If it survives a month you can buy another $500 clunker instead of losing the same to a new car loan, though they are far more rare these days (the example clunker typically now costs closer to $2-$4k now, or ~4 months of new car loan payments that you’d be stuck paying for 6 more years). The sweet spot is 10-15 year old cars under 200k miles and using small loans if you can’t pay cash. New cars are for idiots and the financially independent, but newer cars 5-10 years old can be worth the price/stress tradeoffs for some once you can afford one.
You’ll also get far more savings primarily riding a bike (and ebikes make this far easier once you can afford one) since most of your trips are likely under 5 miles, and your old car will last a lot longer for when you really need it. You might even find you can get by without owning a car.
Yep donate to a lot, but I make sure it’s out of my planned donation budget or out of my (set amount) “feel like it” budget categories. I consider patreoning creators / journalists / FOSS seperate from charity, but I try to pay a fair subscription amount I’d give to paywalled stuff. Political donations I do occasionally as well but that too is not charity.
CharityNavigator is important to vet charities, and a good starting place to look for charities in causes you care about.
I try to focus 50/50 on local vs international stuff, which amounts to 10/90% impacts due to wealth discrepancies. I donate typically to organizations doing the work, but also do a smaller amount to UnitedWay (which if you are too tired, stressed, or distracted to do charity research is worth the lost efficiency as they do a lot of charity vetting for you).
I don’t donate monetarily to strangers on the street, but I do donate (time and money) to shelters and assistance programs who can bring a lot more aid per dollar than I can.
If you work for a corp, be sure to check if they have a matching program, you can double your impact.
I highly recommend using a email alias provider as you’ll get a lot of spam. I block most charity calls/text attempts to my phone number if they get it (I don’t understand how that is effective at all, but they all seem to do it).