When I first started working from home, 99% of my business came from word-of-mouth – a design here, a few blog posts there. I started every workday by spending a few hours writing cold emails to friends of friends and pitching to freelance gigs found on various sites and Facebook groups. Finding work was as […]
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As a homeowner, the process of renovating, remodeling, and upgrading your property to create your own private corner of paradise can be an expensive hobby.
The silver lining however, is that some upgrades can help pay for themselves over the long run by saving you money on your home insurance bill.
Granted, the renovations that typically help you qualify for an insurance discount are of the less glamorous or aesthetically pleasing variety, but it’s still money in your pocket. And when it comes to home ownership, every penny is important.
Here are some of the projects to keep in mind when considering home improvements that can help pay you back with a discount on homeowners insurance.
This one is (or should be) a no-brainer for homeowners everywhere. There are about 2.5 million burglaries annually, and 66 percent of them are home break-ins.
Naturally, burglars are more attracted to properties that don’t have a home security system. In fact, homes without such protection are 300 percent more likely to be targeted.
“Installing a home security system reduces the odds of a burglary and homeowners insurance gives you a reduction on your premiums if you do so,” says McCall Robison, who manages a home blog for Best Company that regularly focuses on cutting insurance costs and home improvements.
In addition, some home security systems will earn more of an insurance reduction than others. To max out the discount offered by your insurance provider, says Robison, your home security system typically must include central monitoring that’s connected to emergency services. The insurance company wants to know that in the event of a break-in, an alarm will be triggered immediately and authorities will be notified.
It’s also important to keep in mind that the home alarm systems of today are far more sophisticated and advanced than the simple burglar alarms of decades ago. The days of a security system focused only on theft are quickly disappearing.
Today, security systems include everything from sensors in your basement or near your water heater to detect water leaks to monitors that let you know if your pipes are freezing, says Jim Hyatt, senior vice president of personal lines at Arbella Insurance Group, in Quincy, Mass.
“Certainly, security systems are a great way to deter burglaries, but the bigger risk is fire and water,” says Hyatt. “Water is the other top cause of people having disasters happening to their homes.”
“A lot of alarm systems 20 to 30 years ago were just burglar and fire alarms,” added Hyatt. “Today it’s more common to also have water leak detection systems.”
Insurance companies will provide credits ranging from five to 10 percent for homeowners with security systems, says Hyatt.
With increasingly severe storm events occurring around the country and the world each year, many homeowners are installing generators to protect themselves. It’s a smart move on many levels.
“During some of these winter storms, utility companies have a very difficult time keeping up with power outages,” Hyatt said, and a generator can keep the lights on during such an event.
Perhaps equally important, a generator purchase will not only save a few dollars on your insurance, it will also help prevent expenditures on additional losses such as repairing burst pipes during extremely cold weather and redoing floors when the pipes leak everywhere.
Once again, the amount of the insurance discount related to the generator installation varies, but can be anywhere from four percent to 10 percent, says Robison, who adds that they can also increase your home’s resale value.
If your roof is 10 or more years old, it’s considered a substantial risk by many insurance companies, says Robison.
“This results in higher premiums on your homeowners’ insurance,” Robison explained. “If this is the case, consider replacing your roof for a lower premium. Roof issues are the main cause of water damage and leakage, so your homeowners insurance will heavily consider a sturdy roof as a worthwhile discount on your premiums.”
Replacing or simply reinforcing a roof with newer, stronger material makes the most sense if you live in an area prone to heavy snow, rain, or natural disasters (think: hurricanes and tornadoes).
For those who do live in a dangerous and disaster-prone area, the roof is not the only item that can result in a discount.
Shatterproof glass and storm shutters are among the additional precautionary changes that provide protection during a disaster and translate into a reduced premium, said Robison. The states where home owners are most likely to get a hefty discount for these additional improvements are Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Louisiana.
Do you own a home that was built in the late 1800s or early 1900s? Even if it was updated in the 1940s or 1950s, the plumbing and electrical are still several decades old, says Hyatt.
“You’re most likely paying a pretty high price for homeowners’ insurance,” said Hyatt, who notes completely pulling out the old wiring and upgrading it to current standards may be another way to cut your insurance bill.
Updating an old electrical system, like knob and tube wiring, can lower your home insurance premiums. Photo: House and Hammer
Ensuring that there’s a safe heating source in your home goes a long way toward keeping insurance premiums down as well. While a wood-burning stove may seem like a nice feature on a cold winter night, they account for a significant number of fires, says Robison.
“Insurance providers raise your rates if you have one,” says Robison. “Taking it out could save you anywhere from $50 to $150 on your premiums, depending on your provider. Also, not having a wood-burning stove makes your home less accident prone and much safer, especially if you have children in the home.”
Renovating your home is part of the joy of being a homeowner (at least for many people). But if you’re embarking on such changes, it’s important to touch base with your home insurance provider and ensure you have adequate coverage going forward to protect all the money you’re spending.
“If you decide to do a major renovation and expand the square footage substantially and add a bathroom, then your house is different than it was before,” said Hyatt. “You don’t want to get caught not having enough insurance after spending $70,000.”
Related Articles:
The post Five Home Improvements Worth a Discount on Your Homeowners Insurance appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
Once a month (or so), I share a dozen things that have inspired me to greater personal, professional, and financial success in my life. I hope they bring similar success to your life.
“Don’t waste your time chasing butterflies. Mend your garden, and the butterflies will come.” – Mario Quintana
There are two ways of looking at success in the world.
One of them is the idea that success is something you have to chase. You have to pursue success by “faking it until you make it” and playing whatever games are necessary to get whatever rewards you are seeking.
Another is the idea that success is the result of preparing yourself so that the results you want come naturally, as do the accompanying rewards.
I used to believe strongly in the first route to success, that if you wanted success you needed to get out there now and grab it. What I’ve found, though, is that this kind of success often falls apart. It doesn’t last.
What lasts is the kind of success you built yourself, over time, by making yourself into a better person, the person that’s able to do something well. That takes a lot of time and effort, but that kind of success rarely fails.
I wish I understood the difference when I was younger.
Lately, I’ve been scheduling my day with twenty minute time blocks. I plan out my morning routine with twenty minute blocks. I plan my work day with twenty minute blocks (usually three blocks of work and one block of break time in a repeating loop).
Why twenty minute blocks? For some reason, it seems to fit everything really well. One hour blocks of work followed by twenty minute breaks tend to match up extremely well with how I work, as I tend to start losing focus after about an hour and twenty minutes is a great amount of time for a “reset,” giving me time to take a short walk or to eat a quick meal.
How do I do this? When I sit down to work, I start a one hour timer. When it goes off, I stop working and go do something else for twenty minutes, then I repeat this until the time I have blocked off for work is finished.
Twenty minute blocks have felt like magic. When the timer goes off, I feel done and ready for a break. When a twenty minute break has passed, I feel ready to give it a go again. It just matches how my life flows.
“You often feel tired, not because you’ve done too much, but because you’ve done too little of what sparks a light in you.” – Alexander Den Heijer
For me, mental tiredness usually comes from spending most of a day doing things that other people want me to do that are not in line with what I want to do. The more I do that, the more tired I tend to feel at the end of the day.
There are two solutions to this that I’ve found. One, find things that other people want you to do that you also want to do yourself. Ideally, you can get paid for this.
Two, live a life that enables you to at least have some time to do the things you want to do. That might mean living a more frugal life, for example, that enables you to work less. That might mean getting out of a difficult relationship. Whatever you need to do, find some room for yourself.
It’s almost a perfect equation for me. The more time I spend doing things that I truly want to be doing and the less time I spend doing things that I don’t want to be doing, the more alive and energetic I feel.
From the description:
Our leaders and institutions are failing us, but it’s not always because they’re bad or unethical, says venture capitalist John Doerr — often, it’s simply because they’re leading us toward the wrong objectives. In this practical talk, Doerr shows us how we can get back on track with “Objectives and Key Results,” or OKRs — a goal-setting system that’s been employed by the likes of Google, Intel and Bono to set and execute on audacious goals. Learn more about how setting the right goals can mean the difference between success and failure — and how we can use OKRs to hold our leaders and ourselves accountable.
So, what’s OKR? OKR is a way of setting goals that I’ve been playing around with lately. The idea is to set an objective – what you want to accomplish, in your own words – and a number of key results that describe that objective – numbers you will achieve if you meet that overall objective.
So, let’s say I want to be healthier – that’s my objective. I might set a key result of “losing an average of 2 pounds per week this quarter” and/or “walking 500,000 steps this quarter” and/or “doing 360 minutes of planks this quarter” and so on. You get the idea. Try to make those numbers audacious and right on the edge of what you think it’s even possible to reach.
Then, after the quarter is over (and at the midway point, too), grade those objectives on a scale of 0 to 1, where 0 is no progress and 1 is complete achievement. So, if I walked 350,000 steps in that quarter, I would have a score of 0.7, or a 70%. I basically look at this as a school score on a 90/80/70/60% grading scale.
I’ve actually been doing this during the third quarter of the year, merging this idea with ideas I learned from Triggers by Marshall Goldsmith.
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” – Rumi
The only thing you truly have control over is yourself: your thoughts, your choices, your actions. You can’t control what nature does or what anyone else does. You can only control you.
If you throw all of your energy into changing the world, you probably won’t see a whole lot of success, for a number of reasons. One, you’re not putting your best self forward because you haven’t invested in improving yourself. Two, the world is generally indifferent to you and won’t change just because someone who hasn’t made themselves the best they can be is demanding change.
A much better approach is to focus on improving yourself. Make yourself better so that, in the moments when you have an opportunity to make change, it actually has an impact.
I like to think of this in terms of tossing rocks in a lake. An impatient person might throw handfuls of pebbles in immediately and create no lasting impact. A more patient person, on the other hand, will carefully select the right rock that will create big waves, and that invested time and effort will have a far bigger impact.
I recently visited the office of a friend who had each wall of his office covered in Idea Paint and I quickly realized the huge benefits that such an environment would have for me.
Idea Paint is basically paint that turns a wall into a whiteboard. You can write on it with dry erase markers and erase what you’ve written with dry erasers.
Every single wall of his office was painted with this stuff, which turned his entire office into a giant whiteboard, and he was really using it. There were notes and diagrams and to-do lists and other things everywhere. Brainstorming sessions, quick jottings, half-formed presentations… it was like he had dumped his brains out on the walls, and it was amazing.
I would really, really, really love to paint my home office with this stuff. If we ever do decide to build a new home and I have a home office, this is how I will paint the walls.
“You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” – Marcus Aurelius
The path of success in life isn’t in going out there and changing the world around you. You can’t really control those outside events; at best, you can influence them.
How does effective and lasting influence occur? It comes when someone with the right skills and traits pushes at the right place at the right moment.
Those right skills and right traits are built with time. They’re built with the constant choice to make yourself better. They aren’t found overnight.
Similarly, the right place at the right time is often found with a great deal of reflection and study and observing the world around you.
You control you. Improve yourself – your skills, your thinking, your ability to observe – and you’ll be ready for when the right moment comes.
From the description:
How you define Stephen Duneier depends on how you came to know him. Some define him as an expert institutional investor, while others know him as a large scale installation artist, avid outdoorsman, professor, decision strategist, coach, business leader, mindfulness extremist, author, speaker, daredevil or Guinness world record holder. In his talk, Stephen explains that what truly defines him aren’t titles, but an approach to decision making that transformed him from someone who struggled with simple tasks to a guy who is continuously achieving even his most ambitious dreams.
What’s the core message here? It’s kind of the theme of this edition of “A Dozen Pieces of Inspiration” – putting effort into improving yourself or improving your routine, even if that improvement is seemingly a tiny one (he refers to them as a “marginal adjustment”).
He does this by breaking down self-improvement gestures into really tiny bits – five or ten minute tasks. What can you do in five or ten minutes to move you just a little bit toward your goal? If you want to get healthier, maybe you could do pushups and jumping jacks for five minutes. If you want to learn a new topic, maybe you read a difficult book for ten minutes. When you’re done, you go off and do something else. (I kind of like twenty minute blocks, as I noted earlier.)
The key is marginal adjustment – just finding a little thing you can change in your daily routine and then sticking with that little change. Make that one change and keep making the decision to stick with it.
“If you want something you never had, you must be willing to do something you’ve never done.” – Thomas Jefferson
If you want something new in your life, you can’t keep doing things the way you’ve always been doing them.
If you don’t want financial stress, you can’t keep spending money like you always have. If you don’t want career stress, you can’t keep staying in the same job doing the same things. If you don’t want relationship stress, you can’t keep treating your partners the same way you always have.
You have to try something new.
Trying something new isn’t easy. It’s often hard and it’s often scary. It can also feel like you’re not making any progress, especially after the “honeymoon” period is over.
Again, I’ll repeat: doing things the way you’ve always done them will give you the same results you’ve always had. If you don’t like those results, you either need to do things differently or learn to live with them.
“If you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.” ― Toni Morrison
There comes a point in the life of most people when they realize that they have “enough,” and that continuing to chase more and more and more is an endless road that will never lead to happiness.
At that point, many people begin to struggle with purpose. Why am I doing this? What’s the use? They either find a state of contentment or a state of frustration.
For me, I’ve found that the idea that I can help others once I’ve found that sense of “enough” to be incredibly exhilarating and inspiring. The constant endless road toward “more” leaves me feeling drained, but knowing I have “enough” and anything more that I achieve will help lift others is exciting for me.
This comes from The Last Waltz, a Martin Scorsese documentary covering the last concert given by The Band, an influential musical group in the 1960s and 1970s. The concert featured a lot of guest performers on many of the band’s well known songs, but this one takes the cake.
The song itself is a good performance, but when the Staples Singers, particularly Mavis Staples, join in, the song goes to a whole new level. Her voice is amazing and the song just flows along.
There’s this sense of underlying joy here, where you can feel everyone enjoying themselves while performing beautiful music. That brings me back to this performance over and over again.
“Success isn’t owned. It is leased, and rent is due everyday.” – J.J. Watt
Our natural, default state, when we’re not working for anything and just wandering through life, is usually not nearly enough to get us the things we want in life. In order to have those things we want, we have to become something more than that default state. We have to become better than that.
The catch is that the process of becoming better isn’t just something you do once and call it good enough. Rather, it’s something that you always do. You work on it until it’s a part of you and it’s ingrained in you, but that natural default version of you still lurks inside.
If you don’t keep an eye on yourself, if you don’t keep working for that better you, you will slide backwards. Being a better version of yourself is a daily thing, not a “once in a while” thing.
The post Inspiration from Mario Quintana, Toni Morrison, J.J. Watt, and More appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
This may be your chance to get your foot inside the door.
Insider Inc., a digital media website based in New York City, has internships across all of its platforms.
You could be the next lifestyle intern and write about celebrities, select the “deal of the day” as the Insider Picks commerce intern or be the video writing intern about pets.
Less than half of the internships list “paid” in their job description.
However, the opportunities listed as paid include food and travel writing intern, finance editorial intern, social media intern and sports editorial internship.
Keep in mind that you do have rights and unpaid internships may be illegal.
It’s the Big Apple or bust for all but two of these internships.
You can skip the skyscrapers and opt for the California coast instead as a tech editorial intern in San Francisco or as an evening news intern in Los Angeles.
The majority of the internships run for six months with a preferred 40-hour workweek commitment.
Start and end dates are not specified.
No deadlines are listed. But as with anything, the sooner the better. So if you’re interested, apply now.
Unlike some entry-level internships, most of these opportunities require experience, degrees and specific skills.
Prior experience and knowledge of the beat, as well as a strong portfolio will boost your application.
Insider Inc. says many of its writers and editors started out as interns, so this could really be your big break.
Get ready to hustle and be a cog that turns the media machine.
These gigs are fast-paced, and interns don’t get coffee, file or make copies. Instead, they’re expected to collaborate, generate content and get their hands dirty in meaningful work, according to the postings.
The best way to get an internship is to give potential employers everything they need up front.
Make sure your resume includes all relevant work experience and always include a cover letter.
During my interview at The Penny Hoarder, I was told my quirky cover letter piqued the editor’s interest. Cover letters will get you everywhere, so do not skip them.
Any story or blog links and portfolios of your relevant work give you credibility and help you stand out.
Include references, as some employers go full steam ahead and may contact references before they even call you.
Read the job description carefully and include every requested detail.
Remember, applying for an internship can’t hurt and if you don’t get it this time, you can always try again.
Stephanie Bolling is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She prefers the Sunshine State to the Big Apple.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
Ecommerce websites live and die by their conversions.
For those of you who have a high volume of traffic to your website, that’s great news. But traffic alone doesn’t generate sales.
Is your website traffic translating to conversions?
There are certain metrics you can use to measure this. Look at your bounce rates. Analyze your shopping cart abandonment rates.
If your website visitors aren’t converting, your ecommerce site won’t make money.
Don’t get me wrong: the products you’re selling might be amazing. That’s not necessarily the issue here.
The design of your website and the checkout process might be what’s hurting you.
For the most part, simple website designs have higher conversion rates. This same concept needs to be applied to your checkout process.
The information in this guide will help you identify any flaws with your checkout procedure that could be hindering your conversions.
If you have just launched a startup company and are in the process of designing your website for the first time, these useful tips and best practices will help you as well.
Here’s what you need to do to design a checkout process that converts.
For website visitors to make a purchase, they need to be able to navigate to your checkout page.
Once someone decides to buy, they’ll add the items they want to their shopping cart. In a perfect world, you want them to continue shopping so they spend more money.
But if the checkout buttons aren’t clearly labeled, the customer may ultimately leave the items in the cart without buying them.
This could be why your shopping cart abandonment rates are so high. Instead, include checkout buttons on both the top and bottom of the screen.
Check out this example from the Champs Sports website:
Positioning the checkout buttons in two places ensures the visitor will see and have access to both buttons.
The word “checkout” will stay in their line of vision, regardless of where they’re looking on the screen.
I also want you to notice that the location of the shopping cart on the right side of the screen allows the customer to continue shopping on the left.
This increases the likelihood that the average order amount will be higher and conversion rates remain high as well.
You can implement the same strategy on your ecommerce page to drive sales.
Security needs to be a top priority for your ecommerce site. If your pages appear untrustworthy, people won’t want to buy anything.
In the past five years alone, 46% of people in the United States have been affected by credit card fraud.
There’s a high probability that nearly half of your website visitors have experienced this. Even if they haven’t personally fallen victims to fraud, I’m sure they know at least one person who has.
This puts people on high alert.
If your checkout process isn’t secure, people won’t feel safe entering their credit card information, which is ultimately what you need to make money.
You must understand and implement the top elements that add credibility to your website.
All pages of the checkout process must be secure. It’s also in your best interest to include security badges, such as Norton, McAfee, or whatever else you’re using to protect your customers.
Here’s a common mentality I see from ecommerce sites all the time. If it costs you money to ship your products, that means you should charge your customers for shipping, right?
Wrong.
While this may sound like a reasonable justification to you, your customers don’t see it that way.
In fact, shipping costs play a major role in why shopping carts are abandoned in the United States:
Do not charge your customers for shipping.
But you still need to make sure you’re turning a profit, even if you’re offering free shipping.
You’re better off raising the prices of your items so that the shipping costs are built into the base prices. Psychologically, this won’t impact your conversions.
That’s because customers won’t be surprised when they see additional charges when they check out. If your product is listed for $50 on the site, that’s what they expect to pay. But if the costs add up to $70 with taxes and shipping, it’ll hurt your conversions.
I’m not expecting you to be unrealistic here. Don’t ship your customers a piano overnight for free.
All I’m saying is you shouldn’t charge for standard ground shipping. If a customer wants the delivery to be expedited, you can let them pay an additional charge.
A website visitor is ready to buy something. They’ve already made up their mind.
Don’t give them a chance to change their mind and abandon the cart. If your checkout process is long and complicated, you won’t have high conversion rates.
But if you can simplify the process by eliminating unneeded steps, you’ll make more money.
Ask yourself what information you really need from the customer to complete the purchase. Do you need the customer’s name?
Yes, but you don’t have to ask for it several times.
If a name is required to process the payment method or shipping information, don’t make them type those details twice.
Research shows that websites with fewer form fields have a higher performance rate during checkout:
Only ask for information required to complete the transaction.
If the customer’s shipping and billing addresses are the same, they should be able to check off a box indicating that—instead of having to type their address twice, for shipping and billing.
That alone shaves an extra step off the process and significantly reduces the number of form fields.
I get it. You want to learn as much information about your customers as possible.
In a perfect world, everyone who visits your site will create a customer profile. This allows you to monitor their browsing behavior and suggest items to them based on this behavior and their purchase history.
Customer profiles allow you to segment your audience based on the customers’ locations and make it easier for you to add subscribers to your ecommerce email list.
When a customer is browsing from their customer profile, they can also place repeat orders with just a couple of clicks.
Customers can save their payment information to their accounts, which reduces the number of steps in the checkout process and makes it easier for them to convert.
If you’re encouraging customers to create a profile, I’m all for it.
But there is a big difference between encouraging and forcing. Does a website visitor need to have a customer profile to convert? Absolutely not.
Forcing people to create a profile could be hurting your conversions.
People want to buy something. Let them give you their money.
Don’t prioritize your content marketing strategy over actual sales. Here’s an example of how a global giant Walmart implemented this strategy:
It’s always a good idea to follow the lead of the companies that have had major success in a particular space.
Offering a guest checkout is also reduces unnecessary steps, which I discussed earlier. Creating a customer profile is not necessary to complete a purchase, so don’t make it so. Otherwise it will turn some customers away.
It’s no secret that we’re living in a mobile world. Ecommerce brands need to recognize this if they want to succeed.
In fact, 62% of people who own a smartphone used their devices to make purchases online within the last six months alone.
It’s estimated that in the next three years, mobile retail sales will control 54% of the ecommerce market share in the United States.
Why is this the case?
It’s because technology has made it more convenient to shop from mobile devices.
People aren’t walking around with laptops in their pockets all day. But phones are seemingly always within an arm’s reach, if they’re not already glued to the consumers’ hands.
If someone visits your ecommerce site from a mobile phone, they need to have a great experience.
If your site isn’t optimized for mobile devices, there’s a slim chance you’ll be able to generate conversions.
Just look at these numbers.
The design of your mobile site can be the difference between customers buying something or bouncing and buying from your competitors instead.
But 74% of mobile users are more likely to revisit websites that are mobile-friendly.
If your site is properly optimized, it will increase the chances of your website visitors not only converting but also coming back and buying again in the future.
You can never truly be sure your checkout process is designed for the maximum number of conversions unless you put your theory to the test.
The best way to determine which elements are driving the highest conversions is through A/B testing.
If you’ve never run an A/B test before, the concept is very simple. You start by identifying one element of the page you want to test.
Then 50% of your site traffic will see version A, while the other 50% will see version B. Compare the conversion rates between the two variations to see which one yielded the best results.
When testing the checkout page, it makes sense to start with the “purchase/buy now” button, or whatever your final CTA button is that completes the transaction.
There are lots of potential tests you can run on this button:
Test only one element at a time.
For example, let’s say you test the conversion button at the bottom right side of the screen compared to the bottom left side of the screen.
Once you have conclusive results, you can implement that change and then move on to testing the wording of the button, e.g., “purchase” versus “buy.”
Ultimately, the most important aspect of a checkout procedure is the payment step.
Without the payment step, transactions can’t happen.
From your perspective, you may think it’s in your best interest to accept only certain credit cards. I know you pay higher transaction fees for some cards compared to others.
That said, you need to accept as many payment methods as possible, including alternative forms of payment:
Let’s not get carried away here. In 2018, it’s probably not necessary to accept Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
But in addition to all major credit cards, you need to accept alternatives such as Apple Pay and PayPal.
You don’t want your customers to leave your site without buying anything because you don’t accept the payment method they want to use.
Even if they have the options you accept, they still may go to one of your competitors instead so they can use their favorite method of payment.
The days of accepting only Visa and Mastercard are over. It’s time for you to adapt and add these other payment options to your checkout process.
If you’re driving lots of traffic to your ecommerce site but those visitors aren’t converting, you need to analyze the design of your checkout process.
Add multiple checkout buttons to different areas of the page.
Customers care about security, so the entire checkout procedure needs to be safe and secure.
Do not charge for shipping. Eliminate unnecessary steps, and reduce the number of form fields required to make a purchase.
Don’t force your site visitors to create customer profiles. Have a guest checkout option.
Optimize your ecommerce site for mobile devices.
Use A/B tests to see which design elements maximize your conversion rates.
And accept as many forms of payment as possible.
If you follow these best practices, your ecommerce checkout process will yield high conversions and, ultimately, increase your profits.
What elements of your checkout process do you need to change to drive higher ecommerce conversions?
Whenever I’m on a road trip and I don’t happen to have an audiobook or a podcast available, I’ll spin the radio dial and listen for something interesting. I actually really like local radio shows that cover things that are actually going on in that area, so I’m usually seeking out things like that.
One thing I often hear as I’m spinning the radio dial are advertisements for all kinds of things: local restaurants and car dealerships and so on. I usually keep turning the dial, but for some reason, I always stop on the ads talking about people’s money.
You’ve heard them – they’re the kinds of ads that talk about getting out of debt really quickly or building wealth quickly or things like actually turning your debt into wealth.
I’m always amazed at the incredible claims that these programs make. They really do make it sound like all you have to do is sign up for this program or go to this seminar and suddenly all of your financial problems are solved.
The thing is, all of them are usually selling some minor variation on the same plan. It’s a super simple financial plan that I absolutely guarantee will get you out of debt really quickly and help you start building wealth faster than you know it. All you have to do is start following the plan.
Here it is – the core secret behind all of those “get out of debt quick” and “get rich quick” plans that sound enticing on the radio. Are you ready?
Spend less than you earn, make that gap as big as you can, and do something smart with that gap.
That’s it. That’s what every single one of those programs boils down to, with the “do something smart” varying a little bit but usually starting with “paying off your debts as fast as humanly possible starting with your highest interest debts.”
The truth is that this basic advice is also at the backbone of virtually every personal finance book you’ll check out at the library, too. Sure, they might vary a little in terms of what “do something smart” actually means, but the overall framework of spending way less than you earn and doing something smart with the difference is the key to all of it.
So, how do you make the magic happen?
You start by cutting your spending hard. That’s what all of these plans will end up suggesting to you, whether they do it subtly and lightly or they push it hard.
As I mentioned earlier, almost all financial plans you read or hear about or watch boil down to you having some freed-up resources to get rid of your debt and start saving for the future. How do you get those freed-up resources? There are two routes – earning more or spending less – and only one of them is immediately available to most people. You can always choose to spend less because that’s a choice you control, whereas your income is usually at least partially out of your control. Thus, cutting your spending is usually the first step, as you have to have some resources to start with.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s no question that earning more is a good thing when it comes to building lasting financial success, but you can’t just flip it on and off like a switch. If you could, everyone would be earning a mint… but that’s obviously not the case. Keep working toward improving your career and your earnings, but don’t use dreams of a big salary in the future as a justification to spend money today. If you want quick results, you’ve got to start with what you have, and what you have is the ability to cut back on your spending.
There are a lot of ways to do this. Switch to buying all store brand items when you go grocery shopping. Start shopping at a discount grocery store. Cut your cable and go with Netflix. Cut your landline. Switch cell phone carriers. Shop around for better insurance. Eat at home more often. The number of things that a person can do in their life to cut spending is practically infinite. You just need to find the things that you can cut hard that have a minimal impact on your life.
If you do that seriously, you’re going to suddenly have plenty of money to stop living paycheck to paycheck and start knocking down those debts rapidly and then, when the debts are gone, start building wealth.
The key to all of this is in the word “seriously.” If your “cuts” add up to stopping at Starbucks one less time this month, you’re not going to see any change in your life for a very long time. You have to cut and cut hard.
Every time you see a little extra in your checking account from those cuts, start paying down a debt. Start making extra payments on your highest interest rate credit card, as big as you can make them. When that’s gone, move on to the next one. When they’re all gone, celebrate… but keep going, because now you have the opportunity to build wealth. Start throwing a lot of money into your 401(k) or your Roth IRA. Start saving for a home. Start saving for whatever your goals are.
It is that simple. It’s kind of like magic. Just get a grip on your spending today and keep that grip and you’ll be in far, far better financial shape down the road.
If you’re sitting there thinking to yourself that this is obvious, you’re right. That doesn’t change the fact that 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and much of the remaining 22% have some form of debt.
It might seem “obvious” and “simple,” but if that’s true, why isn’t everyone doing it?
It’s because although the strategy is “obvious” and “simple,” it’s hard to actually execute. It’s easy to talk the talk. It’s much harder to walk the walk.
If you can just start doing it, though, your life will change. If you can manage to spend less than you earn paycheck after paycheck, month after month, year after year, you will see profound changes in your financial life. Your debts will melt away like ice cream on a hot summer day. Your account coffers will start growing like a hungry twelve year old.
All it takes is spending a little less and sticking with that change, and then, maybe later, earning a little more. Then, take that money you’re not spending and that extra money you’re now earning and do something smart with it. Be patient and keep doing that and your life will change.
It’s amazing how something so simple, something that virtually anyone can do, can have such profound results, but that’s exactly how it works.
I should know. Several years ago, I was in debt up to my eyeballs, living in a tiny apartment, with tens of thousands of dollars in student loans, two car loans, and three maxed out credit cards. Today, I own my own home and have zero debt. The first step I took – and the only change I made in the first couple of years when I was making the debt vanish – was to simply cut back on my spending, cut back seriously, and stick with the cutbacks. That’s it. Eventually, I figured out how to improve my earnings a little, but by then, the snowball was already rolling down the mountain.
See? It’s magic. And you can do it, too. All you have to do is move from thinking about it to doing it.
Good luck!
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The post The Magic System for Getting Out of Debt and Building Wealth Quickly! appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
It’s time to call in some backup and talk with a credit counselor. Not one of those credit repair scams you’ve probably seen or heard ads for — I’m talking about a reputable, nonprofit debt management agency.
After an initial call or visit, a credit counselor can assist you in disputing negative items on your report or help you manage your debt through a payoff plan. A legitimate debt management plan shouldn’t charge more than $50 per month.
The most nerve-wracking part is making the first appointment. I did this a few years ago when I was feeling crushed by my credit card, student loan and small-business debt.
My counselor asked me a ton of questions about my debt. Balances, interest rates, minimum payments. She asked about my checking and savings account balances, and what I was paying in estimated taxes each quarter because I was self-employed. She asked about my rent costs. My utilities. If I hadn’t signed up for this, I would have thought it was invasive.
She crunched some numbers and sighed a little. “You just need to keep going,” she said, explaining that my credit was good, my payment history was solid and my interest rates were fairly low. The best course of action would be to stay the course and keep making whatever payments I could.
This might be the same news you’ll get if you call a credit counselor. But you’ve likely been looking at this debt so much that you need an impartial third party to review your situation.
It was hard to accept that a debt management plan couldn’t help me then. Like you, I wanted a plan. An answer. Any answer.
The reality was that I had to form a plan on my own. I tackled small balances first to clear them away, and then moved on to debt that had higher interest rates. But the real key was to stay motivated. It’s going to be a long road out from under this debt, whether you work with a credit counselor or on your own. As you rebuild your payment history, your score will go up. The zero interest transfer offers will return. You can keep transferring the balance and throwing money at your debt for as long as you have to.
And for the next few years, that’s going to have to be OK. Because even if it takes years, there will be an end to that journey. If you can stay motivated, you’ll be well on your way to freedom from debt.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
Travelling abroad can be exhausting – so wouldn’t it be nice to get the VIP treatment and relax in a private space away from the crowds? From comfy seats to cocktails, Moneywise finds out what’s on offer at airport lounges and whether it’s worth investing
Airport lounges are no longer exclusive hideaways for high-flying executives and passengers travelling first- class – anyone can get some pre-flight peace for a few quid. Alongside the buffet, booze and free wi-fi, some airport lounges offer some swanky extras. The SkyTeam lounge at Heathrow Terminal 4, for example, has a Clarins Wellness area and PlayStation room, while Sleep ’n Fly in Dubai International has igloo-style sleep pods.
But when considering whether to book an airport lounge, it’s important to understand the difference between airline and airport lounges.
Airline lounges tend to offer the most exclusive facilities, with massages, sleeping areas and showers typically available alongside rest areas with unlimited food and drink. But most airline lounges are restricted to first- and business-class passengers, and frequent flyers.
Airport lounges, on the other hand, are much more accessible. Brands such as Plaza Premium, No1 Lounges, and Swissport run facilities in airports all over the world, and these are open to everyone – at a price. In general, you get what you pay for; prices range from about £20 to more than £45 a visit.
If you just fly a couple of times a year, you can buy a lounge pass for the airport or airports you’re travelling through on a one-off basis. But the big question is: is it worth it?
Tom Bourlet, travel blogger at Spaghettitraveller.com, reckons it is.
“The cost is normally around the £25 mark, which might sound steep, but as airport costs all start to add up, it seems to be worth it by the end,” he says.
“You get a private wi-fi connection, which is a lot faster than the basic free one everyone uses in the airport. You get a large range of food, both hot and cold, while there are unlimited drinks – not a bad perk if you are a few hours early. Depending on the airport, you can normally get much more comfy seating, plenty of space and your own private booth.”
Customers on lengthy layovers will arguably benefit from lounge access more than people who simply arrive early for their flight. You can normally pay for lounge entry on the door but, with lounges often capping the number of people admitted at any one time, it’s best to book ahead. This can save you money, too. For example, the No1 Lounge in Gatwick’s North Terminal costs £32 per adult and £18 per child if booked online, but £40 and £20 respectively if you just turn up.
You can save even more money if you buy a pass via a cashback site such as Quidco.com or TopCashback.co.uk. At the time of writing, Quidco pays 11% cashback on No1 Lounge passes, bringing the cost at Gatwick down to £28.48, while TopCashback pays 11.55%. Other offers on Quidco include 10% cashback on Lounge Pass sales and 8% cashback on Executive Lounges.
Sites such as LoungePass.com and LoungeBuddy.co.uk are a great way to compare the different lounges at any airport you will be flying to, from or through.
Manchester airport’s Aspire lounge (above)
“We provide customer reviews, photos, and other information to help travellers decide whether the lounge is right for them, whether they’re looking for a place to grab a bite, get some work done, relax, or all of the above,” says Brent Griffith, co-founder of LoungeBuddy.
“When you book lounge access with us, we save you a spot in the lounge so that you won’t be turned away. There are also certain lounges that you can purchase access to through LoungeBuddy that are not available to the general public elsewhere, such as the Lounge@B in Dubai and Lufthansa Business Lounges.”
Regular travellers should investigate annual membership. There are two main options here – an annual pass for a particular lounge brand or schemes offering access to multiple lounge brands.
Aspire Lounge annual membership costs £259.99 (via Executivelounges.com) for unlimited access to any participating Aspire or Swissport lounges in the UK, Canada, Denmark, and the Netherlands. A big advantage of Aspire Lounge membership is that you can bring a guest each time for free.
However, Priority Pass membership (via Prioritypass.com) will be a better option for many people. It offers access to more than 1,200 lounges in more than 500 cities across 130 countries. The lounges are run by various brands, including Plaza Premium and No1 Lounges.
Standard membership costs £69 a year but you have to pay £15 per lounge visit. Standard Plus is better value – for £159 a year you get 10 free visits. If that’s not enough, Prestige membership costs £259 and offers unlimited lounge visits. Members can take a guest each time for £15. However, simply having a pass doesn't guarantee entry – if the lounge is busy, for example, you can still be refused access.
Jon White, director of marketing at Priority Pass’s parent company, Collinson, says that with individual lounge access costing up to £45 each time, frequent travellers can save money with annual membership.
“For example, our Priority Pass Standard Plus membership includes 10 free visits for a one-off cost of £159, which means you only need to make a couple of return trips each year to make it worthwhile,” he says, “With memberships, travellers are not only saving on lounge access – the selection of complimentary snacks and tipples available should be weighed up versus the cost of other food and beverage options in airports and transport hubs.”
There are a couple of ways to get Priority Pass membership for free – but you’ll need to be pretty well off. Membership is included with the £28 a month NatWest Reward Black current account, but this requires a sole income of at least £100,000, a NatWest mortgage of £500,000, or £100,000 saved or invested with NatWest. American Express’s Platinum card includes Priority Pass membership alongside worldwide travel insurance and hotel benefits – but it comes with a hefty £450 annual fee.
DragonPass (via En.dragonpass.com.cn) combines lounge access with discounts on airport dining, limousines, and meet-and-greet services. It covers about 970 lounges and has three membership options with its top-tier deal costing US$399 (£278) and offering unlimited lounge visits.
Before you book lounge access, check it’s a lounge at the same terminal you’re departing from -– unless it is accessible landside (before security). Some of the larger airports with multiple terminals have several lounges in each terminal.
If you fancy a visit to the best airport lounge in the world, you’ll need to go all the way to Jamaica. Club Kingston, at Jamaica’s Kingston Norman Manley International Airport, was the overall winner of Priority Pass’s Lounge of the Year Awards 2017. The lounge features Jamaican artwork and décor, local food and drink, signature cocktails, a conference facility and dedicated work stations.
EMMA LUNN is a freelance journalist who writes regularly for Moneywise, the Independent and The Telegraph
And you have a lot of options when deciding where to invest for retirement: 401(k)s, 403(b)s, traditional IRAs, Roth IRAs — all tax-advantaged accounts you can put mutual funds and exchange-traded funds in.
Unfortunately, that freedom can be paralyzing.
Many people can’t contribute more than a few hundred dollars per month, and with thousands of mutual funds and ETFs to choose from, sometimes it’s easier to just invest in a new car.
Well, Fidelity is trying to lower that barrier to entry for investors with something no major mutual fund company has ever done before.
On Friday, Aug. 3, Fidelity will begin offering two no-fee index funds with no minimum investment.
You’ll be able to invest in the Fidelity Zero Total Market Index Fund (FZROX) and Fidelity Zero International Index Fund (FZILX) with a zero expense ratio — the percentage of the fund that goes to fees associated with managing the fund — no account fees and no investment minimums.
These funds can go into a traditional or Roth IRA, 529 plan or any investment account when you purchase them through a Fidelity brokerage account.
Index mutual funds and ETFs are known for having the lowest fees in the investment world. Fidelity is just the first to cross the zero-fee finish line. Schwab’s lowest index funds have a 0.03% expense ratio, and Vanguard’s have a 0.04% ratio.
So you’d have to have a lot invested to see a significant difference.
This looks like a classic “loss leader” strategy. A loss leader is a good or service that’s strategically sold at a loss to attract customers in hopes they’ll purchase other, more profitable products while they’re there.
Kind of like what MoviePass was (unsuccessfully) trying to do.
This is evidenced by the fact that Fidelity didn’t even let people take a breath before it also announced it’s dropping expense ratios on a number of other funds to as low as 0.015%.
Whether you stick with who you have or try out these new Fidelity funds, the most important takeaway is to consistently contribute to your retirement accounts. Lower fees typically translate to higher profits, but not if you don’t contribute.
This article contains general information and explains options you may have, but it is not intended to be investment advice or a personal recommendation. We can't personalize articles for our readers, so your situation may vary from the one discussed here. Please seek a licensed professional for tax advice, legal advice, financial planning advice or investment advice.
Jen Smith is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She consistently invests in index funds and gives money-saving and debt-payoff tips on Instagram at @savingwithspunk.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
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It’s getting started.
When you don’t have a ton of money, it’s nerve-wracking to put it in a metaphorical shoebox that you can’t access for decades, even when everyone’s telling you now is the best time to start.
When my husband and I started thinking about retirement last year, we were in the same place.
We went searching for information and found that everyone who knows anything about investing has a strong opinion about it, regardless of how much they actually know.
The easiest and most common options in 401(k) plans and IRAs are mutual funds, but there are still a plethora of funds to choose from.
After talking to a number of investment professionals and personal finance writers, we found one type of investment that nobody had anything bad to say about: index funds.
An index fund is a type of mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) designed to track the performance of an index by including the same individual stocks as the index.
You may have heard of the S&P 500 or Dow Jones Industrial Average. Those are examples of indexes that index funds try to match.
For example, the S&P 500 includes 500 of the largest publicly traded companies America, so an S&P 500 index fund will have all 500 — give or take a few — of those companies’ stocks in it.
People love index funds for two main reasons.
Robert Farrington from TheCollegeInvestor.com helps millennials navigate investing for the first time and loves index funds for that reason.
“One of the biggest things that erodes your investment gains is fees. The less fees, the more money you can keep in your pocket,” he said. “What many people don’t realize is that non-index funds can charge fees upward of 1% per year or more. Index funds can have fees as low as 0.03% per year — that’s a huge savings and simply equates to more money in your portfolio.”
And you’ve heard of Warren Buffett, right? That famous businessman who invests for a living and has a net worth of over $84 billion?
While Buffett actively invests in single stocks, for the average citizen who doesn’t enjoy reading about that stuff all day, he recommends low-cost index funds.
Because index funds aren’t actively managed, the fees associated with them are super low. With low fees, more of your money can compound interest compared to actively managed funds with higher fees.
Buffett actually bet $1 million that he was right — by pitting an index fund against a basket of hedge funds for 10 years — and won by a landslide.
“It’s unfortunate, but it’s a fact that some companies will fail. It’s also a fact that some companies will outperform others,” he said. “Humans don’t have crystal balls, and to be able to select which ones will fail and which ones will perform well is nearly impossible.”
By having low-cost index funds, you own a little piece of a lot of companies, as opposed to an actively managed fund that typically includes fewer companies. So if one company fails, it’s backed up by many more successful companies. And on average, you’ll trend with whatever index your fund is tracking.
While some naysayers think index funds will kill the market, Camilo Maldonado of The Finance Twins said that index funds are still a small percentage of the overall stock market, and they’re likely to stay that way.
“Only about 40% of the stock market is owned by indexers, which is well below the 75-85% threshold that leading economists and investors, like Warren Buffett, warn against,” he said. “What this means is that investing in index funds will continue to be a viable investment for many years to come, since there's no certain indication that those levels will ever be reached. After all, there's always someone willing to bet that they can beat the market average.”
You can add index funds to almost any retirement or investment account. And because the funds are so broad, you don’t need many to diversify.
The easiest place to start is in your traditional or Roth IRA.
If you don’t already have one you can open an IRA brokerage account with a company like Vanguard, Charles Schwab, Fidelity or BlackRock. Each company has its own selection of index funds and minimum balances to open, so check each to find the company that’s right for you. You’ll want to look for fees that are less than 1%.
Your 401(k) may have more limited options.
Wherever you choose to put them, including low-cost index funds in your portfolio is likely to result in fewer fees flying out of your accounts and more money for you in retirement.
This article contains general information and explains options you may have, but it is not intended to be investment advice or a personal recommendation. We can't personalize articles for our readers, so your situation may vary from the one discussed here. Please seek a licensed professional for tax advice, legal advice, financial planning advice or investment advice.
Jen Smith is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder and maxes out her 401(k) and Roth IRA contributions, all in index funds. She gives money saving and debt payoff tips on Instagram at @savingwithspunk.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
This is the seventh entry in an eight-part weekly series that provides a detailed look at the book The Wisdom of Frugality by Emrys Westacott. If you’re new to the series, feel free to hop back to the first entry.
This chapter of The Wisdom of Frugality takes direct aim at one of the biggest benefits often cited for living a simpler frugal life: it’s environmentally friendly. A frugal person, as the argument goes, uses far less resources than an affluent person and thus puts less of a strain on the global environment. Many people carry this concept forward and use it as a big part of their moral justification for frugality.
This part might not seem relevant to frugality, but bear with it.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, there was no need for people to be concerned about the environment. The individual actions of humans in a pre-industrial society did not add up to nearly enough to cause environmental damage on a scale that could consistently cause significant and widespread harm.
Nature was seen as a wild force for man to exploit. It was far beyond the ability of man to control it or interfere with it in any significant way; rather, man found ways to accentuate the benefits of nature and minimize the negative impact on human life.
Over the centuries, humans gradually developed technologies that allowed them to exploit more and more of the earth’s resources, eventually leading to the Industrial Revolution and widespread exploitation of those resources.
Alongside the Industrial Revolution, a backlash of sorts arose in the form of Romanticims, which lauded natural untamed landscapes and distrusted artificial things. This eventually developed into a broad tradition, with people like Henry David Thoreau rejecting many aspects of technology and eventually growing into the modern environmental and political movement.
Frugality and environmentalism find a great deal of overlap because of similarity in tactics. Both of them find a great deal of value in minimizing one’s use of the Earth’s resources and getting as much value as possible out of the resources that we do use.
The idea of “reduce, reuse, recycle,” for example, is as much at home with an environmentalist as it is with a frugal person. Both will seek to get as much value out of things as possible, but for somewhat different core reasons. The environmentalist wants to reuse and reduce in order to minimize their impact on the Earth, while the frugality wants to reduce and reuse in order to minimize the expense.
The specific tactics that both groups use in their daily life tend to match up really well, too. Strategies like using less water, consuming fewer manufactured goods, using less electricity, and finding low impact things to do with one’s time are strategies that both frugal people and environmentalists share, even though they may be doing those things for different reasons. Often, frugal people and environmentalists are on the same page with broader initiatives in the community, like having an effective mass transit system, which lowers overall environmental impact (great for the environmentalist) while also lowering individual cost (great for the frugal person).
However, a great deal of synergy in tactics doesn’t add up to full agreement. While there may be some overlap between the beliefs and tactics of the environmentalist and the frugal person, there isn’t perfect alignment.
First of all, ecological impacts are often difficult to articulate and evaluate. Things like biofuels and rechargeable batteries might seem to be environmentally friendly on the surface, but the full picture of their environmental impact often isn’t nearly as clear cut. For example, rechargeable batteries often require some very environmentally unfriendly practices and materials requirements to manufacture, for example. They may be frugal, but are they environmentally friendly? It’s a bit harder to tell for sure.
This is true for larger strategies that might seem like great synergy between frugality and environmentalism. Is it more environmentally friendly to install solar panels on your home than to keep buying from the grid? What about the manufacture of those panels – what kind of impact does that have? Figuring that out becomes very difficult, whereas crunching the numbers to determine the cost-effectiveness of such a choice is much more cut and dried.
The thing to remember when being skeptical of ecological impacts of individual choices is that it’s good to be skeptical of the individual practices, but recognize that the overall principle – reduction of environmental impact – is a good one.
The second issue to consider is the fact that simple living isn’t always green living. A great example of this came from the “burn barrel” we had when I was growing up. We didn’t have trash service and the only real option for trash removal was to haul it to a dump that was many miles away, so instead we had a “burn barrel” – an old barrel that my dad picked up somewhere – in which we burnt our trash. When the barrel became full of ash (and with a few unburnt items in there), then we’d pay to have it hauled away. It was far cheaper than actually having trash service, but far less environmentally friendly.
In retrospect, the environmental cost of services out in the country where I grew up was much higher than it would have been in the city. The environmental cost of running power lines, water lines, roadways, and other such services to us out in the country was enormous. Furthermore, to have access to other services, like grocery stores, we had to drive quite a few miles.
The idea of “simple living in the country” is really only environmentally friendly if you decide to completely go without a lot of basic services. Some people in rural areas do eschew a few services that people in urban or suburban areas might expect (such as speedy internet), but people in rural areas do expect an awful lot of the basic services that all Americans expect, like drivable roads, drinkable water, and so on, and those services have a pretty big environmental footprint when they’re offered in rural areas.
Another great example of how the frugal option isn’t always the most environmentally friendly option is the choices faced when buying fresh produce. Local, organically produced items are going to have a lower environmental impact than produce that came from a factory farm several thousand miles away… but the local organic produce is going to be more expensive because the factory farm methods squeeze a lot of cost out of the system.
How does a person decide what the right choice really is? It’s not an easy decision no matter what you choose. There ends up being several reasonable choices when it comes down to balancing various environmental factors, and often the “best” choice ends up being influenced by other factors like health benefits, the impact on the local community, and so forth. Often, this best choice does not end up being the least expensive choice, which can put a price conscious person at odds with an environmentally focused person.
Furthermore, it can be argued that the choices of individuals make no real difference. The actions of governments and corporations will make the real difference, not individual frugal choices. The things I do in my daily life have very, very little impact on the environment compared to the impact of large scale agricultural businesses and manufacturing businesses.
This is the reasoning that many people use for individual poor behavior. “I can’t possibly make an impact,” goes the logic, “so it doesn’t matter what I do.” Thus, people excuse their own unethical and damaging behavior.
The thing is, individual actions multiplied many times can make an enormous difference. Consider, for example, a community that has limited water in its reservoir that agrees to some general water use rules within the town. If everyone chooses to conserve a little, everyone has enough water for their needs. An individual person isn’t going to be able to fix the water issue through severe cutbacks or non-use, nor is that individual going to be able to singlehandedly drain the reservoir, but when lots and lots of individuals agree to limit their water use to merely meet their needs rather than all of their wants, there ends up being enough water for everyone to meet their needs.
This pops up over and over again. When people agree to use restraint when utilizing common resources like water and wood and other such things, there’s enough for everyone to have their needs and sometimes their more important wants met. If individuals assume they have no impact and then uses the resources recklessly, then simple arrangements where everyone has their needs met can never occur and some will be left without needed resources.
When lots of people take little steps, economies of scale kick in. For example, if everyone in America gave a single dime toward a cause, that cause would suddenly have $30 million dollars. Little efforts are only small when they’re seen in isolation – if they’re repeated by everyone and looked at from a distance, they appear enormous.
Another counterpoint is the idea that our best hope for fixing the environment lies in technological innovation.. Many of the tools that we have for keeping our environment healthy come from technological innovation – solar panels (and their steady improvement), wind power, algae power, tidal power, tools for environmental cleanup, and so on. As powerful as frugal living can be, it can’t fix the damage of the past and it can only somewhat alter our trajectory going forward. Technology has the capacity to fix our past mistakes and radically alter our path going forward.
The problem is that technological innovation, as it’s happening, often has a huge environmental impact itself. It can take a ton of resources to go from whiteboard idea to something that works, and that first version that works is usually very rough and takes a long time to refine. In other words, development of the technologies that we really need to make things better is going to require some significant short term environmental impact, and there’s not even a guarantee that those technologies will help. Furthermore, other technological innovations will likely continue to increase our use of resources while we stumble towards any kind of solution to the environmental impact of that resource use.
Stepping up activities that are causing the problem is illogical. It’s the equivalent of eating more when you’ve just been given a prescription for diabetes medication. Yet it’s essentially a requirement if we believe technology will just fix everything.
Many people hope that this research will happen as a result of the economic booms that have come from the development of earlier research into high-demand products. The reality is that the kind of research that’s done in the wake of a successful product is usually not in solving big societal problems, but in developing a follow-up product. Apple’s R&D department didn’t start trying to solve humanity’s deep questions once they developed the iPhone. Instead, they went to work on the iPhone 2 and the iPad.
Most of the arguments that people make in favor of frugality are individual arguments. They look at things purely in terms of the individual – how can I get the most value out of this situation, considering my needs and wants and my financial bottom line? The environmental angle is an attempt to move beyond that individual approach. How does frugality come into alignment with larger societal needs? It happens to line up well with being green.
When you start looking at frugality through the lens of what our moral obligations to others actually are and how we live them out, it’s clear that frugality can be a major part in terms of living out our obligations to our community and the world. If we live a less expensive and simpler lifestyle, we’re left with more resources with which to use to make the world a better place, plus we’re consuming fewer resources ourselves. There are a lot of ways we can use those resources to make the community and the world a better place.
In short, frugality is a powerful supplement to a public service oriented lifestyle. If volunteerism and other forms of public service and public work are a major part of your life and you want to actively work to make the world a better place, then frugality plays a strong complementary role in that because it reduces the amount of time and energy and money you need to commit to meeting your living expenses, which thus increases the amount of time and energy and money you have available to commit to the causes you care about.
There’s another interesting underlying issue in all of this: just because something feels right doesn’t mean that it is right. It might feel “right” (for an example that hits home here in Iowa) to buy ethanol-supplemented fuels, but the significant reduction in fuel efficiency plus the environmental cost in the conversion of plant matter into ethanol means that I’m not convinced that what “feels” right actually “is” right (the jury is still out for me on this one, to tell the truth). It takes a lot of work to move from what “feels” right to what actually “is” right, and that sometimes means giving up on some tightly-held beliefs. That’s a kind of effort that’s in short supply in the world, sadly enough.
Next week, we’ll tie up this book with some final thoughts on the book as a whole and what it means for people practicing frugality today.
The Wisdom of Frugality Series:
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