Values – Budget Bliss: Bucket List

How I Prioritize Conflicting Values

Published on January 21, 2025November 10, 2024 by BudgetBlissLeave a comment

I’ve written before that we often have to pick and choose our battles when it comes to living out our values as almost nothing we can do in this modern world exempts us from harming others, short of going completely off grid and homesteading out in the middle of the wilderness surviving on nothing but what you create yourself. However, even those intrepid homesteaders buy some of their things at least to get started, so they still participate even if they say otherwise because without a village full of specialized craftsmen how could they not? Even the fact that they can live peacefully on their land free from marauding warbands is because they are surrounded by a modern society with an active army and local law enforcement agencies.Plus the tax man always comes in one form or another and if they’re youtubing their experience guess what they’re participating in?

The truth is we have to accept that we cannot make perfectly ethical choices that always align with our values. We have to pick and choose our battles and make compromises. I value the environment, but I have gone on cruises with my mother. Which is arguably one of the worst choices when it comes to environmentalism. Unfortunately, I’ve found that cruising is one of the friendliest travel options for someone with chronic health conditions if you want to see multiple countries and a bit more of the world. She worked very hard as my mom and practically killed herself to provide for me a modicum of middle class lifestyle growing up and to support me as best she could through college, a job that while it required a college degree paid me less than 20,000 a year, and grad school. She gave up her dreams of travel to give me a good life, so I help make her bucket list happen. The best way to do that has been cruising once every three to four years.

The two values that conflict are the environment and family. In general, my family lives in a very environmentally friendly way. We reduce our energy consumption as much as possible, avoid purchasing new items preferring thrift shops, ebay and Facebook marketplace. We buy “ugly” produce and check the quick sale items to reduce food waste. As one can see in the rest of this blog, in general we avoid travel to far flung places. I try to garden with native plants or at least plants that are non-invasive and friendly to my local area. I’ve planted a number of trees which all contribute to the environment. Even our toilet paper and tissues are made from bamboo to try and reduce the waste. However, every three to four years we do go on a trip that is truthfully bad for the environment. Is it better than the person who takes a week trip to various foreign countries around the world once a year? It’s probably on par to be honest.

It could be easy to start trying to calculate carbon “credits” to “off-set” the indulgence, which isn’t really the point of our daily lifestyle choices. If you indulge occasionally in fast fashion you may try to justify it with all the second hand purchases you’ve made. It may be a logical fallacy to say “well I can be ‘bad’ in this one instance because I’m so good all the other times.” We see this when people decide to go off their diets, or buy something from a place they know has a terrible reputation for how they treat their employees. It can be easy to judge people (or ourselves) who do make these compromises negatively. However, we all do it and we all make judgments about what compromises we’re willing to make when our values conflict or our budgets come up against certain realities of life.

It may not even be about having different values but how we rank our values in a given situation. Would I much rather purchase all my clothing from etsy shops supporting American small businesses? Absolutely. Do I have the money to do so? Absolutely not. Clothing is expensive to make at $15 to $20 an hour for a living wage. It’s even more expensive if you want them to use material that is also American made; perhaps you want it to be of all natural fibers and dyes from an organic cotton farm here on US soil using only the best sustainable, environmentally friendly practices.

I’m someone blogging about living her best life on a salary that is less than the median income. I don’t have that sort of cash, despite my greatest wishes otherwise. Almost none of us do and sometimes despite your best efforts you can’t find what you need at the thrift store given that it’s based on donations. I’m lucky in that I wear pretty common sizes but even then I can’t always find what I need and I’m forced to go to a regular store to purchase something new and not sustainably made, free from exploitative labor practices.

The overarching value is reduction of waste, but it sometimes conflicts with what I may feel I need. Like when I needed to go to the gala as part of a fundraising event as part of my job and I didn’t have a dress for the occasion. I wasn’t spending over $100 on a dress for my non-profit job. I also wasn’t buying a used prom dress from my local thrift shop to do it because I don’t want to look like I’m 15 instead of over 30. I placed the value of helping raise money for a good cause over my usual value of reducing consumption of goods.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

The point of this post is to simply have you begin to reflect on how you personally navigate your values and to recognize that sometimes it’s not about being a hypocrite but rather having two conflicting values where you make a decision about which one to value more given your own limited resources whether that be time, money or energy. It’s not about telling you what to do but to get you to pause and reflect on how you may be navigating these conflicts without putting much thought into it leading to negative judgements of yourself and perhaps even others. This is a time to practice some self-compassion as well as compassion for the choices that others are making. It’s easy to throw stones in glass houses, but one really shouldn’t. It’s a kinder gentler approach to living out values

You can be more mindful about the decisions you are making to more align your actions with the things you actually care about. This allows us to create more meaningful and impactful lives that bring us joy. This also causes reflection about what we might be doing that doesn’t align and to ask, is there a different way to achieve the same ends without as extreme of a compromise? I like quality clothing that will last years not months, so I may go to ebay and try to find used designer clothing for a steal. Goodbye fast fashion, hello sustainability that isn’t breaking the bank. If I decide to go on a cruise because I want to be able to travel places with my mother and help her obtain her dreams, is there a line that is a little better for the environment than the rest? Is there one that also treats their staff well? What about the excursions it offers? Even something as simple as purchasing biodegradable paper plates if I decide I want to have a picnic with my sister in the park.

I’m always asking, is there a way I can do this better to fit my values? I am also willing to revisit previous decisions. I may say that upon further reflection that it was a compromise I shouldn’t have made. I can’t change the past, but I can move forward with making a different decision moving forward. Perhaps, I am at a different place where I have more freedom to choose. When I was purchasing my car there wasn’t really a hybrid with four wheel drive in my price range. I had to determine which was more important to me: the safety of having four wheel drive in a job that required me to drive in bad weather or a hybrid that was better for the environment considering the amount of driving I was doing. At the time, I chose safety, because I like living and couldn’t afford to become disabled from a catastrophic accident. As I begin to consider purchasing another car, my driving needs have changed so I will more likely choose a hybrid. Additionally, there are now more options which combine hybrid technology with all wheel drive.

We won’t always be able to live out our lives in perfect harmony with our values. We will have to pick and choose. We should be asking ourselves which values are in competition with one another and weigh the impact of those choices against the conflicting values. Sometimes one value will win out over another value. The ranking can vary from decision to decision. We should be willing to recognize when there is conflict to allow for self-reflection and arrive at the best decision for ourselves while owning that we are making a choice that conflicts with the values we have.

Living Out Your Values

Published on December 3, 2024November 9, 2024 by BudgetBlissLeave a comment

Our values are often reflected in what we do much more than what we say. The things we strive for and goals we want to achieve demonstrate what we actually believe. There’s a saying that goes “shut up and put your money where your mouth is” which is short is stop talking and actually sacrifice for what you believe in. Shouldn’t we consider this when looking to complete our bucket lists?

If the point of a budget bucket list is to help create a meaningful life where we’re at, then a meaningful life reflects our values, morals and ethics. I want to have a life that is well lived. One that aligns with who I am as a person and to be able to look back at all the things I have seen, done and accomplished and feel at peace. I don’t want to have regrets for things left undone, but also for things that I did that left me feeling empty or guilty.

When considering what I want to accomplish in my life, it’s not just about what might be fun to do, but also what I value. I took pride in my German and Irish roots, especially living in a German-American area like Lancaster, County. So, I learned German and studied abroad in Germany. I made certain to spend a little time in Ireland when I was over there. When learning the violin, I studied folk Irish songs. I took Irish step dancing in college. I said I valued those items and backed it up with actions. Those things were more than just learning a language or a dance style plucked at random, they reflected what was important to me.

Your values can inspire you to add things to your list. Do you value your heritage? Then maybe explore activities that connect you to your family’s past. Maybe you value being self-sufficient, then taking workshops to learn crafts such as woodworking and carpentry may be your jam, more than say spending a week in Bora Bora. Most of what I started with were the things that reflected what was important to me, nature, art, music, travel to specific places that held special meaning to me. Some of the things I’ve done have been in support of what was important to the people I do them with.

Sometimes, a value will prevent you from doing something. Do you value animals? Those animal encounters may be quite tempting but they are rife with exploitation and abuse of the very animals you claim to love. You cannot say that you value elephants and then go ride them. Even alternatives like bathing still involve a traumatic training known as the “crush” where young calves are separated from their mothers, isolated, deprived of food and water and beaten until they are broken. Elephant tourism is driving those numbers up. In almost every case, an interaction with an elephant means interaction with a traumatized elephant for your benefit. Not every animal encounter is a result of abuse, but it is important to be careful with them because abuse is so rampant, especially in underdeveloped countries.

I carefully researched this dolphin led encounter before booking and even consulted a friend who works at a zoo to help me ensure I was participating in an ethical encounter.

You will need to pick and choose your battles. There is almost no undertaking that does not involve murky ethical decisions in our modern world. Buying a cell phone? How were the minerals mined in Africa? How were the workers treated, who assembled it in China or Taiwan? Is the money that is going to the company being used to fund policies and politics that you disagree with? What about the environmental impact? That’s just a cell phone, what about attending a concert? Traveling to a festival?

When considering my budget bucket list, I started with my values first, understanding what I stood for and where the lines would be drawn. I was careful to do my research and pick my battles. I encourage you to also start with the things you value before writing down everything that comes to mind or taken from someone else’s list.

When you start out with guardrails, it’s easier to say no. Whether we intend to or not, when we see something “cool” that we want to do, we start to form an emotional attachment through our excitement. It can be hard to reel that back in. I don’t shop at places like Shein and Temu, but I see advertisements for them all the time. It makes it easier for me to not get tempted by the cute clothing or gatchet that I really want to have when I have set the boundary of “I will not buy from these places.” I said I will not exploit animals, and it made it easy to say no to interacting with baby tigers, even in the face of their cute adorable faces. Before I could even picture holding those sweet babies and petting their soft fur, the firm “no” stopped all thoughts of the activity. Whereas if I had written my list, saw the opportunity first, I may have been tempted to try and justify keeping it there or saying to myself “I’m just one person….”

On this blog, I will encourage you to drink richly from the cup of life and to follow my example of finding things in your own backyard to do. However, there are many different places that one can drink from, it’s up to each of us to be mindful of what we’re taking out of life and whether its right for us. It’s not up to me to dictate to you what values, ethics or morals you should have, that’s up to you to decide. I’m only here to remind you to think about them before you take a drink that ends up tasting bitter and gross.

In the Pursuit of Happiness Be Careful What You Leave Behind

Published on October 22, 2024August 29, 2024 by BudgetBlissLeave a comment

I have written earlier about the choices we make and that there is always a cost to be paid. I encourage you dear reader, not to be disheartened with this advice. It is not an admonishment to not do things. It is only a word of caution to walk through a given door with your eyes open and prepared for what the task ahead will ask of you.

Consider the high performing lawyer. She goes to school, gets into a prestigious practice, starts working very hard, makes partner, earns a lot of money, and works very long hours. Suddenly, one day she wakes up and realizes she has lost touch with her family, she have no real friends because the only people she interacts with are her fellow lawyers who are only out to compete with her, she has a beautiful apartment she never sees and decides to quit taking a much lower paying job so that she can actually have a life outside the office, maybe get married, and have a child.

If she chooses to get married, have a child and keep her career working 70 to 80 hours a week, who will raise that child? Certainly not her directly, but whatever hired help she has. What kind of relationship will she have with that child? It would be difficult to cultivate a close personal relationship with a child she barely sees, especially when she is probably missing out on all the important things to a child like dance recitals and birthday parties. This is not to judge someone who chooses this life, it’s just not the choice I would want to make. The good Lord knows I don’t want to be away from my cats that much, I imagine I will want to spend even more time with my own children. However, to each their own.

Now it is not always something as grand as career vs family when we make these choices. They can be small. We cannot be a master of all trades given our limited time and resources. Choosing to pursue one hobby will probably mean giving up another. If I choose to weight lift, I may not have time to learn how to paint. If I choose to play the violin, I probably won’t have time to learn to sew. If I spent all my time out of the house going places, I would not be able to have my cats. I am not saying that these are the only dichotomies. Rather a single yes to one thing closes the door on almost hundreds of others, but a choice must always be made. Even choosing not to choose is still a choice – often the worst option you can take as it almost always leads to less than optimal conditions.

A yes to learning German was a no to the other 7,000+ possible other languages. A yes to pursue psychology and social work, was a no to thousands of other career paths. The point of course is to consider what doors your “yes” is closing and what ones it is opening. As a goal oriented person, it can be easy to get “lost” in the pursuit of the goal. To blindly plough forward heedless of the destruction in your wake until you stand upon the mountain top to gaze upon a ruined domain.

How often did I find myself alienating my project partners blindly completing the project and “getting us the A” in school? I was often confused when they reacted badly to my process. We got it done didn’t we? Are you unhappy with our success? The goal was to get a good grade, mission accomplished. I did not know that there were other pieces of the project not on the rubric that I was supposed to learn like how to cooperate with people and cultivate working relationships. In my pursuit of the goal, I burned the relationships with my peers in school. In the pursuit of other goals, we may neglect relationships or lose sight of things that really matter.

What might we still be missing in the pursuit of our goals? That is not to say that we should not pursue those goals only to be cautious in the pursuit. When your life narrows down to a single goal or passion, be aware that chances are you are about to give up a lot of things. If you want to become a doctor, you will probably give up a lot of free time and sleep. Traveling the world may mean giving up secure roots and long term relationships. Becoming a star athlete will mean missing out on a lot of fun parties to train and compete. When picturing your best life what are the things that you most wish to preserve? What things do you want to accomplish and what do they require of you to do? Are there things you absolutely won’t give up? Are they worth holding onto even it means giving up on a dream?

Often what we feel will make us happy, money and fame leave us empty and unfulfilled. In chasing those dreams, we often damage the relationships that truly enrich us. That isn’t to say don’t pursue your dreams. There are plenty of worthy goals and dreams to pursue. Depending on your own internal value system what one person finds most important may not be the same for you. However, it’s important to reflect on what you really value before diving headlong in pursuit of a goal that doesn’t really align with who you are. It’s also important to not get too hung up on a singular path to achieve a goal. I wanted to help people live better lives. I’ve become a therapist, but if this blog takes off, maybe I’ll do this full time instead. Maybe, I’ll become a professor and teach. Maybe I’ll start a non-profit. I’m open to where God leads me to serve and I’ve been willing to forgo obtaining higher paying jobs to do so. If you feel the reward is worth the cost, by all means pay it, just reflect on what the costs may be before you agree to pay it.

Things that should not be on your list

Published on June 25, 2024June 11, 2024 by BudgetBlissLeave a comment

I should hope that in your explorations of my various posts that it is fairly clear that I wholeheartedly and enthusiastically encourage you to add things that are authentic to you to your list with almost no limitations. If for you a bucket list item is finally baking the perfect cake, then by all means put it on your list. If saving up money to follow your favorite band across the country on tour – go for it!

However, there are some things that I strongly discourage and believe should not grace anyone’s bucket list. Namely items that are harmful or exploitative. Now, I won’t get down too deeply into the various nuances of exploitation and how almost everything we do is exploiting someone in someway, so there may be times when it seems like we’re splitting hairs. However, there are some activities that are quite clearly harmful to engage in.

Take the ever popular animal encounters. Many of them are quite fine and benefit both the animal and the people. But not every animal encounter is good, some are down right evil. Take baby tiger encounters, if someone is able to make a business entirely out of baby animal interactions you can almost be certain that the animals are being harmed. I would no sooner go to a puppy mill and pay them to interact with their puppies, but that is essentially what you would be doing. After all, animals don’t stay small and cute for long. Where are these babies coming from? How do they keep a continuous supply of baby animals? Where do they go when they grow up? Babies that are being constantly handled by humans are certainly not going back into the wild nor are they probably going to zoos.

It is important to consider if these animals are bred for human interaction, what sort of enclosure do they have, does the facility have any sort of accreditation such as the The Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) the gold standard for the industry, are there limits to group size, is it an animal led interaction and how likely is it that this is an animal that is being exploited? Some animals are much more likely to be part of a larger system of exploitation such as elephants. As much as I would love to interact with an elephant, unless it’s an encounter at a zoo or other facility with a fairly stringent accreditation, I won’t be participating in it. There are many stories coming out of Asia where even at places “meant” to help the elephants are actually places where they are being exploited and harmed.

When I was in Bermuda and I had the opportunity to do a dolphin encounter. Before even signing up for it, I started to do research into whether this was an ethical thing for me to do as I had read that many dolphin encounters in the Caribbean were harmful to the dolphins. I was pleased to see they had several accreditations and even reached out to one of my friends who worked at a zoo to see what she thought. She affirmed in her own investigation the organization seemed above board. With the best of intentions, I signed up for the encounter.

My caution was rewarded because when I went they kept the groups of visitors small and it was a dolphin led encounter. This meant that they opened the doors whichever dolphin showed up was the dolphin we would work with. The dolphins got to decide on the limits for themselves and make the decision to come or go. Honestly even the “enclosure” they were in, was really a net in the open water. The entire pod could have left at any time with a simple jump out to freedom. It was as effective at keeping them in as a one foot fence might be at keeping your dog in your yard. I am quite happy to recommend the encounter to people as positive for both people and dolphins. I did my research and had an amazing experience. I also don’t have to live with the guilt and even shame of having done something to harm these beautiful creatures that I adore because I took time to reflect first. The same could not have been said had I given into temptation and gone to cuddle the baby tigers.

Another common area for harm is the environment though this one is a bit fuzzy. Still, I encourage you to do your research and see if what you’re about to embark on is going to be drastically harmful. Releasing items up into the sky is a decided red flag as what goes up must come down. Balloons kill thousands of animals every year because of balloon releases. Would you really kill an animal for a few hours of fun? (We’ll table the hunting debate for now, I’m not referencing hunting.) When I decided to engage in a lantern fest, part of what I was paying for in my ticket price was for the clean up after the event. The lantern was 90% biodegradable and they had a significant rate of lantern recovery of between 85 – 95%. They had an agreement with the local land management that if lanterns were recovered after the event they would donate a certain amount of money to conservation of the land per lantern recovered. It meant that I was confident in my engagement with the activity as something that was minimally harmful to the local environment. Once again, it’s about doing your research and figuring out where you draw the line. For some people, releasing anything into the air is too harmful and risky to be worth it. For some people, my choice to go on a cruise is too much.

This post should not be read as some sort of permission to name and shame. It’s to make you really consider the potential consequences of your actions and to be willing to re-assess past decisions in light of new information. Take the ever popular, simple and seemingly harmless practice of rock stacking. Stacking rocks has been made so popular by social media, the national park service has started to ask people to knock them down as the practice is becoming increasingly harmful to the environment. It turns out, the small animals that need those rocks are the bedrock of the entire ecosystem and we were destroying them with our little instagram pictures. Apparently, If we want the wolves to stick around, we need to leave those rocks be. Things we would never think of as harmful can be devastating.

Unfortunately, the exploitation of people is probably the most fuzzy area, even though it seems like it should be easiest. This is mostly because there is so much exploitation of people in the tourism industry it is almost impossible not to end up in its clutches. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, do your research. Cruises are notorious for their poor treatment of the crew. Certain cruise lines are the typical offenders whereas others have pretty good reputations. Some hotels hold people in semi-domestic slavery. Others may be hubs of sex trafficking. I won’t publish a list here because these things can change overtime with changes in management and leadership. I certainly don’t want people coming to me later saying that I said a certain line was okay only to find out five years later it’s now one of the worst offenders.

Going on a mission or service trip may seem like the least exploitive thing you can do, but it can actually be one of the worst things you can do. There are stories of people going to orphanages to give toys that the children never see, or shoes the children will never get to wear. Essentially, saving the “poor orphans” is the thing the company is selling and if there aren’t “poor orphans” they lose their product. They can’t be saved if they’re already living in a beautiful facility provided with toys, food and clothing?

If you go to build houses, you can be assured that there was a group of local professionals who had to come in after you to fix all your mistakes just so you could feel good about what you were doing. There are other tales of churches being painted multiple times in the same summer by various youth groups robbing the locals of a job and money. These weren’t service trips, these were tourism experiences disguised as service. This isn’t to say every mission trip was like that and that by going you are robbing locals of business and self-sufficiency. However, it’s a good idea to question what you’re being asked to do. Are you doing something that is within your expertise or skillset or something you’d call a professional to do? If it’s a company that is consistently sending people to the same place, then why is it in such dire straits all the time?

Finally, things that go against your ethics and morals should never be on your list. Do your research and use your brain to ask the questions. As you learn more, the questions will begin to seem more and more obvious to ask. Additionally, if you engage in something and then later discover that you did participate in something that goes against your morals and ethics, it may be best to simply leave it off the “list”. This isn’t to hide it or out of a sense of shame. It is so the inclusion of it doesn’t encourage others to do it. For example, I did ride an elephant as a child long before the internet was widely available and the concerns for the elephants had reached my parents. All I knew was that I loved elephants and I got to ride one. However, you won’t see it on my list and other than this brief aside, I don’t think I will publish it elsewhere. This is to discourage elephant rides as I’m not celebrating it as a bucket list item that I have done. When we leave those sorts of things on our list, it is a celebration of that experience and it isn’t an experience worthy of celebration.

Not everyone’s morals and ethics will align. I already mentioned hunting, lantern releases and cruises. Some people may find consumption of any animal or animal product to be abhorrent. There are activist throwing soup at art because they feel the environmental impact of the museums is too much and so seeing the Mona Lisa probably isn’t something they’d have on their list. For me, cuddling a baby tiger isn’t something I’ll probably ever do because I cannot think of an ethical way to do it. This is a personal decision that you have to make and live with, but I will encourage you to continue to learn about the ethical practices of a given activity. One more reason for staying closer to home, it’s a bit easier for you to find out what’s actually going on.