I'm an undergraduate student. Apart from savings, I just started on a internship, my first job, where I am earning a somewhat good sum for the country where I live. For the first time, I have some financial independence from my parents. My parents' use of money is thoughtless and greedy, so I never thought much of making use of it. Now having financial independence is opening up a lot of moral questions. I have two choice now: either donate part my earnings, or save up for the long term. Whatever it is, I want to maximize what good I can do with it, and I will not tolerate any less. My savings, of course, could have great consequences in the long-term.
My question is mostly of an empirical nature. I would be very thankful if you could lead me in the right direction for doing my own research.
Aside from that, I have the question of whether to use my own or my parents' money for my everyday spending, which is negligable, and I am estimating would use up no more than 7% of my earnings. They wouldn't mind lending me that. Like I said, money in my parents' hands has no value to me. It is wasted either way. However, I really wish for that independence, as an opportunity for self-education and simply because it makes me feel good.
This question is more philosophical, but I'm struggling with it.
This seems like a good idea to me. I didn't donate immediately when I had my first job because I still felt financially illiterate and I didn't have a great sense of my overall spending and income trends. A few years later, when I had a few months runway in savings and a better sense of my financial position, I went back and made donations proportional to what I'd earned in years prior. This had the additional benefit of clustering my tax writeoffs in a single year, resulting in a nice tax refund.