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Saturday, November 16, 2019

Go Green, Live Rich: 50 Simple Ways to Save the Earth and Get Rich Trying

So awhile ago, I found a couple more David Bach books that I wanted to read at the library.  Today I wasn't feeling great...so once I decided I needed to stay up rather than keep sleeping, I decided to read Go Green, Live Rich: 50 Simple Ways to Save the Earth and Get Rich Trying instead of mindlessly wasting what was left of the day watching Youtube.  Bach claimed this would be another fast read (two hours), which also appealed to me; I didn't want something that would take a lot of concentration while I'm not feeling 100%.  I do think it took a bit longer than he said, but I still finished it in less than a day. 

So Go Green, Live Rich was written over a decade ago, when the climate crisis was just coming to mainstream attention (about two years after Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth came out, just to give it a bit more context). The book is made up of 50 tips to help you save the planet (while also purportedly making you rich in the process).  It's broken up into several smaller sections with tips for greening your transportation, family, work, travel, etc.  The last two sections detail how to make some money (mainly investing in green businesses), and gifting green (basically tithing to green causes - tithing has come up in both of Bach's other books that I've read so far, so I wasn't surprised to find it here as well). 

I'm not going to lie...most of the tips are kind of obvious.  Bach breaks down some common-sense things that you can do to both help the environment and save some money.  I actually felt like I was reading 397 Ways to Save Money again because there was a lot of overlap (although obviously 397 Ways to Save Money has way more tips), such as swapping out old light bulbs for energy efficient ones, getting newer and more energy efficient appliances when your old ones break down, etc.  When Bach got to the family stuff, he also started to remind me of the tips I read in Plastic Purge.  So I guess Go Green, Live Rich is kind a combination of Taylor's and SanClements' books.

I did like the breakdowns Bach included though of not only roughly how much money you would save in using his tips but also the impact it would have on the environment (most often in tons of CO2 avoided, but also things like trees saved and stuff like that).  But he also included a lot of websites; while I didn't check them all, I'm sure some of the sources are quite out of date since the book is over a decade old (but to be fair, I was able to find the couple that I went looking for, so not all of them are out of date!)  Hilariously, the one link I looked for that was obsolete was Bach's own website (greengreen.com, which now just redirects to davidback.com) - I discovered that when I went looking for his reading list of green books (which I have been completely unable to find).

Overall, I think this is a good starting point if you're looking for ways to green your life.  It has a lot of the same tips and ideas that are in 397 Ways to Save Money, but it's a faster and easier read.  But if you're already on board with living more sustainably, you should probably give this book a pass; it's full of tips you've probably already considered.  On the personal finance front, it's also not nearly as in depth as his other books (like The Automatic Millionaire), so you'd be better off reading one of those if that's your interest.

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