I'm Stephanie Safarian and this is episode 71.

You are listening to the Sustainable Minimalist Podcast, a show about living simply and sustainably with your family.

Here's your host, Stephanie Safarian.

Hello there and welcome back.

Today we are talking about something that is near and dear to my heart. We are talking about what it actually means to be conscious

consumers and where and how we even start. I'm under the assumption that the general public associates the

term conscious consumerism with being cheap and I'm using air quotes over here

around the word cheap by the way.

It's almost as if shopping mindfully and with intention

gets a bad rap because doing so is lumped into the frugalness category

and being frugal, aka being cheap,

is the absolute opposite of being cool, right?

The assumption that conscious consumers are cheap, again air quotes, doesn't even begin to get it right.

I think that being a conscious consumer is actually super cool, and it's super smart too. Here's why. Conscious

consumers naturally buy less and save more money. Saving more money means a few things.

Either A, you're not unnecessarily financially stressed out

or B, it means you have a bit more money in your account to buy big price tag items or big price

tag experiences when the opportunity comes along.

And by the way, if you're a homeowner, that big price tag item probably isn't something

cool new and shiny, it's probably doing maintenance on your house or your home without crying

when the estimates roll in. A few other bonuses of being a conscious

consumer is that you're not ignorantly harming the planet unnecessarily and

...