My wife and I fortunate enough to be in the "dual-income-no-kids" phase of life. We're by no means rich (since we're still young and in a high cost of living city), but we're able to save a good amount of money each year. We want to be generous, and we want to avoid the trap of thinking "when we finally reach [$xxxmm's] net worth, THEN we'll give". At the same time, we'd like to save for a house, be able to quit our intense jobs, and accumulate wealth.
For you more experienced monkeys, how do you decide how much to give away?
1) Find a charity you both want to give to. Investigate if you can give to something like Toys for Tots every year or food to a foodbank, or if you can give your time which is also very important because a lot of charities have extremely high "admin" fees so not much actually goes to the real target cause. That's not to say charity can be simply helping out family members in need from time to time. Just be careful because you don't need random family members then start coming out of the woodwork with a hand out
2) Talk it out about how much you think is fair to give, IE not being cheap but not destroying your savings either.
3) It may sound pretty shrewd, but keep any records of how much you donate because come tax time you can write it off.
I know I'm cynical, but I've seen too many horror stories of everyone from family all the way up to corporate bigshots getting grfited.
I prefer to focus my giving on local charities where I can know or see the impact. Usually some cause I have a personal connection to, have volunteered for, etc. It's fine to start with like small one time donations or recurring donations. Like anything else, it takes some time and maybe trial and error to figure out what's right for you.
I now give between 5-10% away a year (usually towards the higher end of the range in election years) but I started off donating like $10/month to the animal shelter I volunteer at. There's no right number or percent though - it's a very personal decision.
What about the best of both worlds - give back in time, and save your money for now to meet your personal objectives. My personal perspective has always been that unless you're cutting a multi-million dollar check, below that time is more valuable to whatever cause you feel close to vs. money.
The traditional Christian tithe amount of 10% is a pretty good marker in my opinion. My wife and I look at our taxes each year. Figure out the amount. Review the charities that we gave to last year. Give some to those right away if they made good use of the money. Leave an amount for later in the year for unforeseen donations: new charities, natural disasters (happens every year somewhere) etc. And then another leftover if you run into regular people in need for example a waitress with five kids that you run into.
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