“Effective Altruists Should Promote Frugality” by James Brobin

There are three ways EAs typically do good: Donating to effective charities. Working on high impact cause areas. Getting others to become EAs. All of these require either time and/or money. To donate to effective charities, one needs to have a sufficiently high level of financial security to justify their donation. If someone wants to work in a high impact cause area, they need enough time and money to pursue their desired career. Lastly, if one wants to get others to become EAs, they need enough time to find others who may be interested in the cause. Despite this, I’ve observed almost no references to the importance of saving money or how to save money within the EA forum or sites dedicated to EA outreach such as effectivealtruism.org, 80,000 Hours, and Giving What We Can. As such, I think that frugality, the optimization of one's financial resources to maximize one's time, should be more widely discussed and promoted within the EA community. Pros: Saving even small amounts of money can enable one to donate much more money to effective altruism. For example, by cutting one's own hair rather than getting a professional haircut, one can save [...] --- First published: November 12th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tD6yuY8miHJPpxLeq/effective-altruists-should-promote-frugality --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.