Most of the EA stuff I've seen doesn't appear to me to assume vast amounts of disposable income; merely enough to be willing to give some away. Then EA is about what to do with your charity budget, whether it's large or small.
How you prioritize helping others versus helping yourself (and your family, if any) is a more or less orthogonal question.
(I might suggest, snarkily, that for someone who requires "vast amounts of disposable income" before being willing to give any away no term with "altruism" in it is very appropriate. But that wouldn't be fair because e.g. your intention might be to secure yourself a reasonably comfortable life and then give away every penny you can earn beyond that, or something.)
That's it, basically; it's about how much of a buffer I'm 'allowed' to give myself on 'reasonably comfortable'; I'm supporting myself and full-time student partner and not in permanent full-time employment so my instinct whenever I have a sniff of an excess is to hoard it against a bad month for getting work rather than do anything charitable with it (or it all goes on things we've put off replacing for monetary reasons, like shoes that are still wearable but worn out enough to no longer be waterproof).
I think Lumifer articulated better than I could what I...
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