Why These Parents Give Half Their Salary — $128K — to Charity Each Year
“With the level of poverty and suffering there is in the world, its shocking how bad things are for some people — and we don’t think it’s OK for us to just stand by,” Jeff Kaufman tells Yahoo Parenting. So he and his wife, Julia Wise, aren’t. The Somerville, Mass., couple recently revealed that they donate half of their salaries each year to charity, with last year’s giveaway totaling more than $128,000.
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“We like to donate as much as we can, so we are shooting for more than $100,000 this year,” Kaufman, a software engineer, told WBZ on Tuesday. Wise, who has two part-time jobs including work as community director at the Centre for Effective Altruism, added, “We know we are making a big difference to other people and it gives us satisfaction to know that we are doing something more important than buying a big-screen TV.”
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Julia Wise and daugther Lily. (Photo: Jeff Kaufman)
The pair — who raked in $250,000 last year, earning “more than we need to live on,” according to Kaufman — feels that being parents makes their goal even more important. “One of the charities we recently gave to is the Against Malaria Foundation,” explains the father, 29, whose daughter Lily is 1. “Most people who die of malaria are kids under the age of 5. That was something that specifically spoke to us. Before we would think, ‘Wow, it’s horrible that all these kids are dying,’ but now that we have a kid, we think, ‘If she was sick…’ Knowing that that’s a thing other parents have to deal with makes it feel more urgent to us, not less. We don’t want to have others go through that.”
Lily with dad Jeff Kaufman. (Photo: Jeff Kaufman)
Of course, the expense of raising kids makes it more difficult to save much, but they remain dedicated to trying, even now that Wise, 30, is expecting their second child in February. “We don’t have a car, so that helps us save money, but the main place we save is that we don’t have a larger house than we need,” says Kaufman, who shops at thrift stores as often as possible. The family shares a three-bedroom apartment with another couple who doesn’t have any kids. “It’s somewhat unusual,” he admits of the arrangement, in which his family uses two bedrooms. “But our roommates also find helping others an important thing to do, so we’re not planning to change the situation.”
Kaufman and Wise still manage to put away money for their kids’ college funds (“We are definitely hoping to help our children out with college and not put it all on them,” he says), but also want to educate their little ones by showing them that giving away matters. “We would like Lily to grow up to be a generous person and make giving a part of her life,” says Kaufman. “But the main thing is that we want them to learn that other people matter. If someone else is hurting and you can help them, you should help them.”
(Photo: Jeff Kaufman)
(Top photo: WBZ).
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