As much as I encourage anyone pursuing financial independence to include charitable giving in their plan, the truth is that you don’t have to shell out big bucks to do good in the world. There are quite a few great ways to make a difference that cost you nothing or very little, especially if you have time on your hands.
This week’s post is the third and final part in the wrap-up of our first full year of early retirement. Today we’re talking about everything we’re consciously changing in year 2, based on what we’ve learned about early retirement and learned about ourselves.
I get that there are plenty of folks who see early retirement as a selfish, lazy act that will ultimately make us drains on society. But those folks are ignoring the social good that each of us can do simply by quitting our jobs, as well as the incredible potential that early retirement offers each of us to do so much more.
Just as we have a mission in early retirement to figure out what we want to do when we grow up, and to adventure more, we also have a mission to be more charitable, both by volunteering and by giving money directly to important causes. Which may seem harder when we have less cash flow coming in. But there are some good ways to build charitable giving into your retirement financial plan, including with a donor advised fund. What’s your charitable mission?
In just two short months, we’ll be retired and living on a constrained income for the first time in ages. But we’re not worried, because we have a whole bunch of ways to live beyond that budget, especially once we have time to invest in research and deal-finding. (Plus, we can live a pretty sweet life for not a lot of money, so it doesn’t take much budget stretching to feel like we’re living a life of luxury.) Check out our plan for living beyond our budget — and then let us know what we missed!
Lately we’ve been mulling over a question: Is it a win or a fail to die with money leftover? Of course we can’t know how long we have, but if we could, would we prefer to spend our assets down before we die, or to be able to leave a big legacy behind? There’s a lot behind this question, and today we dig into all of it!
