Monday’s post listed the wide range of environmental challenges that threaten our livelihood over coming decades

The single best solution to this problem is reduced material consumption. Most see this as a painful sacrifice, while, in reality, it’s a great way to increase your quality of life. 

Today’s post discusses this claim from the viewpoint of personal wealth. 

The double benefit of financial responsibility

Obviously, consuming less stuff will allow you to save more money and earn your financial freedom at a younger age. But there’s another less well-recognized benefit. 

Less consumption does not mean less economic activity. Those who save money by consuming less generally invest this money in new endeavors, most of which will make the world a better place. 

In other words, investing instead of consuming redirects economic effort from producing and distributing wasteful consumer goods to producing and implementing solutions for a better tomorrow. 

A better life through less spending

Consumerism has conditioned us to continuously chase happiness through consumption. However, the human mind requires more sophisticated things than common consumption to be happy. 

Maslow’s classic pyramid of human needs illustrates this nicely. Clearly, material consumption is essential for the bottom two levels. But things become rather murky for the upper three. 

It’s easy to picture buying food, shelter, and security. But can you really buy love, esteem, and self-actualization? I think not. 

I recently published a longer article on this topic showing that less consumption will get you to the top of the pyramid much faster than more consumption. 

In that article, I outlined four beautiful aspects of less spending: the satisfaction of growing wealth, the fascinating challenge of smart lifestyle design, the joy of creative freedom, and self-expression through investment.  

The big five expenses

Smart lifestyle design deserves some additional mention in this post. To get the most bang for your lifestyle change buck, it’s wise to focus on the big five expenses: home, car, health, food, and kids. 

Master these five elements and their interesting interactions, and you will achieve huge savings without any sacrifice in life satisfaction. In fact, you’ll gain plenty of life from your reduced spending. 

Such zero-compromise reductions in consumption can go a long way towards saving the planet 🙂