If you have more money than you need, you should start giving some of it away.  That’s the lesson I learned about a year ago, when I took a gamble and donated $100,000 to a variety of charities, centered around the Effective Altruism movement. And I did the same thing this year, with a couple of shortcuts:

  • Betterment Investing just added a spectacular no-cost automatic donation feature. Using their existing tax-optimized system, they allow you to donate your most appreciated shares directly to any of their many connected charities. This gives you the maximum tax deduction right now, while reducing your taxes further when you later withdraw from your account later in life.
  • Paypal has a similar feature: even from within the minimalist phone app, you can click a “donate” icon and transfer out surplus bits of your balance directly to a large selection of good charities.

I made part of my $100,000 donation via Betterment’s new system. I have three accounts with the company (my public Betterment Experiment, a rolled-over IRA, plus a personal taxable account with the largest balance of the three). All three accounts have seen rapid appreciation due to the current boiling-hot stock market,  so there are lots of capital gains available to harvest.

The largest of my donations this year ($70,000) was to GiveWell, through the Betterment system. As I fired it up, Betterment automatically estimated my tax savings in real time.

As with last year’s donation, this biggest chunk went to charities based on the Effective Altruism philosophy.

Read the full article about easy methods on how to donate by Mr. Money Mustache at Mrmoneymustache.com.