money-treeAs 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:

ing-accounts

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
  4. My Journey to Become a Green Investor – Part 4: The Final Decision
  5. Frugally Green Featured on Saving for Serenity