever in the negotiation, I just raised it with my manager and we brought it to HR. Everyone was positive about the idea but unsure of how it would work in the broader scheme, including if other people would see my schedule and want to get on the 32-hour week train too. (I hope so, but I avoided saying that.)

When I say all benefits remained the same, I mean all of them. It's probably an oversight, but I continue to accrue vacation days at a rate of 20/yr - except for me, that's 5 work weeks, not 4. I've avoided pointing that out.

I did the exact same thing at my work with the same concerns of hr and the hope that all my coworkers follow my path. But everyone is much more greedy than I expected!

Having 3 days of weekends every week is just amazing on top of my regular vacations

This is such a wonderful thing to do.

to be fair it didn't improve your quality of life MEASURABLY

Why not? If you'd rate your happiness or peace of mind on a scale of 1 to 10 every day, and after a donation the rating goes up, that's an empirically measurable improvement to your quality of life, much more so than a product that may make your life more convenient but you're still stressed and unhappy.

The 4-day week made for 20% less work, I would say. ;)

Are you serious? We need more people like you. Crazy proposition. I'm the best trader out there for options. There are services which allow others to mirror my account, I am planning to set one of those up.

If you are interested, I'd let you follow my account for free, if you are willing to donate 100% of the profits it makes and pay your own fees for the required brokerages.

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