My friend Maggie has a way with words. She says that attempting to describe my book is like trying to gift-wrap a tap-dancing elephant. She’s captured the dilemma perfectly! Continue reading
Category Archives: Information, Action & Being Resourceful
Walking Our Talk in a Consumer World
Singer Neil Young has been in the news recently—first for his outspoken criticism of Alberta’s oil sands and then for not walking his talk. In a recent article, Licia Corbella of the Calgary Herald reported that Young’s five large tour busses were all left idling for an extended period even though only one was occupied. They were parked outside the venue where he was speaking at a press conference about man-made global warming. Apparently there is incongruence between Young’s talk and his actions.
The same could be said for most of us. Continue reading
A book I’d have written if I hadn’t been writing mine
![Section_4[1]](http://theuncommonguides.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Section_41.png)
Part 4 of my book Conscious Spending, Conscious Life is about health, safety and integrity of the future. It covers food and toxics, among other things. People are often surprised that I included health in a book about consumerism. But the truth is, food has become the ultimate consumer good—commercially grown, highly processed, and heavily marketed.
Navigating the consumer culture—unharmed—is a tricky task these days. Remaining healthy is one of the challenges. Despite relative wealth and an abundance of food products in North America, we continue to become more and more unhealthy.
Much of what we call “food” really isn’t. The dictionary defines food as “material that is used by the body to sustain growth, repair, and vital processes, as well as to furnish energy.” In a consumer culture, it is so easy to make poor choices and eat a lot that fills us up but doesn’t support our bodies in carrying out vital life processes. The choices we make can end up haunting us sooner or later.
When we become conscious of what we eat and try to do the right thing, we’re faced with confusing and conflicting information to sort through. While I was writing my section about food and toxics, I was frustrated by not having enough space to say everything I wanted to.
So I’m happy to tell you about a book I discovered Continue reading
Courage to change
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I recently met a young woman who is buying nothing for a year. Julie Phillips (photo) was giving a talk about how this came to be (serendipity, like many of life’s most remarkable moments) and about her experiences during the first six weeks of being propelled into a #DIYLife.
Julie Phillips is certainly not the first person to spend less money and do more for herself,
but I was struck by several defining aspects of her story: Continue reading
Capturing the Essence without Going Nuts
We live in a culture of excess. Over the top. Hyperbole. It’s a challenge to maintain perspective, or what my grandmother referred to as a sense of proportion. Blowing things out of proportion was not a cool thing when I was growing up. Yet it so easily happens. One thing leads to another, and pretty soon… Continue reading
Credit Card Minimum Payments: Who knew??!
The consumer culture has become a complicated and complex place to live. Dealing with money is no longer simple and straightforward.
It’s easy to make financial mistakes that haunt us for years, yet insights to help us navigate through the tricky parts of the system are fragmented and inconsistent.
I observed this during my 27 years teaching a college course in consumer economics, and it concerns me. That’s why I wrote Conscious Spending, Conscious Life. I hope this book will bring coherence and consistency to the way we think about money and how we deal with it.
There are so many things that people just don’t know. Early on, I discovered that many students thought if they made the minimum payment on their credit card balance, they weren’t in debt. They used their credit cards and paid the required minimum, thinking they were doing the smart and adult thing.
That was an illusion…
When we see situations in their true light, they come into focus in a new and clearer way.
Here’s an example:
$3172 in purchases on a credit card at 18.5% with minimum payments of $63/month.
Assuming nothing else is bought on this credit card and the minimum payment is faithfully made each month, the last payment will be made 42 years and 8 months later, according to information printed on the credit card statement from which this example was taken.
Over those 42 years, interest amounts to $9,451. That is three times the cost of the goods themselves! A total of $12,263 will be paid for purchases worth $3172.
Knowing this is an eye-opener. Knowing how to find this out for ourselves is a game-changer. For that reason, I include many links to information sources such as the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada.
When we ask questions—i.e., how much will this really cost me?—and independently check out the answers, we are less likely to make long-lasting and serious mistakes because we understand the implications of the actions we take. In other words, we are acting consciously.
P.S…
The way to beat the banks at their game is to only use your card as a convenience, not as a way of living on money you don’t have.
When you use a credit card as a convenience, you use it to facilitate making purchases during the month, and then unfailingly pay the entire month’s balance on the due date, not just the minimum payment. In that way, you do not pay any interest to the bank for using the card each month. But that is only true if you pay the balance off in its entirety every month by the due date on your statement.