Pennywise and Poundfoolish

Grass vs. Green

Most people have made the mistake of keeping the stock sod “Kentucky Bluegrass” variety of grass that is put on their lawn.  It is an ugly, cheap type of grass that is sold en-mass to homebuilders because it’s fast-growing and cheap.  It requires a lot of upkeep and is almost guaranteed to turn an ugly brown in the summertime, despite heavy amounts of water and fertilizer.  The only exception would be if it has some slight shade in some areas.

The bare minimum

A small investment in your lawn could be the difference between a sunken paycheck, bad environmental practices, or less curb appeal when selling your house.  The barest minimum needed is a type of grass that does very well in the Northwest (I believe it would do just fine anywhere else)—want to know how to get that green lawn in the summertime with only a minimum investment of water, fertilizer, money and time?  Use a variety of grass called “Tall Fescue”.  It costs a little more at the store, but it pays off in dividends for years to come.

How weeds can make you money

Every plant can have a function, if you want.  Do you think that strawberries and potatoes only grow on farms and other people’s gardens?  I suggest planting some strawberries and/or potatoes, as well as other hardy fruit, herbs and tuber plants that interest you.  They are very often flowering plants, require very little upkeep, spread like weeds and—if you indulge in the gifts they bear—can actually provide you with sustenance.  A small plot of land will provide enough to put by over the summer.  You can give some to neighbors, or find somebody with a solar dryer and dry them out for you (a community-building idea).

Planting real plants instead of grass gives the opportunity to create a ground that is more permeable to water (grass is not), which allows groundwater sources to be replenished easier.  If you can lobby with your neighbors to advertise incentives for others to follow suit, there are massive social and environmental benefits to be gained.

Some plants that spread easily (keep in mind that there are hundreds of varieties of each—though only a few may have been accessible to you from the store):

• Strawberries
• Potatoes
• Onions
• Garlic
• Chives
• Lavender
• Thyme
• Moss
• Mint
• Your imagination?

Whole cities go dark on Saturday

I don't normally post on the weekends, but this was just too cool to pass up.

Legend has it that when Thomas Edison died, people thought about doing a tribute to him by turning out the lights for one night.  That idea was rejected on the grounds that people couldn't handle it, that the city would turn to chaos.  Apparently that's just what happened in Australia.  I guess we could start our sustainable living by giving people more credit to be able to handle change.

Links roundup

The best of this week:

The Simple Dollar -- tells you what you should be careful of in your interview for your next job.

The Weather Channel Blog speaks for itself.  Be careful though, there's a lot of haters on there!

Greener Gadgets Conference is definitely something for the New Yorkers to check out in 2009.

Antishay Ventenne - speaks my own mind with her retirement plan.

A penny saved is $3 earned

“A penny saved is a penny earned”—words that grew out of the early 1900s . . . back when two pennies could buy you a complete lunch.  Three pennies could buy you a higher-end lunch (where I live), and a dime—a dime could afford you a gourmet dinner!

Taking frugal advice of your seniors is a great idea, but it’s important to realize that you need to adjust for inflation (because they certainly won’t).  Adjusting for inflation will make great-grandpa farmer Earl appear smarter than the greatest financial tipsters on MSNBC today.

An amount of money at 3.5% interest over the course of 90 years becomes more than 300% larger.  That means that the penny of your grandparents is more like $3 today.  In other words, if you save $3 a day, you can end up with more than $1,000 by the end of the year.

How do you afford that?

How do you afford $90 a month, $21 a week?  First of all, if it was sound enough advice for your grandparents— who went through the depression for cryin’ out loud— it’s probably something that the average person today can deal with.  But just in case you need a little help:

• Save your dollar bills.  If you deal with cash, you have—in some ways—more opportunities to save money and build wealth than your card-carrying friends.  At the end of each day, put the leftover dollar bills into a jar and save it until the next time you go to the bank.  You’ll probably have a couple of dollars a day left over.

• “Keep the change”—round your purchases up to the nearest dollar, two dollars, or whatever.  Whatever the difference between the product purchased and your amount rounded to, you stick that money into savings.

• Know what your priorities are.  I do this by systematically eliminating things I like for a week and then adding it back.  If it feels like a waste of money, I simply stop buying.  If I can’t live without it (perhaps it actually makes me less happy), then I keep it—for now.

How envelopes controlled my spending: low tech personal finance

Most great personal finance advice seems to come in the form of low-tech solutions.  Something that I have been employing for the last few months that seems to work well: envelopes.

The concept is simple:  I have about 6 non-electronic bills (meaning there’s no way to pay them online).  I consider eating out a bill, and I also consider entertainment a bill—if you make having fun a priority, then you are able to regulate your spending in this area.  Anyway, I write the amount that I have budgeted for each pay period (usually a monthly budget divided by two) and label what that envelope is for.  Then I put in the exact budgeted amount (no cheating) into the envelope.  That’s it!

Sound’s easy, doesn’t it?  Here’s where the savings come in.  Most people go over budget for a few reasons:

1. Too easy to access their reserve funds— Either by not budgeting or making the mistake of making those funds accessible while you’re still in “impulse-spend” mode.  Keep emailing me—I have a million different ways to control this one; I’ve even gone so far as to freeze my debit card in a bag of water!

2. Budgeting— As I mentioned before, the simple act of budgeting at least lets your conscience know when you’re probably due to reign in spending.

3. Not budgeting for one item or another because “it’s not that big of a deal”—this system relies upon you sticking to cash for all of your non-internet purchases.  I have a friend that had not budgeted for gasoline!  After asking her what she can realistically expect to pay in a month for gas, it came out to just enough for her to be able to make a major goal of hers come true.  “Creep” is a term that will be coming up several times in the future of this blog about sustainable personal finance.

4. Not having fun— What makes personal finance and frugality a horrible and stressful subject for many people is the approach.  After all, who wants to spend their days thinking about ways to not spend their money?  You have to include things like entertainment in your budget, and separately include eating out—this way you not only find out how important entertainment is to you (by going without for a couple of days after you’ve already spent all your cash), you will also begin to plan ahead within that budgeted amount.  As you practice sticking to your budget, you become better at finding more and more fun activities to do with your friends.

5. Not adjusting limits— With a system as inflexible as “cold, hard cash” in place to make sure you don’t go over your limits, you have to make sure you are also getting your needs met.  Not adjusting your limits when absolutely necessary for your happiness is a major reason why many budgets—and diets—fail after the first month.

Back to the meat

Each paycheck gets cashed and divided into its corresponding amounts.  Whatever is left over goes either to your electronic bills for the month, or directly into savings.  What you find left over in the envelope at the end of the month gets put directly into savings immediately—no questions asked (before you can spend it at the coffee shop!).  This way, you’re guaranteed to save those $5’s and $10’s that you may not have spent the prior pay period.

Boiling it down

What this all ends up looking like is this: each paycheck that comes it, you are basically treating yourself (as a consumer with a j.o.b.) as an employee while You (the moneymaker with all the real dough) act as the employer.  This technique is used by people in real-estate all the time—when they make huge windfalls of cash, the smartest ones tend to continue living on the same budget (perhaps a little splurge here and there), while they sock the bulk of the commission away in their 401k (as tax-saving tool).

By creating a budget that you are at least willing to try—and then modifying it throughout the season to one that you’re content with—and dealing with the surplus in a way that sets you up for success, you can live frugally and not even realize it!

America's Greatest Generation is Now

An excerpt from a book I'm reading titled: Hope's Horizon: Three visions of Healing the American Land by Chip Ward, where the author speaks to a group of people on some hippie excursion.

    An ecosystem is such an intricate weave of reciprocal relationships that even small changes are echoed thorughout the web.  I tell the group about a superintendent at a national park who was beset by an abundance of wasps one season.  The wasps made their nests in the eaves of the park housing and tended to dive-bomb the rangers and their families when they entered and elft their homes.  After a summer of painful welts and screaming children, the superintendent ordered the wasps eradicated.  The next year saw few wasps but an infestation of caterpillars in the park's historic fruit orchards.  Trees were damaged and the fruit harvest was poor.  The wasps, the park naturalists realized, were the caterpillars' most effective predators.  Spraying the caterpillars to get them in check compromised bird and fish populations.

     That's how it goes-- you spray wasps but kill fish and apples.  And we rarely consider the impact of our spraying on the microorganisms in the soil and water, although they are the staff of life itself.  In the park, wasps were eventually reintroduced in hopes of regaining the dynamic balance that was lost when they were thoughtlessly killed.

I often wonder myself how we as a society can keep the economy going strong while keeping the environment safe.  The answer is no less important-- thinking about the monetary ecosystem is just as important to our national identity and security as is thinking about the biological ecosystem; to deny that perspective is to invite national disaster.  The answer I am forced to come up with is this:

I believe that we stand at the cusp of a great change; that our nation-- our world-- for the first time in history has the chance to choose the fate of every future generation.  I believe that the people living today will be recorded in history as the greatest generation, that this new revolution will not be an industrial revolution, but rather a new era where industries and ecosystems are fused in a balanced, sustainable process of supporting life on this planet.  That fortunes will be gained in this revolution, and the giants of today that cling to propaganda of doubt about the state of the environment will become forgotten relics of a quaint ideology-- akin to the champions of "manifest destiny" of the 1800's; an ideology that fueled acts of genocide waged against other minorities-- an ideology that wants you all to believe that the massive scarring that mankind has done to the Earth is merely a figment of imagination in the minds of the entire scientific community.

I think that the American spirit will dominate the sustainable-living movement and create the sustainable-industry movement.  I think that Americans will realize their full potential as stewards of the land, and as guests on the only place our whole world can call home.  I want to attribute this quote to Carl Sagan, but I cannot find a source confirming it; I still believe this is something he would have said:

All of the struggles, all of the pain, every war waged over land or religion or people, every painting and symphony and ounce of culture the human race has ever created all took place on a little blue ball tucked away in a corner of an unkown galaxy-- the only planet like it in the known Universe.

I believe that our world is waiting for America to take the lead.  I think that the world needs America right now-- not for its money or its military might; I think that people need something to believe in again; the 1960's had their space race, the 1940's had GI Joe.  Today's problem's will not be solved by military might alone, but rather by the commitment to our fellow man that we will safeguard this planets resources, and use them wisely for the good of the next thousands of generations.

Gone again!

I apologize for not updating-- I've been on military training in California for the last few days.  I will be back by the end of the week, with some quality posts.  In the meantime, please poke around and let me know what your experiences are with personal sustainability-- be it financial or ecological.

Stay safe, stay warm, stay sustainable.

Zach

New job, new schedule

It looks like they're going to be working me the graveyard shift starting tomorrow night.  If my posting is a bit sporadic over the course of the week, I do apologize-- I will definitely try to be on top of it all.

I will also be gone next week starting monday, so that may throw another kink in the works. . .  But on the bright side, I'll be trying to do plenty of writing while I'm gone!

Buy into Human stock now while the price is low

I won't go into the gory details, but just skim through this article defining the Genuine Progress Indicator (or GPI).

I am no economist, but the key points that I took away from it:

• GPI is the measure of a lot of the things which make up our level of "happiness" and good outlook, independent of income level-- things like consumption of personal goods,  amount of natural resources used, pollution costs, accidents and hazards caused by the economical activity, etc.
• If GDP measures the amount of economic activity in the country, the GPI measures the human activity of that country.  What real good has that country done for itself, the planet, and each other. 

• As the graph on the page clearly shows (I wish I could paste), the Genuine Progress Indicator has essentially stagnated since the 70's.  What that tells me is that people in the US are contributing more dollars to the economy, and getting less human satisfaction out of each dollar made.  Doesn't that sound like the tone of the last 35 years?  Vietnam, Nixon, Big oil, conflict upon conflict minimally tied to US average joe's interests, more oil, downsizing, burst bubbles, and now massive criminal activities and war going on right in front of us, daring us to say anything and risk "treason"-- it can really be somewhat of a downer!

But not for me!

I took a different message away from this report-- I think that the current trends bear out what the market has been telling us for years!  Sell high, buy low.  Right now, every dollar spent making you a happier person, a more sustainable environment, or more educated, or in general minimizing the costs section on page 3, is worth more than working that extra hour for that extra $7.50 - $14.

What this boils down to is this: once you've got enough coming in to satisfy your basic needs, you've got a cash flow into a retirement/savings, and you've got your emergency fund, spend your leftover money on things that make you happy, and find ways to minimize your ecological footprint, and minimize your costs that don't give you pleasure.

So I guess that if ever there was a time to invest in people, now would be it!

Personal Finance and Gardening

Many people say that gardening is expensive-- far too expensive for it to be an alternative to shopping in the store.  Well, I don't agree one bit.  People say that it's far too time-intensive to maintain.  I would say that if you know one of those people, take a look at how they spend their day: most likely it's in front of the television for at least an hour out of the day.  Even myself, who has no business laying in front of the "boob-tube" as my family called it, can still find the time out of my busy schedule to pack in a little of the History Channel, or Mythbusters.  The chances are that they are simply afraid of tearing up their yards.

While it is true that a lot of money can be spent on garden accessories, we need to put into perspective that it is just that-- accessories!  In Barbara Kingsolver's book: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - Kingsolver quantifies the cash retail value of her time invested in her garden at $4,410.  The net amount of money earned from dining in (on their own food), putting food by for the coming winter, and working out in the garden amounted to the equivalent of $7,500 of annual income.

What does this mean for you?  It means that you, me, all of us should take whatever we have-- be it a bucket, 10 x 10 plot of land, or the roof of your garage, and use it for something other than looking pretty.  The startup costs can be expensive, if you let yourself be sold on accessories.  Or it can be an asset: eating up your kitchen scraps and thereby immediately reducing your garbage bill.  Perhaps you don't even want to garden, but you know somebody who does.  Why not compost your kitchen scraps anyways, and when a friend or neighbor wants to start a garden, let them take it off of your hands?  Worst case scenario- you sell it on craigslist.com or freecycle.org.  Either way, the act of composting-- the first act in starting a garden-- becomes an asset.

As for time commitment, if you cannot find 15 minutes in your day to water a garden, then you seriously need to re-evaluate your lifestyle.  Again here, the time commitment to watering a garden is more than paid for by the feeling of accomplishment, ownership, and spiritual goodness that comes along with it.  If you have a child or significant other, a garden is one of the best ways to make time to spend with them.  What child doesn't like making cute little decorations for a garden fence, or playing with bugs, or has been curious about "what's that"?  It gives you the added benefit of needing to know your stuff-- the child quizzes the parent, thereby forcing the parent to research and learn, which in the process makes them both better gardeners, farmers, and better environmentalists.  Complaining about time commitment for a garden is akin to complaining about the cost of toilet paper: there's just too much benefit to pass up!

Do you not have the space? Listen, for the price of free you can buy, build, or otherwise craft containers for your plants.  Visit any slightly rural town and you'll find brightly painted tires full of lavender, beanstalks, bamboo, and every other kind of plant you can imagine.  Craft could very well be a dying art form in the United States cities.  How many city-folk (oh no- my country influence is coming out), travel to the country to see crafts?  The art of crafting is something that arises out of necessity and scarcity of resources.  Where some people's solutions have traditionally been to go to war for what they want to aquire, the traditional American solution is usually to use their heads to come up with alternatives-- hence the idea of American Innovation!

The bottom line

The vast majority of Americans can make at least a small portion of their own foods themselves.  Those with houses and backyards can make enough to put by for the winter, and perhaps enough to barter or give to neighbors.  Don't talk to me about tax implications either-- there's nothing the government will do to you if you want to trade a cup of sugar for a bunch of tomatoes.  Try it sometime, I think you'll like it.

Resources for Action!

www.animalvegetablemiracle.com

www.organicstoyou.org

www.cropchoice.com