I’ve been on a mission to promote giving within the financial independence community, and one of my recent interviews was on the ChooseFI podcast with Brad Barrett. After the episode aired, there was a flurry of activity in the ChooseFI Facebook group, with many people exploring what it would mean to take a giving pledge. Charlotte was one of those folks who was considering taking the One For the World Pledge, where you donate 1% of your income each year to charity. But first, she wanted to better understand her options for giving effectively to climate change initiatives.
I was so excited to engage with Charlotte, I asked to meet her personally and we had an amazing chat about her background, why giving is important to her, and how the worlds of financial independence and effective giving should overlap more.
When I’ve asked people, “What is the single best thing I can do to support others who are exploring what it means to commit to charitable giving?” the most common answer has been, “I am inspired by real stories of other people who give. Can you tell more of those stories?”
I hope that sharing Charlotte’s story will make giving feel more possible, and perhaps even exciting. Here’s what Charlotte has to say!
Charlotte and her husband on a recent trip to Innsbruck, Austria!
What attracted you to the FI movement in the first place?
I first heard of financial independence while listening to Farnoosh Torabi’s podcast in 2019 - she was interviewing the couple behind Our Rich Journey who had retired early & moved to Portugal. FI turned out to be something I didn’t know I needed: a common language (+ math) to help connect with my husband around our plans for after his daughter graduated from high school in 2024. My hope was to take a year off from our jobs and travel the world once we hit our financial independence number. At first we both had our doubts, and my husband was unsure of how to make the best use of his pension once he left his job of 20+ years. But FI gave us a common ground to make a real actionable plan. And now here we are, financial independence is right around the corner and we’re just starting the next chapter of our lives.
Ok, so financial independence just made sense to you? What about giving?
Being mindful and altruistic was an important part of my upbringing. I grew up in a very small town outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma. My family was part of the Methodist church there and it was very active with the communities the church called “underprivileged” in the city. Each year we’d host huge Christmas parties. There’d be tables where we could decorate cookies, sing carols, and then Santa would come out and give each child from that community an entire bag of presents. At the time, I don’t think I truly understood the reality of what it meant to be a member of this community. I didn’t learn about the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 until I was an adult. These families we were serving were likely direct descendants of the survivors of the massacre.
As I think about what it means to give today, I have very mixed feelings about that time now. But as a child, I remember really enjoying it and feeling a sense of pride in it. And that has stuck with me.
I later moved to North Carolina with my family, and our new church participated in the Appalachian Service Project, which involved spending a week in the mountains and rebuilding homes for folks up there. Then, in my 20’s, I was an AmeriCorps volunteer in southern Colorado working in the homeless shelter as intake coordinator/translator and at the food bank. We were the main food bank in the San Luis Valley and would drive around to the smaller outposts to deliver food. It was a special year for me in so many ways. I was living very simply (we were paid $225 per month as a volunteer stipend, though housing and transportation were taken care of) with a great community of other like-minded volunteers. Prior to that year, I don’t know that I even thought much about the homeless population. Spending a year getting to know them and their families, learning about migrant farmworkers in our country (many of whom came through the shelter) and cooking for and with them was a tremendous experience.
How do you see FI overlapping with giving? Are they in conflict?
At first glance there seems to be a natural tension between pursuing FI and giving. Why would people want to give their money away if it slowed their time to freedom? I think that FI has evolved a ton thanks to changes in the FI community - people like The Fioneers who promote SlowFI and Ramit Sethi who promotes designing a rich life that is unique to you. The focus is trending more towards a holistic approach to life while pursuing FI, rather than FI and early retirement being the whole focus to the detriment of everything else.
That certainly has been my path - the first few years I had blinders on to anything that wasn’t my savings rate and practicing frugality. If FI gave my husband and I a common language around big goals, Ramit helped us be more thoughtful with his Conscious Spending Plan. It’s a simple tool but has helped me loosen the reins a bit and feel more comfortable spending to enrich my life.
And this enrichment now includes our 1% pledge to put our money towards a cause we think is vital: climate change. If you had asked me this question in 2019 or 2020, I’d probably say that giving is in direct opposition to FI. Now, I believe they make total sense together. Giving is part of our “rich life”.
You took the 1% pledge after listening to me and Jack on the ChooseFI podcast. Why?
Just like financial independence, the podcast and the 1% pledge were a message I didn’t know I needed to hear! I went down a mini rabbit hole following the podcast, looking at the recommended resources and the effective charities that were recommended (Note: These resources are included once again at the end of this post). When I didn’t see anything focusing on climate, I reached out to Rebecca and she was extremely helpful in pointing me to some literature, where the Clean Air Task Force was presented as one of the most effective organizations working on climate change today.
Tell us about your giving strategy prior to listening to the podcast?
In a word: random! I’d hear about a disaster, find someone online who seemed reputable who was asking for money to help, and send some through Instagram. We’d also give to political candidates who we believed in, especially following the 2016 election. We knew that giving was important, but we didn’t have a structured approach to defining how much and to where we wanted to give.
How was it taking the One for the World Pledge?
Super easy! I had a brief conversation with my husband about it, told him what our monthly 1% number would be, and then signed up for an auto draft. We are about three years away from hitting our FI number, and we have found that this pledge doesn’t even make a noticeable difference to our financial plan! We don’t miss the money and it feels so good to be doing something we believe in. Now we make consistent monthly donations to a charity that is important to us and can revisit this strategy as and when needed.
If you could give one piece of advice to others what would it be?
If you hear about the 1% pledge and it sparks something in you, do this one small thing right now: calculate what your 1% would be per month. FI people love doing calculations, right? My guess is that it will shock you how little that number is.
Wanna know what your 1% could be? Check out Yield & Spread’s Fi-lanthropy Calculator
For a gazillion bonus points, head to thelifeyoucansave.org and find the effective charity that resonates most with you. And once you find the charities and cause areas that are important to you, make it easy for yourself. Sign up for the auto draft option to donate each month. Then, notice how your body feels while you’re doing this. It feels good, right? We’re sending you a virtual high five too!.
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Some of the core resources mentioned on the ChooseFI Podcast:
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