I wanted to highlight an article I enjoyed by heather at her weblog The Greenest Dollar. I liked it for two reasons.
First, part of what I mean by neofrugal is being more aware of the consequences of spending… making spending choices based on not only price and quality, but also culture, ethics, and morality. The BP debacle prompted heather to rethink her spending and other habits with an eye towards minimizing her oil footprint. The amount of oil burned by Americans is staggering, and our dependence on it puts much of our economy at risk and largely in the hands of increasingly hostile and destructive companies and regimes. The list of action steps heather provides is great start on considering larger concerns when making what might seem like insignificant choices.
The other part I liked was the recognition of the fickle nature of motivation, and a great technique for making the most of it while it’s around. As heather and Steve Pavlina before her recognize, the best way to make a lifestyle change is to change the environment to make the old ways more difficult to fall back and the new ways easier to implement. While she was motivated, she figured out changes to make to her environment now to improve her ability to stick to new choices later. This is the same kind of thing I’ve been trying do at jeffjewell.net with Franklinism: create the structure to enable new habits.
So, anyway, nice article that got my attention for a couple reasons.
