The important thing is not to burn out, which would substantially reduce future giving. Right now I'm aiming only to max out Google's $6K/year matching limit. I probably won't increase that until I have a lot of savings, like on the order of several months of salary. Then if my partner is OK with it I'll head towards giving 10%, and after that I'd hope to give away 50% of future pay rises; whether we go beyond that will depend on how our income and outgoings compare at that point.
I wouldn't pay any attention to any comments that don't discuss the commenter's giving, by the way! You would probably get more informative answers if the question was "How did you decide how much of your income to give to charity?"
The tithe is a well-established Schelling point, and one that I follow. 10% Jaibot and Bride of Jaibot of income goes to GiveWell's top charities. I Use Google's one-a-day app for non-optimal warm fuzzies, and I pitch in to explicitly rationalist causes like MIRI or helping a dying person afford cryonics.
(here is where I notice Ambien kicking in. Post becomes less reliably representative of Jai from here on out.
The important thing is to measure yourself against what you are: You are a human. Humans are not very good at world optimization, when left to thei...
I'd like to hear from people about a process they use to decide how much to give to charity. Personally, I have very high income, and while we donate significant money in absolute terms, in relative terms the amount is <1% of our post-tax income. It seems to me that it's too little, but I have no moral intuition as to what the right amount is.
I have a good intuition on how to allocate the money, so that's not a problem.
Background: I have a wife and two kids, one with significant health issues (i.e. medical bills - possibly for life), most money we spend goes to private school tuition x 2, the above mentioned medical bills, mortgage, and miscellaneous life expenses. And we max out retirement savings.
If you have some sort of quantitative system where you figure out how much to spend on charity, please share. If you just use vague feelings, and you think there can be no reasonable quantitative system, please tell me that as well.
Update: as suggested in the comments, I'll make it more explicit: please also share how you determine how much to give.