My Mission is to encourage you to:
Live intentionally – shift your paradigms away from consumerism and focus on the things that really make you happy.
Save and invest – save a significant proportion of your income and learn how to invest this successfully.
Learn that less is more – spend money with intent and discover how to cut out unnecessary junk from your life.
Be more away of your impact on the environment – our collective actions can have a significant positive impact on the planet, we just need to make the right choices.
Hi, I’m Richard, the founder of Slow Down and Save. It’s great to have you on board. 🙂
I’m a meteorologist by profession, and have been working in this space since 2016. My work has been varied over the years, but has often involved a lot of direct exposure to the effects of climate change on the weather around the world. It’s now quite clear that temperatures are more often above than below average across much of the world, and dozens of countries/ regions experience their warmest summer or mildest winter on record every year. So for me, the influence of climate change has been quite plain – visceral almost.
This has translated into a general interest in sustainability. There are a lot of people on the planet and in order for everyone to have a good lifestyle, we, as individuals, have to consume less. This is the only way for humanity to maintain a sustainable existence on Earth, while allowing a flourishing natural ecosystem to exist.Â
I have also developed a keen passion for personal finance and investing over recent years. I spend a lot of my free time researching into personal finance and investing – reading websites, perusing social media and digesting books like The Simple Path to Wealth and The Intelligent Investor. I’m constantly learning new things and find the subject very exciting!
Something that I’ve always found interesting is how consumerism negatively impacts both the environment and our finances. Being a consumer usually leads to owning lots of things which depreciate in value, and also use more of the planet’s resources. This seems like a natural cross-over point between my interests. How can we move away from a lifestyle in which consumerism rules, and towards one which saves us money and also saves the planet?
So… that’s my story in brief. Now we arrive at the website idea. Back in 2015, I built another website/ blog based on the weather and my early-career experiences as a meteorologist, StratusDeck (https://stratusdeck.co.uk), and very much enjoyed the development process. Now I want to translate my passion for sustainability and personal finance into this new project.
Slow Down and Save’s story began in February 2025, when I first made live this website’s predecessor, Consider the Climate. I blogged about things that interest me on a semi-regular basis: minimalism, climate change, weather, investing, fitness and intentional living. Eventually, I realised that the name did not really fit with what I was talking about. While I’m passionate about climate change, the website was never as climate focussed as the title implied. I was worried the title gave the wrong impression and would discourage potential readers – so I changed the name to Slow Down and Save in September 2025. Around the same time, I also realised that the WIX development platform I was using was too restrictive if I really wanted to grow the website. So, I made the switch over to WordPress.
And this is where we find ourselves now. I hope you find what I have to say interesting!