Reader’s Choice Charitable Fund Leverages FIRE to Give More

We started a FIRE principle-based Donor-Advised Fund (DAF). Our readers get to help choose which charitable organizations the fund’s proceeds are given to by voting!

Core to the mission of TicTocLife is to be an avenue for us to give back to the community that helped build our financial independence mindset and meet our early retirement goals.

Part of the way we want to do this is to help spread ideas throughout the personal finance community regarding charitable giving. The principles we’ve learned to build wealth within our personal finances can be applied in similarly novel ways to charitable giving.

Monthly Reader Poll

One of the ways we intend to forward our charitable mission is to encourage readers to participate in guiding our own giving. We’re doing this by providing a monthly poll of charitable organizations around a certain theme.

Your vote in the poll leads us to give to the neediest organization in our monthly roundups.

Our current non-profit reader-directed giving poll is below.

If you’d like to help us decide where our next monthly donation should go, read and review our quick outline of the choices and submit your vote in the poll below.

Poll

This poll is no longer accepting votes

Which humanitary aid organization should we support to help Ukraine?
9 votes
VoteResults

The above poll will close at the start (midnight, EDT) on March 15, 2024. As always, we will monitor for vote-rigging or mistakes and reserve the right to override the poll results where necessary.

Reader’s Choice FIRE Fund

How did this giving poll come about?

In August of 2020, we created our first public charitable fund tied to FIRE principles and TicTocLife’s community.

The goals of the Reader’s Choice FIRE Fund are multifold:

  1. Apply FIRE principles to building a charitable fund
  2. Encourage our community to direct the donations
  3. Spread these ideas to multiply giving

How is this charitable fund designed to achieve those goals?

FIRE principles & charitable giving

We will leverage a key principle of FIRE, the 4% rule, in building this charitable fund.

What if, instead of a lump sum donation, we invested the sum in low-cost index funds and donated 4% of the fund’s value annually? Couldn’t we do this, potentially, into perpetuity?

Similarly, we wanted this charitable giving fund’s balance to represent our personal FIRE experience.

In 2019, we spent $40,885 on our living expenses—that’s our FIRE budget. We planned our FIRE number partially based on this figure. We decided that $40,885 would be an appropriate, FIRE-representative balance to aim for in our Reader’s Choice FIRE Fund.

The fund’s founding date, August 8, 2020, is also the three-month anniversary of TicTocLife’s launch. We felt it would be appropriate to set a goal to fully fund our first public charitable fund by TicTocLife’s one-year anniversary date: May 8, 2021.

In order to put us on the right track to reach this goal, we deposited the first quarter of that goal, $10,222, into the fund on the founding date.

Community directed giving

We will incorporate our readers within our charitable mission where possible. Our intention is to hand-select approximately 3-5 charities per month and donate to one of them. Working from the 4% rule, we’ll aim to donate 1/12th of 4% (or 1/3%) of the fund’s value every month to our selected charity.

We will select the charity by narrowing our 3-5 candidates in a community vote. Monthly, we release a Budget Update on or around the first of the month. All future updates, beginning September 2020 will contain our charity candidates for the month and a polling system to vote on them for you, the readers.

We’ll also update this page over time, tracking our historical contributions from the Reader’s Choice FIRE Fund and the charities they went to.

Spreading can multiply giving

It is our hope that by engaging with you, dear reader, the seed for this type of giving strategy could be planted in your mind, too. If we were able to reach a single additional FIRE proponent and nudge them towards giving in a similar way, we would effectively double our own giving.

If it doesn’t make sense for you to give at this stage in your financial independence journey, you might know someone who can. This is the only time we’re asking you to consider sharing our ideas directly. Help us fulfill this mission and purpose behind the TicTocLife project.

Sharing can help grow this idea to other people who have reached FI and can afford to do this. It also promotes FIRE principles outside the existing FIRE community, expanding the movement and showing what good can come from FIRE.

How is this charitable fund constructed?

In August of 2020, we opened a Donor-Advised Fund (DAF) to house our Reader’s Choice FIRE Fund. DAFs help mitigate taxes in a way that can let us contribute more to our chosen charities. They also streamline the process of donating to the recipient charities.

We’ve written more on giving, including ways to incorporate a DAF as part of your strategic giving plan.

Keep an eye out for more articles in the near future that goes into the weeds on DAFs, their benefits, pros, and cons. We’ll update this space.

The Reader’s Choice FIRE Fund from TicTocLife is an account with Schwab Charitable. We fund this DAF from our own personal DAF that houses most of our charitable giving.

We created a “child” DAF with Schwab for this specific purpose in order to be able to have more flexibility with the account’s initial balance, as avoid minimum balance fees, and to be able to make smaller contributions to charities.

Schwab Charitable’s minimum balance is $5,000 and charitable donations can be made as small as $50. There’s a minimum annual administrative fee of $100 (or 0.6%, whichever is greater). Given the related tax benefits and smooth donation process, we feel it’s worth the fee.

DAF Asset Allocation

The DAF’s balance is invested and will grow (hopefully) with the stock market, enabling us to keep giving from this fund into the future. The balance is distributed among low-cost index funds as:

  • 80% stocks
  • 20% bonds

Both asset classes are split 50/50 US domestic and international.

This asset allocation generally matches our personal investing principles and the suggestion of the Trinity Study.

DAF History

We will maintain the ledger below for our Reader’s Choice FIRE Fund, our DAF with Schwab Charitable.

Activity DateDescriptionTransaction Amount ($, US)
2020-08-08Initial Deposit10,222
2020-09-08MCV Grant for August(50)
2020-09-08September donation3,407
2020-10-07AdoptAClassrom.org Grant for September(50)
2020-10-08October donation3,407
2020-11-03Richmond Animal League Grant for October(54)
2020-11-03November donation3,407
2020-12-01Heifer International Grant for November(68)
2020-12-01December donation3,407
2021-01-06Direct Relief Grant for December(79)
2021-01-06January donation3,407
2021-02-06New Beginnings Incorporation Grant for January(93)
2021-02-07February donation3,407
2021-03-04National Black Farmers Association Grant for February(104)
2021-03-04March donation3,407
2021-04-02St. Mary’s Health Wagon Grant for March(118)
2021-04-02April donation3,407
2021-05-02Girls Who Code Grant for April(144)
2021-05-02May donation3,407
2021-06-03Conservation International Foundation Grant for May(156)
2021-07-07NAMI of Central Virginia Grant for June(157)
2021-08-01Side By Side VA Grant for July(158)
2021-09-03Healthcorps Grant for August(161)
2021-10-04HIAS Grant for September(154)
2021-11-02K9s for Warriors Grant for October(162)
2021-12-18412 Food Rescue Grant for November(160)
2022-01-12One Simple Wish Grant for December(161)
2022-02-09International Medical Corps Grant for January(153)
2022-03-09100 Black Men of America, Inc. Grant for February(143)
2022-04-04CARE Grant for March(151)
2022-05-15Oceana, Inc. Grant for April(150)
2022-07-08Human-I-T Grant for May(131)
2022-07-17FNE International Grant for June(130)
2022-08-16FNE International Grant for July(141)
2022-09-19Center for Disaster Philanthropy, Inc Grant for August(134)
2022-10-28Let’s Win! Pancreatic Cancer Grant for September(122)
2022-11-29Water Mission International Grant for October(131)
2022-12-20National Indian Child Welfare Association Grant for November(138)
2023-01-19Home Instead’s Be A Santa for a Senior Grant for December(135)
2023-02-16Malaria Consortium Grant for January(142)
2023-03-23Convoy of Hope Grant for February(131)
2023-04-30Partnership Against Domestic Violence Grant for March(135)
2023-05-28Virginia Capital Trail Grant for April(137)
2023-06-18Children’s Lifesaving Foundation Grant for May(137)
2023-07-16Greater Richmond Aquatics Partnership Grant for June(145)
2023-08-15Feed More Inc. for Grant July(149)
2023-09-18Maui Humane Society for Grant August(146)
2023-10-23Mr. Hollands Opus Foundation Grant for September(138)
2023-11-24HIAS, Inc. Grant for October(135)
2023-12-21CARITAS Grant for November(146)
2024-01-15The Doorways Grant for December(152)
2024-02-23American Heart Association Grant for January(154)
2024-02-23Balance46,143
The last balance update always reflects any unrealized gains since the balance is invested.

This Is Your Charity Fund

If you like this charitable giving idea, please don’t hesitate to steal it. If you’re a FIRE proponent, we hope you like the idea of combining FIRE and giving:

  • Build a charity nest egg and invest it in low-cost index funds
  • Leverage the 4% rule and build a system of perpetual giving
  • Maximize the value of a dollar, especially in giving, with a DAF

The best possible outcome that could come of us publishing this is for someone else to latch onto the idea and use it for themselves. We’re not terribly comfortable publicizing our giving, and so the purpose of making this public is to get you to consider following our footsteps.


Poll History

Our previous charitable fund polls are below for posterity’s sake.

January 2024

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Which healthy heart organization should we support?
9 votes
VoteResults

December 2023

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Which medical support service charity should we support?
8 votes
VoteResults

November 2023

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Which charity should we support this Holiday Season?
13 votes
VoteResults

October 2023

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Which charity should we support providing aid in the Middle East?
9 votes
VoteResults

September 2023

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Which educational charity should we support this month?
7 votes
VoteResults

August 2023

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Which charity combating the effects of extreme heatwaves should we contribute to this summer?
9 votes
VoteResults

July 2023

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Which food aid charity should we contribute to this summer?
9 votes
VoteResults

June 2023

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Which water safety charity should we contribute to this summer?
6 votes
VoteResults

May 2023

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Which kid's camp charity should we contribute to?
20 votes
VoteResults

April 2023

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Which organization encouraging sports and nature should we contribute to?
7 votes
VoteResults

March 2023

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Which organization honoring Women for Women’s History Month do you think we should we support?
8 votes
VoteResults

February 2023

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Which organization providing disaster relief in Turkey and Syria do you think we should we support?
8 votes
VoteResults

January 2023

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Which life saving organization should we support?
8 votes
VoteResults

December 2022

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Which organization should we support in spreading Holiday Cheer?
15 votes
VoteResults

November 2022

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Which organization should we support in honor of Native American Heritage Month?
4 votes
VoteResults

October 2022

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Which organization providing disaster relief do you think we should support?
5 votes
VoteResults

September 2022

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Which organization fighting cancer do you think we should support?
9 votes
VoteResults

August 2022

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Which charitable organization providing disaster relief and policies regarding climate change do you think we should support?
7 votes
VoteResults

July 2022

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Which Medical Clinic charity organization do you think we should support?
5 votes
VoteResults

June 2022

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Which Medical Clinic charity organization do you think we should support?
14 votes
VoteResults

May 2022

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Which charitable organization increasing equal access to technology do you think we should support?
4 votes
VoteResults

April 2022

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Which charitable organization promoting nature conservation do you think we should support?
8 votes
VoteResults

March 2022

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Which charity providing humanitarian aid in Ukraine do you think we should support?
13 votes
VoteResults

February 2022

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Which racial equity nonprofit organization do you think we should support?
6 votes
VoteResults

January 2022

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Which Healthcare Worker relief charity do you think we should support?
21 votes
VoteResults

December 2021

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Which Holiday Children's Charity do you think we should support?
12 votes
VoteResults

November 2021

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Which organization supporting hunger relief do you think we should support?
12 votes
VoteResults

October 2021

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Which organization offering Aid to U.S. Veterans do you think we should support?
14 votes
VoteResults

September 2021

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Which organization that supports refugees do you think we should support?
9 votes
VoteResults

August 2021

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Which organization that supports community health awareness do you think we should support?
31 votes
VoteResults

July 2021

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Which nonprofit LGBTQIA+ community organization do you think we should support?
17 votes
VoteResults

June 2021

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Which non-profit mental health organization do you think we should support?
15 votes
VoteResults

May 2021

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Which non-profit focused on the conservation of the Earth do you think we should support?
27 votes
VoteResults

April 2021

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Which non-profit focused on women and girls do you think we should support?
21 votes
VoteResults

March 2021

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Which non-profit promoting cancer and disease prevention do you think we should support?
18 votes
VoteResults

February 2021

January 2021

December 2020

November 2020

October 2020

September 2020

August 2020