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Financial efficiency (or, 100 pennies saved is $1 saved)
Mar 27, 2008

Where does our money go and how fast? What if we streamlined and slowed down the flow? To borrow from Amory lovins concept of the negawatt, lets inject some negadollars into our budgets.

My guess is that almost everyone has areas in their spending patterns where more money than needed is used to obtain the goods and services that make life comfortable and enjoyable.

With the buyout of Bear Stearns by J.P. Morgan in Mar. of 2008 alot of questions arose. The public was a little confused and scared about market stability. In one New York Times article the advise to the average investor was to take stock of your financial situation and don't make any decisions based on emotion.

If only I could do this with my money on a daily basis.

Greg's negadollars formula -->
$ earned - costs of living (needs, wants, emotional purchases) + negadollars = $ leftover

To know how your money is being spent, and to know the options you have for increasing your purchasing power is important. But don't forget to add the second piece of the negadollars formula. We are human and we have needs and desires and if all goes well they will be satisfied. The question is; what will be the cost?

Hold on to your caps this could require thinking on your part. What things have you purchased that serve purposes that could be met cheaper? Yes that 300GB hard drive is cool but was it so long ago that we existed on 80GB? A little selective deleting of a movie here an album there and you're good to go. What services do you subscribe to that have cheaper competitors? Do you really need that new ringtone package for $5 from the TV comercial, when you could piecemeal a few of your favorites for .10 apiece from your provider?

Or look at cutting the fat entirely and sticking with the default ringers or *gasp* a home phone and answering machine.

just a couple examples to show there is money to be found even if you think you are just meeting your needs of a new computer and phone service.

Greg's definition of:
"Financial Effiency" = a ratio between the amount of life lived and the amount of dollars spent.

Just because you spend more money doesn't mean you have to get more out of life.
Consider recreation: buying season football tickets vs buying good shoes and taking a nature hike in a national park on the weekends. At the end of the day which one leaves you more fufilled and by what percent. If there is a great disparity between the ratios of the two activities I would argue that over time making the financially efficient decision will net huge results in happiness and wealth.

I'll end by saying "Find the sweetspot of the financial efficiency curve and live there!"

All the best-
Greg Burnley
Visibility: Everyone
Posted: Thursday March 27, 2008, 11:48 pm
Tags: money sustainability finance effiency [add/edit tags]

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