Ready to see the impact of your consumption on the planet, sign-up for the 15 day #SaveMoneySaveThePlanet Project.
Your Custom Text Here
Be an Earth Hero: Practical Green Gifts for People and the Planet
Personal finance and the environment. The impact of spending on the wallet and the planet.
I just finished the book "Your Money or Your Life" by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominquez. I love personal finance and am an avid personal finance book reader. Of all of the books I've read, this is one of the few books that talk about the relationship and impact of our spending on both our wallets and on our one planet. “Financial Integrity is achieved by learning the true impact of your earning and spending both on your family and on the planet.”
Read moreA Brief History of Consumption
In our current system, the worker's life belong not only to the commodity he or she makes, but also increasingly to the garbage graveyard. When manufactured goods are trashed, so too is the labor that went into making them. What other productive, scientific, creative pursuits could we have invested in the time we were making cheap things? Garbage is not just nature, but human labor thrown away in the interest of the circulation of commodities and the extraction of profit.
I just finished reading Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage and I can't help thinking about the above quote. It makes me sad. I'm also struggling to reconcile my Economics and Sustainability brain. As someone who studied Economics in undergrad, economic growth was paramount, but the only way to have economic growth was to produce more. On the other hand, my Sustainability brain is screaming, we can't keep producing more. We don't have enough resources and we are not even recycling resources properly.
Read moreSustainable Investing: Aligning Your Portfolio With Your Values
We all need to start thinking of money in terms of freedom. Money = Freedom. Today, most of us exchange our time for money. Yes, the money eventually pays for housing, for food, for clothing, for vacations etc., but at the heart of it, we are exchanging our time to buy other things. It would be very idealistic of us to state that money is not important. We don't live in a world where money is not necessary, but we can figure out a way to use it for good.
Read moreThe Rise of Conscious Capitalism - Ecology and Economy
I've been struggling with the tenets of minimalism, zero waste and conscious capitalism for some time now. Not the practicalities of it, though I have my moments, but the idealism of it. We don't live in a perfect world. We don't live in a circular economy. The term "conscious capitalism" feels like an oxymoron. We live in a very capitalistic society that uses the GDP as the factor for measuring our economic growth. GDP means the creation and consumption of things. How can we be conscious about that and is that something that we can change?
Read moreIntroduction to the energy of money and how your personal money history, beliefs and ideas affect you you earn money, save money and spend money.
Read moreWe don’t make time, we have time. We own our time. We don’t construct time.
Read moreI've always believed in investing. Just because I care about the environment, it doesn't mean I don't want to participate in the economic productivity and success of large companies doing good work.
When investing, look for SRI funds, "Socially Responsible Investing" - is an investment discipline that considers environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) criteria to generate long-term competitive financial returns and positive societal impact.
Read more
