I was in Natchitoches, unfortunately, so a bit away from you. I met a guy once from Munroe. But I've since moved to Virginia, so I probably won't be attending any hypothetical LA meetups.

Huh. A sister (chemical) plant to mine manufactures HPMC in Belgium. That's probably what's making the actual barrier. I wonder how necessary the other ingredients are.

I only give 10%, but that is enough to make itemizing deductions worth it for me, when combined with my mortgage interest. I am also looking to retire early (or at least become financially independent and increase donations substantially). Good financial advice is always relevant to everyone.

Three hundred dollars is a pretty minimal deduction. I expect there are at least a few effective altruists on here who have significant enough charitable contributions that it still makes sense to itemize deductions even with the increase in the standard deduction.

cash contributions to charity have a special call-out

Is this true? I don't think it is. From irs.gov: "You may deduct charitable contributions of money or property made to qualified organizations if you itemize your deductions."

I found my favorite strategy for responding to salary questions on r/negotiation several months back: "Right now I'm focused on trying to figure out if this job is a good fit for the direction I want to take my career. If we both decide it is, I'm sure we can come to an understanding on salary."

Then, if they press: "Well I don't think it's fair to consider just salary in comparing job offers. I'd have to look at a total holistic benefits package to fairly compare two offers."

Then if they insist: "Look, you and I both know that my naming a desired salary puts me at a negotiating disadvantage. Please don't ask again." At this point, you probably don't want to work at this company anyway.

Two notes:

1. I'm in a pretty high tax bracket, but I still do Roth IRA/401k contributions. This is because if you are maxing out your accounts (which if your goal is "early" retirement, you almost certainly will be) you are protecting more real dollars from taxes. The contribution limits are the same regardless of whether you contribute on a traditional or Roth basis. If I can protect $6000 and never have to pay taxes on it or protect $6000 that I'll eventually have to pay taxes on, I'd rather take the tax penalty now and protect more real dollars. I never see this discussed anywhere, but it's my primary motivating factor in doing Roth. There is also the flexibility consideration which you mention. (There are also more advanced strategies such as backdoor Roths and mega-backdoor Roths that you didn't really touch on, but they're not super important.)
2. One thing you don't discuss is the tax advantages of owning a home. All interest you pay (in the US) is tax deductible. Commentary on the prudence of that aside, it doesn't seem likely to change any time soon. Besides which, interest rates are currently so low that it probably makes sense to finance other items as well, even if you have the ability to pay for them out of pocket. But I'm not up to speed on car/student/etc. loans, so that might not be true for other asset classes. My recently refinanced interest rate on my home is 2.5%. At a rate like that they are literally giving money away, if you assume 3% inflation every year (admittedly a debatable assumption). If you are risk-tolerant (most people aren't risk tolerant enough, remember) you should generally be happy to finance debt to invest the returns in the market.

Interesting. I didn't realize that (wasn't active on LW at the time). Is Scott not interested in cross posting?

Does Scott's contract with Substack prevent automatic cross-posting here? I really do loathe Substack as a UI.

One of the differences is that transmission is, for obvious reasons, much, much easier to control on an island. Hawaii isn't doing nearly as badly as the rest of the United States, for example.