I’ve been doing a lot more reading than writing lately, chalk it up to taking the old addage of two eyes:one mouth and applying it to ‘new media’. One of the blogs I’m really excited about is The Happiness Project. Gretchen Rubin spent a year experimenting with doing what all the research, old wives’ tales, and wisdom of your Aunt Bertha have to share about what makes us humans happy.
She has continued to blog about her trials, successes, and life. Since EconGrrl is all about living your values, Ms. Rubin has a lot to share with us. I especially like today’s post about asking for help. Ask! It gives your community a sure fire way to demonstrate connection and love with you. Community connections coupled with a strong sense of self is a key to EconGrrl’s happiness.
So, check out the Happiness Project, and leave your comments here as to what are the keys to your happiness.
Ciao!
Sometimes a concept takes a long time to percolate into it’s ‘home base’ in your brain.
My partner and I have been working with a tighter than usual budget lately and rooting out the cause was becoming a near obsession for me. We are settling into a new routine, trying to keep ‘good enough’ records without following a “Your Money or Your Life” level of detail. I get stressed, because I am the detail partner.
Through several of these discussions, he has, less than helpfully, stated that when we move he is going to look for a lower rent. Finally today, I was eating lunch, when it struck me that just $250 more per month really would grease the gears of our spending plan. We are meeting our needs; it is just taking more attention than I would like.
Well, we have been in our current house for five months now. Our current fixed costs (house related) are $400 higher than our last house. OF COURSE my partner wants to change that when our lease is up. I just couldn’t see the connection, because the spending plan change didn’t ache until these past two months.
I derive two life.hacks from this situation: PATIENCE with my process and my husband’s different process and two REMEMBER TO ENJOY my newer, brighter, bigger space. I chose to spend a significantly bigger portion of my monthly money on our physical space. I just have to remember that when I am turning down invitations out at the end of the month.
Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used by Peter Block
My review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
I had a newer copy and found it invaluable to my practice. I lent it out two years ago and have only just replaced it with this score from Amazon’s marketplace. I am looking forward to renewing my acquaintance with this book!
View all my reviews.
Hello EconGrrls & EconGents!
I have hesitated to write about the economy. All my economics and sustainability mindset have screamed for a ‘market correction’, but they are just painful. I was waiting to have solutions, or at least hopeful bits, to share before wading into the conversation on what we have going on in the US economy-wise.
Thank you Green America (formerly Co-op America) for giving us a starting place with topic:
Solutions from the Green Economy
January 15, 2008
Everyone now understands that the economy is broken.
While many name the mortgage and credit-default-swap crises as culprits, they are only the most recent indicators of an economy with fatal design flaws. Our economy has long been based on what economist Herman Daly calls “uneconomic growth” where increases in the GDP come at an expense in resources and well-being that is worth more than the goods and services provided. When GNP growth exacerbates social and environmental problems—from sweatshop labor to manufacturing toxic chemicals—every dollar of GNP growth reduces well-being for people and the planet, and we’re all worse off.
Our fatally flawed economy creates economic injustice, poverty, and environmental crises. It doesn’t have to be that way. We can create a green economy: one that serves people and the planet and offers antidotes to the current breakdown.
Here are six green-economy solutions to today’s economic mess.
1. Green Energy—Green Jobs
A crucial starting place to rejuvenate our economy is to focus on energy. It’s time to call in the superheroes of the green energy revolution—energy efficiency, solar and wind power, and plug-in hybrids—and put their synergies to work with rapid, large-scale deployment. This is a powerful way to jumpstart the economy, spur job creation (with jobs that can’t be outsourced), declare energy independence, and claim victory over the climate crisis.
2. Clean Energy Victory Bonds
How are we going to pay for this green energy revolution? We at Green America propose Clean Energy Victory Bonds. Modeled after victory bonds in World War II, Americans would buy these bonds from the federal government to invest in large-scale deployment of green energy projects, with particular emphasis in low-income communities hardest hit by the broken economy. These would be long-term bonds, paying an annual interest rate, based in part on the energy and energy savings that the bonds generate. During WWII, 85 million Americans bought over $185 billion in bonds—that would be almost $2 trillion in today’s dollars.
3. Reduce, Reuse, Rethink
Living lightly on the Earth, saving resources and money, and sharing (jobs, property, ideas, and opportunities) are crucial principles for restructuring our economy. This economic breakdown is, in part, due to living beyond our means—as a nation and as individuals. With the enormous national and consumer debt weighing us down, we won’t be able to spend our way out of this economic problem. Ultimately, we need an economy that’s not dependent on unsustainable growth and consumerism. So it’s time to rethink our over-consumptive lifestyles, and turn to the principles of elegant simplicity, such as planting gardens, conserving energy, and working cooperatively with our neighbors to share resources and build resilient communities.
4. Go Green and Local
When we do buy, it is essential that those purchases benefit the green and local economy—so that every dollar helps solve social and environmental problems, not create them. Our spending choices matter. We can support our local communities by moving dollars away from conventional agribusiness and big-box stores and toward supporting local workers, businesses, and organic farmers.
5. Community Investing
All over the country, community investing banks, credit unions, and loan funds that serve hard-hit communities are strong, while the biggest banks required bailouts. The basic principles of community investing keep such institutions strong: Lenders and borrowers know each other. Lenders invest in the success of their borrowers—with training and technical assistance along with loans. And the people who provide the capital to the lenders expect reasonable, not speculative, returns. If all banks followed these principles, the economy wouldn’t be in the mess it’s in today.
6. Shareowner Activism
When you own stock, you have the right and responsibility to advise management to clean up its act. Had GM listened to shareholders warning that relying on SUVs would be its downfall, it would have invested in greener technologies, and would not have needed a bailout. Had CitiGroup listened to its shareowners, it would have avoided the faulty mortgage practices that brought it to its knees. Engaged shareholders are key to reforming conventional companies for the transition to this new economy – the green economy that we are building together.
It’s time to move from greed to green.
–Alisa Gravitz
In the traditions of several of my friends, we are in the season of the New Year. Maybe it is indoctrination by the American school system or the sudden smell of fallen leaves, but Autumn seems to me a much more natural, intuitive place to mark the beginning and ending of things than mid-winter.
I encourage my clients and friends to recognize their internal seasons, as much as our societal ones. If in May or Sept, you realize you need to make a break with the past and welcome a new future, then do it! Have a New Year’s party, make a resolution, an adjustment, or even an acknowledgment of your current state.
Autumn has always been a time of beginning for me. It’s resonance is even deeper this year as we live with Hurricane Ike’s prunings piled on every lawn and the changes to my town wrought in that one night slowly reveal themselves as we reassemble our routines. Some of the old routines still serve, and are being reestablished, while others no longer match our reality and need be let go of, perhaps mournfully, perhaps in relief, but let go of either way.
Happy New Year!
* Both the Ethiopian Orthodox & the Hebrew calendar begin in Autumn. Their months also follow the cycles of the moon, instead of the sun.
In July I had the pleasure of speaking to a group of remarkably on the ball women entrepreneurs. They are all members of the Direct Selling Women’s Alliance. They exemplified the creativity that is required to create one’s life with a balance of work, family, personal, and social aspects. Two things all these women had in common were a great sense of humor and a clear purpose for choosing their business.
The local chapter meets monthly, in locations that move widely within the spread of our great city, so all members will get some opportunity to attend with a short commute. For more information about the Houston Chapter of DSWA contact Jennifer Clanton: athenasbyjennifer AT yahoo DOT com.