Pennywise and Poundfoolish

Chevrolet's Greenwashing

This is my response to the latest Chevy commercials touting their new hybrid SUV.

In 1985, the Chevrolet El Camino Pickup 2WD got 14 miles per gallon in the city, and 20 on the highway.  By contrast the 2008 Green Car of the Year, the 2008 Chevy Tahoe Hybrid gets a gas mileage of 20 mpg in the city and 20 mpg highway.  Guys, this is rediculous.  Fuel economy for America's vehicles hasn't increased significantly in 23 years!

  You need to demand action.  Check out noimpactman's resources for contacting your politicians.  If you want to reach them directly, then just go here.

Also, you need to be wary of ethanol-based vehicles as well.  Ethanol has a much lower energy density than gasoline, and requires quite a bit of acreage to extract useful ethanol from the raw product.

I am not sure what the solution should be, but I am very aware that someone who calls a product green when it is clearly not somebody I want to be following.  Perhaps we might should simply try putting some of that $20,000 on a new recumbent bike.

The Cost of Junk

My last post was about using your own relationships to decrease the manipulative effects of the market for items that could easily be borrowed.  Today I got to thinking about how it is commonly said (in my circle of friends at least) that we are slaves to the things we own, and I realized that the time spent cleaning up, cleaning around, getting mad about losing, and working towards buying could be spent doing something productive.  However that's not the whole picture-- the time spent using many products that we take advantage of to the exclusion of the people in our lives can turn us into that strange cat-lady the lives across the street.

Don't become this woman

But that's not the real point here is it?  What this is all dancing around is that attachement to things is so intrusive, and at the same time so subtle, that it takes somebody pointing it out for the world to realize it.  Here I am at 11:00 pm blogging about how our we need to spend more time building community, while my pregnant wife is asleep in bed. . . alone!  In that respect, I am not saying that I'm perfect, far from it; I am merely saying that revalations are easier to see as important as they are encountered along the journey of life, not at the end-- when you've presumably figured it all out (unless you're cat-lady).

Time spent using

Indulge me a little. . .

There are 24 hours in a day.  Figure nowadays with 6 of those being taken up by sleep (reference here) that leaves 18.  Working and commuting for about 10 hours every day (maybe you want to include lunch with that?), then coming hope, that leaves 8 more hours.  1 or 2 for getting ready, and another 2 for "in-betweens"- those lost hours when you wonder "where did the day go?" leaves. . .  4 hours.  That's 4 hours left in your day!!!

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Just in case you missed this, here it is in math-ese:

24    <--- the number of hours in a day (duh)

-6    <--- the average amount of sleep a working person gets

18

-10    <--- your workday + commute

08

- 2    <---  getting yourself ready for the day

  6

- 2    <---  the "where'd my day go" factor

  4    <--- the amount of time you vegetate in front of something shiny.

 

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That 4 hours leftover is a part time job!  That's the garden you've been missing, the romantic walks you've been wanting, time enough to cook and clean up after yourself, and *certainly* time enough to get to know somebody that you live next to.

Wrapping up

I would like to get some hard facts on just how much waste we produce, not just materially, but also wasted time; that time you spent on WoW could have been spent on learning a marketable skill, a better hobby, or. . . meeting a girl.  A real one this time.  In part that is what this blog is about: bringing into the reader's awareness the opportunities that abound around the regular person.

She will won't show her guitar-hero without at least dinner and a movie first

Sustainability through Community-building: the simplest approach to influencing markets

In today's marketplace we have a culture of consumerism, not conservation. 80 years ago conservation was the patriotic order of the day, and now purchasing an SUV every couple of years is often seen as greatest act of patriotism that the masses can engage in. This type of lifestyle is, very simply, unsustainable, not to mention a grossly inadequate example of involvement in our nation's destiny. In order for the markets to understand that sustainable living must be the duty of all Americans, we as a population need to cast our votes by purchasing products that will last.

We further need to define what is necessary in our lives. If you think about it, how many different items do we really use in our daily or weekly lives? If you have a gizmo that you are thinking of buying, will you only use it once a month? Why can't you just borrow a neighbors? When did this become such a strange thing to do?

I've never known any of my neighbors on such a basis that I could pick one arbitrarily and borrow something from them. On the other hand, my grandfather who lives on a homestead in eastern Washington would think nothing of borrowing a neighbor's tractor. When did community become such a radical notion? It seems that the way to change the marketplace is to pool your communities' resources to decrease your individual demand on the marketplace. This pooling of resources is somewhat analogous in my mind of Division of Labor, in that it significantly cuts the demand on the larger marketplace by more efficiently utilizing resources at hand. In other words, the "big secret" to solving our problem of a "disposable society" may be as simple as treating your neighbors as family!


So go out and meet a neighbor today, ask to borrow a cup of sugar, bake them a pie or you can throw a block party.

lessons from 5 years ago

The year was 2003. I was 20 years old. My parents were in the process of getting a divorce, my relationship was on the rocks, and I was a month away from dropping out of college. My then-fiance (we are no longer together) was going through some pretty tough times herself and I made a decision: either I could stay in school where I wasn't happy, or go back home and try and patch up my life, notably the relationship that I had sabotaged through letting the stress get to me. I chose to give up college and move back home. Although most people might think that it was an understandable move, our relationship ended less than a year later.

Something else that occurs to me each time I think about those days: if I had just stayed focused on school, I would have completed my degree, and a masters by now. I can't say that it's a wasted decision though- because I learned many important lessons from the decisions I made 5 years ago. In choosing to give up what I had fought for years to accomplish, I learned that:

*Your problems in life do not give you the right to treat people badly.

*Mentally blocking yourself by focusing on the negative only serves to delay action towards the positive.

*Choosing to do something out of love instead of your own best financial interests is just that - a choice. Don't ruin your selfless decision by getting depressed about it.

* Your mood affects those around you. Sometimes the only thing your loved ones want is to see you happy.

* We are all only 1 step away from disaster. Plan for it and you'll be two or three steps away.

Recently I quit my job (again, I was unhappy), and we are moving back to Portland- a city I really don't like because of it's horrible job market and bad traffic. My wife wants to move there so that she can be close to her parents while she has the baby. Initially I agreed but over the last few weeks I've been complaining loudly about how much I hate it there and how horrible of a time I was having finding decent work that would support us. She couldn't take it anymore and finally told me exactly how my mood affects those around me.

I realized that the lessons from 2003 were being ignored when they were needed most. My life was changing and I was missing everything that defined security in the modern era: shelter, money for food, money to pay the bills, saving for the future.

Now that I know what is happening, I can spot the sabatour behavior within myself.

Product Review: Nickel and Dimed with Adam Shepherd

I haven't read this book yet, but this post from Get Rich Slowly (one of my favorite blogs) directly affects my own mission: to start from where I am now, financially speaking, in a new city, and build wealth, stability, and security in a reasonable amount of time, all while balancing a life. I think I'll pop on over to Adam Shepherd's site and download his book for free.

I'll let you all know what I think of it when I get through.

*note: I am also planning on spending the 12.95 + S/H to actually *read* the book, pending a quick library search first ;-) so Adam, don't feel too bad!

A Turning Point

This is the first post on a new project of mine. I'm out of work, broke, depressed, moving to a place with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country and I have a baby on the way. This blog is my inspiration to take back my own life through understanding financial management, personal finances, and work-life balance.

Here goes!

The name for this blog was chosen because pennies and pounds represent the same thing: waste on a small level, financially, ecologically, or materially will hurt the whole as much as waste on a larger level. On the flip-side, attention to detail and frugal living as a movement will change the scape of our world just as much as if corporate waste was eliminated. Each purchase- or lack thereof- is a vote cast in the marketplace. Our consumer-driven society must return to its roots with sustainable living, and a balanced lifestyle.

Let's get living!