Eliminate waste and become rich

When I visit my friend’s places, I often find that they are living an unsustainable life because they waste a lot. The chief thing that they waste is often money. True, they live within their paycheck-to-paycheck needs, but anybody who wants to retire one day understands that this is not enough—they know that they need to put a good portion of their paycheck towards building assets.

Eco-Hack: cook. Plain and simple.

By simply cooking at home, you can cut down on

• Money spent on packaging made from cardboard (saving trees) and plastic (reducing our dependency on foreign oil).

• Money spent on processing mediocre raw product

• Emissions from processing mediocre raw product

• Total food costs. These savings can be over 50% in some cases. Possibly even more if you were to join a CSA.

And you can increase

• Your bottom line. You will have more money to spend on cool stuff.

• Your health. It’s pretty much certain that eating pesticide-free products are better for your health.

• Your family time. In many countries cooking is the center of the family life. This is particularly true with my wife and I (who are always trying to outdo each other), and we intend to make sure that our baby will have the opportunity to spend time with her parents cooking. I could write a book on this, but luckily Barbara Kingsolver already did. Look up “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” for a look into what you probably wish your family life was like.

There is one consequence of cooking at home that may be a bad thing or a good thing depending on how you handle it. You will have plenty of kitchen scraps to fill up your garbage with. This means a higher garbage bill for you. Not exactly a good idea if you’re trying to cut your budget, right? Well, fear not! Kitchen scraps make great compost. I know—you’re probably thinking “no compost! I don’t have the time!  It's gross!” Well, fear not—I’ll bet that if you just post on freecycle or craigslist, you’ll probably find somebody near you who’s willing to pick up your kitchen scraps for their own compost. I’m willing to be that there’s even companies that make a living off of neighbors scraps.  Anybody know of any?

Visiting other people’s homes taught me that a poor person with a sense of creativity often has more potential for wealth than a person with a decent job, but poor spending habits. But let’s examine what it is that we work for:

• Covering the necessary bills. This doesn’t mean luxuries like a cell phone (yes. . . it really is a luxury)—it means stuff like rent/mortgage, health, food, entertainment, debt.

• Financial security for the future.

I have to ask—how secure are you if you are relying on a system that guarantees you will have utility bills that will increase with time (ever heard of a rate increase?). By taking control and installing solar or wind power and a rain catchment or grey/blackwater retrieval system, you never have to suffer from a rate increase ever again.

With two of the principles our economy is based on being that idea that people will spend what they make, and increases in pay cause increases in consumption spending, most of budgeting is a game of “hiding” money from yourself. The net result is that your future requirements are minimized. When you take control of your food and utilities, you maintain control for the rest of your life. Your requirements shouldn’t increase with time, as most people’s consumption stays relatively constant—there’s just more people drawing upon the system. The advantage of taking control of your utilities is not only never paying utility bills again, but you can also pocket the energy savings (and the extra equity in your home as this becomes a more and more desirable trait due to future energy crunches), and put this little bonus into your retirement..

I recently posted about the fact that I’m getting rid of my cars as a part of an effort to save a ton of money each year and do something good for the environment. Well, by not spewing out tons of pollutants, I am also cutting my expenses by a minimum of $3,600 per year with additional savings as gas prices rise (you don’t really think they’re going to fall, do you?).

The carfree thing is probably the biggest lifestyle change that I will really have to deal with. Installing solar panels and/or wind power and a water system is a one-time deal that will not require any additional energy from me to maintain year to year. So the potential savings could be thousands per year after everything is said and done.

I wonder how many millions of dollars is being missed by corporations and businesses that refuse to “go green” and save redesign their products to be cheaper to manufacture, and more energy efficient to build?