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Category: Frugal Living

What Can We Do?

What Can We Do?

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At the University of Minnesota Dr. Nate Hagens teaches an honours course called “Reality 101: A Survey of the Human Predicament.” Hagens operated his own hedge fund on Wall Street until he glimpsed, “a serious disconnect between capitalism, growth, and the natural world. Money did not appear to bring wealthy clients more well being. ”Reality 101 addresses humanity’s toughest challenges: economic decline, inequality, pollution, biodiversity loss, and war. Students learn about systems ecology, neuroscience, and economics. “We ask hard questions,” says Hagens….

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Degrowth in the suburbs

Degrowth in the suburbs

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeNaMlibiak&w=560&h=315] So what would become of the suburbs if we gave up fossil fuels and moved toward a low-energy, post-carbon society beyond growth? Suburban catastrophists like James Kunstler in the US argue that fossil fuel depletion will imminently render the suburban landscape an inhospitable wasteland. Such curdled imaginations fail to recognise suburbia’s latent capacity to become something new. Inspired by research and advocacy from the likes of Ivan Illich, David Holmgren, and Ted Trainer, we see the suburbs as an ideal place to begin retrofitting our cities according…

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20 habits of frugal people

20 habits of frugal people

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It takes serious strategy to save serious money. Unless you’ve won the lottery, acquiring wealth takes a lot of hard work. Not only do you have to put years into a career, but you also have to be disciplined about keeping the money you make. People who are serious about growing their bank accounts usually have frugal lifestyle habits that make saving go more quickly. By implementing some (or all) of these habits in your own life, you can supercharge…

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Tips on Freezing the Harvest

Tips on Freezing the Harvest

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It’s that time of year—the garden is bulging with fresh produce and you’re spending lots of time in a steaming kitchen preserving it all. I find freezing preferable to canning for a number of reasons. For one, when it’s time to prepare a meal with my preserved garden goodness, frozen foods tend to be brighter, fresher, and all-around tastier. And relatively speaking, it’s fast and easy. Over the years, I’ve come up with a few tips to make freezing even…

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12 Ways to Stop Wasting Money and Take Control of Your Stuff

12 Ways to Stop Wasting Money and Take Control of Your Stuff

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In my work as a consumer psychologist and author, I’ve read countless studies about consumer behavior, and I’ve conducted plenty of research on my own, interviewing hundreds of shoppers about how, when, and why they shop. Here’s what I’ve learned about how to avoid piling up too much stuff and how to stop making unnecessary, excessive, and ultimately unsatisfying purchases. Read12 Ways to Stop Wasting Money and Take Control of Your Stuff by Kit Yarrow at Money.

10 overlooked low-tech ways of keeping your home cool

10 overlooked low-tech ways of keeping your home cool

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Summer is here and the air is full of the the sound of whining air conditioners, all seriously sucking kilowatts. Yet much of that air conditioning load could be reduced or the air conditioning season shortened if we did simple things, many of them common before air conditioning was common in North America. Here are some low-tech tips for keeping cool. The best ideas are those that keep the heat out of your home in the first place, rather than…

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Seed Saving 101: 10 Things to Know If You Want to Start Saving Seeds

Seed Saving 101: 10 Things to Know If You Want to Start Saving Seeds

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Beans. That’s right. If you want to start saving seeds, we recommend beans. Or peas. Why? Legumes are by far the easiest seeds to save, and among the easiest to germinate. You can’t go wrong. With that, let’s learn more about the basics of seed saving. In order for a plant like lettuce to produce seed, you must wait for it to send up its gangly flower stalks, which eventually produce tiny seed pods. By this time. the lettuce leaves…

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Why every house should be designed for multigenerational living

Why every house should be designed for multigenerational living

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In many cultures, multi-generational households are pretty standard; your parents took care of you, and now you take care of them. In China, almost every apartment sold has three bedrooms: one for the parents, one for the kid, and one for grandma. But in the United States, Canada and many European countries, the natural progression has been to get a job or get married and move out to set up your own household. And from the end of World War…

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Where do you fall on the personal finance spectrum?

Where do you fall on the personal finance spectrum?

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Finance writer Trent Hamm divides people into categories based on their financial decisions. The idea of a savings spectrum, as described by Hamm, intrigues me. It makes it easier to understand the differences between households and how one can save so much more than another, and how lifestyle choices affect that. Seeing an actual savings rate portrayed in percentages is helpful too; it makes it easier to see where I fit in, relative to where I want to be —…

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TLTI thinking tiny (homes)

TLTI thinking tiny (homes)

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When it comes to new housing, the Township of Leeds and the Thousand Islands is thinking small. Tiny, in fact. Council members decided this week to embrace the tiny-house movement that has become the darling of environmental trend-setters in the United States and Europe. They asked planning director Elaine Mallory to prepare a zoning bylaw amendment that would remove the minimum size requirements for new houses, and include tiny houses in the township’s definition of permissible dwellings. The township’s building…

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