We should all try and be more frugal \ stacker news ~meta

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11.7k sats \ 28 comments \ @Signal312 14 Sep 2023 meta

There was a recent post here (#253554) that surprised me, mainly in how many here still believe in energy scarcity, the need for recycling, and the benefits of being "eco-friendly". Whatever that means. Personally, I find Saifedean Ammous's arguments (energy scarcity is NOT a problem, except that we've made it one with government policies) to be very convincing.

It sure seems like this whole thing (climate crisis, we must switch to renewable energy only) is our newest religion. And recyling is one of the sacraments of the religion. Probably the only really useful recycling I've done is when, as a kid, we walked on country roads to collect aluminium cans, and once we had a huge bag of crushed cans, we'd head to the scrapyard where they'd pay us for the aluminium.

Also I appreciate the articles from @nullcount on recycling: https://www.insider.com/mit-research-andrew-mcafee-says-recycling-is-useless-2019-10 https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled Bottom line, almost all "recycling" is a pointless, money and energy wasting exercise. Though people will still look askance at you for rejecting it, because it's a part of the eco religion.

Thinking through the lens of frugality, rather than the blinders of "eco-friendliness", can help you figure out what truly makes sense, vs what is just counter-productive virtue signaling. If it saves you money, then you can stack more sats. A good thing.

So here's some frugal and fun ideas for you, that will also make you more self-sufficient.

Baking your own bread. It's not hard, once you have some easily-developed skills. You could buy lots of baking tools and supplies, but you definitely don't need to. And you can easily and quickly make a loaf of bread that's far better than a fancy $5 loaf you could buy in a store.
Cook. Avoid processed foods, and just buy ingredients. And cook. Cooking is fun and can save loads of money, not to mention being far healthier than what almost everyone is eating.
Make your own cleaning supplies. Forget about vinegar and baking soda, all you need for 95% of cleaning is a spray bottle with mostly water, with a squirt or two of dishwashing liquid.
Cut your own hair, or have a family member cut it. It's not hard at all and saves time as well as money.

Other ideas?

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421 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr 15 Sep 2023

been cutting my own hair for years and so far nobody has complained (to my face at least 😂)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nemo 15 Sep 2023

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527 sats \ 2 replies \ @orthwyrm 15 Sep 2023

Bitcoin and frugality go hand and hand, yet I find it isn't emphasized as much as I'd expect in this community. My guess is that most of the influencers are a couple of cycles deep at this point and have already "made it". Flying out to conferences all year and eating nothing but ribeyes sounds fun, but it sure ain't frugal.

Anyway some ideas, in order of importance:

Accomodation: Live with friends / family and split the bills. It can be a lot of fun if you pick the right people. Humans are social organisms and don't do well living alone.
Travel: The bicycle is the most important tool you can own. It's cheap yet offers free travel, exercise, and fresh air. Also move closer to work! Your 1 hour clown car commute is a collosal waste of time and money.
Food: Good cooking equipment is the second most important tool(s) you can own. Preparing your own food is cheaper, more rewarding, and healthier (even the nicer restuarants add all sorts of processed shit to get you hooked).
Exercise: You don't need a gym. Cycle + do body weight exercises at home (check out r/bodyweightfitness to get started). Buy a set of weights if you really must.
Clothes: Simple, cut back. I have no idea how people spend so much on their elaborate rags. Really you shouldn't be spending more than a couple hundred £ on clothes each year, apart from a solid pair of shoes which is always a good investment.
Tracking: Monitor your expenses. Yyou should also work out costs not in terms of £, but in terms of hours worked. An expense of £100 is abstract, but knowing that it took 5 hours of your scarcest resource, time, is not.

Do the above and you'll stack a shit load more BTC.

__@_'-'

50 sats \ 1 reply \ @0fje0 15 Sep 2023

All of them good, solid points. Thanks!

The one that resonates the most with me, is this one:

Tracking: Monitor your expenses

While I've been doing this for most of my life - often frustrating my family - I recently started tracking some key expenses in bitcoin. I.e. converting the expense from fiat to sats.

It's fun and rather 'inspirational' to see these expenses deflate in BTC terms over time. And helps to maintain a low time preference by somehow making it more tangible & real.

Currently I only track a few items but the plan is to expand the list to eventually include all my expenses. For example:

Electricity: sats/kWh
Food: sats/loaf of bread

It also serves as my own, personal inflation index. One I can rely on more than any government issued "CPI".

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @orthwyrm 15 Sep 2023

Yeah. Every time I make a purchase there's a mental calculation I do in the back of my mind about what future value I'm throwing away by making a purchase today.

My working assumption when doing these calculations is a 20-20 rule: Bitcoin flips gold's market cap (x20) a generation from now (20 yrs). So if I buy a bar of chocolate for £1 today, that's £20 I'm throwing away 20 years from now.

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @TheWildHustle 15 Sep 2023

Sell your car and use public transportation/uber Try free hobbies like running/reading/music Quit nicotine/alcohol Grow vegetables Unsubscribe from most paid subscriptions Realize that most things in clown world are intended to either poison, addict, or rob you.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @TheBTCManual 15 Sep 2023

I'm all for being self-sufficient, I do a little gardening, and bake my own bread, but I do think scaling via your community is the best most frugal thing you can do, supporting local businesses, getting value for money, and turning over capital that generates goods and services is for me still the best way to encourage the best use of resources

Being frugal doesn't have to mean cutting down, but spending in a way that is more efficient, maybe your time is better suited to making furniture, so why waste your time baking bread? The division of labour is how we improve our lives

If you do some things yourself like lets say cutting the lawn, why not do the neighbours and bag a favour from them in the future.

Of course, many have a lot of needless consumption that can be cut down and that's a start, but cutting down only gets you so far.

42 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford 15 Sep 2023

Start a garden growing food your family likes to eat. Not only is the quality better you learn a skill.

11 sats \ 2 replies \ @nullama 15 Sep 2023

Maybe, but at the end of the day just do what you are good at and buy the other goods and services.

The only thing you cannot get back is time.

11 sats \ 1 reply \ @kepford 15 Sep 2023

Its all about time preference. But the modern human undervalues skills IMO. We are also do fragile. We dont have enough hard skills.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @Signal312 OP 15 Sep 2023

Doing what you're good at is the way to make the most money, for sure.
But for resiliency, being interesting, doing things away from the keyboard, having good mental health, etc., learning some non computer skills is a good idea.

95 sats \ 0 replies \ @Billy_Dow 15 Sep 2023

Hello I'm the OP of the post in question, I have read the link about recycling and I did not know that (man the governments can't do anything right it seems) but I don't think we should give up on recycling just beacuse it's something they do badley. Satoshi never gave up on money and we shouldn't give up on this. We could do with more trees and less plastic and one way to do that is recycling them properly, I think my point still stands about reusing and reducing and turning bottles into 3d printer filliament is good way today that. Another good way is switching to hemp plastics what break down easily and harmlessly, hopefully this is something we switch to sooner rather then later even tho it's something us plebs have little control in. We can only hope that one day a better system is put into place to reduce plastics.

Thanks for the lesson friend, learning never stops ✌️

30 sats \ 2 replies \ @sb 15 Sep 2023

Make your own moisturizer without artificial scents or synthetic preservatives: melt a cup of coconut oil in the microwave, add a cup of olive oil or MCT oil, (optional: half a cup of microwaved shea butter or beeswax - if you prefer a more solid consistency than liquid) and stir. That's it!

To turn this mix (including shea butter and beeswax) into deodorant, you can add a cup of arrowroot starch and a few drops of essential oil (like grapefruit or any other scent you like).

To make soap, follow the same steps but add lye instead of the arrowroot starch, shea butter and beeswax.

There are plenty of recipes online, and you'll be surprised how versatile coconut oil and a few of these other easily accessible materials are :)

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @Signal312 OP 15 Sep 2023

I use so little moisturizer that what I have will last a long time, but when it's done, I plan to try this. Actually I'll probably try just straight coconut oil and see how it goes...

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @sb 15 Sep 2023

That will definitely work as an effective moisturizer, like I said, if you're okay with it solidifying at room temp 😂

5 sats \ 2 replies \ @SatoshisSkeleton 15 Sep 2023

TLDR TBH.

But are you saying no more lambos?

😳🤔😳🤔😳

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Bullen 15 Sep 2023

Just the one.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nemo 15 Sep 2023

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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bell_curve 19 Feb

I do not recycle for the reasons you mentioned

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @eduardopro 16 Sep 2023

https://imgprxy.stacker.news/j4cPlQ-KPo1wxvvGYJKnqtSeYpeHOClCkb63PIrVgK0/rs:fit:600:500:0/g:no/aHR0cHM6Ly9wYnMudHdpbWcuY29tL21lZGlhL0YzeEF2d3RXUUFFUE1nay5qcGc

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @franzap 15 Sep 2023

I find this interesting because I have been very frugal and minimalist most of my life and I'm going in the opposite direction. Not splurging but shifting my time preference.

Yes, doing everything yourself can be a bad tradeoff - that's why we do commerce no?

I'd rather have someone else cut my hair and bake my bread. Well, I don't eat bread.

Yes for cooking and cleaning supplies for health reasons.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @sebastix 15 Sep 2023

Recycling? Start with cycling =)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bitcoiner1 15 Sep 2023

*Grow your own food. *Hiking and running are my low cost hobbies. *If you eat fish, go fishing 🎣. *If you want to travel you could try House sitting and Couchsurfing. *Avoid buying brand new car or any other articles. *set a rule like waiting a month before buying X stuff. *have a budget and control all your expenses. *If you have a car and don't use every day, you can rent it. *Don't live in a house bigger than you need.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @faithandcredit 15 Sep 2023

My concern is that en Europe they are subsidizing unviable methods of transportation and energy production. It is leading people to adopt these methods. But when the subsidies stop then what? No more energy production, no more transportation. It really is a disaster in the making. But we shouldnt underestimate the ingenuinity of humans and how they will adapt when the subsidies stop and life as we know it ends so to speak. (In EU)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Zepasta 15 Sep 2023

Bookmarking this great post!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @2bithits 15 Sep 2023

Where I live there are these quarterly "throwout" days. In this 2 week period you put any items like furniture, old clothes, tree clippings etc onto the street & the council will come around and pick it up.

I've seen a crazy amount of waste & I feel sorry for these consumerist souls. At the same time we've found books, kids toys (some brand new), furniture & other stuff that has saved us a lot of money to stack sats.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @TomK 15 Sep 2023

Nice, thank You. The good old ''Epicurean'' lifestyle. Cutting monetary dependencies makes You unvulnerable and mentally fit for tough times. Society is aiming for this kind of a philosophical-spiritual movement. Maybe btc will contribute its part via the growing community and its impact on social life??

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nicosey 15 Sep 2023

The things you own, end up owning you...