Grow * Prosper * Thrive

For the Thrifty, Quality Matters MORE

2008-10-06T13:00:00.000-07:00

Today I had the opportunity to go to lunch with my team at work. It was a company sponsored working lunch (which is a polite way of saying that I didn't have to pay for it). This was a particularly nice treat because I've been making a concerted effort to bring my own lunch to work each day. First, it allows me to eat healthier, second it wastes less time than finding someplace to eat and waiting for food, and third it undoubtedly saves us money. In fact, we've been pushing hard to eat out less overall. Interestingly, this means that quality is even more important when we do.

This goes against the conventional wisdom that saving money is all about taking the cheapest option and forgoing quality. In fact, this is what being frugal always implied to me: a choice to focus on price over quality. I find that as we become conscious of our spending however, quality is actually more important than price. Now that we're eating out less, eating out is more of a special treat, which means that we can afford to pay a bit more if we choose to but it had better be darned good!

So back to lunch today. We went to a rather tony restaurant where my small plate of pasta cost $15 for lunch... and it was terrible! Really bad. And you know I was relieved that I didn't have to pay for it, because if I had I would have been angry. In fact lately it seems that when we have made the choice to go out it hasn't been as good as we'd have liked. And the more we spend, the more disappointed we seem to be. One recent exception is a local Teriyaki place that's actually really cheap. You always get plenty of food and it's always delicious. Typical plates are $6-8 -- for dinner! But while I love that price, what's more important is that the quality is equally good. It really does feel like a treat.

I know that restaurants struggle with the slowing economy. Food and operating costs have surely increased for them just as for us. But what they have to remember is that a restaurant is a luxury. It's a treat that we choose to enjoy, not something that's required. You may have to adjust your menu or prices to cope, but you cannot get away with poor quality or service. When we were eating all the time a bad experience, while unpleasant, was only temporary. Tomorrow night we'd just eat someplace else. But when dinner out is a rare treat the quality matters even more.

It's the same with many things. If spending $9 on a movie ticket is a special event, you want the movie to be good. If you stop buying every new video game release, you're going to be more selective about the one you do buy. When clothing purchases are planned specifically for occasional wardrobe-building (as opposed to your weekend hobby) then those clothes had better last. That means quality.

The past decades of overconsumption have made quantity more important than quality. If you see every new release in the theater it's OK if some suck. If you buy every new game it doesn't matter if you never play half of them. If you come home with bags of clothing all the time who cares if some fall apart or go out of style after only two wearings? But that's changing now for many people. Because being thrifty means seeking out quality as well as value. And thrifty has come back into vogue.

Natural Cycles

2008-10-01T09:00:00.000-07:00

It's been a difficult month. There's been a lot going on and a lot of changes. Kid starting school, visitors, returning guests, changing weather, illness, and so on. The result is that our energy levels are quite low. In recent years I've realized that the key to dealing with these times is to acknowledge them and not berate myself for all the things I'm not doing. Instead, I need to conserve my energy and put it toward those things that are most important.

This is good advice for any kind of crisis, including financial. And "financial crises" does seem to be on everyone's minds lately, doesn't it? In my two part article, Filling The Well, I talked about building up a reserve during the good times in order to have a cushion for the bad. Financial certainly, but also mental, emotional, and physical. Part two of this article has lots of practical advice and steps for starting those reserves from scratch when you're completely tapped out. However, what I didn't go into as deeply were techniques for ongoing maintenance.

Now is the time -- when I first realize that we've been too busy, stressed, rundown, and ill -- to start working on those reserves. It's easy to wait too long and run completely out of gas before thinking about mitigation. But that's a mistake. To use a financial metaphor, the earlier you realize that your checking balance is low, the more options you have to fix it. If you wait until after you start bouncing checks, things will be much more difficult. This is where the prosperity key of introspection comes in handy. Keeping an eye on yourself let's you identify problems early (just like keeping an eye on your account).

So once you realize that you're heading toward a low ebb, how do you fix it? One thing that works for me is to triage -- which is basically extreme prioritization. What's most important? What can wait and get deferred until later? What can get canceled altogether? For me that means focusing only on:
* Our family's health
* The day job and school
* The budget

And that's it. Everything else gets postponed in order to give us time to recuperate. Physically we put the focus on eating well and getting enough rest. Mentally, we take a break from worrying about the small stuff. Emotionally, we spend time together strengthening our connections. At the same time, we work on making sure that priority issues are handled. That means deadlines and homework, bills and budget will still get done if at all possible.

It's hard to put other things on hold. To make excuses for existing commitments and avoid taking on new ones. But it's worth it. Because by focusing on building reserves the rough patch goes faster, which means I can get back to working on all those other things sooner. This is better than dragging along, overallocated and exhausted until I collapse and nothing gets done. And taking off a couple of afternoons early to grab a nap is better than getting completely ill and missing a week of work -- better for me as well as the job.

It's also critical that I not kick myself for what I'm not doing. I had this experience yesterday walking home from the bus. I was thinking about all the things I wanted to accomplish this autumn that I hadn't yet -- and here we are in October already. But then I realized that September was the craziest month we'd had in a long time. It's OK that we didn't get more done. In fact, it's smart.

Oh Autumn -- domestic bliss

2008-09-28T20:48:00.000-07:00

Commenting in another blog suddenly gave me a big case of guilt about this blog. I'm woefully behind on posting (and only one post short of completing my Keys to Prosperity series!). However as the seasons turned, things got awfully busy. Here's what we've been up to (and how it ties into living the prosperous life):

* The day job! I've been reading a lot lately about how your regular income is a key component of your investment portfolio. BusinessWeek has an article about asset allocation based on your industry and career risk. Over at The Simple Dollar, Trent points to that article but then expands the idea into a more broad-based (and to my mind more useful) direction: viewing your career as an investment. I remember reading a quote from Warren Buffet about how the average person should invest most heavily in their career, it being the best, safest, and most regular source of income you have.

Work's gotten busy, in part because I recently requested a new position with my company. I love it, but there's a learning curve. Still, it's a step in the right direction for my career and a whole lot of fun. So I'm putting in the time to ramp up and get started out right. It's paying off. I'm still keeping a sharp eye on my work/live balance, since this has been an issue in the past, but things are going well.

* The little one. We have a little one who's just started Kindergarten. We're all still adjusting to the different schedule and new responsibilities. She loves school and is still so excited to go each day. At the same time, she's been more demanding in the evenings and weekends and is just a bit clingy. We're giving her the extra attention she needs while setting ground rules about homework (once a week at this point), dinner, and bedtime. The time we invest here brings infinite returns of course.

* The "homestead." Fall's brought a new focus on domesticity and thrifty living. We've been looking at ways to save and not be deprived. For example, we tried Trent's recipe for homemade laundry detergent (it's working great and was fun and easy to make) and also homemade dishwasher soap. Hint, if you have a ice cream shop around, call and ask about their tubs. We got a ton of free creamery tubs -- food grade, sanitized, and a perfect 3-gallon size. Much more convenient than the larger 5-gallon ones.

We bought a bread machine and have made a commitment not to buy bread from the store anymore. Having fresh bread around without having to be around to make it is great (I love making bread by hand, but simply don't have the time). And naturally there's no comparison in terms of cost. The basic recipes are somewhat bland, but we found a recipe for bread machine bread using a sponge that's really quite good. Next, we're going to try bread with a bit of almond meal as well as pizza dough and sweet rolls. It's inexpensive experimentation and none of our errors so far has been inedible.

Homemade gelato, chicken stock, and other wonders. Cooler days make cooking a more appealing prospect. My husband the chef has been making wonders in the kitchen (the second time I ever saw him, he cooked for me and I said "I'm going to marry that man").

* Creative stuff. I have a number of crafty hobbies that I enjoy as well as some art that I struggle with. Now that we're not camping every weekend, I have more urge and incentive to create things. For example, I made the little one some simple skirts for school and tried a new technique for each one. I hemmed some pants for my husband and did some mending. I took up my knitting. All inexpensive (the way I enjoy them) and stimulating. And I got out my sketch book, which is something of a big deal. These thing are good for me and make me feel more creative and productive in all areas of my life.

So that's what I've been doing and it's all doing well.

Real Inflation

2008-09-15T13:44:00.000-07:00

In my article on Taste Inflation, I talked about how over time our tastes for the good things in life tend to inflate. But as useful as it is to think about, a more pressing issues for many families (including us) is real the actual, literal inflation that's driving up costs. When I went searching for information on current inflation rates, I found a lot of people claiming that the government's numbers (2-3% a year) were incorrect / fudged / outright lies. Other's take a more moderate attitude and explain it as a combination of perception, time-line, and variation in shopping habits.

I'm not about to weigh in on the "is the government lying to us?" debate, but I will say this: it doesn't matter what governments or pundits say about inflation, what matters are your own monthly expenses and how they rise and fall. I mean, let's be pragmatic, the fact that electronic prices have fallen doesn't help you if you aren't buying electronics. But just about everyone pays for food and fuel, and these are where prices have risen most sharply.

Food and fuel are not only a large chunk of many families monthly budget, they are also some of your more flexible expenses. You can't exactly change your monthly rent or mortgage payment, but you can adjust your eating habits and transportation choices. We've been noticing the pinch lately and have made some changes to how we operate and what we buy.

I already wrote about using coupons for groceries and household items, but now we're doing even more:

Eating out? No way! We've been eating out a lot less frequently and have been eating cheap when we do. What do I mean by cheap? First, we stick to places where the cost is low. This includes our favorite hamburger joint and a national subway sandwich chain. Second, we get takeout instead of eating in. That eliminates some of the cost (and increases the health factor of the meal) because we have milk / water / juice at home instead of paying for sodas. In fact, the few times we've eaten out recently have been disappointing... perhaps it's a sign.
Grocery store flip. We used to shop primarily at a local healthy foods chain (similar to Whole Foods) and supplement with visits to the regular chain store. Now we've flipped that. We shop first at the chain and then anything else comes from the healthy store (they have the best prices on free-range eggs for example). By shopping at the "regular" store first, we've been saving a ton.
The juice quandary. I was miffed when our favorite brand of bottled OJ (100% natural, not from concentrate) shrunk the bottles, but kept the price the same. I complained and they even sent me some coupons, but this didn't solve the larger problem. 100% juice was non-negotiable, but we needed to cut the cost. So, we turned to frozen concentrated juice. For a tiny fraction of the price of bottled juice, we can get 100% juice drinks in a bunch of flavors, including orange juice. Is it quite as tasty? No. But it's still delicious, healthy, and far from koolaid. My favorite brand of juices run $1.37 for a "can" that mixes into 64 ounces of juice. And there are a ton of combinations. We've been making popsicles with the juice and also use concentrate mixed with generic soda water to make healthy sodas for special occasions.
Organic... not so much. The one change I do regret is that we decided we simply couldn't continue to buy all organic paper products. It was just a huge budget killer. So instead we've been getting the regular stuff... but using more cloth napkins, rags, and towels to offset the resource usage. I've also been collecting the plastic bags I get from the regular grocery and using them when we walk our dog, as opposed to the special doggie bags we were buying.
And speaking of the dog... We've always fed our dog a national brand of quality dog food, but after the pet food recalls two years ago (has it been that long already?) we switched to a premium "gourmet" brand. We felt strongly that if we couldn't be confident of the quality of his food, just like ours, we shouldn't have gotten a dog in the first place. So, we splurged. But prices have been edging up and it's becoming an issue. Because we've shown brand and store loyalty, we're about to get a free 50 lb bag of food (which doesn't last that long when your dog weighs over double that) but after that we've decided to switch. Fortunately, our store loyalty is paying off as the owner is going to walk us through other, less expensive options that we can feel confident about. I'm also planning to bake another big batch of dog biscuits when the weather cools off (we have no AC, so it's an issue).
Meat... Finally, we managed to find space for our upright freezer in the town house (we can't have it in the garage because of power issues) and have been restocking it. Our favorite old-style butcher has good prices on antibiotic and hormone-free local meats as well as freebies and bulk discounts. But they're way across town, so we've been consolidating our errands out there and stocking up when we go. That means freezing small portions of deli meats and the like.
...and beer (that's two food groups right there). After some discussion and research, we've come up with a way to get brewing again in our new place. Temperature and space are issues, but we think we've figured it out. That means quality beer at a fraction of the price and in nifty blue grolsch bottles.
Lunch money. When our little one started school, we figured she could just eat in the cafeteria. But the choices weren't all that healthy and, while the price was good (like $2.10 a day), we knew we could do better with homemade lunches. But we did splurge on a nice container set with an ice pack insert, an insulated lunch box, reusable plastic drink boxes (much cheaper than the store bought ones), and a hot lunch/drink thermos. So she enjoys her lunch from home whether hot or cold and we don't have to worry about stuff getting "funky."

The above items about all about food and groceries. In addition, we've been tweaking the way we drive in order to save fuel. We weren't going to make a big dent here. We're already a one-car family, and our car is paid for and meets our needs well. But we made a few tweaks:

Magic school bus. We had originally anticipated needing to drive our little girl to kindergarten, but she surprised us by happily jumping on the school bus from day one. Yay for her!
Not-so-magic commuter bus. I was already busing to work daily since our move. Before, I was close enough to bike in and save even more, but that's not as feasible now (believe me, I tried it). I did arrange to buy bus passes pre-tax through work, which saves a bit. And I walk a half a mile to save about $.40 cents each way on bus fare. Frankly, I need the exercise anyway and it's actually faster to walk than it is catch the other bus and make a transfer.
The big errand issue. With gas as high as it is, even cross-town trips can have a real cost. We discovered that driving to the butcher's cost us almost $10 round-trip -- and it's not that far away. So we've been trying to consolidate errands and trips where we can.

So, some thrifty changes to help us keep our budget under control and deal with real inflation without going completely cheap. It's always a balancing act, but when you look past your habits and regular patterns, it's possible to find some room to wiggle.

Some Budget Lessons for August

2008-09-11T12:12:00.000-07:00

I keep a monthly budget. And I'm always willing to make changes as necessary. There were a few critical lessons that I learned in August that I thought I might share:

1. If you want regular savings to be truly invisible, don't list it in the budget. Instead, just have the money auto withdrawn and reduce your income by the same amount. Out of sight, out of mind.

2. Watch those minus signs! Crediting a bill instead of debiting it is bad news (ouch!).

3. Don't start the month off in the negative. Just because last month got all screwed up and you needed to pull from the emergency fund (is bad math an emergency?) doesn't mean you should screw yourself this month too by starting out in the hole. Instead, acknowledge the problem and regroup at a more reasonable pace.

4. Remind yourself of the amount of time it took to get to this point. Years, right? If it takes the same amount of time to get back to your starting point, you are doing OK. Bonus points for getting there faster, but negative points for beating yourself up.

5. Staring at the budget and thinking "fuck we are so broke" is stupid. Even if it's true. Stop it!

Traits of the Prosperous Household

2008-09-10T06:20:00.000-07:00

My Keys to Prosperity posts are all about the components necessary to experience prosperity. The start of a prosperity "how to" list really. But there's another way to view prosperity -- by looking at the characteristics of something you already know or sense to be prosperous.

It's often easy to identify some organization or entity as prosperous, but less easy to figure out WHY. Kind of a prosperity version of Justice Stewart's famous definition of pornography: "I'll know it when I see it." However if you're interested in recreating prosperity (if not pornography), it helps to get a sense of the traits that prosperous things have. Whether they are the causes of that prosperity or the result, emulating them might just be a technique for getting closer to that result yourself.

I don't have a very good idea of what a prosperous business or farm looks like, but I think I can identify traits common to a prosperous household. By household I mean a group of people who live under the same roof and who act together as a unit as well as the place where these people live.

A prosperous household is:

Clean. While a house doesn't have to be OCD spotless or magazine perfect, I expect that a prosperous household will be sanitary. First of all, filth and dirt breed bacteria that can make members of the household sick. Health being a key to prosperity, it makes sense that the prosperous house will be squalor free. Second, cleanliness indicates that the residents of the household care about it. When the people in a household work together to keep both themselves and the place clean, it demonstrates a commitment to the household itself.

Possible to do items: Create a cleaning schedule. Buy more efficient cleaning supplies. Identify and practice habits that keep things clean (coasters and doormats!).
Organized. Again, there's a difference between "workably neat" and "Martha Stewart." The latter isn't required. But if you find yourself wasting time looking for lost items, buying duplicates of things you can't find, stumbling over clutter, and feeling overwhelmed by crap, how are you going to foster prosperity? In addition, if there's more than one person in the household, they need to coordinate organization together.

Possible to do items: Eliminate unnecessary clutter. Find or purchase appropriate storage. Create and communicate "everything in its place" locations (coat racks and key hooks).
Functional. Above all, a household must work for its members. Work and play must be supported. Space should be effectively utilized. Tasks and goals should be sustained. A perfect and beautiful formal dining room that gets used once a year is the antithesis of prosperity. That you can afford the extra square footage might say something about you, but as space is one of the household budget's biggest expenses (whether that be rent, mortgage, parking, or storage costs) what it says might not be flattering. Whereas the same dining room, messier but better loved and used for hobbies, homework, game night, or regular meals, is the epitome of prosperity. The members of the household should be able to define their functional needs and implement systems and spaces that support them, while also crediting the needs of other members.

Possible to do items: Reassign room usage. Create individual work spaces. Obtain appropriate furnishings.
Rhythmic. That sounds odd, but what I mean is that the prosperous household fosters a certain regularity of operation. There's always food in the house. No one is ever out of clean underwear (hey, these are goals to strive for). There's a sense that things happen in right order and at their right time. From large-scale cycles like putting up storm windows each October and stocking up at farmers markets through summer to small-scale cycles like making sure household members get their coffee and breakfasts each morning. Members of the household are in the habit of doing work to keep the household running. And the household in turn supports the regular tasks people need to do with the right tools and layout. In addition, there must be a sense of ownership of regular tasks so that the members know what they personally need to do to keep things running.

Possible to do items: Create a yearly household maintenance chart. Purchase tools and supplies. Identify and assign regular chores.
Flexible. A prosperous household is going to be able to adjust to whatever life throws at it. That means that the members must be flexible as the environment and situation change over time. Everyone must have a willingness to try new things in order to maintain a standard of prosperity. In rough times, household sacrifice might be necessary and when times are good innovation can improve prosperity significantly.

Possible to do items: Support training opportunities. Communicate household status. Brainstorm small business ideas.
Thrifty. The prosperous household won't tolerate excessive waste. The contents are well-cared for and properly maintained. Excess is eliminated or effectively handled. Members of the household cultivate the skills necessary to make best use of assets. As much as is practical, the household strives for a sense of sustainability and independence. The members work together to meet the household's needs and seek out the best options for doing so.

Possible to do items: Create a meal plan to use leftover and reduce kitchen waste. Learn to fix and mend items that need maintenance. Shop around for the best option.
Welcoming. No household is an island (except for this one) and making the household part of the wider community is critical to prosperity. It's ironic that some of the most beautiful and beautifully kept houses are the least welcoming. A prosperous household is ready to connect with neighbors and always welcomes friends. There's a necessarily generosity associated with prosperity to keep connections strong.

Possible to do items: Host a neighborhood barbecue. Start a reading group. Invite friends to a movie night.

So, how does your household measure up? I can already identify areas where we are doing well and ones where we need to do some work. Since my family is pretty domestic, our household is the center of our lives. We want it to be as prosperous as possible.

Key to Prosperity -- Introspection

2008-09-09T11:23:00.000-07:00

I've never been very good at long-term goal setting. It seems like every time we try to articulate our goals, we end up in such a different situation that those goals no longer mean anything. Recently, I discovered another way of setting goals that seems to work better for me. But still, this is an area where I struggle.

Yet over and over I've read that it's incredibly difficult to put your financial life in order without having some goals to strive for. This is where introspection comes in. Because goal setting is often about doing. But knowing yourself well is about being. You might have goals that you know you need to meet in order to be more prosperous (like paying off debt). However prosperity is about being able to lead the kind of life you want. And that's much more dependent on what it is that you want, than what it is that you do.

So while obviously you have to set goals in order to reach them, beyond that, you have to know who you are and what you want to even set the right goals. Otherwise you run the risk of meeting your goals and then discovering they don't give you the kind of life you want.

I remember reading (but can't for the life of me remember where) that there are only two kinds of problems. One, you know what you want but haven't achieved it. Two, you don't know what you want. Clearly, you have to know what you want before you can get rolling -- and that's there introspection comes in.

Many people understand the value of being introspective, but I think that there are some common misperceptions about how to effectively introspect. We are a heavily navel-gazing society, with huge self help and self examination industries and yet we're still lost and confused.

Introspection isn't about making yourself feel important. A lot of people use introspection as a vehicle for elevating their own problems / issues / successes into high drama and criticality. Your stuff isn't any more critical than anyone else's stuff... except to you. And even then, if you look within so closely that you make mountains out of your little molehills, you won't end up benefiting. Don't get so myopic that you lose the larger picture.

Introspection isn't about dwelling on your problems, feeling sorry for yourself, or (above all) beating yourself up. If you sit down to examine yourself and start cataloging every bad choice you've ever made, STOP. You're doing it wrong. If it turns into a pity party about how bad everything is now, STOP. That's the opposite of helping.

At the same time, introspection isn't about pumping up your ego with your wonderfulness. Affirmations are useful, but telling yourself how great you are doesn't help you figure out who you are. Announce your affirmations to the universe, but let your own mind/heart/soul speak for itself.

Introspection is a value neutral exercise. It's not about dictating or about judging. It's about listening, honestly and objectively, to yourself. People with faith often talk about that "still small voice." They call it the voice of God's guidance. That's useful, but you don't have to go that far to realize that if you listen to the whispers inside you, you can learn an awful lot about yourself. Whether that information comes from God or your own subconscious isn't relevant here. The point is that you listen.

What kinds of things can you learn? You can learn what you need and what you really want. You can learn about what makes you happy and content. About what uplifts you and what struggles you find worth taking on. What your priorities and real values are. Who you really are (good or bad) right now. From this knowledge you can set useful goals, both material -- I want a home of my own -- and non-material (emotional, spiritual, pick your term) -- I want to be more generous.

It is at this point, once you really know yourself, that you can then makes changes in who you are and how you life. Without knowing yourself, you can't know what goals to set. Without clear goals, you will find it much harder to create the kind of life you want. So if prosperity is what you desire, you must discover what that means to you so you can define the goals to achieve it.

Useful Quotes on introspection:

It is by our innate wisdom that we enlighten ourselves, and even the extraneous help and instruction of a pious and learned friend would be of no use so long as one is deluded by false doctrines and erroneous views. As we introspect our minds with Prajna, all erroneous views will disappear of themselves, and just as soon as we realise Essence of Mind we will immediately arrive at the Buddha stage. When we use Prajna for introspection we are illuminated within and without and are in position to know our own nature. To realise our own nature is to obtain fundamental liberation.
A Buddhist Bible, First Edition, Dwight Goddard 1932

Our most important study is our own mind, not only the intellectual mind but the spiritual mind. "Know thyself" was inscribed on the temple of Apollo at Delphi; and it must be inscribed on our own temple, "over" the door of our mind. "Know thyself." We must become acquainted with our own mind.
Keep a True Lent, by Charles Fillmore, 1953

And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake:
And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.
King James Bible, I Kings 19:11-12
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of mankind is Man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest,
In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast,
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reasoning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such
Whether he thinks too little or too much:
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused, or disabused;
Created half to rise and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled;
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
Alexander Pope (1688–1744), British poet. An Essay on Man (Fr. Epistle II). . .
THE IMAGE

 Water on the mountain:
 The image of OBSTRUCTION.
 Thus the superior man turns his attention to himself
 And molds his character.

Difficulties and obstructions throw a man back upon himself. While the
inferior man seeks to put the blame on other persons, bewailing his fate, the
superior man seeks the error within himself, and through this introspection
the external obstacle becomes for him an occasion for inner enrichment and
education.
I Ching Hexagram 39. Chien / Obstruction

Prosperity Consciousness?

2008-09-08T12:30:00.000-07:00

I recently read Shut Up, Stop Whining, and Get a Life by Larry Winget. This book is pretty much my perfect "self-help" type book (I think I'd do a review soon) and there's lots of great food for my brain.

But one comment he made really struck me. He mentioned "poverty consciousness" and "prosperity consciousness." These are terms I've never heard before, but that perfectly encapsulate something I've been wrestling with in regard to my own search for prosperity.

Are we prosperous because of external measures such as income, spending, debt? Or are we prosperous because we think we are. Certainly the first is accurate. You can't very well claim prosperity if the bills aren't getting paid. On the other hand, an appreciation of what you already have is a key component of prosperity. When you understand that you don't need a lot of stuff, you gain the twin benefits of both feeling prosperous with what you have right now as well as saving money by not buying the things you don't miss.

Winget points out that a prosperity consciousness not only makes you feel better about what you already have, but ends up actually getting you more. That is, focusing on how poor you are will tend to keep you poor while focusing on prosperity will help you be more prosperous. I'd like to point out that he also puts a heavy weight on action -- he makes no claim that simply thinking about what you want will bring it to you. Still, your focus is a critical component of taking the right action.

Here then is my challenge: How can I place the necessary attention on improving our prosperity without feeling poor in the process and thereby undermining our own goals?

I Will Not be Frugal

2008-09-03T15:10:00.000-07:00

In my seminal post, Frugal Sucks!, I outlined the negative connotations that the word "frugal" brings to my mind. I know not everyone has such strong reaction to the term, but from the state personal finances and debt in the US, I think many people do. Yet what we do instead (mindless consuming, borrowing, spending) is driving us to the brink of both financial and spiritual ruin.

I've made a personal commitment not to be frugal, but instead to be prosperous and thrifty. But what are the differences? Here's my list of the DON'Ts of negative frugality, along with my concurrent DOs of prosperity and thrift:

Deprivation -- being frugal means you are deprived of things.

Prosperity means that you define deprivation based on your own sustainability and happiness... not the definitions provided my glossy magazines or television. Only you can decide what is really enough, but you are allowed to enjoy those things that bring you lasting pleasure.

Being thrifty means you choose the option that's the best intersection of price AND quality and you care for it and make it last. One $20 shirt is better than four $5 shirts and I know myself well enough to know that 3 hours in a thrift store looking for a nice $1 shirt will NOT make me happy. And frozen burritos may be cheaper than fresh fruit, but my health will pay in the long run.

Missed opportunity -- frugal means you miss out on things you want to do because those things cost too much money.

Prosperity means that you can assign value to experience just as to material goods. And each person must decide for themselves which experiences have value. It also means having a lifestyle that affords the ability to take advantage of new experience when it arises. That means sustainability as well as fiscal responsibility.

A thrifty viewpoint however realizes that some of the best experiences cost very little (a little gas, a small fee, a bit of time) and are still well worth exploring.
Selfishness -- frugality is all about looking out only for number one, preparing for your own future and letting others fend for themselves.

Prosperity takes a broader view. Having a prosperous household or business means living in a prosperous community, which means helping others. Plus giving has value in and of itself and brings rewards both monetary and spiritual.

Thrift realizes that while prudent spending and saving is critical, in the end you leave this world as you arrived: naked and empty-handed. Leaving a legacy is a chance to give prosperity to those you care about most.
Tedium -- frugal means always doing the same thing because it's cheap and just what you do. Experimenting costs money because, hey, what if you mess up!?

Prosperity admits the constancy of change. While it's a good idea to stockpile when there's a surplus, it's also the time to try new things because failure is more tolerable. Then, if or when the tide turns, you will be well prepared to change with the shifting currents.

Being thrifty doesn't mean you never make mistakes, and failure is simply practice for success. Embracing new things in a moderate way is a great method way of supporting positive change. You don't have to invest every resource to learn from your mistakes and enjoy your successes.
Lack of choices -- if you are frugal, you can only do the cheapest thing. Each choice closes off every other choice and you can't ever change it.

Prosperity affords you options. Your good planning can be used to open doors and, because change is always occurring, new options will soon present themselves. It's OK to make a more expensive choice, or a higher risk one, as long as you do it with full awareness.

And thrift means living simply so that the occasional poor choice isn't the end of the world.
Deferred living -- work and scrimp today so that you can enjoy tomorrow... except tomorrow never seems to come until you're too old to enjoy it.

Prosperity means nothing today if you don't plan for tomorrow. It's a sustainable and ongoing process for enjoying the present and the future. Each day could be your last... but it's also the first day of the rest of your life. Live as if both these things were true.

Thrift cautions us to be moderate, neither sacrificing today for the future nor hocking our future for the pleasures of today.
No room to dream or grow -- dreams cost money. Trying stuff out costs money. Failure costs money. Best to just stick to what you know will bring you money. Risk is bad!

Prosperity is about a life that has room for making dreams comes true. Dreams don't cost money. Dreams are free to everyone who dares to dream them. Making dreams come true may come with a cost, but like any choice or good or service, the cost might be well worth the reward. Giving yourself permission to be prosperous means you can give yourself permission to dream.

And the thrifty lifestyle? Without a lot of burden and clutter, life can be a place where there's room for dreaming, trying, failing, and -- we hope -- succeeding.

Can You Be Prosperous Alone?

2008-09-01T13:02:00.000-07:00

One of the most powerful things I've read this year is this Cracked.com article "7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making you Miserable." Despite the common (x) reasons (something something) blog format, it's engagingly written and covers an important topic. I'd recommend you go read it. Really. I'll wait. In fact, let's both go read it and meet back here in a few minutes...

See, told you it was good.

It was this article that started me wondering -- can you really be prosperous alone?

Now there are a whole lot of people in this world who think they know how other people should live. People who are perfectly willing to tell you that you can't be happy or successful unless you are straight/married/single/sexually liberated/a parent/child free/close to your family/independent/go to X church/an atheist/love your neighbor/hate the enemy -- and so forth. I don't agree that there's only one way to live or one way to be happy. I think that, if you are not actively hurting others with your choices, you can live any way you like.

Yet there's no doubt that we're social animals. We need other people around for emotional and economic health. Even if we don't like them, we still need them. I believe, and research supports, that having a social circle makes people happier. And when it comes to financial success, others are absolutely necessary. Throw three or more people in a group together and, as soon as they get their basic survival needs met, they will create an economy. You live in an economy right now and, good or bad, you end up being a participant. I say being an ACTIVE participant and cultivating relationships is a critical component of prosperity. Here are some particular groups to think about.

Coworkers
One area where I've always excelled is in my career. I'm good at finding and keeping work as well as improving my job lot over time. In my time I've worked in several different roles for a bunch of different employers in a host of varied industries. So I can tell you from experience that getting work is often a matter of who you know (particularly when starting out) but keeping work is ALWAYS a matter of who you know. In any job with a social component (I suppose none of this advice applies if you work in a fire watch tower) the connections you make with the people there are critical to your success. If you just go in and do your thing while avoiding interaction and communication, I don't suspect you'll be there long. Since for most of us our job is a critical contributor to our prosperity, this is a major issue.

So chat with your coworkers. You don't have to be best friends. You don't have to talk about sensitive subjects (politics, religion, etc.). But you really do need create connections to the people you work with. People who bring other people up are more likely to get praise and reward. People who bring other people down are roundly ignored and should be censured. And people who blend in the woodwork will miss out altogether.

Friends
A second critical area (one that I need to work on) is your circle of friends. Not only do good friends contribute to our emotional well-being, they also contribute to our prosperity... just as we do to theirs. When you have people you can lean on in times of trouble (and who, naturally, can lean on you) it makes your life more sustainable. From a great job lead to help moving to emotional support when you need it, our friends help us get through rough times. And as I've suggested, it's the tough times that really put a burden on our ability to get through life. Plus if you need a favor and don't have anyone to ask, you end up paying a stranger to do that favor for you.

If calling friends out as contributing to prosperity seems cold, remember that you contribute to your friends' prosperity as well -- or at least you should. And despite all the well-known benefits, there are many people who have almost zero friends.

How to make friends:

1) find some people
2) be nice to them
3) stay in contact

Although you'll do better with people who you have something in common with, that can be as banal as "they live on our block." I'm actually much better at number 2 (at least I hope my existing friends will think so) than numbers 1 and 3. Naturally you should feel that these people are applying the same steps to you (being nice and staying in touch -- otherwise return to step one and keep looking). And remember: friends help you move, real friends help you move bodies.

Family
Another component is your family. This is a tricky one. Your family is made up both of people you choose (like your partner) and people you get stuck with. And, while it'd be awesome if all families were wonderful, we know that's sometimes not the case. Still, people can often rely on family the way they can't rely on a friend. Even if your family is completely adopted later in life, it's nice to have people who you can be totally open with and who will help you in any situation.

A generation or so ago, it seemed that most people lived within an extended family group. But this has changed. Part of it is increased mobility, but another component seems to be some kind of rift that has developed between generations. I don't completely understand this, but I have experienced it -- to my great sadness. Still, I'm happy to say that I have a BRILLIANT immediate family and some wonderful friends-who-have-become-family. I don't know what my life would be without them, but I'm pretty sure it would be a lot harder.

If you have a good family, it's worth keeping in touch and keeping your connections strong.

Associates and Acquaintances
These people don't have a specific stake in your prosperity and you probably don't in theirs, but they are the people you do business or interact with in the course of your daily life. It's a good idea to have pleasant relationships with these people. This group includes merchants you frequently deal with, service professionals that you have an ongoing relationship with, and officials you encounter regularly.

You don't have to make these people into great friends, but you should have a friendly interaction. For example, I'm kind and friendly with the security staff in the building where I work. And I know the maintenance guys at our town home complex by name. I don't have to be nice to these people; I could just ignore them. I choose to take a more active role in connecting with them and therefore when there's a problem, they already know me. This makes dealing with things much easier.

When we can claim a web of connections in the community where we live, it means we can also claim a place in that community. The constant and complex interactions within this community help ensure our prosperity by both direct and indirect means. And all this in addition to the other benefits that these connections confer in terms of happiness and emotional security.

The Theme of Prosperity

2008-08-29T12:50:00.001-07:00

One of the problems with blog and online diaries in general is that a lot of people don't think much about their purpose and goals. Why do you keep a blog? Is it a semi-private diary? Is it a place to connect with people you know in real life? Is it a potentially money-making venture? Is it a place to find validation of your worth as a human being through virtual connection with others? And what's the end result? Cash? Love? Readers?

I'm not a marketer. My efforts on my first (and to date only) book bear that out. I don't know how to get people to come here and make the effort to read this -- apart from maybe writing well and being interesting. I don't know how people are going to discover that I exist. But it's OK because that's not my primary goal here.

For the record:

The purpose of Grow * Prosper * Thrive is to explore the concept of prosperity as a list of practically applicable steps as well as an overall world view.

The goal of Grow * Prosper * Thrive is a) for my family to become more prosperous and b) for the content here to coalesce into workable material for a future book.

And I can see that both those happening already. The keys to prosperity seem to be tying together into both a contiguous mental framework as well as a practical todo list. Though my posting speed has slowed a bit, I'm excited by this fact. I can learn to think this way! I can do these things!

Next up, the final keys to prosperity as well as a the beginnings of a guide or manifesto that ties them all together...

The Budget Game

2008-08-28T06:41:00.000-07:00

I've often found that, since the things I write about are those things which are on my mind, the things I write about are also frequently those things I'm struggling with. This is true of most of my articles here and particularly of the last one.

The truth is that I'm just not feeling very positive about things lately. Some of this is due to the change in season and upcoming changes in my life (child going to school for example). Another part to the fact that I've been a bit sleep deprived this week. But a major portion comes from the fact that writing about prosperity has caused me to concentrate more on prosperity. But instead of doing it correctly, I've been doing it all backwards. I haven't been focusing on the areas where things are good and where I want to improve. Instead I've been focusing on how much there's left to do and the areas where we have much to improve.

I'll be writing on how important focus is to prosperity soon (I think it's next on my list) but it's clear to me that just applying focus isn't enough. In order to remain positive and appreciative, it's important to focus on the right areas.

In an effort to change this incorrectly applied focus, yesterday I started reworking our family budget. This falls in the realm of my responsibility because I'm more detail oriented and better at Excel. Naturally my husband and I have frequent (if not daily) discussions about our status and what we have in various categories, but I'm the one who types in the numbers. I've been keeping an Excel spreadsheet budget for years (I recall having one at my first off-campus job back in... 1992 or so?). Much has changed, but the basic form of the budget has remained the same. The rows are various income and expenses, the columns are months or pay periods.

Despite my long experience with this, it was only recently that I discovered that the way you organize the spreadsheet can have a huge impact on how you actually do with your money. It's not just a tracking device for dollars and cents, it's a representation of your attitudes and views. You organize this sort of document based on how you see your financial world and, in reverse, reorganizing it can have an impact on that point of view and cause actual change in behavior.

For example, you've no doubt heard the mantra to "pay yourself first" but is that reflected in your budget? Do you have a line, up there with your monthly bills for "saving" where you allocate a specific amount, treating it like the electric bill? Or do you leave it at the bottom where everything else gets subtracted first and any shortfall will get yanked out of this amount?

A couple of months ago I tried a new budget based on an interesting idea I'd read about. See, we were doing ok on the paying the bills part (which is step one for most people who need a budget -- predicting your bills and getting them paid on time) and the emergency fund part (never been good at this, but we were doing ok), but not so much with the paying extra toward debt part (step three, if you listen to Ramsey). In my current budget, the extra debt part was the lowest priority, where any extra money went after everything else got bought and paid, and there was rarely anything left over. So I took a suggestion (and I can't remember which blog I gleaned this from) to first deduct all the monthly bills then divide the rest proportionally into two chunks: savings and spending. In my version of this, the paying extra toward debt part was a part of the savings area.

Well, this ended up not working at all and after a couple of months our finances were seriously affected. It did work to focus on getting more money toward debt, but the trouble was that it weighted savings and spending equally. Note, my spending category doesn't include food, transportation, or other irregular but planned for items (like a new tent when our old one proved as waterproof as a sieve). No, spending is purely for bonus extra stuff. So from this point of view spending and savings aren't equal at all. Yet by treating them as two halves of the same chunk of money, we had a hard time separating them. We didn't treat saving enough like a static bill.

So now I'm working on a different model, one where saving is it's own category and everything has a fixed and/or estimated amount except for extra spending money. That money is what's left over after all the bills and planned expenses are paid for, after savings is set aside, and after a extra goes to pay for debt. Should planned expenses jump for any reason, we reduce the other allocations in the reverse order: spending money, extra debt reduction, savings, planned expenses, and then bills. Well, except for the fact that I always try to have a little spending money set aside. Because something will come up -- it always does. I hope this will help put the focus on the right areas and help me feel better as well.

Key to Prosperity -- Positivity

2008-08-25T19:10:00.000-07:00

It seems like there's a lot of blogging on being happy right now. In addition to the Get Rich Slowly post I mentioned, Trent at The Simple Dollar asks Is a Positive Attitude Enough? Clearly, a positive attitude isn't enough on its own. But I believe it's a critical component of being prosperous. The very happiness studies mentioned in the Get Rich Slowly article frequently comment that, once you get past a point of poverty, extra money doesn't actually make people happier. That's because one, we become accustomed to whatever standard of living we have (see my article on Taste Inflation) and more wealth quickly becomes the same old same old and two, we don't feel rich or poor by some arbitrary standard but by comparing ourselves to others.

From this point of view feeling wealthy, blessed, and prosperous is more important than actually having x amount in the bank or a car as cool as the neighbors or a house as big as those people on TV. On the other hand, anyone who's ever been poor knows that it sucks and therefore hedging against future poverty is critical to future prosperity and happiness. The ways to do this are obvious (though not necessarily easy): eliminate debt, save, and strengthen long-term earning potential.

In addition, a positive attitude helps us deal with adversity, come up with more creative solutions to problems, and reduces the risk of many health problems. This same research that tells us that the endless fight for "more" won't make us happy, also tells us that love, community, faith, and health do. And while a certain element of our state of mind is genetic -- just how we're wired -- another component comes from the choices we make and the things we strive for.

Finally, I believe that in order to feel prosperous and be prosperous, we have to have a positive outlook because of something that I've seen and experienced, but can't prove. This is not objective, scientific, or rational, but I believe that the things we focus on are those things we end up with more of. I'm not sure it's mystical, though I don't completely understand the mechanism, but if we focus on poverty we're more likely to stay poor. It may be just that our focus affects our decisions, many of which we make subconsciously. Or it might be that we project, through subtle cues, that we are deserving of those things we spend a lot of time dwelling on.

For example, if we constantly thing about being and feeling like a victim, we are more likely to be victimized because we project that attitude and predators deliberately choose people they think will be easy to coerce, manipulate, or attack (according to prisoner studies). Note, I do not think this means that anyone deserves a bad fate and would like to say, for the record, that I believe that "The Secret" (and similar extreme positive thinking cults) are a bunch of victim-blaming, simplistic snake oil. Still, fake it till you make it is a legitimate technique for projecting positive characteristics and interacting with others.

In terms of prosperity, focusing on feeling poor seems counterproductive and is one of the key issues I have with frugality. And putting all the focus on the power of money to make me happy is bound to backfire (since research shows it actually doesn't). Instead I want to focus first on feeling positive about what we already have (see my thoughts on Gratitude and Appreciation) and second on feeling positive about aspiring to future goals (the journey versus the destination).

Useful Quotes on Positivity:

Whoever influences the child’s life ought to try to give him a positive view of himself and of his world. The child’s future happiness and his ability to cope with life and relate to others will depend on it.

Bruno Bettelheim (20th century), Austrian-born child psychologist. A Good Enough Parent, ch. 1 (1987).
THE JOYOUS. Success.
Perseverance is favorable.

The joyous mood is infectious and therefore brings success. But joy must be
based on steadfastness if it is not to degenerate into uncontrolled mirth...
THE LINES
Nine at the beginning means:
Contented joyousness. Good fortune.
A quiet, wordless, self-contained joy, desiring nothing from without and
resting content with everything, remains free of all egotistic likes and dislikes.
In this freedom lies good fortune, because it harbors the quiet security of a
heart fortified within itself.
Hexagram 24: 58 Tui / The Joyous, Lake, I Ching, Wilhelm Translation
THE SEVEN MAJOR POSITIVE EMOTIONS
The emotion of   DESIRE
The emotion of FAITH
The emotion of LOVE
The emotion of SEX
The emotion of ENTHUSIASM
The emotion of ROMANCE
The emotion of HOPE

THE SEVEN MAJOR NEGATIVE EMOTIONS
(To be avoided) 
The emotion of   FEAR
The emotion of JEALOUSY
The emotion of HATRED
The emotion of REVENGE
The emotion of GREED
The emotion of SUPERSTITION
The emotion of ANGER
Positive and negative emotions cannot occupy the mind at the same time. One or the other must dominate. It is your responsibility to make sure that positive emotions constitute the dominating influence of your mind.

Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill [1938]

Of course, it's easy to be positive about the areas in our lives that are going well. The trick is to also find some positivity in those areas that aren't so great. One technique is to see the positives that can come of a poor situation in the future. So, for example, instead of thinking "my job sucks!" you think "my job isn't that great, but I'm learning stuff that can bolster my resume." Or instead of "we are so darned broke" try "at least we realize there's a problem... now how do we make it better?"

As I write these essays on keys to prosperity (see the right-hand side of the page for links to all of them) I see how the pieces are starting to fit together into a unified whole. An attitude or collection of steps to enhance prosperity. The next step is making those work in my own life.

Happy happy, joy joy

2008-08-25T09:59:00.000-07:00

J.D. over at Get Rich Slowly has a post on The Psychology of Happiness. The conclusions tie neatly into my own recent post: Prosperity -- Journey or Destination?

To quote:

About 50% of individual happiness comes from a genetic set point. That is, we’re each predisposed to a certain level of happiness. Some of us are just naturally more inclined to be cheery than others.
About 10% of our happiness is due to our circumstances. Our age, race, gender, personal history, and, yes, wealth, only make up about one-tenth of our happiness.
The remaining 40% of an individual’s happiness seems to be derived from intentional activity, from “discrete actions or practices that people can choose to do”.

So clearly working toward prosperity is more critical to our happiness than reaching some predefined set point.

Stocking the Larder

2008-08-23T14:23:00.000-07:00

Labor Day weekend is still a week away and the official first day of fall might be the third week of September, but I can tell you that here in the Pacific Northwest autumn has arrived. The weather is warm and sunny, but some inner trigger shifted and I'm suddenly focused on getting ready for cooler days ahead. This is an instinctual end of summer thing for me. I go from a carefree attitude to suddenly thinking about stocking the larder and preparing for the winter months.

This attitude isn't necessarily rational. After all, winters here aren't even that harsh here and in our urban paradise, we can pretty much get anything we want any time of year. This year we can also view this stocking urge as a hedge against inflation. In the past week, we've done two major grocery expeditions and a huge freezer-stocking meat run. Unfortunately, our current place doesn't have much of a pantry. In our previous house we had a pantry room, filled with shelves. Now we have a tiny kitchen and no pantry at all. So we have to be more creative.

It's interesting that we've always been food stockpilers. From the time that my husband and I first made a household together, he insisted that we get extra stuff whenever we could afford it. So while there were plenty of times when dinner involved an egg, a half cup of potato flakes, and a pack of ramen -- all the food in the house -- these times would be interspersed with major shopping expeditions. The very first time we went shopping together, he insisted on spending a huge portion of our grocery budget on a broad selection of good quality herbs and spices -- something that shocked me at the time but that I never regretted afterward.

It helps that he can cook -- and I mean REALLY cook. Not just throw together some semi-prepackaged items, but cook from the most basic of ingredients. He can butcher meat, if he has the tools, and can do useful things like make pudding without, like, a box of pudding mix (dude, I didn't even know that was possible) or stock from a whole chicken. So things like beans and lentils and barley and flour and cornstarch really get used in our house.

And that's the first key to stocking a pantry -- you should only get items you will use. Now, some things will last a really long time if stored properly. We often have a bag of dry 15 bean mix sit for months with no harm done, waiting for the cold day that we get the urge for soup. But everything will eventually go bad or slowly lose nutrients, even canned goods, so it's critical that stuff get used up eventually. If canned carrots are like the devil's orange ick to you, then don't buy them with the thought that if the world ends, you may decide you like them.

And watch for quality, particularly when buying in bulk. If you want to get bulk bin items, find a store that sells a lot from their bulk bins. This often means paying a bit more at the local coop or healthy store rather than less at your regular grocery. But that's better than wasting all your money coming home with five pounds of granola that has already gone stale in the bulk bin. Ask how often they switch out items to keep things fresh and consider how open to the air the bins are. The bins you scoop out of will need to be changed out more frequently than those dispenser bins where you hold a bag underneath. Also watch for quality if you shop at a warehouse store. A 12 pound bag of cheap chemical-laden crap is still 12 pounds of crap... no matter how cheap it was. We used to have a Sam's Club membership but gave it up because prices in no way made up for their serious lack of quality.

The second key to stocking up is that you have to keep buying extra every time you shop (or at least every time you can afford it). Otherwise you'll just deplete your stockpile and be back where you started. This is why, despite having a mass of food, we've never been able to keep a wine collection. We buy a bottle and drink it or buy a case... and slowly drink it. But we aren't in the habit of always picking up extra, so we eventually end up back at zero. When you grab a can of whatever, just automatically train yourself to buy an extra. When you buy a pound of spaghetti, get a second pound on principle. You don't notice the pinch at the register so much if it's a regular trickle rather than a one time flood.

The other reason to make stocking up a regular habit is to take advantage of sales, particularly on pre-packaged stuff. One of the things we do like to have on hand is Annie's Natural Mac and Cheese. Relatively healthy and chemical free, but more expensive than Kraft. So I wait until I see them on sale and then buy a bunch -- and because I'm in the habit of it, I rarely run completely out between sales. In fact, I also tend to double-up on non-food items when they are on sale. Things like toothpaste, soap and detergent, razors. Non-food items are fricking expensive, so it's worth it -- especially since almost everyone has some space under their bathroom sinks.

In fact, buying extra every time you shop works better than going out with a "I'm getting six months worth of stuff right now!" attitude. One reason is that you will automatically get the things you actually use without having to think about it. Another is that you won't succumb to the lure of some giant can of tomato or something (one of those restaurant sized ones that no normal family can eat up before it goes bad). And finally because storage is a real issue for a stocked pantry and coming home with a dozen cheap bags of bulk dry goods with no containers to put them in is a recipe for disaster (or at least weevils).

And that's the third key to stockin' the larder. You have to store stuff so that it will keep. This means that you keep your food away from heat and out of direct sunlight. Should you be lacking a closed pantry, some of the following are solutions that work and have worked for us:

* Buy a cheap cabinet with doors (one of those press board things) and keep it in the kitchen or dining area or even the living room near the kitchen.

* Get open shelves with completely opaque containers.

* Get open shelves and keep pots, pans, and appliances on them so that you can use the cabinets for food.

* Put anything else but spices or perishables over the stove.

* Stand your cooking utensils in a container on the counter to free up that drawer for spice jars and small cans.

* Clean out under your sink, move the cleaning stuff elsewhere, and put containers down there.

One thing we've never had, but that I would really love is a "root cellar" type room that was underground and unheated (unlike a finished basement), but not completely unfinished and too scary to store food in (like the basement in Minnesota that had a creek running through it after wet weather). It would be easy to keep bulk root vegetables and hard fruits they way we store dried pasta -- if only we had a place cool and dark enough below ground.

As for containers, we probably all have that Martha Stewart urge to buy a perfectly matched set of designer containers to create the perfect pantry -- but looks are really second to cost and efficiency. First, some stuff doesn't need to be all jarred up. We eat a lot of rice and usually just keep the stockpile in the bags they come in (yes, we have multiple types of rice) and have rarely had issues. And pasta in boxes gets left in their boxes. Flour, sugar, cornmeal, and other bulk legumes and grains should get placed in airtight storage containers to avoid bugs. But that doesn't mean they all have to match.

You can collect storage containers naturally by washing and saving things like big yogurt containers and peanut butter jars. Or you can ask around for spare jars. Lots of people end up with extra mason jars that they don't use. You can even by thrift jars, though I'd recommend buying fresh lids. Or keep an eye out for a sale on ball jars and pick up a case. I happen to have a case of quart ball jars (and no current plan to can anything) and they get used all the time. And for some stuff, a box of heavy ziplock bags will work just fine.

The fourth key to keeping a stockpile of food is to make a distinction between items that you are going to use every day and items that you use more rarely, but want to have on hand. This is the clothing equivalent of your day-to-day clothes that get lots of regular wear and the three-piece suit you keep for weddings, funerals, job interviews, etc. You don't wear it much, but you still need to have it. This is how I feel about baking supplies. I don't bake much (not as much as I'd like, actually) but when I do get the time and urge to bake something, I'd better have things like molasses, brown sugar, condensed milk, yeast, and so on on hand and ready to go. Because if I have to make a run to the grocery store, the baking just won't happen. That's why I keep a bag of quality chocolate chips on hand. If the urge to make cookies strikes, I will be ready. And if they get a little chalky with age... well, 15 minutes at 350 degrees inside a delicious cookie and you won't be able to tell the difference. Really.

On the other end of the spectrum are things you use so frequently that you just want it fresh. We keep potato flakes around, but also fresh potatoes. And we use enough onions and garlic to keep bulbs in the main area of the kitchen. And we prefer frozen veggies -- which is a whole second section of the stocking up discussion -- to canned for both health and flavor reasons.

Finally, the most important thing to do when building up a pantry is to keep it clean and pay attention to it. Unpleasant things in the pantry usually happen in dark corners or on high shelves. You need to keep spills cleaned up and regularly check items like grains that you don't use every day. A couple times a year, try to go through the whole pantry top to bottom, sorting, tossing, cleaning, collating, rotating, and repacking items. Don't let a questionable item linger in there and immediately investigate any signs of mice or bugs.

I believe I mentioned before that food is prosperity for me. And that means that my prosperous household needs to be stocked with plenty of it.

Prosperity -- Journey or Destination?

2008-08-22T08:15:00.000-07:00

In some regards, prosperity seems like a binary state. You are either prosperous or you aren't. It's like a destination. Once we've arrived at a state of prosperity, we imagine that all things will be well and we can finally relax. Until then we are not prosperous and don't get the benefits. The value, then, is in being prosperous. So whatever your definition of prosperity is (a profitable business, no debt, passive income) you can't enjoy the benefits until you meet the goal.

I think this is a limited view. There is also value in becoming prosperous. The process of moving toward the desired state is as valuable and as beneficial as reaching that state. I think that this is a view lacking in a lot of financial thinking. People get very focused on the value of the end goal (being debt free is a common one) without acknowledging the value inherent in striving for that goal (being thrifty, maximizing income, exercising discipline). In addition, there's the reality that things are always changing. You might be prosperous now, but there are no guarantees and security is largely a myth. You have to keep doing the right things to maintain that state.

It's tied to the difference between happiness and contentment. Contentment is a sense of pleasant satisfaction with the context of your life (who you are, where you work, where you live, and so on). When you are happy with your life as is, that's contentment. Contentment can be based on long-term (my marriage) or short-term (a vacation day) aspects. Contentment is passive happiness. It's happiness with what is. I imagine that the point at which I reach prosperity will bring me a sense of contentment.

Now happiness itself is more difficult. It's defined as either a state of contentment or "a pleasurable or satisfying experience" (Merriam-Webster online). It's the second definition that I find interesting. It implies that while you can't experience contentment without happiness, you can experience happiness without contentment.

That means that while there's a flavor of happiness reserved for people who's lives are in a good "as is" state, there's still happiness for those who are hungry for change. In fact, it's perfectly likely that at any one point, you can be completely contented with some things in your life, while wanting to change others. But even if you are currently content with nothing, that doesn't mean you can't be happy. So while I can't claim contentment with our current financial situation, working toward prosperity makes me happy.

And if happiness with what is (contentment) is passive happiness, then happiness in the act of striving is active happiness.

It's easy to equate pleasure with happiness. The experience of a great meal, wonderful sex, lovely trip, or relaxing afternoon are all things that seem to imply happiness by definition. Satisfaction leading to happiness is again a more interesting supposition. After all, a "satisfying experience" can be a hard day's work well done or besting a rival or coming through your "dark forest" unscathed and having learned some really useful lesson. You can find satisfaction in both highly esoteric areas, such as a burst of enlightenment, or completely mundane ones, like a well-scrubbed toilet. So satisfaction can come from an experience that isn't necessarily pleasant.

In fact for some people, the happiness that comes from some deeply satisfying experience might be even greater than that which comes solely from pleasure. What brings you more happiness, a perfect dessert or having learned a tough new skill through your own hard work and efforts? I have to admin that I'm a big a fan as any of the occasional deep-fried dark chocolate pie, but the happiness I get from the new skill lasts longer.

Finding our way to prosperity is, for me, a long string of learning and gaining new skills. Rethinking my assumptions, readjusting my attitudes, and practicing different habits.

When humans seek out happiness (sometimes forgetting that the wellspring is inside us all along) we tend to seek out the "things" that will make us happy rather than the "experiences." I suspect this is due to market and consumer culture and it certainly doesn't lead to prosperity. And when we do seek out "experiences" to make us happy, we tend to go for the pleasant ones. After all, to seek pleasure and avoid pain (in the general sense, some people have different definitions than others) seems a natural human instinct.

However there's also value in seeking out the experiences that challenge us in order to reach a goal. For my goal of prosperity, I feel like the satisfaction of doing the right things right now brings me happiness.

I do think that being happy is trainable, at least among those with normalish brain chemistry. We can decide to be happy, even if we don't decide to be complacent about where we are in our lives. We can take the happiness from our good experiences. We can be happy where we're at, even if we aren't happy with where we're at. Being happy confers a whole host of mental, physical, and emotional benefits. I believe that happiness and a positive attitude is critical to prosperity (more in this in a future post). So it's in our best interest to be as happy as we can be.

At least that's the advice I give myself... when I'm not too cranky to listen.

Taste Inflation

2008-08-21T07:10:00.000-07:00

Rather behind as I return from my vacation and catch up on everything...

There's been a lot of talk and press lately about inflation, with the costs of food and fuel getting higher and higher. It's hard to avoid hearing about it, even for a newsphobe like me. And it's harder not to see it as you drive or shop. The trouble is that there's not a whole lot that we, as individuals, can do about inflation itself. But there's a different kind of inflation that we can do something about -- taste inflation.

Taste inflation is the way that the costs of our tastes inflate over time and it happens to many of us. When my husband and I were first together, we had very little money and (by necessity) very simple tastes. For example, we ate a lot of ramen, drank cheap beer as a treat, and bought generic jelly, tubs of margarine, and bulk high-fat ground beef. As our financial situation improved however, we began to buy better quality and healthier groceries. To a degree this was a good thing. Fresh fruit and veggies are better than preprocessed frozen burritos. Juice is healthier than Kool-aid. We also made changes based purely on taste (like beer).

The trouble is that this was, for many years, a purely unconscious process. I only became aware of it when my husband returned from the health food store with a half-gallon of fresh-squeezed organic orange juice. I took a sip and demanded that he never buy it again. Why? It was delicious, but so expensive. I didn't want to get too attached to the taste.

It was at this moment I realized that my tastes were changing over time and that I could be in control of this process. Another example was a national sit-down Italian restaurant chain. When I first ate there, when I was a teenager, it was a high-end delicious treat. Now it's, well it's not terrible, but the food lacks sophistication and nuance and the wine is barely palatable.

So as time goes by I become harder to please and what I eat becomes more expensive. To a degree I'm OK with this. Food is one of life's great pleasures and eating well is important. Making good food at home and feeding friends are two of the things we really love. In fact, to me food is prosperity -- at a very deep and visceral level. I won't compromise my prosperity by eating crap.

And in so much as food prices increase, we do have some room to retreat from our expensive tastes. Instead of 100% not-from-concentrate juice, we can buy 100% frozen concentrate. It might not be quite as delicious, but we will certainly survive. Instead of expensive shrinking boxes of breakfast cereal, we can buy organic flakes in the bulk bag and add dried fruit, nuts, and honey on our own.

But taste inflation happens with all sorts of stuff (here the taste is more figurative than literal). Cars, clothes, personal care items. Over time we can become more picky and consequently spend more. The key is awareness. Some things really are worth paying more for... but others are definitely not.

One interesting area is in person care items. As we age and the news from the mirror becomes rather more startling, particularly in the morning, there's a temptation to somehow fix this problem with expensive products and treatments. This used to be mainly an issue for women, but lately men have been drawn in as well. I believe it's important to care for ourselves and take care of our skin, but there's a point at which taste inflation can rapidly spin out of control. Fifty dollars for a quarter-ounce tub of goop that's supposed to work miracles. The truth is that we have some control over how we look as we age, but not as much as we'd like. And it's the simple stuff like healthy food, enough sleep, no smoking, and plenty of water that usually contribute the most.

Another taste that inflates is usually one for brand names. I'm actually pretty indifferent to brands, but I know that many people aren't... and they pay for it. And they usually pay more as time goes by and the brands they choose increase in prestige. And don't forget houses. Upgrading a house used to be reserved for increasing family size. But during the boom it became purely a matter of taste -- a bigger kitchen, more bathrooms, fancier neighborhood.

A final area where tastes inflate is in the area of services. The things we are willing to do for ourselves versus those that we'd like to pay someone else to do for us. There's been a recent push in productivity circles around outsourcing (see The Four Hour Work Week for the prime example). I can see the value to a certain degree, particularly for entrepreneurs who really can make more growing their business rather than stuffing envelopes or answering phones. But if I'm paying someone to wash my car in the sunshine so that I can spend my time slaving in the office, well you have to wonder.

Childcare might be the ultimate example of this outsourcing, though it's one that many people absolutely must do instead of choose to do and I will not judge it. Still if, over time, you discover that you absolutely can't live without laundry, yard, cleaning, grooming, and automotive service, your taste inflation may be getting out of hand.

As the real costs of goods increases, it's a smart idea for us all to examine how our own tastes may have inflated during the good times. One way to mitigate the effects of rising costs is to dial back our expectations just a notch. While I won't be eating margarine again any time soon, we can all decide how much our good tastes really cost us.

Key to Prosperity -- Appreciation

2008-08-18T09:43:00.000-07:00

Well, I've returned from a week in the wilderness (or at least at a campsite by a lake). It was a week without technological access of any kind (no computer, cell phone, radio, or TV). Instead there was a great deal of sun, water, dirt, fish, insects, and above all -- appreciation.

This past week I had an important realization: camping is all about appreciation. And appreciation, if you recall, is one of my keys to prosperity.

When you go out close to nature it's easier to cultivate a great appreciation for this wonderful world we live in. Nature is worth enjoying and appreciating for its own sake and it's easy to become distanced from it during day-to-day life. But while camping, you also appreciate basic necessities like fire, food, and clean water. You appreciate how your own actions contribute directly to your circumstances (you want food, you need fire; you want fire, collect kindling and chop wood). You appreciate how cool community is (either because you are absolutely alone, such as we were last camping trip or because you are in the midst of an equal and varied community of circumstance, as we were at the lake).

But after days of camping, you also begin to appreciate all the ease and luxury of civilized life. The ability to hop into a hot shower at any time. Heat without having to start a fire. Indoor plumbing. Soft beds. The Internet. All of the wonderful things that we tend to take for granted when we're in the midst of it.

Prosperity is about living a good life, but also an honest one. You have to constantly be asking yourself what really brings you joy and what's just fluff. When you strip down to a more basic level (and trust me, we don't do anything like backwoods camping at this point, we have plenty of gear) it's easier to make those calls. Switching contexts also causes a shift in perspective. -- whether that's time in the wilderness or in another state/country. You see that other people and places and lifestyles can be different, indeed are different. And that makes you more aware of how your life can be different as well.

We are, each of us, incredibly wealthy. Those of us in the Western world (particularly those with means to enjoy the Internet) have more material goods, more equality, more freedom, and more access to information than just about any people in history. We need to remember to feel appreciation and gratitude for the wealth we already have if we're going to embrace prosperity in our own lives. Without that appreciation, prosperity can just become another money game (earn more in order to buy more -- that's not what I think of as prosperous).

Useful Quotes on Appreciation*:
We can lessen attachment by contemplating impermanence. It is certain that whatever we're attached to will either change or be lost. A person may die or go away, a friend may become an enemy, a thief may steal our money. Even our body, to which we're most attached, will be gone one day. Knowing this not only helps to reduce our attachment, but gives us a greater appreciation of what we have while we have it. For example, there is nothing wrong with money, but if we're attached to it, we'll suffer when we lose it. Instead, we can appreciate it while it lasts, enjoy it and enjoy sharing it with others, and at the same time know it's impermanent. Then when we lose it, the emotional pendulum won't make as wide a swing toward sadness.
Gates to Buddhist Practice Book one of The Living Dharma Series: The Oral Teachings of Chagdud Tulku
Chagdud Rinpoche, Padma Publishing

The third practice, īshwara-pranidhāna, means devotion to God, but God as understood by the Hindu, as the perfect Being pervading all things, the life of the world, the inner impulse of which each one of us is a share. The aspirant must habituate himself to see that Principle in everything, to accept all as from that hand. "Everything that is received is a gift," says a Hindu proverb; more than that, it is a gift from God, presented with perfect wisdom, to be accepted, therefore, with cheerfulness and joy. Behind the eyes of every person he meets, the aspirant must also see the Divine. The common salutation of the Hindu, with the palms together, looks curious to the Westerner, as resembling prayer. It is prayer—the recognition of God within our fellow-man. It is appreciation, the opposite of depreciation. Ishwara-pranidhāna is in effect the full appreciation of everything. It makes for maximum attentiveness and thus maximum living.
Great Systems of Yoga
Ernest Wood, [1954]

How empty are our conceptions of Deity! We admit theoretically that God is good, omnipotent, omnipresent, infinite, and then we try to give information to this infinite Mind. We plead for unmerited pardon and for a liberal outpouring of benefactions. Are we really grateful for the good already received? Then we shall avail ourselves of the blessings we have, and thus be fitted to receive more. Gratitude is much more than a verbal expression of thanks. Action expresses more gratitude than speech.

If we are ungrateful for Life, Truth, and Love, and yet return thanks to God for all blessings, we are insincere and incur the sharp censure our Master pronounces on hypocrites. In such a case, the only acceptable prayer is to put the finger on the lips and remember our blessings. While the heart is far from divine Truth and Love, we cannot conceal the ingratitude of barren lives.
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures
Mary Baker Eddy

The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936), British author. Autobiography, ch. 11 (1936).
Columbia Encyclopedia

The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.
Amelia Earhart (1897–1937), U.S. aviator, author. Quoted in Mary S. Lovell, The Sound of Wings, ch. 11 (1989).
* As always: Sacred Texts, BibleGateway.com, Bartleby.com, and I Ching online

Some of the quotes above are about gratitude rather than appreciation. The difference is that when you feel grateful for something, there's usually a recipient to that feeling. For many people this is gratitude to God. Appreciation, on the other hand, is like gratitude without an object. You don't have to even believe in any God in order to appreciate all the good things you have and that are in the world. You don't have to thank any entity, whether Divine or human (the government, your parents, and so on) in order to appreciate. In this regard, I believe that appreciation is a better goal in terms of being applicable to a large number of people (though I got no problem with gratitude, no sir).

While generosity is a challenge for me, I feel like appreciation is easier. From the wonder of nature to the wonder of the microwave oven -- not to mention the wonder of family and friends -- I feel great appreciation each day.

Ideas for enhancing appreciation:

Go camping -- it's cheap and fun too!
Write a list of things you are thankful for each week.
Change context to gain perspective.
Appreciate the little things AND the big things.

Four Middle Classes?

2008-08-12T08:15:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting article from the Pew Research Center about how the US actually has four middle classes. It's worth reading, especially since the visuals are somewhat difficult to parse. It's gotten me to thinking about about the difference (if any) between feeling prosperous and being prosperous. Is prosperity just a state of mind? More on this when I return from my vacation.

Filling the Well Part 2

2008-08-11T08:15:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I asked how we can take ourselves out of a bad cycle where you can't refill your various wells (I guess you could call this a personal drought)...

This question is a challenge. After all, if you're already in a situation where it's a constant race to just to stay in place, it's hard to even picture doing anything differently. But there are some steps you can take to break out of a nasty vicious cycle.

The very first thing you can do is create a little quiet space for yourself. Odds are when you're in that state your mind is racing and filled with worry and stress. It's going to be very difficult to start the process of change without some space to work in. Just a tiny bit of quiet can be the first little wedge into this seemingly insurmountable wall. That's because filling the well requires effort and energy and a little space can help you find that.

That can mean taking your lunch break outside or turning off the TV at night for half an hour before bed or getting up a bit earlier to enjoy the morning quiet. Just making a little calm patch in the noise to think. Meditation is all well and good, but this doesn't necessarily have to be that. You don't have to think of nothing or clear your mind or have a mantra. It might even be a good thing to take a few calm moments to think clearly about your situation. Now, resist the temptation to spend that calm time thinking about all the rotten, scary, stressful stuff going on. Instead, just try picturing living your life in a different way -- picture an alternate reality.

Don't worry about figuring out how to get to that reality now. You don't have to know that yet. But making changes in your life is a form of magic, and you can't make the magic happen if you can't picture what you want. Try visualizing a world where you feel good, where the bills are paid, where you enjoy your job. Imagine the details. Picture sights (your new cozy safe apartment), sounds (your breath without wheezing while you go for a walk), smells (dinner on the stove, a product of your full pantry).

The key is to be realistic. You could spend your time imagining that you're model gorgeous, that you inherited a billion dollars, that you never married that jerk... but those things aren't realistic. It's just fantasy and dreaming and we can't extract improvement and action from that. What you have to do is visualize you in a new life that's based on your actual situation. You aren't going to be able to travel back in time and say "I don't" instead of "I do." However you can picture a life where you aren't stuck financially, relying on infrequent support checks without money for a good lawyer. You can't make yourself taller or blonder, but you can make yourself healthier, better read, more educated, more articulate. You may not have rich elderly relatives who you could start visiting regularly, but you can have a more stable financial situation.

As you start picturing this new life, you'll find that some things seem to fit better than others. The color of the paint and carpet in your future alternate house fade to unimportance, but the fact that you have a garden and can walk the streets safely become more and more prominent. This is your subconscious telling you what's really important for you and what's peripheral.

Having this possible alternate reality in mind is a critical first step to making changes. Because even if it never manifests in the exact way you visualize, believing in the reality of change is critical to making that change happen.

The next step is to start changing your mindset all the rest of the time. Not that you have to have your head in the clouds, visualizing all the time. You still have to deal with your current situation and we know how much attention that can take. But it's HOW you deal that's critical. It's the KIND of attention that matters.

For example, don't spend a bunch of pointless time blaming yourself for the way your life is. It's easy to kick yourself over past bad choices, but all it does is add to the stress and fatigue you're dealing with now. Taking responsibility is important, but endlessly kicking yourself about it is useless. It's just not productive. And don't spend a bunch of pointless time blaming other people either. It's equally nonproductive to point that blame outside yourself -- even if part of it belongs there.

There are many ways that the deck can be stacked against people because of gender or race or economic circumstances. Society also has its vicious cycles and blaming the victim and isolating people are two of the nastiest. But blaming others just uses your limited reserves to generate useless anger and gives you a feeling of futility. The time to point the finger and call people or society out is after you've broken out of your cycle. When you have reserves, using them to help others or point out injustice is of the highest calling. But you can't do that when you yourself are on the brink.

As you focus on your daily challenges, use your new visualized future to help you gain perspective. Your job sucks, but it isn't forever. You feel lonely, but can't you think of one person who cares? You feel horribly out of shape, but that just gives you more room to improve. Change is possible. You probably already believe that change for the worse is possible because you've experienced it. But change for the better is possible as well. And what you do now can make the difference between the two.

Start considering which wells you can begin to fill now. If your financial well is dry, you're going to need some extra income to change that. Money won't just materialize without some effort on your part. But you can start filling your emotional, physical, and mental wells right now. Just the tiniest steps can grow into large changes.

Emotional:

* Talk to a supportive friend or family member (emphasis on supportive) or if you don't have one, try to make one. We are judged by the quality of our friends... not because the world is full of judgmental people, but because we become like those we surround ourselves with. If you feel short on those kinds of people, put yourself in situations where you might meet them.

* Connect with people you see every day. These don't have to be your future best friends to bring something good to your life. Do a little something nice for someone. Bring cookies to work and say hi to the neighbors. Ask the postman's name. This isn't about major connections the way the previous item is... it's about the small connections. The little exchanges that help you feel like you are a part of the world.

* Write all your negative thoughts out on a paper. Now for each horrible, defeating thing you wrote, write the exact opposite on a different piece of paper... twice. No really. I mean it. I'll wait while you get a pen. It's surprising how easy it is to write something bad ("I'm just a pathetic excuse for a human being") and how hard it is to write something good ("I'm a valuable person with something good to give to the world"). Burn the first paper and frame the second.

* Feed your spirit with joyful and uplifting food. I like dark comedy and drama and cynical nihilistic commentary on our society in literature and film. And I like mindless eye candy type shows that are effectively car wrecks on TV. But now is not the time for emotional junk food. We're a cynical society. Honest positive emotion seems kind of pathetic and embarrassing. We're not supposed to be uplifted, filled with joy, moved by wonder. We're not supposed to cry when we read books or watch movies. We're not supposed to laugh unless it's at the misfortune of others. I'm giving you express permission to those things we're not supposed to do.

Physical:

* Get up. Get out. Take a walk. Even a short one. Breathe some air. Feel some weather. Get some sun or rain or snow on your face. Yeah, hug that tree already. Or sit with your back to it and look up in its branches. Find a private place and run a little bit if you can. I don't mean RUN(tm) like some adult exercise program. Run like a kid, ungainly, ugly, just for fun.

* Feed your body with good food. Avoid extremism and diets. "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Michael Pollan was kind enough to encapsulate the most important bit of his book In Defense of Food so that you can start right away without having to read it. Eat slow. Chew your food. Take time for your meal.

* Get some rest. While depressed people can sleep waaaay too much, the average American is chronically sleep deprived. What's ironic is that as busy as we feel we are, most of us spend a pointless period of time before we go to sleep watching TV or reading or surfing (yeah, me too). Not that a little evening relaxation will kill us, but hey, if you aren't getting enough sleep try turning off the electronics and the lights and just go to sleep already.

* Make a small change in your environment just for the sake of beauty, comfort, aesthetics, and pleasure. Clean off your desk / counter / table or take out the trash and scrub the sink. Make a nature altar on a window sill. Light some candles. Arrange some flowers in a vase. Cover your old chair with a nice throw. Toss out that ugly picture that reminds you of your ex. When our lives are out of control, everything can seem overwhelming. You can't do everything... so you do nothing. Try a different approach and just to a little something.

Mental:

* Learn something new. Don't make this more complex than it needs to be. Go to the library and find a book or two. See if there's a weekend class. Find someone who knows how and ask some questions. The goal isn't productivity or money or status or power. Enjoy learning just for the sake of learning. Just because it's fun.

* Avoid the news. Seriously. It's not doing anyone any good. If you don't have friends or family to tell you when stuff happens, scan the headlines on a site like BBCs world news and through the glass of the newspaper dispenser. Check the weather on wunderground.com or weather.com. Realize that if war broke out or a flood was coming, you will no doubt hear about it.

* Exercise your gray matter with puzzles and games. Cross-words, sudoku, trivia. Cross-word puzzles have been proven to stave off Alzheimer's later in life. So give your brain a bit of a workout.

* Make a new habit. There's been an article going around the blog circuit about making new habits instead of changing old ones. I'd written about habits before and complete agree. Instead of trying to change some bad habit, make a new good one instead. Or make a new habit that's neither good or bad, just to stretch your brain. Change the order of your morning routine. Write with your non-dominate hand for a while. Take a different route to work or the store. Your brain will be busy forging new connections that you can then use to change your life.

Record any ideas that come to you. As you start filling yourself back up, even just a little and as you keep picturing how your life could be, eventually you'll get some idea of a step you could take. Something you could try to change things for the better. Writing your resume and posting it. Or keeping a loose change jar to help keep track of your pennies. Or trying whole fruit yogurt shakes for breakfast. Take a look at these ideas objectively (it is a scam or get rich/thin/healthy fast scheme? or it is an idea generated by your subconscious to really help you?). If the latter, give it a try. This is how we make change in our lives, one tiny little step at a time.

Finally, acknowledge that there is work involved -- sometimes a lot of work. If you have a long history of cycles of poverty and irresponsible spending, you're going to have to work to break out of it. Make more, spend less, create new habits. If you've been eating badly for a long time, it's going to take work to learn to enjoy natural flavors, unadulterated with salt and fat, and cook for yourself. If you are stuck because of past issues, it takes a whole lot of work to push through your old fears in order to do the things you know you need to do.

This last point is a challenge to embrace. When you're in a vicious cycle, it already seems like your life is much harder and more work than most people's. Someone with a reserve of money, time, health, and emotional well-being is better able to weather life's rough patches and has the tools and skills to even avoid some of them. So yeah, that person's life is going to seem easier. It IS easier. But in order to get out of a bad cycle, you need to work hard... the key is that you have to work on the right things. You have to work smarter AND harder.

That sucks. And it may even seem unfair. All I can say is that life was never guaranteed to be fair and, hey, what's the alternative? More of the same? Change for the worse? You might as well lay down and die.

I have had people say to my face that I have it easy. That things come easy to me. It's true that I have been incredibly blessed in some areas. I feel intensely grateful for my immediate family, for example. But in other areas I know I've had to work. I've had some intensely crappy jobs, for example. I was physically assaulted by a boss once. I've had to climb up a high sign on a slipper ladder in the rain in the dark in an unsafe area. I cleaned a bingo hall and have cleaned houses.

I've also struggled with very bad times and difficult issues. Most people don't know about them, but they were hard to get through and hard to get past. When I mention PTSD, trust me I know whereof I speak.

And even when I'm not in my dark night of the soul, shit still hits the fan. Like when we were in that rotten summer apartment in Colorado, and the toilet upstairs overflowed with no one home and the maintenance people ignored our calls and it took six hours of being massively flooded with toilet water while we carried our furniture out front door before they came and shut it off... and they didn't even offer us a place to stay? And then when they didn't clean it up right and we began to get ill and get infections (ear, finger, respiratory) and we had no medical insurance and I battled migraines without medication... that sucked.

But what I remember most about that summer was the joy of escaping a bad job and burdensome mortgage and taking some time off. Afternoons at the pool with the Ham, teaching her to enjoy the water. Making friends in the complex and having kids for Ham to play with. I remember it as a calm peaceful time to reconnect with myself and my family and get my priorities in order. I remember it as a very good thing and a wonderful time. We got through it.

You can get through it too.

Filling the Well Part One

Filling the Well Part 1

2008-08-10T08:15:00.000-07:00

Some of my articles here were originally worked up and posted in my small private journal. Prosperity, creativity, and personal growth have been on my mind for some time. Here's a two part article that was sparked by my reading of The Artists Way by Julia Cameron. I wrote it shortly after our family moved to a new home.

Cameron talks about "filling the well" in The Artist's Way. The idea is that creative inspiration comes from an internal well and that you have to replenish this well in order to continue being creative. Her point caused some general thinking on this topic and this morning I had a revelation -- creative inspiration isn't the only well we've got to keep filled.

I was thinking about how much chaos has been in our lives these past few weeks and how it's left me feeling depleted on several levels. Financially, we spent money on the move. Physically, our immune systems have been under some stress and we haven't been eating or sleeping well. Emotionally we're strung out and snappy. Mentally, we're tapped out and sluggish.

And no wonder! Between house hunting and packing and illness and emergency dental procedures and terrible weather and moving and on and on and on -- it's a wonder we're still holding things together right now. But we are. And we are primarily because we started this move some some reserves. Financially, we had cash for burly men and double utilities and lots of takeout. Physically we had been taking care of ourselves. Emotionally, we were happy and getting along. Mentally, we were sharp and thinking straight. We had some water in those various wells so that, even if there's a bit of a drought now, we are still OK.

That's good, because life can really seem like a long series of ups and downs in this way. There are times when all's well and running smoothly. Then there are other times when everything seems to go crazy and you need to expend lots of energy just hanging in there.

This led me to an interesting thought. If, in accordance with common wisdom, life has its ups and downs, then the key to living well is handling those changes well. For example, one of the results of moving is that you tend to get less than optimal sleep. Last week my husband was so tired that he brewed himself an extra cup of afternoon coffee. The next day in the afternoon he and I had the following conversation:

Him: I slept like crap last night.
Me: You had that coffee really late in the day.
Him: Yeah and I couldn't sleep and now I'm exhausted. Maybe I should have another cup of coffee now.
Me: Wait a second! Then you won't sleep well tonight again and will want extra coffee again tomorrow...

He agreed and just toughed it out until an early bedtime. Now the problem isn't that sometimes you're tired and want a little extra coffee. The problem is that this sort of thing can cause a very negative cycle. The next thing you know you've got a pot a day habit and a serious insomnia problem. And the results of that one stressful time start to trickle into the rest of your life. Soon the move will be done and life should calm down (knock wood) and we'll be back to sleeping better. But if we don't handle things during the rough time correctly, then it won't stop there.

And this gave me a very light bulb over the head kind of moment. Because everything is like that. If you're flush with cash, but blow it all playing the ponies, when you need the extra money during a dry patch it won't be there. So you'll be very stressed and anxious. Then when another flush period arrives, you'll be so relieved to be out from under that crushing stress that you'll probably be even more likely to blow the money (let's party!). There's no equilibrium and you'll always be stuck.

Here's another example. Your job is very stressful and taxing. At the end of each day you can barely expend the mental effort to turn on the TV for a few hours before falling into bed. But because of that you have no extra energy to spend finding a new job. Again, stuck.

A final example. You let yourself get run down and very, very ill. Three weeks later, you stumble out of your sick room to find that now you're behind on absolutely everything -- from work to social obligations. So off you run, doing and catching up and calling and emailing... until once again you crash, because you never gave yourself time to heal in the beginning.

Having ups and downs is a cycle. But never being able to build any reserves because if it is a vicious cycle. It goes from being an occasional rough time you deal with to an endless rough time that never seems to let up. And let's be honest, the checks you bounce when you're in that dry patch, the ill-will you build at the job you hate, the obligations you can't meet because you're always sick... those are the kinds of actions that lead directly to more rough times ahead! And not because of any metaphysical woo-woo, but through clear cause and effect.

So this leads leads to two obvious questions: First, how do you avoid sliding into such a vicious cycle? Second, and even more critical, how do you get yourself out of one. The first question is easier. Simply take time to fill those wells when things are calm. Put a little cash aside when there's extra. Eat right and get good sleep and exercise so that your health will be good. Take time to make and strengthen contacts with family and friends for the emotional good it brings. Keep your mind fresh by giving it a little exercise as well. And above all, let yourself enjoy the good times without overindulging. Then, when eventually the inevitable busy or stressful season comes, you'll be in the best shape possible to weather it.

The second question is a lot harder...

Filling the Well Part Two

Guilt-Free Domesticity

2008-08-09T14:10:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to make this post all day. But I keep devolving into a history of domesticity and home economics and socio-sexual / gender politics / feminist themes... which is not at all what I want to talk about.

No, what I want to talk about is my domesticity... and my family's. Because I don't think, at its core, being domestic is a woman thing or a girl thing. It's a HOME thing. It's about doing the work that makes a home and family run. It's about the sphere of our domiscile, apart from our social spheres or spiritual spheres or work spheres. It's not about one sphere belonging to only one gender or any of that. It's not about guilt or the right way to be.

I grew up in a very domestic environment. My parents totally missed the labor outsourcing push of the 70s and 80s and kept doing almost everything by and for themselves, even when they could afford to do otherwise. They gardened and did their own yard work. They fixed things around the house. My father took care of the cars and did basic maintenance. He built stuff (including a vacation cabin by hand). My mom cooked, and canned, and sewed, and knitted. Our home was the center of our lives when I was growing up and we all spent a lot of time there. Despite jobs outside the home (and my mom worked too, once I was in school) we generally spent our time and energy at home.

I may not have always had a perfect relationship with my parents (oh, the teenage years!) but I did have a good relationship with our home. For years even after I moved out to go to college and in with my now husband, my parents' house was this perfect, luxurious haven. One of the biggest signs of growing up was when their house turned into a place to go stay at when you visit relatives, with uncomfortable beds and unfamiliar food. When, to put it bluntly, the place I was actually living became home.

The truth is that I was not very domestic growing up. I learning a bit of sewing and knitting. I did needle point as an on-again off-again hobby. But I resisted learning to cook and wasn't interested in the work that went into the house... just the results. I was particularly not a fan of cleaning. I certainly never took a home ec. class!

But that early training obviously had an effect. Because my husband and I are very domestic indeed. And while we do like having a nice and comfortable place to live, I tend to like domestic activities for their own sake. I really do enjoy sewing, knitting, baking, and so on. I still don't like cleaning, but I've tried to take my husband's perspective -- we may not like cleaning, but we like it when it's clean. So it's worth doing for that purpose alone and we can take a certain pride and enjoyment for that reason. That's how I feel about baking -- that it's worthwhile for its own sake. Even if I could buy a better looking and better tasting pie at the European bakery. Even if I have the money to do that. Baking the pie myself, from scratch, is a worthwhile pursuit in its own right.

There's an emotional element to this as well I think. When we cook for our little girl (and by we, I mean my husband) she often asks, "did you put love in it?" And we always say yes... because you know, we do. Takeout from the BBQ place might be delicious. It might be worthwhile because we'd never BBQ a brisket at home. But it's not the same as "putting love into it." When you do stuff for yourself and for your family and for your home love goes into it.

However, I'm also very practical about this aspect of my life. We're not Martha Stewart. We're not really into decorating for decorating's sake. I'm not about throwing the perfect party with perfect flowers and perfect linens and the perfect decorations for each and every holiday. I'm much more casual than that. I'm about the house being comfortable and practical and not ugly (I hope). I'm about feeding people good food and not sweating the small stuff.

You notice that I've been saying both "we" and "I." That's because, while this is my post about my thoughts, domesticity is our house is a gender-neutral activity that we all take part in. Because it's OUR house that we all take care of. And taking care of our home tied neatly into taking care of each other as a family.

I also really enjoy domesticity's associated themes of sustainability and ecology. Fixing things yourself, growing and making your own food, mending things instead of buying new. Not that we do all of that right now (no garden) but I still appreciate the idea of it. I also realize that part of the reason I enjoy tasks like mending clothes or baking bread is that no one is forcing me to do it. I have to admit that my mom did all this house stuff, but sometimes didn't seem to enjoy it much. She put too much pressure on herself about some things. I try to take a different view. I do it as much as I like it and then put it aside without guilt when it becomes stressful or unpleasant. Beyond the basics necessary to keep the house running (like cleaning up) everything else is optional -- to be done for joy and love, not out of obligation. That's critical for me as I balance my career with my family and home life.

It's not that I don't want to go anywhere and do anything... it's just that I really love being at home. I love hanging out with my family, doing things together or different things near each other. I love taking pleasure in the place we live (and I've gotten quite skilled at doing that regardless of what that place is like). I like making home the center of social stuff as well. I like when friends come over to hang out. And we love feeding people.

In fact, my domestic nature is closely tied to my concept of prosperity. When I picture prosperity I often think of farms and homesteads. Estates filled with animals and children with a big kitchen and a kitchen garden. I imagine friends coming to stay and pitch in and make the household run. You might say that prosperity isn't my goal so much as a prosperous household.

This focus on home has stayed with me no matter where we've moved. It's almost like being a snail, carrying the idea of home with us as we go. And I like that. And it works for me. And I won't be ashamed for being domestic.

Rest and the Value of Time

2008-08-08T08:15:00.000-07:00

One thing I want to be very cautious of is confusing prosperity and productivity. Not that there's anything wrong with getting stuff accomplished, but that's not all there is to life. I like the maxim to work hard and then play hard. Because prosperity means not only having a good life, but living in a way where you can enjoy that good life.

Instead many people work hard and then don't play at all. Part of this comes from a culture that values earning power over all other criteria. It also comes from what I see as a foolish cult of time valuation. This concept that if you earn about $50 an hour at work, all your time is somehow magically worth $50 an hour. Look, my work time may be valued at a predictable amount based on my pay, but I'd be silly to insist that my veg out in front of the TV time is also worth that much. And my one-on-one time with my daughter? Well, it's actually "worth" way more (in the sense that you'd have to pay me way more than I make at my day job for me to give it up).

Truthfully, I don't think it makes sense to put a price tag on time at all.

Does that mean it's a good idea to spend hours of your life trying to save like $3 in cash? No, of course not. But that decision has less to do with some dollar value of your hour and more to do with the value of your time in non-monetary terms (I could be doing some else that's more fun or worthwhile) and of your piece of mind and lack of stress versus the money you'd save.

Even if I ran my very own flexible business (where there might be a very direct connection between hours working and income generated), that doesn't mean that time to rest and reflect is a bad investment. In fact it's a necessary component of productivity and of a healthy life. No one may be paying me to read a good book, but there are facets of value that don't have anything to do with money.

In contrast to those people who are all about the dollar value of their time and work work work are those who neither work nor play hard. Instead, these people putter. When they are working, they are constantly distracted and lack focus. When they are supposed to be relaxing, instead they continue to fuss with tasks they need to do.

There's a perfect example when it comes to camping. My local "family" has a similar take on setting up camp. You get there, work together hard to get things completely setup and everyone fed... and then you chill. You just relax. Now, relaxing on a camping trip can mean enjoying a stroll or hike, having a wade or swim, collecting rocks or leaves... but the point is that these activities are those that you do simply for enjoyment. What you do not do is spend all night slowing setting things up, with frequent short breaks, and many distractions. That's puttering and it drives me nuts. Because you don't work productively and you don't get any real rest or relaxation either! You're in a constant middle state where you're never done.

In any case, a combination of working hard and playing hard are important for a life of prosperity. Because both working hard and playing hard make us feel happy and satisfied, in addition to potential monetary rewards.

More on being prosperous versus feeling prosperous in a future post. But for now, in the spirit of playing hard, I will be away from the computer for most of this upcoming week. I may have a few things post automatically, but won't be trying to meet my goal of a post a day that no one reads.

Why I Don't Watch the News

2008-08-07T09:48:00.000-07:00

Recently someone of my acquaintance mentioned that they were experiencing anxiety and distress. And it came up that she had recently started reading a whole lot of news. I mentioned that I didn't read the news and that, far from being uninformed, I'm much happier and less anxious. I feel better about my life and the things I have and the choices I make. I feel less fearful. And I feel more prosperous.

Years ago, I read that researchers had discovered that there's a negative correlation between happiness and news acquisition. That is, the less news you read or watch, the happier you are. (I can't find an source for this now, if anyone knows what I'm talking about, chime on in.) Recently I've gotten wind of several other sources for this (various organizational and personal productivity gurus advocating reducing the amount of information you have to process). I've been practicing this for years now and as far as I can see, the positives far outweigh any negatives.

When I was little, my dad always seemed to be watching the news (I appreciate that this memory is probably biased by youth -- a 30-minute newscast seems like a really long time when you're six). When I'd complain, he'd retort that if I didn't watch the news I'd be unformed and wouldn't know what was going on in the world. And my, again imperfect, recall was that most of the news was foreign (and therefore made no sense to me, being about strange far away countries with 2000 years of conflict between them -- dude, I'm supposed to have context for that!?). I have heard that there is currently less world news, in terms of percentage coverage, than there was back then. I don't know how accurate that is, but I will say that there sure is a whole lot more news in general.

When I was a kid, each of the big three networks (in the days before cable my children) had just a few newscasts each day. There was a morning newscast, including local weather and traffic and headlines for the day (and usually some smarmy Regis and Kathy-Lee type morning show). Then there was the six and the ten -- two evening newscasts that included basically the same stories. That was it. And the three networks had all the same stories as each other, barring some local affiliate color news ("Ronald Miller has grown the prize winning pumpkin in this years county fair..."). War in the middle East? A statement by the president? A major storm? Stock market hoo hah? Each network had the same stuff. Ditto with the local news serious segment. Some horrible car accident or political shenanigans? All three of your local station affiliates would carry the same story with the same quotes.

Now there are several whole cable networks devoted to nothing but news. Twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week. Three-hundred and sixty-five days every single year. And they compete with content. They aren't all the same. Before, your choice was based whether you preferred Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, or Tom Brokaw. Now it's based on who gets the hottest pundits, who airs the hippest shows, and which talking heads you trust more. Not to mention that the networks and the cable shows also have websites, where you can read and/or watch all the same stories -- and even more.

So where does all this new news comes from? I appreciate that there are more people on the planet than there were 25 years ago. But is there really more going on? There's certainly more that's getting reported.

This brings me to the fundamental question: what is news, really?

I believe that, at its core, news -- real, hard news -- includes those things that you need to know to make informed decisions, ensure the safety of you and your family, and allow those of us in democratic countries to participate in the running of our government (you in the back, stop snickering). By this definition, all of the following would be considered real news:

Local traffic and weather.

Local political and election coverage including ballot measures.

Local bad news including both environmental/health and quality of life issues as well as social concerns and any crime that could affect me.

Local good news or good citizen stories like charity events and local heroes (in order to balance crime concerns to make informed personal safety decisions).

National weather (forecasting and natural disaster news).

National political and election coverage including the supreme court.

National environmental issues including national health issues.

Financial news, but only insofar as you invest or it has a wide effect.

International war coverage including any action we're a part of as well as human rights violations.

International politics, including UN and EU coverage.

International major election coverage.

However, by contrast, none of the following would be real news (entertaining or engrossing maybe, but not hard news):

Local traffic, weather, or political coverage for anyplace you don't live or intend to visit.

Fashion.

Celebrity.

Beauty.

Lifestyle and decorating.

Books, movies, and music (unless your writing wins you a nobel prize or a fatwa).

Specific crimes and court cases that don't affect you ("somewhere in Kentucky, something bad just happened").

Anything on Nancy Grace.

Health stories that affect small percentages of the population ("color-blindness, the hidden scourge").

Health issues that are too nebulous to help anyone ("something in your kitchen can kill you!").

Any story involving any combination of the following: OJ Simpson, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, prison, rehab, divorce, infidelity, pregnancy, child custody, or alien abduction.

Think for a second. How much of what you see on CNN or cnn.com comes under the first list and how much under the second. If you remove all repeating information, how much news is there really?

Now, in terms of the stuff you actually choose to pay attention to, it's not that you choose all of the first list and none of the second. For example, you can safely ignore almost all local bad news and good news and pay only scant attention to international politics. At the same time, you may honestly enjoy following fashion and celebrity happenings... let's just not pretend that it's news.

Personally, I believe that less is more. Here are my current sources of news:

Office scuttlebutt: Let's be honest, if a bridge collapsed, a war broke out, or a serial killer was targeting people in your neighborhood someone would probably mention it.

Blogs: my list passes along interesting stories, often ones under-reported by major sources (you'd think, with all the time that places like CNN have to fill, there wouldn't be any under-reported news). In addition, some of my list blogs opinion topics on stories of current interest.

My Husband: My husband reviews BBC news and watches CNN in the morning just until he sees repeats (about 15 minutes actually). That means that I have a line on any major international happenings (rare), cool technology and science stories, and other tidbits.

Wunderground.com: where to go for weather.

That's pretty much it. I don't regularly read any papers. I don't watch any news on TV. I rarely read news sites (major exception -- election time).

And the result:

1. I still know roughly which way the wind blows. I can participate in any discussion that comes along and not feel like an idiot or moron. Stories with lots of coverage trickle to me seemingly through osmosis.

2. I am not a Pollyanna. I'm well aware that there are serious problems in a lot of different areas. I still consider my personal safety. I make an effort to see the homeless in my town and remember that distribution is anything but equitable. I know that bad shit happens.

3. I'm more content and satisfied. Celebrity and fashion news inevitably makes me feel poor, old, fat, and/or ugly. It makes me want stuff that I wouldn't want otherwise and makes me feel anything but prosperous.

4. I'm much happier. How do I know? Because every so often in a moment of boredom, I'll indulge in some news and it always makes me feel sick, cranky, anxious, and depressed.

Some might say that news is reality and I should therefore feel that way because the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket. I say that first, I haven't seen good evidence that what gets called news has shit-all to do with reality by any definition. And second, even if that is reality, being all anxious and depressed about it doesn't help me, my family, or the world.

If there really is a connection between news and unhappiness, why do so many people watch and read so much news? Well, there's the car crash effect. Once you start looking, it's hard to look away. I watch CSI, I get that. But you know you can't unlearn things once you learn them. I remember one of the Sherlock Holmes stories where he berates Watson for telling him that the Earth circled the sun. Seems he doesn't want any information not relevant to his work cluttering his brain and now he'd have to work very hard to forget that knowledge. Of course Holmes was a junkie, so maybe we shouldn't trust him entirely.

I happen to like knowing about things. I'm a voracious reader of fiction and non and think that a well rounded education about lots of stuff is useful and helps me know how to think. But I don't want horrible things cluttering my psyche any more than Sherlock wants them cluttering his brain. I can't unknow the terrible details of abuse or torture that I've seen on the news. I can read about statistics and get a real sense of the scope of the problem. But the details? What good do they do me? All I get from that is creeping despair and depression.

Other bigs chunks of "news" are actually bright shiny advertisements for The Good Life (tm). Because of the glossy wrapping, it doesn't seem harmful. But many people don't realize the effect -- that their own lives only look grayer, poorer, lesser by comparison.

In addition, I think that people long to know THE TRUTH(tm) and the news seems like one of the places you can find it. But I don't think the truth is knowable, at least not by the likes of you and I. Once you accept that you have no clue of figuring out what the government is up to, who's lying, how the earth works, the nature of humanity, or what really happened -- well, that's a huge weight off. You don't know because you CAN'T know. So relax.

Finally, it seems like a lot of people have this sense of being out of control and knowing stuff seems like a way to get that control. But knowing about something doesn't necessarily give you the power to control it. So the more knowing you do, the more uncontrollable things you become aware of and the more careening-wildly-with-no-hope-of-stopping your own life seems. Isn't it more logical to focus your efforts and energy on the handful of things that do seem to be within your control (like your own choices and moods and your relationships)?

I know that some may be mortified by the fact that I not only don't subject myself to the news, but also don't care about it. I've had reactions ranging from pity (poor uninformed fool) to anger (how dare you get away with that?). But I have to say that it works well for me. And it's a simple thing to try. Just go on a news fast for a couple of weeks. Sure, you'll jones for your fix. You might be surprised at how dependent you are on your daily feed. But after the shakes subside you might actually feel better.

Prosperity Means Having the Right Tools

2008-08-06T08:00:00.000-07:00

This past few days, while scheduled posts happily added themselves to this blog, I was out camping with my family. We had a wonderful time, however we did discover that some of our old camping gear wasn't meeting our needs. For example, our soft-side cooler barely kept our stuff cool through the three days we were at the site. And our tent proved disastrously porous in even the lightest rain -- even after a heavy Scotchgarding (the floor oozed from every corner and the inside walls of the tent were almost wetter than the outside).

So we decided, after some discussion, that if we enjoyed camping (we do) and wanted to continue to camp (yes) and wanted to stay in Oregon (oh yeah) we would need a waterproof tent and a better cooler. So that added a bit to our vacation budget for the summer. Still, a quality tent (if well cared for) should last for some years. So the actual cost per night will continue to decrease over time.

A more frugal decision might have been to make due. To leave the site for extra ice every other days or only camp in good weather (Oregon makes this second option challenging). But that didn't feel particularly prosperous, to sacrifice an admittedly inexpensive vacation option because our equipment was inappropriate or old. Driving off site for ice uses fuel and you know we'd get caught in the rain eventually. We did shop around for the best deal and saved a lot by ordering online with free shipping -- no need to spend more than we have to.

Goal Setting Through State Naming

2008-08-05T08:00:00.000-07:00

I used to write down New Year's resolutions. I did it every year and every year discovered that writing them was certainly easier than keeping them. As 2008 rolled around, I barely bothered to look at the meaningless promises I made back in 2007. In fact most of them were now completely irrelevant (it was a period of major changes in our lives). Clearly, I needed some help with setting goals for myself.

This past January, the Internet was buzzing with a backlash against resolutions. All the cool kids were doing "personal manifestos" or "incremental changes" or "escaping the cult of achievement plans." Certainly, my experience was that my resolutions didn't seem to help anything happen for me. So why bother with them except out of habit?

Well, we know that goals are good. Without some kind of long-term plan it's easy to spend too much time doing all the wrong things to try to get to a place that you never wanted to go in the first place. Simply promising to do something new wasn't going to cut it.

But there was something else that did work and manifest for me. It's my own cool kid technique and one that I will continue using. And since all cool tools need nifty handles, I will call mine State Naming. In state naming, you don't say what you will or will not do. Instead you describe your "state" at some point in the future with the intent of manifesting that state.

OK, here's how it goes. Back before our move to Oregon, I was working at the world's most boring job and spending a lot of hours gazing out my office window and trying to kill time. One thing that interested me was Getting Things Done and various related tools for productivity and planning (this is an amusing thing about me: when I'm bored I tend to over plan and focus on that kind of stuff... when I'm busy, I don't have time for it and don't miss it). In any case, one of the things I decided to try was a top down planning approach, starting with my major life goals and working toward doable actions related to those goals. Makes sense, right? Because transferring "be healthy" into something you could actually, you know, accomplish is a useful exercise.

However I got completely stuck on writing down my goals. I simply couldn't make myself be clear. I mean, don't we all want to be healthy, wealthy, happy, and good -- however we define those things? Finally, I discovered a technique that worked well for me.

What I did was open up a document and type, "In ten years I will be 44, (husband) will be 48, and (daughter) will be 13."

Then I started writing, in prose, what I want to have/do/etc at that time in various areas of my life (no headings or real organization, just prose). Things like "I want to live..." with a description of my ideal housing situation and "I want to work..." with information on my perfect job. I kept it to a high level -- not house at (address) or even house in (neighborhood), but more like house with large yard, good schools, etc. I also included things I don't want.

Then I skipped down and wrote, "In five years I will be 39..." and so on.

Then I retyped the original things that still applied, but adjusted them for the time frame. So in 10 years I want to be working for myself on a path that aligns with my life purpose. In five years I will settle for working for myself (since I don't know my life purpose). And in three years, I want a good paying job with lots of flexibility and no travel or major commute.

I did one for 10, 5, 3, and 1 years out.

This exercise had two results. First, it helped me tie my longer-term goals to things that I could do now. This was, as I said, the original point and it did work to a degree. But once we decided to look at moving and things got very busy, all my planning stuff got shoved aside. And in fact, most of those individual steps became as irrelevant as my resolutions. So while the process was interesting and diverting, the results ended up being completely ignored and forgotten for about six or seven months.

Second, and more interestingly, almost all of the things I wanted at my one year mark manifested themselves into my life without me actually thinking about it. When I went back to my computer and dug up the file (months after our move and more months after the state naming) I was shocked to see that almost everything I'd written had come to be. And not just because I'd made it that way.

Remember, I didn't get into specifics. If I wrote "I will have a job in Portland" no one would be surprised that I'm now living here. But I wrote things like "I will have a job without a major commute" (something moving wouldn't necessarily solve). Yet, now I have that as well as just about everything else I'd described. Of course these were my goals I was describing, so surely I was a part of them manifesting. Still, it happened without conscious effort or awareness on my part.

The project and task planning, the resolution setting, the detailed analysis of HOW to do stuff ended up unused and unuseful. Things changed too much and too rapidly in the interim.

Even more fascinating are those items in my state naming that did NOT manifest. I can definitely see there are a couple areas where I need to do internal work (as opposed to external, todo-list work) and sort stuff out for myself. Because while the areas I'm comfortable and at peace with flow better and manifest themselves more easily, the ones where I struggle do not. And naturally, it's in those areas that I would like more manifestation because those areas are lacking. It shouldn't surprise you that prosperity is one of those areas.

And that, above all, was a real revelation that came from this state naming exercise. Like most people, I'd struggled with some areas of my life. And frustratingly, those areas seemed the least amenable to change. But now I know, definitively, what those areas are. And that hints at fixing them and then state naming them into what I want instead.

I'm still trying to figure out how to use this technique on a more frequent basis. Part of the process might rely on giving it the time and distance to work. I can't see, for example doing it every week. But it definitely worked for me as a way of both codifying my longer term goals as well as identifying the areas where I need to put the most effort.

Key to Prosperity -- Generosity

2008-08-04T13:30:00.000-07:00

Prosperity is about choices and attitudes more than it is about a balance sheet. That is to say, people can feel prosperous at a number of disparate income levels. If your income were low, you might still feel prosperous because of options open to you in the future or a lifestyle that gave you the things you needed without a lot of money. If your income were high, you might still feel poor because of debt or unrealistic standards.

The truth is that human beings are notoriously bad at objective comparison. We suck at rating relative risk, for example. We make choices based on emotion instead of reason. And we are terrible at ranking economic standing. We will harshly criticize ourselves and make ourselves unhappy by comparing what we have to people on TV or people with great wealth. But we will avoid comparisons of our own situation with those who have far less (perhaps out of guilt?).

When we do we realize that, however much we feel we are struggling, we have great wealth compared to many in this world.

More on the psychological effects of feeling prosperous or poor when I talk about appreciation. But for now, the key is to understand that when we feel a sense of prosperity and have an awareness that others have less than we do, we also realize that we have enough to share. This willingness to be generous has very little to do with the amount of money we make. In fact, while the very wealthy contribute huge amounts to charity, poor people contribute a higher percent of their income.

A Conde' Nast portfolio.com article talks about this well-researched fact:

...Americans at the bottom of the income-distribution pyramid are the country's biggest givers per capita...The 2000 Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey shows that households with incomes below $20,000 gave a higher percentage of their earnings to charity than did any other income group: 4.6 percent, on average. As income increased, the percentage given away declined: Households earning between $50,000 and $100,000 donated 2.5 percent or less. Only at high income levels did the percentage begin to rise again: For households with incomes over $100,000, the number was 3.1 percent.

Check out the graph, up close and personal.

So the poorest working households give the most as a percentage of income. The wealthy also give a bit more. But the middle class? Not so much. But why should that be?

...the most common explanation for the lack of giving is a perceived deficiency of means: Two-thirds of nondonors say that they simply cannot afford to give...

If the poor are doing so much giving, who are the folks who claimed in Independent Sector's 2001 survey that they can't afford to? Ironically, this is a typical upper-income excuse. Among the people with above-average incomes who did not give charitably in the year 2000, a majority of survey respondents said they didn't have enough money. And they probably believe it. We live in a country in which three out of five families carry balances on their credit cards from month to month and the average household debt for consumer items is about $18,000.

So despite the face, that these people have above-average income, their perception is that they are very poor. Too poor to give to others. Ironic indeed as routinely feeling poor isn't conducive to a prosperous life. But more ironic still, it turns out that giving actually can make you richer.

According to this Entrepreneur article (you'll have to watch or skip an ad), research has proven what the religious and spiritual alike have been saying for ages: "giving stimulates prosperity, for both individuals and nations."

Now, according to this research it's not just that earning more makes you give more (in dollars, we already know that many who earn little give a great percentage away) but that giving more makes you earn more.

More giving doesn’t just correlate with higher income; it causes higher income. And not just a little. Imagine two families that are identical in size, age, race, education, religion, and politics. The only difference is that this year the first family gives away $100 more than the second. Based on my analysis of the S.C.C.B.S. survey, the first family will, on average, earn $375 more as a result of its generosity.

The article lists a few practical reasons for this fact, but the mechanism isn't as important as the fact. When you give, you get. And, in a wonderful win-win situation, others get too.

So generosity leads to prosperity on two levels: First, it helps us feel like we have not just enough but enough to share, which leads to feeling more prosperous. Second, it actually makes us more prosperous as we literally get back from giving.

Useful Quotes on Generosity*:
Generosity will be the harvest of life.
Freshen the heart of the world by generosity;
For ever be steadfast in generosity;
Since the Creator of the soul is beneficent.
Shaykh Sadi, quoted in The Glory of the Shia World, by P. M. Sykes and Khan Bahadur Ahmad din Khan

The purpose of religion is not to construct beautiful buildings, but to cultivate positive human qualities such as tolerance, generosity and love. Every world religion, no matter what its philosophical view, is founded first and foremost on the precept that we must reduce our selfishness and serve others.
Universal Responsibility and Our Global Environment, His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.
2 Corinthians 9:10-11, Holy Bible

[T]he Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’
Acts 20:35b, Holy Bible

Giving is good, but taking is bad and brings death.
Hesiod (c. 8th century B.C.), Greek didactic poet. Works and Days, 356.

Money-giving is a very good criterion … of a person’s mental health. Generous people are rarely mentally ill people.
Dr Karl A Menninger, The World: Medicine: Psychiatry & Psychology
THE IMAGE
Fire in heaven above:
the image of POSSESSION IN GREAT MEASURE.
Thus the superior man curbs evil and furthers good,
And thereby obeys the benevolent will of heaven.
I Ching
* As always: Sacred Texts, BibleGateway.com, Bartleby.com, and I Ching online

Personally, I find generous giving difficult (which is an embarrassing thing to admit). It's difficult for me to give and, in a related twist, it's difficult for me to save. The same uncomfortable feeling I get when I contemplate giving money away is the same feeling that I get when I contemplate saving it -- particularly someplace where I can't easily access it. It's a nervous, out of control feeling. Kind of a "but what if I need that money" excuse that just won't hold up in the objective light of day. I can't tell you the number of times I've started to either sign up to give to charity or sign up for some investment vehicle and found myself stuck before I could complete the task.

In addition, my formative experience was to see friendship as some kind of medium of exchange. Either things were equitable in the friendship or they were inequitable (ie they were "taking advantage" of you). If you gave a housewarming party, for example, you'd only invite those people who helped you move. If you had something to share, you'd only share it with those who'd already shared with you. In fact, these strictures were specifically for those who you were close to. Complete strangers had no such obligation.

I eventually realized that both these attitudes are very harmful. The financial aspect is a phobia plain and simple, probably due to some poverty in my young adulthood. The personal aspect is simply an attitude problem that I hate and desperately want to change. I don't think either attitude is conducive to prosperity.

Over the years I've worked hard to develop the ability to have a more generous spirit. To give hospitality to friends and kindness to strangers. To share what I had in terms of food or space in my house with those people who I cared about. This is no strings attached giving; I try to keep any thought of reciprocation out of it. Now I'm working on financial generosity. I started putting money in accounts that I can't currently access. I make a regular donation to Modest Needs (and highly recommend them). I'm pushing myself to give more to people -- both to strangers and to those whom I care about. I also seek out people with generous spirits and want to emulate them. They not only set a good example for me but are just plain wonderful people and friends.

And I have noticed that being generous seems to make me feel more prosperous and bring good things my way.

More on Thrift

2008-08-03T07:35:00.000-07:00

MAXIM V.
Esteem thrift and economy, for thereby is saved money in business.
The Holy Edict of K'ang-Hi (second Manchu Emperor of China ruled 1662 - 1722)
translated by Paul Carus, with (Daisetz) Teitaro Suzuki
from "The Monist" Volume XIV Chicago 1904

Millish dy ghoaill, agh sharroo dy eeck.
"Sweet to take but bitter to pay "

Hig daill gys eeck.
"Credit will come to pay."

Share goll dy lie fegooish shibber na girree ayns lhiastynys.
"Better to go to bed supperless than to get up in debt."

The Folk-Lore of the Isle of Man
A. W. Moore [1891]

Thrift is an attractive idea until you get down to specifics.
Mason Cooley (b. 1927), U.S. aphorist. City Aphorisms, Twelfth Selection, New York (1993).

The true thrift is always to spend on the higher plane; to invest and invest, with keener avarice, that he may spend in spiritual creation, and not in augmenting animal existence. Nor is the man enriched, in repeating the old experiments of animal sensation; nor unless through new powers and ascending pleasures he knows himself by the actual experience of higher good to be already on the way to the highest.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. “Wealth,” The Conduct of Life (1860).

Diligence is the basis of wealth, and thrift the source of riches.
Chinese proverb.

The Columbia World of Quotations. 1996.

Avarice is more directly opposed to thrift than generosity is.
François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680), French writer, moralist. repr. F.A. Stokes Co., New York (c. 1930). Moral Maxims and Reflections, no. 168 (1665-1678), trans. London (1706).
Columbia Encyclopedia.

Thunder on the mountain:
The image of PREPONDERANCE OF THE SMALL.
Thus in his conduct the superior man gives preponderance to reverence.
In bereavement he gives preponderance to grief.
In his expenditures he gives preponderance to thrift.
Hexagram 62: Hsiao Kuo / Preponderance of the Small, I Ching, Wilhelm Translation

* Sacred Texts, BibleGateway.com, Bartleby.com, and I Ching online

Habit Forming

2008-08-02T15:12:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about making habits.

Clearly, there are many reasons to make a new good habit or break a bad one. However I can tell even now that my goal to live a more prosperous life is going to require some changes in my habits. A lot of the things that people say they want to do to improve themselves are really just either getting rid of a bad habit or making a new one, or a combination. Some goal like "lose 10 pounds" is really about making habits to exercise and eat better and kill habits of getting takeout and eating candy -- or something.

I've heard that it's commonly accepted in psychology that it takes about 21 days to form a new habit. I don't have any statistics on how long it takes to break an existing habit, but my gut says that it's longer than that. That leads me to two kind of revelations I've recently had about habits.
First, it's probably easier to replace a habit than just kill one. So if you want to stop eating potato chips, instead of just avoiding them, you pull a bait and switch by getting hooked on nuts or carrot sticks instead. So every time you want a chip, you grab a stick. You neatly sidestep that void of completely not having the thing you want. For some things, this can be pretty obvious (note, obvious does not equal easy): Nuts for chips, gum for cigarettes, tea for coffee, and so on.

Some replacements are much more subtle and difficult. Let's say you are in the habit of being self-deprecating and it affects your self-esteem. Well, there are a lot of potential habits that you might need to add to combat this. For example, when you get a compliment, get in the habit of accepting it. Make a habit of not enforcing the self-deprecation of others. Get in the habit of replacing self-deprecating thinking with affirming thinking ("I'm good enough, I'm smart enough..."). Stuff like that.

This let me to a blinding brain flash about the nature of goals. A lot of personal goals are actually these messy, undoable fantasies. And we know that it's easier to accomplish a goal when it's concrete. "I want to get my degree in underwater basketweaving" is easier, in terms of motivation and focus, to accomplish than "I want to, like, embrace learning and always learn new stuff, man." A goal like "I want to be fit and healthy" is hard to accomplish because it's not something you can just do. Not the kind of thing that you can add to a list and check off at the end of the day (Monday: [X] Be fit and healthy). Yet the nebulous mushy goals are often those that connect most deeply to the kind of life we want and the kind of person we want to be.

My flash was that these kinds of goals are often just collections of small habits. And habits are the kinds of things you can put on a checklist and mark off. And, in theory, at the end of three weeks you won't need to put it on a checklist anymore (does your daily todo list have "wake up" or "brush teeth"? probably not). The trick is that some of these habits might not be obvious at first glance. They might seem peripheral to the actual thing you want to do.

Here's an example: Last year my husband and I decided we wanted to eat better. Now we know that "eat better" is exactly one of those nebulous undoable fluff goals that are damned hard to implement. So we found ourselves breaking down the goal into sub goals such as "eat more fresh fruit." Now this is better, but we discovered that there are still a number of habits you have to make before the you can meet the goal.

For example, fresh fruit goes bad, so we needed to get into the habit of "shopping more frequently" and "buying only a little at a time." For habitual food stockpilers this second one was difficult. I kept coming home from the grocery with ALL THIS FRUIT that would then go bad before we could eat it. There are other habits. For example, when you live in a household with more than one person, you have a habit of saving stuff. So if there's a bag of cookies, you don't eat them all... you "save some for the other people." This is a great habit if your goal is "get along with your family." But it doesn't work with fruit! The last of those delicious local tree-ripened plums will go bad because everyone's saving it for someone else. So the new habit is "just eat the fruit!" After all, there'll soon be more because we are "shopping more frequently."

Another issue is that when you aren't in the habit of eating fresh fruit, you don't tend to think about including it in meals. So one habit is "snack on fruit" and a second is "have that with fruit." Hungry? Here's an apple. Breakfast. You want an egg? Have some melon on the side. Another habit that helps with the snacking part is "prep the fruit" -- if you come home with a melon and just set it there, it may never get eaten. Chop that puppy up, put half in a container on the TOP shelf of the fridge and put the other half out on the counter on a plate. Got grapes? Wash them all now and them set them out. They won't have a chance to go bad. On Saturday mornings, I've gotten into the habit (see?) of chopping up any fruit that will soon go bad and putting it out to be eaten that day.

Now let's be clear. We didn't sit down with some kind of family todo list and plan this out. It's not written down any place (except for this journal entry). All of this just developed as we struggled to eat more fruit because we wanted to eat better. It was communicated through regular conversion "would you please buy less fruit?! It's gone bad! Fine, but eat more of it and quit saving it then. OK, but now we're running out -- aren't you going to the store soon?"

But then it hit me that this whole more fruit thing was just about identifying and implementing new habits. The habit you go after isn't just "eat fruit" but all those things that make it easier to eat fruit. Suddenly you find yourself eating lots of fruit and it's no big deal. The little habits are made and the big ones just fall into place.

This is probably DUH-OBVIOUS to a lot of you, but getting this connection viscerally was a big deal to me. Suddenly all those fluff goals ("make new friends!") translate to real doable things. Habits that you can make in just about three weeks of effort. And three weeks isn't a very long time, all things considered.

Key to Prosperity -- Sustainability Part II

2008-08-01T13:15:00.000-07:00

Now, I'm happy to blather on about sustainability in an academic sense, but once I get talking about concrete suggestions... well, I start to feel like a major hypocrite. So let me make it clear that this stuff is advice for me and my little family first and foremost. Because we have to make some changes.

Think Locally; Act Locally

The things we can realistically do for the larger environment are pretty small. Not that we shouldn't do anything. It's just that those things are tiny things when compared to the larger picture. And we often live in a world of Hobson's choices, as I discovered when I tried to recycle three bags of shredded paper before a major move. The only facility that would take them was all the way across town. I'd burn more gas getting there and back than would be saved, in terms of environmental impact, for these three bags. Not to mention that paper is pretty biodegradable. So, I tossed it out with the garbage. Frustrating.

But by focusing on the most local level, I believe we can make more of a difference. For example, if I had a garden, I could compost the paper or use it as mulch to keep weeds from growing. We're talking basic bills and credit card offers, nothing toxic. And gardening would be more sustainable in terms of the results of the garden itself. Whether flowers or fruits and veggies, those would be items I wouldn't buy need to by. And complex decisions about whether the imported organic is better than the local non-organic that I wouldn't have to make. Or I could encourage my job to recycle paper. Then I'd add my paper to the larger mass getting regularly trucked away -- economy of scale, and not just financial economy, but environmental as well.

By buying locally, I can not only support the financial sustainability of the place where I live, I can effect more change because my voice actually matters. If I suggest to Walmart that they might want to sell products created without sweatshop labor, or offer more organic choices, or give a credit for reusing bags -- well, I'm just one voice and it's not like they'd care if they lost my business. But the local and locally-owned store just might care and just might listen. And local restaurants (not giant chains) might take seriously my requests for food made with local produce. And then everyone wins, financially and ecologically... if for no other reason than because local = less shipping. And the money I spend stays local as well, ensuring better community financial sustainability.

Fuck Reuse, Reduce is the key

This is something that's really hit me in the past few years. You can try 101 bizarre hippie ways to reuse every odd thing that comes into your life. You can recycle -- if there's a place that takes items in your town. But the real key is to REDUCE the amount of stuff you have to deal with in the first place. Don't let the crap in in the first place. And don't spit it back out without any thought. Little things like using rechargeable batteries, stopping junk mail, using the library, and making stuff last.

Commerce isn't the AntiChrist (and it Ain't a Savior Neither)

There's nothing wrong with buying stuff. If we weren't able to buy the things we needed, we'd be reduced to making it all ourselves... and that doesn't make sense. Thousands of years ago, upright apes discovered the benefits of specialization. Grog could tan leather well but couldn't nap flint worth shit. Noog, on the other hand had the reverse problem. So, they traded the goods and skills they had for the ones they didn't. And thus was born the economy.

Yes, if we all lived in completely self-sustaining homesteads and made every single thing we needed to live, our environmental footprint would be tiny... especially since the first time we got sick and there was no doctor (because he was busy milking goats and weaving cloth) we'd die. Lots of human death is good for the Earth, but I'm not that nihilistic, thanks.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't consider the things we buy. For example, the explosion of completely disposal cleaning products. Even the mildest of them (like a disposable wipe) is still something that comes into your life to be thrown away. I've actually given this some thought. Better to use a disposable wipe or papertowel (OMG excess garbage) ... or better to use a rag and wash it (OMG excess water and soap and electricity for the water)? Who knows. But I do know that too much of that stuff is just not justifiable.

It also means that we should consider the quality of the things we buy. My friend calls this the $20 shirt theory. The point is that you should spend more on something that will last, on something of quality, than spend less on a cheap piece of crap. It's harder to spend more, I know, but it's more sustainable -- both financially and ecologically. One $20 shirt that lasts is better than five $5 shirts that wear out quickly. Better for your budget and better for the environment.

Sustainability is a Group Effort

Years ago, I was talking with an old friend who lived in Maine. She was talking about a major ice storm where the power was out in some areas for like two weeks in the middle of winter. I was stunned. What did people do? Did many die?

It seems that there were very few casualties. Why? Well, first of all, because the weather in Maine is typically pretty extreme (if that's not a contradiction). Even without freak ice storms, they have very severe winters. The result is that, by necessity, people are self-sufficient. Wood stoves are common as are large stockpiles of wood (even for people with new, suburban homes with central heating). People also have more food and water on hand, as well as other useful supplies like lanterns, flashlights, etc. Of course some people do that all over the country, but in Maine more people do it -- because they need it.

The other reason casualties were lessened is because people worked together to help each other. The elderly and infirm were watched over. Neighbors checked up on one another. If you didn't have a woodstove or enough wood, one of your neighbors would and you were welcome there. When the shit really hits the fan, people tend to band together. Because the consequences for not doing so are so very harsh. It's one thing to turn a blind eye to the lonely, elderly cat lady at the end of your block. But when that blind eye might very well result in her death (and her 16 cats with her)? Well, people get altruistic all of a sudden. Because (and I think this is mostly unconscious) no one wants that on their consciences. Again, because Maine has more dangerous weather, they have more experience with building community.

But whether or not you're expecting the end of the world in ice, building community is a good idea. It creates sustainability. Not only in a quid pro quo sense (so and so fixed my car, now I will till his garden) but in an emotional sense. When you have a network of supportive contacts, it makes getting through difficult times easier -- and what else is sustainability but planning now to avoid difficult times or make them easier when they come? This is perfectly illustrated by the fact that a strong network of contacts is one of the factors that contributes to a longer lifespan (physical sustainability at its most fundamental).

Financial Sustainability Starts at Home

It sometimes feels like we live in a world of too many choices. And, when it comes to the environment, the choices are often confusing and contradictory (paper or plastic?). However, when it comes to financial sustainability, choice is a very good thing. The more options you have to sustain yourself in terms of cash flow (buying the things you need, paying the bills, having a place to stay) the better. The more jobs you can find, the less likely you'll be out of work, right? The fewer bills you have the less you have to worry about and the less you have to make. The solution is going to be different for everyone, but one thing is clear. Being a paycheck or two away from homelessness really limits your choices and is not at all sustainable.

While community can create and nurture sustainability, when it comes to personal financial sustainability, independence is the key. The less you have to rely on others, the better. Anyone you're beholden to or owe or can't make it without limits your choices and reduces your independence. That means bosses, landlords, and above all creditors. Now, you may still choose to have a financial relationship with one of these entities, but it's important to be aware of how it affects your sustainability. What happens when you get fired? What happens when your landlord sells the property you live in and the new owners raise the rent? What happens when you can't make a mortgage payment.

Because we live in a capitalist country, we need to consider the way that our financial decisions effect our ability to continue supporting ourselves and our families into the future.

Prosperous but Thrifty Vacations

2008-07-31T17:00:00.000-07:00

This New York Times article talks about how the changing economic climate is causing people to severely restrict their vacation planing for this summer. Economic uncertainly and rising gas prices mean many people are vacationing at home this summer.

I find this ironic as our family is looking forward to a month of frequent and fun vacations for the first time in a number of years. How can we manage it? By adjusting our expectations and having a great time enjoying the simple things. We're going camping. A lot.

My husband and I both grew up camping. While my experience was more of the mountain cabin variety while he was a back country, all-weather guy, we both love being out in nature. We enjoy the quiet serenity and the domestic industry of a campsite. But while we did camp before our daughter came along, once she arrived, it seemed less feasible. I know some people take their tiny babies and toddlers camping with them, but that just didn't work for us in terms of her needs and personality. It wouldn't have been fun. During these years we never seemed to take any other kind of family vacation either. In fact, we were notoriously bad at it and the strain began to tell on us.

Lat summer was the first year our girl was old enough to camp, but we were busy moving to a new city and dealing with all that entailed. This year however, we resolved to make it happen no matter what. The surrounding wilderness offered up a bevy of tempting choices, even within the parameters of the car camping set (when you have to bring stuffed animals, you're not ready for the back country).

In terms of financial implications, we did spend money getting the gear we lacked after all this time. Tents, sleeping bags, cooking gear and the like can add up. But we decided to make the commitment and get the things we'd need -- knowing that they'd last and pay for themselves over and over. Fortunately we did have a tent and sleeping bags, but needed a few significant things including a carrier for our vehicle. Our dog takes up the entire back so if we wanted to take him -- and we do, have you seen the price of doggy daycare? -- we needed someplace else to carry gear.

Still, we spent far, far less than what even just a weekend for three in the city or a resort would have cost. Camping fees are small (and smaller still if you do go into the wild country) and we're lucky enough to have remote areas that are only a short drive away (90 minutes).

In terms of living a prosperous life, we also know from our first weekend out that we were wrong to have waited so long. We sorely missed being out under the stars and in the wild and were quickly reminded how much this type of vacation can restore and refresh the body, mind, and spirit. So while camping does cost more than staying home (particularly in terms of startup costs), for us it's worth it as part of living a prosperous life. We don't need four-star hotels, gourmet meals, and expensive shows and events to have a great vacation. But we do need a vacation. We desperately needed a break away from the everyday and a respite from our busy lives.

Camping is also one of those good investments that grows more economical and thrifty over time. Once the equipment costs has been amortized over enough trips out, you can actually spend less camping than during a bored weekend at home (with all the myriad temptations for shopping and spending and driving around). In any case, taking a break away together as a family is worth any cost if you can swing it. A camping vacation just makes those costs easier to bear.

Advice for new campers:

If you have NEVER camped before, your best bet is to find someone who does camp and who's willing to take you along. Check meetup for a camping or outdoors group if you don't know anyone. Offer to supply the food and beer in exchange for going out with an experienced camper in order to learn a) whether you like camping enough to do it again and b) what kind of equipment you'll need if you do. Car camping will save you costs on equipment, as the lighter something gets the more expensive it tends to be. In addition, you can check your National Parks for cabins or yurts to rent. These are typically bare bones places without power or running water, but can be more comfortable than a tent, particularly if the weather is rough.

If you've camped, but it's been a while, find a campsite with a lot of amenities (showers, toilets, and a store are some) in order to ease the transition. Then borrow the equipment you need from a camping friend. If it's not quite what you needed you at least didn't spend any money on it.

And finally, if you have kids bring them stuff to do. We have a game box that includes an old backgammon set (which doubles as the box), a checker board, deck of cards and extra dice and scorecards for yahtzee.

Key to Prosperity -- Sustainability

2008-07-31T07:30:00.000-07:00

The prosperous farm is one that can continue to thrive during the winter months. It is the same with a prosperous life. The more we can sustain those positives that we have in our lives through the difficult times, the more prosperous we can say that we are.

Even before my exploration of prosperity as a guiding principle, I'd been thinking about and reading up on sustainability. And one issue I've discovered in my research is that the term is sort of nebulous. In fact, there are several arenas of sustainability that are sometimes in opposition to one another.

From one perspective we have:

Societal or community sustainability -- how a group can make decisions to sustain itself and its members. This comes into play not only in terms of urban planning, but also buying decisions (supporting local businesses and so forth) as well as social services. It's about people in a society supporting structures that further the stability of that society, both short-term and long-term.

Personal sustainability -- how an individual makes decisions that affect the stability of the person. This includes buying decisions as well as all sorts of personal planning issues (career, location, children, budget, and so on). Primarily this is about the individual, but since many people have a small tight immediate family unit (partner, spouse, kids, maybe parents) that works together to make those decisions, it's usually slightly broadened in practice.

On the other axis, we see:

Ecological sustainability -- choices that affect our footprint on the Earth, the long-term protection of environmental systems. This is what most people think of when they think of sustainability. Sustainable land management, sustainable farming practices, etc. It's about conservation, recycling, alternative energy, and so on.

Economic sustainability -- decisions that support financial stability, growth of funds, savings, and so on. For example, having no or low debt load (whether on the community or personal level) is more sustainable than having a lot of debt to maintain. This is about money and it's a necessary way of viewing sustainability in our capitalistic society.

So what does this mean? Well, from this perspective you can see that sometimes different kinds of sustainability are in conflict. For example, it might be better for community financial sustainability to buy locally... but better for personal financial sustainability to shop at Walmart (cause it's just plain cheaper). Financial and ecological sustainability can also easily conflict (just look at the Alaskan oil fields for an easy example).

Of course in a perfect world, the various types of sustainability would come together. So by composting green waste a community can save the Earth and save a little money (in terms of landfill space and maintenance). And by recycling your own green waste for compost, you can help save the Earth and take advantage of free compost and mulch from the city. Everyone seems to win!

But often choices are confusing as well as conflicting. You might want to buy organic to support the growers who help the Earth by avoiding pesticides... but it's actually better for the planet to buy locally grown conventional produce, because it hasn't been trucked halfway across the country to get to you. It's better for the economic stability of your own community to buy locally (not to mention that it might be cheaper), but if you don't live in a strong agricultural area, there may not be such a thing as local produce. In New Mexico for example, buying local produce usually means "from Mexico" -- not exactly what local means in terms of the economy.

What a mess! It's like "paper or plastic" -- which is really the better choice? Of course the best choice is to bring your own reusable bags (preferably hand woven by local artisans living in a sustainable collective from locally grown organic hemp -- bags which would probably cost you $20 a piece!).

If sustainability is a key element of living a prosperous live, then our little family unit needs to figure out how to make more sustainable choices in the various areas that affect our family. For example, there are practices specifically designed to support mental, emotional, and physical health. And linked to health, but worthy of its own discussion is spiritual sustainability

Yes, we need to find ways to express our spiritual needs and make decisions that nurture our highest spiritual impulses. Abstract in theory, but really very practical. For example, when we nurture our intuition, we can take better advantage of subtle cues to help us. And when we work at feeling the connection with all things, that encourages a view of the world where sustainability is more necessary. Not to mention that putting yourself in a cynical, non-spiritual, head space can be very harmful. A solidly nurtured spirituality can sustain us through difficult times. Notice that I'm not mentioning religion here (though that can be a part of it). I'm keeping this general because I think it's something that all of us should try, even the most literal atheist.So how to be make sustainable decisions? Because it's all about choices really, and about the things we do now to make way for the future. Sustainability is all about the future -- about doing what works now that will continue to work moving forward.

We know that different kinds of sustainability can be in conflict. So I guess my first step has to be some kind of rough priority -- decisions on where to focus. Now, community sustainability is great. I wish every community would make decisions that ensured a sustainable future for its members. But my contribution to that sustainability at this point is mainly through my vote. Whether the issue is one of ecology or economy, my decision is one of a small part of the whole. So apart from being aware of issues and using my vote, I choose instead to focus on the things I do for myself and my little family. If the personal decisions we make help the community, great! Bonus! And we should consider that effect in our decision-making process. But I'm not going to solve our nation's deplorable health care problems (or my city's deplorable pollution problems) by myself.

In addition, we live in a society that's not very caring of its members as a whole. That means that personal fiscal sustainability has to be considered. It's a harsh truth, but if we want to stay in a situation where we can nurture the sustainability of our own selves (in all those ways I described above) we need to have some financial stability. It's all well and good to live light on the Earth to the degree that you are effectively broke and homeless... but no one will care that you spend all your time volunteering to clean up litter when you end up with cancer and no medical insurance. And many a hippie homesteader ended up return to town when the combination of backbreaking labor, age, and lack of medical care make the wilderness a less-than-desirable place to live. We have to ensure that we can care for ourselves and the people we love. The best solutions here are probably going to be ones that take advantage of some of what society offers (insurance, for example) without falling into the traps that society lays (misuse of credit and debt).

Finally, we have a responsibility to the Earth. This is the most challenging type of sustainability to implement... because there's no consensus on what the best options are. A few years ago, a Salon article about sustainability and ecology claimed that it's better for the environment to buy rice shipped all the way from the Orient rather than local California rice... because the local rice is grown using artificial fertilizers and methods that are hard on the environment. The cost of shipping the rice here doesn't make up for it (although since then oil prices have skyrocketed). Now how would anyone guess that without reading this article or doing some major research themselves? Truth is, they wouldn't. All we can do is try to make the best decisions possible and be willing to change our ways when we learn that something isn't working... and not beat ourselves up too much either. It's not easy to live ecologically in the US without dropping out of the system entirely. Here, small changes may not add up to a lot individually, but we have to hope that cumulatively it makes a difference.

More to come on my personal guidelines for making sustainable choices.

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Over the coming weeks, I plan to explore each of the keys to prosperity individually in order to identify areas where I can improve and tie goals into a plan for living a more prosperous life.

Additional Grocery Information

2008-07-30T08:41:00.001-07:00

Over at Get Rich Slowly, the comments to the article about decreasing sizes have a lot of point (this is sneaky!) / counterpoint (it's business, shop smart!) responses. Clearly, when faced with several nearly equivalent choices, it makes sense to purchase the one that costs the least. This isn't even frugality so much as just base intelligence. And in-store unit pricing makes this easy...

Except that as the sizes shrink, the store tag and unit pricing will often be incorrect for some time. At my local grocery, the containers of Tropicana Pure Premium shrunk from 96oz to 89oz. But the grocery price label kept the old size and old price per unit for several weeks. I actually noticed and complained about it.... twice.

What bugs me is not the loss of 7oz or the "tricksy" new packaging, but the incorrect unit pricing that makes it difficult to know what you're really getting.

Frugality versus Thrift

2008-07-30T08:08:00.000-07:00

In my last post on using coupons, I wrote something that, frankly, surprised me when I wrote it. It was that saving money with coupons at the checkout made me feel thrifty, and I liked it. Imagine my surprise. Me, the gal who is repulsed by being frugal, enjoys being and being seen as thrifty! How can two terms, so close in meaning, have two very differing reactions?

I started by visiting Merriam-Webster online in order to do a bit of dictionary research:

frugal
Pronunciation: \ˈfrü-gəl\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle French or Latin; Middle French, from Latin frugalis virtuous, frugal, from frug-, frux fruit, value; akin to Latin frui to enjoy
Date: 1590

: characterized by or reflecting economy in the use of resources

So, being frugal is "economy in the use of resources" AKA using less. In the case of finances, this would be spending less. The root of the word is from virtue, which comes from fruit (fruit of ones' labors?).

thrift
Pronunciation: \ˈthrift\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old Norse, prosperity, from thrīfask to thrive
Date: 13th century

1: healthy and vigorous growth
2: careful management especially of money
(plus a couple more unrelated items)

thrifty
Pronunciation: \ˈthrif-tē\
Function: adjective
Date: 14th century

1 : thriving by industry and frugality : prosperous
2 : growing vigorously
3 : given to or marked by economy and good management

Thrift, on the other hand, is "vigorous growth" and "careful management." Notice that the root word means to thrive. Being thrifty then is thriving through "industry and frugality." Ah! Not just being frugal for frugality's sake, but being frugal in order to thrive. Careful management with the goal of being prosperous and growing vigorously.

prosper
Pronunciation: \ˈpräs-pər\
Function: verb
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French prosperer, from Latin prosperare to cause to succeed, from prosperus favorable
Date: 14th century

intransitive verb
1: to succeed in an enterprise or activity; especially : to achieve economic success
2: to become strong and flourishing
transitive verb: to cause to succeed or thrive

prosperous
Pronunciation: \ˈpräs-p(ə-)rəs\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Medieval Latin prosperosus, from Latin prosperus
Date: 15th century

1: auspicious, favorable
2 a: marked by success or economic well-being
b: enjoying vigorous and healthy growth : flourishing

Here again, we see the term "thrive" (which relates to thrift) as well as growth both "vigorous" and "healthy." There's definitely a tight relationship between the definitions of thrift/thrifty and prosper/prosperous.

It's becoming clear to me that underlying all my keys to prosperity is the core concept of being thrifty. And what's thrift, but using frugality and good management in order to flourish and grow? Frugality is simply a means to an end and not an end in and of itself. It's a choice you might make in order to become more prosperous.

Can I make better choices in light of this information? Can I get past my disdain and discomfort with the cheapest option if that option is actually the thrifty one? It's certainly given me a lot to think about.

All on the Same Page

2008-07-29T11:13:00.000-07:00

Interestingly, J.D. at Get Rich Slowly just posted about decreasing sizes at the grocery store (the amount gets smaller but the price remains the same) and Carrie Kirby at Wise Bread writes about grocery shopping on a budget, including using coupons.

So either I'm tapping into some group blog mind, or I'm woefully unoriginal.

Prosperous Couponing

2008-07-28T14:54:00.000-07:00

We finally started to notice an increase in the cost of basic grocery type items at the end of this spring. When news stories first came out about it, I hadn't noticed any change at all. I commented on it to my husband, who pointed out that we were already paying more for most groceries because tend to shop organic and local and gourmet. So keeping with my personal theory of inflation, the "Trickle Up" theory, it was the less expensive goods that increased in cost first.

There are probably a number of reasons for this but I've noticed it for food, fuel, and clothes. The cheapest items and poorest neighborhoods get hit first. In terms of food, I'm guessing that since I try to buy local, less of the cost goes toward transportation, which means less effect from the increase in fuel prices. However, I'm also convinced that large food companies hike the price of generics first because, hey, they aren't making as much profit off those items, so take the hike there and piss off less of middle America.

But eventually it trickles up and things just get more expensive all around. We're not in a place where we want to just pay the difference. We have other financial goals that we need to take care of (like not being broke). So in an effort to reduce our monthly grocery budget, we are taking a couple of steps:

Most obviously, we are making an effort to eat out less and at home more. This is the easiest way to save a bunch of money (though it's not always the easiest thing to do).

In addition, I've decided to start using coupons. This is one of the most common pieces of advice for saving money. but I have to admit that until recently I hadn't had much experience with it. In part this was because I wasn't focused on the finances behind stocking a household. But in addition, I had a bunch of preconceptions about using coupons that kept me from exploring them as an option. I believed, for example, that using coupons meant having to eat a bunch of prepared foods high in chemicals and crap and low in, you know, actual nutrition and food. I also believed that the time and cost of collecting and sorting the coupons wouldn't be worth the savings. But I was wrong.

We're still getting started, but here's how it's working out:

First, we decided that we wanted to stick with our basic goals for healthy eating. That means organic or local dairy, free-range eggs, and meat without antibiotics or hormones. We try for local produce and organic if we can. We avoid many processed foods and choose organic and low chemical options for many of those we do buy (like Annie's mac and cheese -- yum!). These principles are a key component of our prosperity goals. We want to eat healthy and well, even though it costs more. We also take it easy on ourselves and realize that every trip to the grocery store is a balance of preference, price, and principle.

Second, we decided that in order to use coupons we'd have to be a little more flexible. That means that we won't be able to be brand-specific when it comes to toothpaste and cleaning supplies. However, we wouldn't buy items that we'd NEVER buy just because those items had a coupon attached.

Third, we decided that taking advantage of a two-for-one option on something is fine, but ending up with 26 bottles of lotion would defeat the purpose. Also, we might plan trips to various groceries at different times, but blowing a bunch of fuel and time cruising all over town was equally pointless.

Fourth, while we'd make the effort to make this work, we would not get completely obsessed or crazy -- the Internet makes that easy to do. That said, I did track my expenses and savings for several weeks to see if it would be cost effective.

Originally, we realized that if we were going to use coupons, we'd need to have some. This meant that we needed to subscribe to the paper. Fortunately, our local paper has a subscription option for the Sunday paper, holiday papers, and the Tuesday food insert (where all the grocery fliers are). That means that in order to be cost effective, we needed to save over $2 a week to recoup the cost of the subscription.

The first week was a disappointment. I only managed to scavenge a few coupons and didn't have a chance to go grocery shopping after I got them. But the next week was an absolute bonanza. It's clear that the beginning of the month is when a lot of places put out their coupons. I ended up with a ton for items we really do want and use. In addition, our local healthy/organic grocery has a quarterly flier with coupons for organic and all natural items (including bread, butter, and soy milk). Now I have enough coupons for organic items to take us through summer's end.

My initial conclusions: This is SO worth it. We've easily made our money back on the subscription and saved a ton in addition. I didn't have to buy odd stuff I didn't want. I didn't have to spend hours of time. It wasn't much harder at the actual store (I admit it was a little more complex dealing with the little slips of paper).

I thought I might feel nasty or unpleasant using the coupons in the store, but I don't. It helps that the very first time I made a major score with coupons (saving something like 50% of my grocery bill) the checkout guy complimented me for being so smart. Using coupons, I feel both thrifty and a little subversive (like I pulled one over on "the man") both of which appeal to me and neither of which make me feel particularly poor or penny-pinching.

I don't like the idea of being frugal, but I can see thrift as a component of a prosperous life. I won't trade down and buy Koolaid instead of real juice, but if there's an opportunity to reduce the cost of that juice I'd be foolish not to take it. It's like seeing a dollar on the street and not picking it up. It's shitting on your luck, which is always a bad idea.

So, the coupon plan has been working very well. We'll just see if it continues to be this useful and cost-saving. Proof that focusing on prosperity doesn't mean avoiding the little things.

Key to Prosperity -- Health

2008-07-28T07:32:00.000-07:00

As I try to figure out what prosperity is and how to be more prosperous in my own life, I've identified a number of key characteristics. The first one on my list is health. Good physical, mental, and emotional health are important contributors to a prosperous life.

Obviously, there are elements of our health that are out of our control. I would never suggest that someone with a disability or illness couldn't be prosperous. In contrast, there are many inspirational examples of people who live amazing, prosperous lives and inspire others each day regardless of limitations on their health. Frugal Dad just posted a list of inspirational videos, including The Last Lecture of Randy Pausch. Great stuff!

Still, there are elements of our health that clearly are within our control. And I believe we have an obligation to take control of those elements in order to be as fit and healthy as possible.

Useful Quotes on Health*:
What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?
1 Corinthians 6:19, Bible King James Version

On the sick man by the sacrifice of mercy may perfect health shine like bronze; may the Sun-god give this man life; may Merodach, the eldest son of the deep, give him strength, prosperity and health.
Babylonian Prayer for Health, Pagan Prayers by Marah Ellis Ryan

The return of health after illness, the return of understanding after an estrangement: everything must be treated tenderly and with care at the beginning, so that the return may lead to a flowering.
Hexagram 24: Fu / Return (The Turning Point), I Ching, Wilhelm Translation
Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
Constitution of the World Health Organization, The Columbia World of Quotations
The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Columbia World of Quotations
* For quick and dirty Internet research, I’m indebted to: Sacred Texts, BibleGateway.com, Bartleby.com, and I Ching online

If I am physically ill, mentally burned out, or emotionally unbalanced, it's more difficult to do the good work it takes in order to build and sustain prosperity. It simply makes it harder to muster the energy I need to get busy changing living, and more importantly, changing my life on a day-to-day basis. Not to mention that good health strengthens the immune system so that I spend less time being ill.

Unfortunately, our society both obfuscates and overcomplicates health. We’re surrounded each day by unhealthy messages, images, and stereotypes; while at the same time the latest guru or fad diet is selling us solutions that are supposed to make us happier, healthier, thin, and fit – overnight. Look at any women’s magazine at the checkout counter. It will invariably have a recipe for a high-calorie dessert juxtaposed with a diet plan that will take those extra pounds off by this weekend. Plus a bunch of skinny models hawking unguents and salves that we simply must have in order to look young and beautiful. It’s no wonder our society is so neurotic and that both obesity and eating disorders are rampant.

I think that the basics of health aren’t meant to be that complex. For good physical/mental/emotional health I need to:

Eat a variety of good food that I enjoy
Get enough restful sleep
Enjoy regular exercise
Avoid chemicals (additives) stimulants (coffee) and depressants (beer) to excess
Eliminate harmful stress
Cultivate a realistic body image (media bad!)
Spend regular time in quiet contemplation (meditation)
Enjoy entertainment that feeds my soul
Keep my brain stimulated
Surround myself with things and people that lift me up, instead of drag me down

Obviously, I’m better at some of these than others. But it’s useful to look at this laundry list as a starting point for creating goals. For example, I know I could eat more fruits and veggies and get more exercise. And that whole quiet contemplation thing? Well, not so much. On the other hand, I don’t smoke and don’t overdo the caffeine and alcohol.

Here’s my personal todo and financial guideline list for Health, based on the areas where I need to work:

Eat a variety of good food that I enjoy

Eat more fruits and veggies and avoid processed foods
Spend money on quality groceries, but save by eating out less often
Search out healthy and/or financially smart alternatives like farmers markets and U-pick farms
Avoid the snack machine at work (which is unhelpfully free)

Enjoy regular exercise

Walking, hiking, and biking are all great and don’t cost anything
Playing with a child is the best exercise

Spend regular time in quiet contemplation (meditation)

It costs nothing but time to take a few quiet minutes a day
It’s OK to suck at first

Keep my brain stimulated

The Internet can help with free Sudoku etc.
In addition, the library is easy and free

Notice in the above list I specifically give myself permission to spend more money on healthy foods. Unfortunately, it’s often the simple healthy option that costs more, while the processed and unhealthy food is much less. This is one area where a strict frugal interpretation might be to spend less money by compromising on quality. Bad idea!

Instead I will make a trade: more money on quality groceries and less money on cheap takeout. And I won’t feel guilty for paying extra for the organic, natural, or hormone free options.

In any case, I know that taking care of my health can save big in the long run, so it’s definitely a worthwhile investment in time and money.

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Over the coming weeks, I plan to explore each of the keys to prosperity individually in order to identify areas where I can improve and tie goals into a plan for living a more prosperous life. In between, I may ramble about other related topics such as goal setting, taste inflation, and will-power.

The Keys to Prosperity

2008-07-27T14:35:00.000-07:00

In my first post, Frugal Sucks!, I listed all the negative connotations that frugality brings to mind. Things like deprivation and lack of options. But if I'm going to embrace prosperity as a solution that can work for me (where frugality just can't) I need to understand what it is. What are the elements of prosperity?

For me, prosperity includes all of the following:

Health -- just as it's the healthy plant that thrives and prospers in the garden, it's the healthy household or business that can be considered prosperous. Clearly, each of us experiences a certain amount of good or ill health during our lives. And often our health is out of our control. But I believe that in order to be prosperous we need to make every effort to be physically, mentally, and emotionally healthy.
Sustainability -- the prosperous farm is one that can continue to thrive during the winter months. It is the same with a prosperous life. The more we can sustain those positives that we have in our lives through the difficult times, the more prosperous we can say that we are. The ability to weather tough times is the hallmark of someone who has their "act together."
Generosity -- I don't believe that selfishness and prosperity go together. If prosperity is my goal, shouldn't I want that goal for others as well? I don't just want to be prosperous, I want to live in a prosperous family, community, and country. The more prosperous we can all be, the better off we all are. A prosperous business creates products and jobs. A prosperous farm delivers healthy, abundant food. The prosperous household has the means to purchase the things it needs and thereby supports the prosperity of others. That means that with our own prosperity comes an obligation to help our neighbors prosper as well.
Positivity -- one of the major issues with frugality for me is that it seems so incredibly negative. Not only does it force me to focus on those things I can't do, choose, or have; it puts all my efforts into dealing with my perceived poverty. Concentrating on being frugal makes me concentrate on feeling poor. I believe that in order to be prosperous, we have to have a positive outlook. People who I admire (many of whom would describe themselves as frugal -- my issues with the term are my own) are very positive. So while I can't be frugal, I want to emulate their positive attitudes.
Introspection -- without knowing yourself you can't understand what kind of life it is you want. And, in terms of a family, you can't communicate that to each other. Without that knowledge you just make the same old bad choices. Choices that lead away from your goals because your goals aren't articulated. Looking within has to be a component of living the life you want.
Appreciation -- we are, each of us, incredibly wealthy. Those of us in the Western world (particularly those with means to enjoy the Internet) have more material goods, more equality, more freedom, and more access to information than just about any people in history. We need to remember to feel appreciation and gratitude for the wealth we already have if we're going to embrace prosperity in our own lives. Without that appreciation, prosperity can just become another money game (earn more in order to buy more -- that's not what I think of as prosperous).
Focus -- while I've complained a bit that frugality seems to focus on negativity and lack and a poverty mindset (at least in terms of my own preconceptions) I would never complain that it includes elements of discipline, will power, and focus. Without those we can never meet our goals. Prosperity might sound more fun than frugality, but I never thought it wouldn't also include hard work and self-discipline.

For me, these are the keys to prosperity. Perhaps over time I'll adjust the list or find more. But next step is to explore each of these areas in order to learn more and determine exactly what advice I can take from each.

Trying on Prosperity

2008-07-26T18:05:00.000-07:00

The past few months have been something of a watershed. I've really started to look at, not just our honest financial picture, but also at the attitudes that drive the choices I make. It was during this time that I realized that, to me, frugal sucks and I have to try to find another way of making sense of how we earn and spend.

Now, I know that this is something of a psychological trick. And maybe some people don't need those. Maybe some people can be rational and make logical and reasoned decisions about money. But I can't. If it doesn't make sense to me on an emotional and instinctual level, it doesn't make sense to me. It's like Ramsey's Debt Snowball: sure, it costs less in the long run to pay off high-interest debt first, but psychologically it's much, much harder than paying off the smallest ones first.

Sitting around thinking of ways to be frugal, to shave pennies off my light bill and buying generic jelly make me feel terrible. It makes me feel poverty stricken, which makes me cranky because our income is good. Worrying about every penny is just putting all this mental effort and focus on the things I lack. The things we can't have, can't get, can't do. To be clear, I realize this isn't everyone's truth. It doesn't have to work like that. But it sure works like that for me.

And this brought me to thinking about what I really want me and my family's lives to be like, financially speaking. I don't want to be frugal. No. I want to be prosperous.

Now, don't think I'm equating prosperous with rich. I don't see prosperity to be equal to great wealth or get rich quick schemes that promise a ton of money and an easy life to be the same as prosperity. No, I'm thinking more of a... well, spiritual view of prosperity. The kind that you might find espoused in the I Ching or the Bible. A way of being right with money or at peace with money. Of making smart choices and finding a way to live that allows you or your business/household/farm to grow and thrive and sustain itself over time.

I think that sustainability and thrift would naturally be a part of building a prosperous life. I think that spending less than you earn, saving for the future, and learning about enough are integral components of it. But it's not about pinching or restricting those things that bring you happiness. Prosperity it about MORE, not LESS.

It's about determining what really brings you joy in your life and doing what it takes to have more of that... without the financial and emotional distractions of those things that don't actually bring you joy. It's about focusing on how to have abundance now and abundance later. How to embrace and engender pleasure without putting the future in hock. It's about more options, more choices, and more ways of building a secure and thriving life and livelihood. Of not sacrificing on those things that truly matter to you and giving yourself permission to give. While at the same time realizing that prosperity is a long-term goal. A process and not a result. The execution of the plan. And the journey instead of a destination.

As I explore the idea of prosperity, the goal is to translate that idea into action. To extract concrete rules and guidelines and choices that help bring that idea about. Not just mental musings or philosophy without purpose, but a way of living that supports what prosperity is.

Next question: what is prosperity? What are it's elements? How is it to be recognized?

Frugal Sucks!

2008-07-23T14:17:00.000-07:00

OK, let's start with a confession. Our finances are a mess. We have a ton of debt and few assets. We have barely any savings and no retirement to speak of. Fortunately we have income, but very little buffer against trouble or unexpected change because of needing to pay to maintain all this debt. Some of it was because of a very poor choice in housing purchase (money pit!) but a lot more was our own failure to keep a rein on our spending and take advantage of the good times as a hedge against the bad.

So yeah, we could use a good dose of frugality more than anyone. There's just one problem...

I hate being frugal. Frugal sucks. Even the word frugal makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Being frugal has a whole host of unpleasant connotations for me.

To me, frugal means:

Deprivation -- being frugal means you are deprived of things. You can't have stuff because it costs too much. You can only have the cheapest option even if it's not the nicest or healthiest or easiest.
Missed opportunity -- frugal means you miss out on things you want to do because those things cost too much money. Doing nothing costs nothing. Going places and trying new activities costs money. The only things that are allowed are those that might make money back.
Selfishness -- frugality is all about looking out only for number one, preparing for your own future and letting others fend for themselves. It's more important to take care of yourself than to leave a legacy.
Tedium -- always doing the same thing because it's cheap and what you do. Experimenting costs money because, hey, what if you mess up!? Do what you know and don't rock the boat.
Lack of choices -- you can only do the cheapest thing. Each choice closes off every other choice and you can't even change it. So you'd better always watch the bottom line.
Deferred living -- work and scrimp today so that you can enjoy tomorrow... except tomorrow never seems to come until you're too old to enjoy it.
No room to dream or grow -- dreams cost money. Trying stuff out costs money. Failure costs money. Best to just stick to what you know will bring you money. Risk is bad!

I know where these attitudes come from and I know that they aren't necessarily any kind of truth. But these are the lessons I learned. And needless to say, this isn't how I want to live my life. This isn't what I want to pass on to my child.

Spend less than you earn, pay yourself first, avoid debt. I get that. It's good advice. And I know we have to do something. We can't continue the way we have been. But I can't bring myself to be frugal. I want to do the right things, but I keep bumping up against this perception I have of frugality that's all about the negative.

I keep a budget. I know where our money goes and what we owe. The checkbook is balanced. I've educated myself about what to do. I read great blogs like Frugal Dad, Get Rich Slowly, Wise Bread, and The Simple Dollar. I even started contributing to my 401K. But when it comes to curbing spending that specter of horrible frugality rears its head. I can't seem to get past it.

I've been thinking a lot about this. There has to be a way of moving past this block and redefining what it is I want out of life. Because I want freedom and options, not deprivation and delay. And I want to do it in a way that's financially responsible to my family.

I know if I put my mind to it, I can figure it out.