A lot of things that save money are also good for the environment. The more things you do, the more it compounds which just means more money stays in your pocket. Here are a few things that I find that are not very hard, but made a huge impact. I also live in a (small) city, so some of these may be harder to apply than others if you have a different situation. They are in no particular order.
- Hang your clothes instead of drying. It cost me $30 to make a clothes line. On average it costs between .25 and .75 PER load just for the electricity to run a dryer. This doesn't include amortized the wear and tear of a dryer. When I calculated that, it was over $1 per load I ran in the dryer. With 2 kids we run a lot of laundry. With 5 loads per week (conservative), I save at least $20 per month.
- Bike instead of drive. I bike to work everyday. I started by only biking when I felt like it. Turns out, biking is WAY more pleasurable than driving in a city. I live about 4 miles away from work, and it turns out it was also faster for me. This not only saved me on gas, insurance, and repairs, but once I started biking frequently we found that we didn't need 2 cars (we sold mine). This easily saves us over $1,000/year. This doesn't factor in any of the health and emotional (I'm much happier after I bike) benefits I get.
- Repair instead of replace. I come from a family of incredible unhandy people. However, times have changed. You know how easily it to repair an appliance or something in the house etc now with youtube? It's like doing a color by numbers. I literally just search the problem (with model number if it's a gadget) and 9 times out of 10 there are 50 videos of people fixing the EXACT same thing.
- Buy clothes second hand. By no means are all our clothes second hand. Maybe we're fortunate, but at our thrift stores there are a lot of clothes that are literally brand new. This saves TONS of money (especially with young kids), is way better for the environment, but equally importantly to us, is better for humanity. Read up on the impacts that fast fashion is having on the makers.
- Grow your own food. I have a 6ftx10ft balcony that I put a hydroponic system on (once again, it's easy, just youtube). I have 6 buckets for large plants and a vertical greens wall. I get 1-2 heads of lettuce and a kale plant/week and last year I got 100+lbs of tomatoes, 50 lbs of eggplant, about 20 lbs of peppers. This doesn't include unlimited amounts of fresh basil, oregano, thyme, etc.
- I also have a bunch of fruit trees (12 or so) on my very small (1/8 acre including my house). I've made it into an urban food forest (if interest read up on permaculture). I have apples, pears, peaches, cherries, plums, apricots, nectarines, almonds, and figs here. It's crazy how much food you get from dwarf and semi dwarf trees.
- Make your own food. We make our own yogurt, granola, bread, etc. The quality is way better than the store and it is also substantially cheaper.
- Learn to cook. It's really not that hard - like anything it just takes practice. As you improve you'll spend less and less on processed foods and eating out. Both my wife and I are (now - it just takes practice) good cooks, and like most things that you're good at we both find it very enjoyable. It also means that we eat much healthier than most other people we know.
- Eat less meat. Pound for pound, veggies are way cheaper than meat. Even just one or two days a week will make an impact on your budget.
- Just stop buying as much crap. We instituted a 7 day waiting period for any non essential purchases. Why? Well, we were impulse buying things that we thought we needed to find that we weren't actually using them like we thought. This was filling our house with a bunch of crap that just stressed us out. It's compounded with kids. Just get rid of it (donate it if possible). Then stop buying it. We convinced ourselves that stuff was making us happy. It turned out it was quite the opposite. You need a lot less than you think. Stuff is bad habit - we're much happier with less of it.
Hope this helps!
April 17, 2019 at 11:46AM
