Frugally Green » Consumerism

When is the Right Time to Buy?

Tyler — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:28:10 +0000

Don’t you remember what your mom always said growing up when you wanted to do something stupid that all your friends were doing?

“If Billy jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?”

Lots of times I would answer “yes” under my breath before I gave up arguing. I knew once that line came out, all hope was lost.

Mom had good advice, though. It’s usually a safe bet that if everyone’s doing it, there’s something to be suspicious about.

We know this, but we’re social creatures. We want to do what our friends are doing. We want to fit in.

Well, guess what all your friends do? They buy air conditioners, fans, and drapes in the middle of the summer because it’s sunny and they’re hot.

In the winter, they switch course and pick up space heaters, sweatshirts, and extra insulation for their homes. Makes sense. It’s cold out.

They repeat this buying pattern ad infinitum. They run into a situation that causes them discomfort and immediately seek to fix it.

Perfectly natural reaction, but it’s draining their wallets and not doing any favors for the planet since they’re not likely to make wise, earth friendly decisions when the gun’s to their head.

You don’t want to be like that. Every salesman knows the fastest way to make a ton of money is to sell stuff to people that are desperate.

Side note: If you’re behind on rent and desperate for cash, consider selling Viagra, hair loss formulas, or air conditioners (but only in the summer).

I want to help everyone make eco-friendly purchases and save money when they need to solve problems like being miserably hot or cold. And I don’t want anyone to suffer through half-ass solutions because they can’t afford to do the right thing at the last moment.

That’s why I want you to start planning out your seasonal purchases so that you can save all kinds of money.

I’m not going to say “all it takes is a little planning.” That would be making light of it. You’re busy. I’m busy. We’ve got a lot on our minds every day.

When it’s hot outside, it’s hard to think about what you’ll need when it gets cold. When you’re sitting in your house freezing your buns off, the last thing on your mind is how miserable you’ll be when it’s 100° and you’ve got no drapes to keep the sun out.

But this is kind of thinking is exactly what’s necessary.

A new furnace is expensive no matter when you buy it, but it’s really expensive if you wait until the middle of winter when you can’t go a day without it. Buy it in the summer and take your time choosing the most efficient one that fits inside your budget. You’ll get more for your money because there’s no pressure to buy.

I have an old window air conditioner from back in my less than earth conscious days sitting in my basement. Last summer when it was over 100° for a week straight, Portland, Oregon was completely sold out air conditioners. People were paying hundreds of dollars for tiny old units like mine on Craigslist.

I honestly considered selling it before my conscience kicked back in. Now, in December, I’d be lucky if I could give it away.

When you plan ahead for your future needs, you take away the power those salesmen wield in times of desperation and give it back to yourself.

Now, every situation is different and certain types of items require slightly different tactics to get the best deal, but here are a few questions to ask yourself when you decide that you no longer want to be at the mercy of the market:

When is everyone else buying it?

If all your friends buy it during the winter, could you save by buying it in the summer? Maybe a better option is to buy it right at the end of the season its intended for?

Here’s a seasonal buying guide from Kiplinger for common consumer goods and services to get your thinking on the right track.

For the eco-aware, you’ll want to start taking that information and overlapping it with the greenest options of whatever you’re looking for.

What’s the most responsible option for me?

With all the time you now have to plan, what’s the best choice for you?

When you buy in the moment, you’re likely to overpay for features that you don’t really need and give little thought to the environmental impact of your purchases. Figure out what you really need and don’t pay for more.

On the other hand, when you’re desperate, you’re also likely to pay for something inadequate that serves as little more than a temporary band aid.

Do I really need this at all?

When you’re lost in a sea of agony and just want something to fix your problem, you’re more willing to pay for something you don’t actually need at all.

By planning and giving yourself time to find the best option, you might realize that there are other, much better choices to solve your problem.

You might have thought you needed air conditioning to beat the agonizing heat, but, after running the numbers, you realize that more home insulation and a few carefully placed ceiling fans can keep you cool all summer.

Without the time to consider all your options, you’re less likely to think of alternatives.

If you’re a busy person, it can be tough to get your mind out of the present and plan for the future, but doing so can unlock a whole lot of new opportunities for you.

Try to find one day, maybe on a weekend, each season, where you can plan out your future needs and strategize how best to meet them.

Do you have any tips for making the most responsible purchases? Have any rules that you follow to make sure you buy at the right time for you?

~~~~~

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How Funny Money Trashes the Planet

Tyler — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:00:17 +0000

Have you ever wondered where the money you use every day came from?

The other day I found myself thinking about how it came to be that a piece of paper was a fair trade for something as big and useful as, say, a house or a car. Who came up with that idea?

Is money something that just doesn’t make a lot of sense to you? Do you sometimes feel disconnected from your finances or find it hard to save money even though you make enough of it?

If you do, you’re not alone. The money system that we use today is not intuitive. It disconnects us from the resources that made it valuable to begin with.

A quick look at how the system developed shows how the path we’ve taken removes what we really find valuable from money and can have a real negative effect on you, me and, as a result, our environment.

The Barter System

Before we established governments, currencies, and trade systems, if you wanted something that someone else owned, you had to have something of equal or greater value to trade for it. If you raised pigs and needed a carriage for transportation, you had to barter with a carriage maker.

The carriage maker knew exactly how much work it took to build his carriage and how much food he needed in return if he were to sell it and build another.

You knew exactly what it took to raise a pig. This was central to your way of life.

But what if the carriage maker didn’t need a pig? What if he needed a cow? You’d have to go barter your pigs with a cattle farmer and then trade your cow for a carriage.

The value we placed on the things we traded were extremely intrinsic, but also highly inefficient.

So, we found a precious metal, gold, that was coveted for it’s rarity and began using it as a broker for transactions.

The Gold Standard

Gold turned out to be a pretty good medium for facilitating trade. Everyone wanted it, so you knew if you had some, you could trade it for something you needed.

Even if someone didn’t want it, they’d accept it anyway because they knew they could quickly trade it with someone else that did.

So now we have gold as a worldwide currency. Rock on.

However, as population grew and transporting large masses of gold became more difficult, we came up with a clever idea.

We didn’t need to actually carry all that weight around. We could just make certificates that represented the gold and our lives would be much easier.

The government would guarantee that this paper used as payment could be traded for a specific amount of gold whenever necessary.

Problem solved! All that gold could sit in banks and we’d just carry around some paper to trade for the stuff we needed.

Now, we don’t really know how much these pieces of paper are worth, but we know we can trade it for gold anytime we want and gold is really valuable.

Well, at least we know those pigs we’re raising are worth bit of it. How many degrees of separation is that?

But now population is growing substantially. This gold that backs up our currency is getting scarcer and scarcer as more people compete for it.

Poverty is creating misery, we can’t mine enough gold to keep up, and we need more money to keep those Commies from turning our great nation all red!

Fiat Currency

So forget the gold! We don’t need it anymore!

Somewhere down the line, we decided that if we couldn’t accumulate enough precious metals to back up all the money we needed, we’d just abandon it all together and start printing more of it.

Now all that’s left is a piece of paper. But don’t worry, your government will put it’s money where it’s mouth is and let you pay your taxes with it.

Today, we live in a world of fiat currency. What this means is that the pieces of paper that we pay our debts with has value because (and only because) the government says it does. There is no physical object that it’s related to anymore. No gold. No nothing. Just the proverbial handshake of Uncle Sam.

If we decide that more money is needed to benefit our economy, we just print more. If there’s too much, we can collect and destroy it.

All of a sudden, the value of our currency is decided on by a select group of people who make decisions about how much of it should be in circulation.

When they decide to print more money, each bit becomes less valuable through dilution. When they decide to print more, the opposite is true.

Your Finances & The Environment

So what effect does all this confusion of a fiat currency have on your finances and how is it affecting our environment?

It seems to make it more difficult to decide how much we should be paying for something.

We still know how much our pigs are worth and we have an idea of how much that carriage we need is, but the vehicle we use to exchange them can now fluctuate wildly on the whim of a few people, making it harder for us to gauge how many dollars (or whatever unit of currency) should be needed to make that transaction happen.

Since a fiat currency system relies on the general principle that we’ll slowly but steadily add more money to the system to keep it growing and thriving, money loses value over time, requiring more of it to buy the same thing later.

This is called inflation and it rewards spenders while punishing savers.

Why save money when what you’re saving for will just be more expensive once you think you’re ready to buy it?

Inflation existed when gold was the currency of the world, but to a much lesser extent since mining more of it quite a lot harder than just cutting down more trees to print more money.

There’s a finite amount of gold to be found on this planet, whereas, we can always plant more trees to print more money.

This is where the credit industry has made a killing.

When used wisely, credit can be a great tool in a fiat money system to buy something now and pay for it later at a lesser realized expense to you.

However, credit is easily abused and many people thinking they need something now find themselves in a tangle when they don’t realize they couldn’t afford it.

It goes without saying that this “gotta have it now” mentality that is fostered by a money system like this is incredibly damaging to our environment as people attempt to collect more and more now to hedge against higher future prices only to end up bankrupt, starting over again.

And an apparently unending supply of money provides the fuel of this vicious cycle.

I am all about maintaining a mindset of abundance, but based on the cycle that we seem to be set on, a lot of people appear to be doing it wrong.

What do you think? Is it too late to go back to a gold secured currency? What else could be used to connect our money with what the Earth has to provide?

~~~~~

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I Am Responsible for the Corporate World’s Waste, or A Lesson in Micro Economics

Tyler — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 12:00:19 +0000

On Thursday, bloggers around the world united to write about one single topic: climate change. It was an act of solidarity organized by the folks at blogactionday.org.

Every year, a major social topic is selected and willing participants around the world discuss the issue on their blogs on the same day in an attempt to raise widespread awareness.

Unfortunately, little old me didn’t know such a day existed until it was too late. Even though I write about this, one way or another, every day, lets consider this my belated contribution.

I learned about this year’s blog action day from Chris Guillebeau while perusing my new favorite site, The Art of Nonconformity. There’s always some great discussion over there and one comment in particular caught my attention:

Yet again the focus is on the little guy. Does the little led on my TV really matter when cities the world over are full of high rise offices that leave their lights on 24/7? Manufacturing and business produce the most harmful emissions and yet the emphasis is on the little home dweller?

This really got me thinking. Was he right? Are we picking on the little guys when the the big boys are the ones causing all the problems?

What difference does it make that I turn off all of my lights when the office buildings down the street leave theirs on all night doing 10,000 times more damage than I ever could? Who cares if we buy an electric car when all the electricity it produces comes from a wildly smoking coal plant hundreds of miles away?

Why should I bother?

Here’s why: because you and I are the most powerful change agents that exist on this planet.

You may think that you can’t make a difference and that some guy in a suit sitting in an ivory tower that doesn’t care about you is calling all the shots, but it’s not true.

We own that suit. We own that ivory tower. When we say jump, that guy listens. The only reason he isn’t jumping yet is because we haven’t told him to. Maybe we’ve started, but we haven’t raised our voice yet. You and I hold all of the power. Let’s wield it.

How corporations work

The #1 responsibility of every corporation that exists is to make money for its shareholders.

Sure, they all have noble secondary goals that tout their value to society, but the one, big, underlying goal that every single one of them is a slave to is to make lots of money for the people that invest in them. The beauty in this is that, usually, the very noble secondary goals must be met in order to generate that profit.

They have to provide us with something that we find valuable enough to trade our hard earned money for.

You see, you and I don’t really care about shareholders and all those shinanigans. How much money they make doesn’t bother us so long as we think we’re getting a good deal for something useful. In fact, if we decided to pay attention to all that, we might even be happy that these businesses that are making our lives so much better are making tons of money.

This is where we get to step in and call the shots.

Why you and I are responsible

Like I mentioned above, if a business must attract tons of our money to return great amounts of it to shareholders, it has to impress the heck out of us. To impress the heck out of us, what it offers must deeply connect with what we value the most.

Whatever it is that you and I find the most important in life, a company must provide to us in order to rise to the top.

So the buck stops at you. It stops at me. What do we really care about?

Do we care that Corporation A runs a sweat shop filled with incandescent lights that stay on all day and night? Does it matter to you that Corporation B swallows up tons of resources and spews out waste at an alarming rate? What about Corporation C that produces its own energy with wind and solar power and recycles all its waste back into its production stream? Does any of that actually matter?

What I believe the commenter on Chris’ post points out, inadvertently, is that it does not. We all say we care about and want the best for our environment, but is that really true? Every marketer out there that’s worth his weight in salt knows that what we consumers say we want and what we actually want are oftentimes very contradictory.

McDonalds knows this better than any business out there and they openly admit it. Their customers say they want salads, so McDonalds offers just enough varieties of them to get you to come in and buy a cheeseburger.

If we really, truly, in our heart of hearts, valued Corporation C above, that business model would be the industry norm. But we don’t and it isn’t. What we really care about is money and giving up just enough of it to get something just barely acceptable in return.

We care about this because it strengthens our ability to do it again and again. We’re consumers. Now, don’t get offended. I’m guilty as sin. Luckily, there’s something we can do.

The power we wield

What we seem to fail to realize seemingly over and over again is that the cheapest things in our lives are the ones we buy the most often.

Even though they’re made from recycled materials, sourced from renewable resources, and manufactured with renewable energy, the most sustainable products and businesses out there are still more expensive than their opposing counterparts.

If you and I decide, together, that a shoe made from recycled car tires by union employees is what we really value, then it won’t take that long for such a product to become less expensive than a plastic one made in a sweatshop by 8-year-olds as the economies of scale push the cost of such a product lower as we buy more of it and less of the other.

And that’s just the thing. We have to actually buy these products - not just say we will. Actions speak much louder than words and this all ties back to the concept that spending more upfront can often save us bundles down the road.

Nope, the little things don’t matter

“But I’m just one person. What difference can I make?”

Well, I suppose that depends on how you interpret the question. The little steps you take to improve your awareness and value for the environment will never add up to much. All by yourself you will never make a difference, and that’s OK.

Big changes are bigger than you and me. What you do doesn’t really matter. Who you influence does.

If only one person reads this post (I’m secretly holding out for more than that) and decides its worth their effort to try something new, then I have doubled the effectiveness of my minuscule efforts.

If that person influences someone else they know to change as well, I’m three times as effective. By acting on my values with sincerity, however little they’ll accomplish on their own, I have the opportunity to attract many others that are predisposed to my message. There’s little else I have to do as others will take over the cause for me.

If you do this right, you can be the head of your own multi-level marketing scheme, tell all the CEOs of the world how you want your fair-trade coffee served, and finally buy an organic cotton T-shirt for a reasonable price. And while you’re at it, you can let them know they need to turn off their lights when they go home.

Can ya dig?

~~~~~

I’ve had some great responses to the survey I posted on Tuesday. Thank you so much to those of you that have participated. If you haven’t yet taken it and would like to, please do so now. I will be closing down responses on Wednesday.

~~~~~

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It’s Easy Being Green: A Handbook for Earth-Friendly Living

Tyler — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 12:00:09 +0000

A few years ago, a gal named Crissy Trask noticed that everywhere she went, people she met were excited and interested in the green movement. Everyone was talking about how important it is to live responsibly and be mindful of the earth. Then she realized that all these people that seemed so gung-ho about an environmentally friendly life weren’t actually doing anything about it.

After a bit of research and asking around, Crissy realized that the people in her life were excited and interested in the prospects of a cleaner, more sustainable world, but didn’t really know what they could do to help or even where to go to find out what they could do. That’s when she decided to write It’s Easy Being Green: A Handbook for Earth-Friendly Living.

Who should read this book: If you’re relatively new to the concept of sustainability, need some help navigating the lingo, or looking for some help figuring out what types of pursuits might fit your lifestyle, this book can offer some guidance as well as references that you can continually look back to.

Who shouldn’t read this book: If you’re looking for a matter-of-fact guide to tell you what to do, then this book isn’t for you. Also, if you’re looking for playful storytelling, this book won’t be a good fit – it’s very middle-of-the-road in its presentation.

It’s Easy Being Green is just what it says it is, a handbook. In fact, I prefer to think of it more as a reference manual as it is filled with definitions of commonly heard (but often misunderstood) terms from around the greenoshphere (I just made that word up so no, it’s not included in the handbook) as well as tons of external resources to get you going in the direction you want once you’ve read it and decided what that direction might be.

The real value in this book, in my opinion, is the 59 page list of tips (organized by topic) that allow you to define a roadmap of things you will do to improve your eco-footprint. At 59 pages, it’s a bit cumbersome, but it’s really comprehensive. Here’s how you use it (This process is also described in the book):

Read through all the tips, one at a time, making a check in the 3^rd box next to it if it sounds interesting to you.
Go through the list again, looking only at the tips you identified as interesting and place a check mark in the 2^nd box if you feel it’s something you’d actually like to pursue.
One by one, go through each tip and begin to accomplish them, giving yourself a time frame to complete each one. To avoid overload, don’t focus on more than one item at a time. Give each your full attention.
Using the 1^st box next to each tip, give yourself a rating of 1-5 to identify how you feel you performed implementing it.
Start over at step 1.

This section of the book has the ability to turn into a living document as you fill it out and pursue the tips you identified. Once you’re done, you might find it useful to go back and look over all the ones you chose, implemented, and scored yourself on. You’ll probably find that you performed a lot better in certain areas than others. It might help you to prioritize your green pursuits going forward.

I should also mention that Crissy understands that her audience likes to buy stuff as she includes 2 chapters in her book titled Buying Green and Green Shopping Online. Personally, I prefer the Don’t Buy Stuff method to getting through life, but that’s not exactly realistic and it’s important to know how to make the best choices when you need to purchase something, so I’m glad she covered it thoroughly.

Crissy also writes a chapter titled Getting Involved where she provides numerous tips and resources for easy ways to connect with organizations that promote sustainability in areas you may be interested in.

Overall, I can’t say that It’s Easy Being Green was a great fit for me. I feel like I’m slightly beyond the level of material that was presented, but I do appreciate all the external references provided. I’ve written down a number of them that I will eventually check out to see if they could fit into my pursuits. But like I said earlier, if you’re just starting out or need help finding direction, you might find a lot of guidance from this handbook – especially from the 59 page worksheet.

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Are You More Frugal or Green?: Balancing Multiple Goals

Tyler — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:00:43 +0000

Here at Frugally Green I am on a mission to connect personal finance with sustainable living, but oftentimes I notice that in my quest to grow in both aspects, I slide back and forth from one extreme to another.

It’s easy to find yourself focusing on one side of the equation and neglecting the other side that is just as important. What good does it do to save and earn as much as you can if you’re not also leaving yourself an environment that you can enjoy once you’ve reached your financial goals?

On the other hand, as noble as it may seem to shirk financial gain in favor of saving the world at all cost (forgive the pun), how many people can really sustain such a life?

I think most people with multiple goals have a natural tendency to create a hierarchy for them. I certainly do it. Even though I strive daily to put my sustainability goals on the same playing field as my personal finance ones, I just seem to have a stronger natural draw towards frugality.

One path to two goals

Maybe you’ve noticed yourself leaning one direction or the other? In the past, when I become aware that I’ve focused too heavily on frugality and begun to neglect my green-oriented goals, I’ve had a tendency to over-correct, sending myself into the ditch on the other side of the equation.

This eventually leads to the same problem with the same, ineffective solution. So how do I get myself back on track and maintaining a healthy, sustainable balance between these goals?

Well, I’ve noticed that simply forcing myself to shift my perception a little has helped quite a bit.

If I’m constantly looking at frugality and sustainability as two mutually exclusive goals, then it’ll be impossible for me to truly succeed in achieving them. Real success will only come when both goals are being met simultaneously.

The most helpful thing I have done to overcome this paradox is to simply be more aware of my decision making process. It takes a little practice to really pay attention to all your passing thoughts, but now I can recognize when I am creating an unnecessary adversarial relationship between goals in my mind.

If you’re committed to multiple causes, achieving success in one should never stifle success in another.

Focus on the big picture

One of the major perception shifts I’ve had to make, but has paid off extraordinarily, has been getting myself to recognize that the least expensive option is often not the best option when it comes to being green or when it comes to being frugal.

Now, this may seem like a pretty simple concept to some, but it has tripped me up for a long time. Subconsciously, I know that buying the cheapest option is almost never the best bet, but there is always something alluring and exciting about the possibility of getting an amazing bargain. Problem is, you have to endure 9 sub-par purchases in order to get the thrill from that single great one.

When you look back on what it took to get that deal, it’s easy to see how much time, money, and resources have been wasted. All of a sudden, that bargain doesn’t provide the same satisfaction it did before. Bummer. Keep the big picture in mind.

But marketing is so good these days. It seems the advertising industry has truly perfected the art selling snake oil. How can you tell the difference between the quality products and the ones that are only pretending? Hard as it may be, it can be done.

Know what you need

Don’t waste time comparing products that don’t have the features you’ll require or the ones with all the bells and whistles that you’ll never use.

Just eliminating those will keep you from 1) paying too much for something you don’t need and 2) buying again when you realize what you picked isn’t up to snuff.

Note: This strategy requires that you do your homework and anticipate features that you don’t need right now, but likely will in the future…but be realistic! This is an easy way to up-sell yourself to something that you won’t utilize.

Hold the items in your hand

Try ‘em out. Feel ‘em up. Most times, the cheapest option will feel the cheapest, too.

Am I really saving any money on that widget if I have to buy it four times to get the same use out of it? Doubtful. And I can be very sure I’m not doing my poor planet any favors.

Now, this isn’t always possible since so much commerce is done on the internet these days so read reviews. It’s hard to find independent reviews that say how great something is since people usually only write them when they’re upset enough to tell the world about it, but take the time to read them and see if anything stands out.

It’s easy to see patterns among reviews that can steer you toward or away from something based on what you need it to do.

For extra green points, if something is available locally, at least give the shop an opportunity to price match for your business.

Borrow it!

This is what friends are for. No need to accumulate things you won’t use often if your friends or family have things that you can borrow.

If we all knew our neighbors better we could save so many valuable resources. There are neighborhoods in my city, Portland, that collect a small fee from willing neighbors to maintain a fully stocked tool shed/wood shop.

If 25 people living within a couple blocks of each other only need to use a chop saw twice a year, why should each of them own one? Leverage your friends and neighbors. Let them leverage you. You’ll come out ahead in the end.

Wrapping Up

Balancing goals can be a tricky juggling act, but with a little thought and planning, you can make great strides in finding the synergies between them rather than fighting to achieve each one on it’s own, and you’ll get there in half the time!

My examples above relate directly to my own problem trying to be both frugal and sustainable at the same time and I’ve shown how shifting my perception has helped me see the opportunities to achieve both, but this concept could apply to any set of goals that you’ve decided are worthy of your time.

Focus on the details when you have to, but make sure you step back once in awhile to get a bird’s-eye-view.

What are some of your goals? How do you balance them? What tips and tricks do you have that could help someone else in the same situation?

~~~~~

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