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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Image of trees by 1Sock

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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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Monopoly money image by rutty

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We’re all different and that’s what makes life beautiful, right? Growing up, we all navigate different avenues, make different decisions that impact our lives, and draw different conclusions from the same information. The culmination of all these differences are what come to make us uniquely “us.”

This is largely related to the fact that everyone possesses their own unique learning profile, meaning that we are naturally inclined to learn better from specific types of inputs and are predisposed to perform better at certain tasks than others.

This is something that we all recognize intuitively, but have you ever considered that it might explain why you’ve got a knack for understanding and caring for the environment, but have thousands of dollars in credit card debt and can’t seem to dig yourself out?

8 ways to be a genius

There’s a gentleman by the name of Howard Gardner who understands this. From 1983 to present, he’s developed the Theory of Multiple Intelligences to challenge the generally accepted measurements of intellect.

According to Gardner’s studies, there are 8 ways that a person can express the intelligence that they naturally possess. They are:

• Linguistically – People with linguistic intelligence have a natural affinity for reading, writing, speaking and listening. They’re often good at explaining and teaching.

• Logically – If you possess logical intelligence, you’re probably good with abstractions, numbers, and complex math.

• Spatially – Those with spatial intelligence usually have a talent for visualizing and manipulating objects and ideas. This is a common trait of the artistic.

• Bodily-kinesthetically – If you’re good with your hands or find that you learn the best by doing an activity, you probably have a strong kinesthetic intelligence.

• Musically – People with a strong sensitivity to sounds, rhythms, and tones usually have a great musical intelligence.

• Interpersonally – If you have interpersonal intelligence, you’re likely extroverted and can easily read others’ moods and temperaments. You probably work well in groups.

• Intrapersonally – People with a very strong sense of self and internal understanding have what’s called intrapersonal intelligence.

• Naturalistically – Those with naturalistic intelligence are highly aware of their environment, can understand how ecosystems work, and can be talented with communicating with animals.

Interesting list, no?

Now consider for a second the relevance of each of these intelligences to understanding how you and the natural world work versus, say, the manmade construct of money. I’m not insinuating that you have to be primarily a logical learner to understand money, but it sure would help, wouldn’t it?

What’s your learning profile?

So what are you supposed to do if you’re not naturally inclined to understand and appreciate the math behind the conventional rules of personal finance?

I suppose it would help to begin by understanding your learning profile. Most of us probably have at least an idea of how we learn best, but it might help to have an idea of our other supporting intelligences to help us gauge the best way to approach what feels like a complex topic.

There are a lot of tests out there that aim to give you a snapshot of your learning profile. I know because I spent all day finding and taking them.  I recommend this test from the Learning Disability Resource Community. I liked it the best for these reasons:

• At 80 questions, it felt very comprehensive.

• I felt the results were accurate.

• The questions were worded in ways that made it easy to select appropriate answers.

• No email address or other personally identifying information was required to get my results.

Speaking of results, here’s a snapshot of my learning profile:

As you can see, I’m highly musical and kinesthetic. Also, I’m not very interpersonal or naturalistic. It’s true, this stuff doesn’t come naturally to me.

On improvement

To this day, personal finance and money, when they’re taught at all, are still taught with very mathy overtones. This is a roadblock for most of us.

So what could a guy like me do if I wanted a better grasp of my personal finances? I would need to find a way to relate it to the musical and kinesthetic intelligences that I already possess.

When I developed my first budget, I started tracking how much money I was spending on CDs, records, and recording equipment.

As it turns out, it wasn’t all that much and I had other parts of my life that needed a lot more attention, but relating money to music was the first step I had to take to get my brain to even accept the fact that money management was now going to be a part of my life.

It’s what got me to say, “Hey, I can do this!” I couldn’t have begun to understand it any other way.

From there, I went to an all cash budgeting system and almost entirely stopped using my credit card. Taking the physical dollar bills out of my wallet and counting them out each time I bought something really played to my kinesthetic intelligence.

Removing the barriers to successful personal finance and working from basic concepts with my natural intelligences gave me the sense of understanding that made me want to keep improving.

Putting it all together

Today, I’m on an all-credit, fully-automated budget tracking system that works perfectly for me, but starting out with what made sense at the time is what it took to get here.

Money, budgets, and personal finance were scary words not that long ago. Music and handwork were comfortable and familiar.

The human mind is a complex organ with all kinds of built-in roadblocks. Learning to connect with yourself and your natural strengths will help you to address foreign ideas and concepts with less fear and hesitance.

What are your primary natural learning styles? How can you incorporate them to improve your understanding of personal finance?

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Want to get even more out of Frugally Green? Share this post with your friends, leave a comment, or get free updates.

Connect with me on Twitter: @FrugallyGreen

Light bulb image by Caveman 92223

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In the world of personal finance, there’s a lot of emphasis given to the net worth calculation.  There’s plenty of debate about how much attention should be focused on it, but most everyone agrees that it’s a good tool to quickly gauge the health of your finances.

For those not familiar with the calculation, it’s simply the value of all your money and belongings minus the value of any debts you owe.  Generally speaking, if your net worth is increasing on a monthly or yearly basis, then you have healthy personal finance habits.  If it’s decreasing, you might need to take a second look at how you’re managing your money or you eventually risk running out of it and digging a very deep hole of debt.

How can those of us living environmentally conscious lives apply this to our own situation? It seems there ought to be a way to quickly gauge our progress or regression in our pursuit of sustainability.  We need to be able to look at our “environmental net worth.”

What is Environmental Net Worth

What would an environmental net worth be?  Well, on a basic level, it would be just like any financial net worth calculation – the sum of your environmental contributions minus your grievances. By adding up everything you’re doing to make the world a better place and subtracting the things that could be perceived as damaging, you can get a quick look at your overall contribution to society.

You could track your environmental net worth over time and see how you’ve progressed. You’d be able to tell if you’re growing and developing by contributing more to a healthy planet. Or, you could identify dips or regressions and find what may have caused them and how to avoid them in the future.

Why is it important?

An environmental net worth calculation is important for the same reason that it’s important to personal finance – it can demystify a seemingly convoluted and confusing situation.

Many people go through life not knowing whether what they’re doing is actually working or not.  There’s usually an intuitive feeling of progress or regression, but for many, it’s just not accurate.  Just as with anything in this world, if it can be measured, it can be improved.

By establishing a way to concretely measure our contributions to the environment, we’ll be better prepared to leave a better world for ourselves and future generations.

How is it calculated?

So how can you calculate your environmental net worth?  This is, of course, the most difficult part.  In a traditional net worth calculation, there’s a really handy tool, we call it money, that’s universally used to measure the value and worth of an object for comparison sake.

In the new environmental economy, such a tool doesn’t really exist yet.  We need a common denominator that we can all use to convert the results of our environmental focus into for comparison’s sake.  Right now, we have a whole bunch of people doing what they think is best, but not a whole lot of data to suggest what really is or isn’t working. 

We need an environmental currency.

The closest thing we have is carbon.  It’s still a bit abstract and calculating your carbon output is not as tangible as, say, counting the dollars in your bank account, but for the time being it’s what we have to work with.

I found this calculator over at nature.org that you can use to get a baseline estimate of what your current carbon “footprint” is.  It may or may not be completely accurate for your situation, but the important thing to take away is the graph at the end comparing the different aspects to the national average.  This will give you an idea of where you can potentially improve.

Remember that,  unlike a traditional net worth calculation, we’re going for the lowest score possible.  Think golf, not basketball.

Where do I stand?

A quick run through revealed that I could really make some improvement in my housing situation.  That makes sense – I live in a big, old four bedroom home with two other people.  It’s too big for us and it’s very drafty since all of the windows are nearly 100 years old.  I kind of doubt there’s even any insulation in the exterior walls.

Since I don’t have any plans to move right now and this is a rental property, the best we can do is add weatherstripping and caulk at all the openings, add insulation in the attic space and, most importantly, get another roommate so that we’re not wasting a bedroom.  The additional body heat won’t hurt, either.

Do you keep track of your environmental net worth?  Where could you make the biggest improvements?

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Carbon Footprint image by Leonski

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How would it feel if you found out that you were wasting 80% of your time doing things that weren’t getting you any closer to your goals?  What if you learned that you could stop, or at least quit focusing on, 80% of the things you do on a day to day basis and still enjoy the same success you do today – still live the same life you’re living? What new and exciting challenges could you add to your life if 80% of the time you spent managing your money and your eco-footprint were simply gone?

What a crock, right? That’s what I thought, at least at first, because that’s what comes to mind any time I hear anything earth shattering (I don’t necessarily recommend this life perspective, by the way).  But guess what?  It’s true, and it works – at least to some extent.  If you don’t believe me, and I wouldn’t expect you to since this post intro is already playing out like the first 30 seconds of every Sunday morning infomercial you’ve ever seen, just take it from some of the richest and most successful businessmen in the world, greatest leaders of all time, and various instances of math and science.  That’s right, math and science.

The Pareto Principle

Enter the Pareto principle. A long time ago, in a land far, far away (think Italy in the late 1800s) there was a gentleman by the name of Vilfredo Pareto who happened to notice that 80% of the wealth of Italy was owned by only 20% of its people. After further research, he found that the same balance applied across many countries and, cumulatively, the world.  Fast forward to the 1940s and we find a business management consultant by the name of Joseph Juran who, fascinated by Pareto’s findings, decided to apply it to his field, finding that 80% of the success of businesses comes from 20% of their efforts.

Juran found that many of his clients could experience substantial growth and success by reorganizing their priorities to focus more on the 20% of things they do that have the biggest impact on their bottom line.  Microsoft has reported that, when they release new software, they’re able to eliminate crashes 80% of the time by focusing only on the top 20% of the bugs that users report.  Many businesses today have learned that 80% of their income is produced by only 20% of their customers.  This is why they offer lavish incentives to their top clients; they know just how much they depend on them for continued success.

What’s in it for us?

If so many others have been able to find success by applying the Pareto principle to their situation, why the heck can’t we? In my mind, there’s no difference between what we’re doing and what the business world is doing.  We’re all trying to get the most bang for our buck and make the biggest change we can with the time and resources we have.  When I analyze everything I’m doing, its pretty easy to see where I’m making the biggest difference.

I know that by eating less meat, I am helping to make a huge dent in the conservation of the environment by reducing the amount of space needed to raise animals and reducing the number of them that are emitting methane into the air.  I also know that by winterizing my home (something I’ll be posting about soon since it’s starting to get cold) I can save a bunch of money on my energy bills since the furnace doesn’t have to work as hard to keep me warm. But these two things are only a small fraction of all the things I do on a daily basis.

In terms of personal finance, I’ve found that by spending just minutes a week using an online account aggregator (Mint.com), I have considerably more control over my money by being able to visualize where it’s all going on a regular basis.  This has been a huge benefit to me since spending countless hours trying to develop money saving systems for myself before turning to Mint proved relatively ineffective.  For me, the secret was in being able to easily see a snapshot of my finances at any given moment.

What about the left over 80%?

So, now I’ve whittled down my list of “really important and meaningful tasks” that deliver far more value than all the rest of the things I do and I’m going to spend way more time working on them.  But what am I supposed to do with this giant pile of waste that comprises the remaining 80%?

I guess this is the part of the infomercial where, just after becoming entirely sold and actually picking up the phone to order, you realize that there’s no way you can actually  get fit drinking beer and watching infomercials all day with your Mega Ab Buster 4000™  stuck to your gut while you lay on the couch.  But that’s a tad over-dramatic because the Pareto principle actually does work, you just don’t get to entirely throw out the rest of your commitments.

When you start to put this rule into action in your own life, you’ll find that you still have to do a bunch of the things that don’t have a significant impact on your success.  This is a reality of existing.  There will be at least a few things on that list, though) that you’ll notice you were spending way too much time on for how little you were getting out of them (this was a bit of an embarrassing revelation for me).

While implementing the 80/20 rule into your life could certainly eliminate a number of no-benefit tasks you were fixated on, the whole point is to reorganize your priorities. By focusing on the 20% of things that are really effective for you and your goals, you should start to see more success in your progress towards achieving them.  This makes dealing with the remaining  80% of the sometimes necessary busywork in your life a whole lot more bearable.

Final Thoughts

If you ever wondered before why you were working so hard but achieving so little, this might be at least part of the answer.  Hard work and determination are amazing characteristics, but if they’re aimed at the wrong targets, the wheels are just spinning. Put the rubber to the road by nailing down what’s really important. Exclude the rest until life forces you to deal with it.

What are you trying to achieve and what’s the 20% that you need to focus on?  What’s some of the background noise that seems to get in the way when you try to do this and how can you deal with it?

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Yesterday, I announced a survey for my readers. If you’re at all interested in shaping the future of Frugally Green and it’s content, please click through to yesterday’s post and give me your feedback by completing the survey.  I do a lot of talking around here, but your opinion is the most important.

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80/20 Rule Image by Sleepy Valley

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What is the most prominent thought that comes to mind when you think of words like ‘frugality’ and ‘sustainability?’  What sort of emotions do they evoke? If they trigger thoughts of scarcity, lack, or limited resources, you’re not alone.

Most of the attention given to these concepts and lifestyles is based around the idea of scarcity – there’s just not enough to go around – so that’s how people relate to them.  The frugal tend to believe that they have a limited amount of money, so they must decide on things to give up in life to stay ahead financially.  Environmentalists believe that because there is only one earth, we must continuously search for ways to use less of it or we’ll run out.

The effects of a scarcity mindset

Is it true?  Sure.  When you base every tomorrow on what was possible today, it’s easy to project exactly where you’ll be next week, next month, or even next year.  If you believe that what you’re capable of today isn’t enough to conquer everything you’ve dreamed, then it’s absolutely true.  I’ve spent a lot of time thinking this way.  It makes sense.  It’s tangible.  I could wrap my brain around it. So, I’ve continued down this path believing I’m on the right track, but I’m not, and today it stops.

After really confronting and wrestling with this idea, I believe that this is where the frugal and the environmentally conscious really have it wrong.

You see, this type of thinking, when allowed to run free, can permeate all facets of life and turn into an overall mindset, causing you to believe that you’re limited in what you’re capable of achieving.  This really becomes problematic once it seeps into your creative, problem solving mind space.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Here’s a little secret I’ve picked up from fellow bloggers Steve Pavlina and Chris Guillebeau about personal finance and, as a result, environmentalism:

The only person that decides how much money you’re allowed to make or what you’re allowed to do to improve the world is you.

Even though it feels like your boss sets your income and some higher power has determined what you must do to be a good environmentalist, it just isn’t true.  I’m completely guilty of this.

Let’s pause for a second and let that sink in.

Abundance as an alternative

Now,  I’m not suggesting that you go out and buy everything that strikes your fancy or turn all the faucets and thermostats in your house up because living abundantly is the only way to exist happily.  No.  What I’m suggesting is that you don’t fall into the trap of thinking that the situation you’re in is the only situation available to you.

There is infinite wisdom in the concepts of prioritizing and living simply, but they do not exist in a vacuum.  I believe that in order to find a true solution to our economic and environmental woes, these concepts must be interpreted in a way that allows you incredible focus on the most important issues.  And these issues must be determined by you.

By 2050, we’re going to add 2.5 billion bright and smiling faces to the planet.  That’s about 28% more than we have right now.

I hate to admit it, but recycling my milk carton, in and of itself, is not going to dig us out of the hole we’re in.  With inflation slowly eating away at savings, banking my change from the convenience store in a jar is not going to secure my financial freedom all on its own.

If you’ve been reading Frugally Green for awhile now, you know that I love to talk about making little changes like ditching bottled water and hypermiling.  They’re quick and easy to implement. You also know that the reason I like to talk about these small gestures is because they are so beneficial in propelling you to bigger changes like unplugging your dryer and eating less meat.

The focus is not the change itself; it is the progress of it. Seeing progress can open your mind to a whole new world of possibilities.  Where once there was a giant burden, there is now a great opportunity.  Like I’ve said before, success begets success and continual progress can open your mind to more abundance-minded thinking.

This is why I find technology so inspiring.  It’s no secret I’ve often complained about how I can’t keep up with it and many times I shouldn’t, but the truth is, it’s refreshing to know that there is a world of people out there inspired by possibility.

Where the scarcity-minded see a need to simply do less, the abundance-minded see an opportunity to do more with less.

This is the heart of the sustainability movement to me – finding ways to do more with less. With an abundant outlook, anything is possible.  Let’s stop breaking our backs shoveling coal into power plants and start letting the sun, wind, waves, and earth do the work.  Why flush our toilets, wash our laundry, and water our lawns with drinking water when there are thousands of gallons of it running off of our roofs?

Looking only for ways to do less doesn’t really address the problems we face every day at their deepest level. We default to this mentality because it’s been done so many times before and we’ve proven it works, to an extent.  It’s a safety net.

A quick case study

For many years, I’ve managed my money with a very close eye.  I had a budget that accounts for every dollar that comes into and goes out of my life. My net worth was growing like crazy.  My goal-targeted savings accounts were really adding up.  And I was completely unhappy.

Something had to change.  Thanks to my inspirers (mentioned above), I’ve been able to allow myself permission to relax my budget a bit, take off a bit of the edge that comes with sweating every penny, and guess what? In a very short period of time I’ve found several new, less apparent solutions to make more money doing things that interest me.

Similarly, but with a slightly different twist, I’ve saved a significant amount of money and carbon and methane emissions by reducing my meat consumption, and I’ve discovered all kinds of delicious alternatives that keep me satisfied on veggie days.

By deciding to reject scarcity, new opportunities opened up.  When I spent hours managing every dollar in my life, I was too busy to see all the opportunities floating around just above my head (which was pointed down at a complicated budget) and when I was busy chomping on beef every day, I was scared to let it go because I couldn’t see the alternatives that were staring me in the face once I finally committed.

Final Thoughts

Now, obviously I’m no expert on the abundance vs. scarcity debate.  I am but a beginner, dabbling in the concept.  All the same, I gave myself the opportunity to try it and found some success.  I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t share that with you.

Many of us in the world of frugality and environmentalism, though well intentioned, are very set in our ways.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned on this journey, it’s that my greatest strides are made when I step out of my comfort zone.

If you’re ready to step out of yours, I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas.  This is more of a journey than a destination and there’s no reason we can’t be on it together.

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If you enjoyed this post,  please share it with your friends, leave a comment, or subscribe to get free updates.

Related posts:

1. Opportunity is the Best Part of Opportunity Cost
2. If You Never Quit, You Can Never Fail
3. A Frugally Green Annual Review

The giant, blue abomination to the left has been the monkey on my back for the past 5 months of Frugally Green.  I first got the idea to start this website after deciding to build a compost tumbler to reduce our kitchen and garden waste.  It was going to be awesome.  The only problem was that I wasn’t really interested in food or gardening, but I sure was interested in a hands-on project.  So, I found a way to make the whole idea more exciting by making it more complex than it ever needed to be.

The beginnings of a frugally green failure

I scoured the internet for the most interesting composter designs, I sat down and drew up my super-awesome-and-improved plan in AutoCAD, making a detailed materials list and then headed to the hardware store to pick up the materials.

I came home and set to work, taking pictures at every step.  I just knew that millions of people were going to want to know how to build this thing and have the most fun of their lives spinning their rotten food around. It was going to be a how-to of the century.

5 months later, I have yet to write a single word or share a single picture of this contraption.  Why? Because I never should have built it in the first place.

Sure, I do use it every day.  Yes, it does work (as far as I can tell).  But, the truth is, there is nothing frugal or green about this thing beside the fact that it is, indeed, a compost bin.  It’s a giant, plastic barrel that carried soy sauce half-way around the world propped up by an unnecessary chunk of metal that’s supported by more wood than needed to remain sturdy. Failure!

I took on this project for all the wrong reasons.  At the time, I didn’t actually care about the function of the composter, I just wanted a green project to busy myself with and I wanted to flex my mental muscle and do something complex.  As a result, I ended up with a less than perfectly functional product that used a ton more material and cost more money than what was ever necessary to get the job done.

The awakening

If I had actually cared about compost at the time, I would have done a little research and found out that turning it is not very important.  I would have also learned a number of other things about it that would have influenced my design to a simpler and more effective result.

What I failed to realize while dreaming up this contraption was that anyone can take a simple idea and make it complicated.  Real innovation occurs by taking something complicated and making it simple.

So here’s my new how-to article for building a truly frugally green compost bin:

• Step 1: Make a pile.

…

Yep, that’s it.  That is all you really need to make good, useful compost.  You don’t even have to spend a dime.  Don’t feel guilty that your composter isn’t as nice as your neighbor’s (if your neighbor even has one). Just revel in the fact that it works just as well.

If, you have pets or nocturnal visitors that will make a mess of your compost pile, we can add just 3 more steps to solve that problem as well:

• Step 1: Screw a few scraps of dimensional lumber together to make a box.

• Step 2: Find a piece of scrap plywood and mount it to the top with a couple hinges.  Add a latch to the front if you have raccoons with he-man strength.

• Step 3 (Optional): Paint the entire assembly to satisfy your aesthetic needs.

• Step 4: Fill with compostable materials.

Now, we’ve added 300% more complication to the process and if I were one of those sleazy marketers, I’d substitute the word ‘complication’ for something sexier and make it sound like the greatest thing since tumbled compost, but I won’t, and composting really is as simple as making a pile.

There is nothing fancy required.  I wish I’d realized that before I spent a whole weekend driving around town buying all these things I didn’t need.

The real lesson learned

There seems to be a common perception these days that the more complicated an idea or product is, the better it must be because it’s had more thought and effort invested in it.  This is patently false.  The best ideas in life are almost always the most simple.  Think back to the most enjoyable, memorable, or even productive times in your life.  Were you doing something complicated or something relatively simple?

Many times we overcomplicate things because we want to impress others or feel like we have to prove to ourselves that we can do something we’re not sure we’re capable of. Testing your limits is the fastest way to grow, but don’t take the wrong approach.  If you really want to stand out and prove something to yourself, take your most complicated ideas and simplify them.  Anyone can do the opposite.

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If you enjoyed this post,  please share it with your friends, leave a comment, or subscribe to get free updates.

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1. I Am Responsible for the Corporate World’s Waste, or A Lesson in Micro Economics
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As I’ve come to realize, there are lots of ways to support my planet while spending very little from my own wallet.  In fact, here at Frugally Green, I usually write about the ways an average person can save money or even make it while incorporating small changes into their lifestyle. The changes themselves may be small, but putting them together can really make a difference.  But what do we do when we feel like we’ve already done all the little things we can to save the planet and save some money?  What if we feel like all the “low hanging fruit” has been picked?

The simple answer is probably that we actually just need to look a little bit harder to find more opportunities.  I know that, although I’ve changed my life dramatically over the last few years, there are still plenty of simple changes I can make that just aren’t on my radar.  However, none of this should distract you from making big changes if that’s what you desire to do.

Sometimes, the big changes we want to make cost a lot of money, like installing solar panels, wind turbines, and heat pumps at our homes, upgrading to high efficiency appliances, or buying a hybrid or electric vehicle.  I’ve written about ways to save big on buying an efficient car and appliances and renewable energy, but the truth is, even if you maximize your savings, supporting new technology is expensive, and you’re going to pay more up front to do so.  This may not seem frugal, but I think it’s important to remember that frugality is all about seeing the long-term savings of a purchase.  You’ll pay a premium to outfit your home with solar panels, but the money you save on electricity, when done right, will more than pay for them through their life cycle.  This is a tenet of frugality – realizing when paying more now will save more later.

But for adults with so many other financial commitments in their life, it’s hard to find the money to make the best purchases they can.  This is why it is so important to get your financial house in order.  When you pay off your debt, spend less than you earn, and save for the long term, it becomes substantially easier to find the money you need to make these kinds of long-term purchases.  It’s like a snowball rolling down a hill – the more it rolls, the bigger it gets.

When I decided to really change how I handled my money, there were a few basic things I did that yielded the biggest immediate gains for me:

• I paid off my debt – Luckily, I didn’t have much at all, but getting rid of it was a huge relief that allowed me focus on more important things, like…

• Tracking my spending – This was easy to do by setting up an account at Mint.  Once a week or so I would go look at where my money went.  Sometimes I felt really good about the things I’d bought, and sometimes I felt awful.  After a few months of just seeing what I spent my money on I…

• Set up a budget - I picked out the major items that I regularly spent the most of my discretionary money on and slowly started to budget a little bit less for them each month until I felt like I had gotten lean enough.  Once I had a good idea of what I was spending my money on and a plan for keeping myself within a few limits, I was able to…

• Pay myself first – This is a very recent development that I am still trying to perfect.  Now that I know where my money goes each month, I’ve decided to automatically start saving a part of each paycheck that I receive.  Before, I would just save whatever was left over at the end of each month but now I am able to declare that I will save “xxx” dollars every month and know that it will be available.

Will following this exact plan work for you?  It might or it might not.  You may notice that I didn’t ever have much debt.  I understand that this is a much bigger problem for many people, but I cannot write effectively on it because I have not experienced it and trying to tell you how to fix a problem when I have no understanding of what it’s like or how it feels to be in that situation would not be helpful to you.  If you’re looking to improve your finances and have a lot of debt, start here with JD over at Get Rich Slowly.  His story is an inspiration, and if you like what you read, he has years of archives for you to comb through. Trent over at The Simple Dollar has a similar story.

Whether you follow the same path I did or create one for yourself, I think you’ll find that when you take the time to really look at your finances and make a plan that you can live by, you will be a lot more connected to how you are spending your life’s resources.  This can lead to very gratifying feelings of security and self awareness.

So to bring the focus back to being frugally green, I’m excited to say that my next big step in connecting my own personal finance with sustainability will be to start a new savings goal for green ventures.  I can’t say yet how much I’ll save or even what it will specifically be for, but I want to get started now rather than later.  So much about success directly relates to simply starting something. I will begin by adding another sub-account to my ING savings where I am saving towards other financial goals:

What can I say?  I like to give my accounts silly nicknames.  It makes saving more fun for me.  If this is something that interests you, you can read all about how to open multiple accounts at ING. Once you’ve got that figured out, you can watch Ramit Sethi’s video on how to automate your finances.

Big changes take big commitments to make, but as you can see, the “big” financial change I am trying to make is a result of lots of smaller ones.  It’s the constant daily focus on small, but important tasks that lead to the big, life-affirming changes.  It’s rare that someone with any amount of success wakes up one morning and wonders how they got to where they are.  They know exactly how they arrived because they spent years, focused every day, on getting there.

I’m curious to know more about the financial state of my readers.  I don’t need to know how much money you have, but I would love to know more about how you approach your finances.  What kind of goals do you have for your money and what has driven you to make them happen?  Please feel free to discuss in the comments or, if you consider this information personal, but would still like to share with me, you can send me an email.  I’ll never share your personal information without your permission.

Related posts:

1. My Journey to Become a Green Investor – Part 1: The Analyzation Stage
2. Are You More Frugal or Green?: Balancing Multiple Goals
3. Multiple Intelligences: Why You’re A Green Rock Star but Suck at Saving Money

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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Juggler image by JPhilipson.

Related posts:

1. Multiple Intelligences: Why You’re A Green Rock Star but Suck at Saving Money
2. Want to Be More Green? Get Your Finances Together
3. A Frugally Green Annual Review