Good day to you and welcome to this small corner of the internet. You’ve found my intentional living and personal finance website. This will be a long-term project that I wish to put consistent effort in developing over the coming months and years. Let’s see how long it lasts!
For me, the road so far has not been an easy one – I’m relatively new to the blogging scene, and this whole website development business has baffled me so far. I’ve been through two site names and am now on my second development platform. There’s been many hours of deliberation and pondering, along with much pacing around the house (which I tend to do when in deep thought), to get to this point. I’ve made many mistakes, and taken early iterations of this project down several dark alleys which I have since backed away from. But I have no regrets (so far). So often in life, I find that the journey is often the experience, and I’m glad this one has been interesting up to now!
To get a better understanding of how we’ve got here, I’ll rewind the clock and give some context.
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 (like that experienced by many in the west), 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, full of biodiversity, to develop. We must be more aware of our impact on the environment – both as an entire species but also on a personal level through the individual actions that we take.
I have also developed a keen passion for personal finance and investing over recent years – really ever since I’ve had enough spare cash to invest. 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 I’ve felt confident enough to manage my own investment portfolio for the past five years. This is something I’m very proud of.
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 uses 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 benefits the planet? It is socially acceptable to live a life with with a lot of stuff in it – how can we move away from these social norms towards more considered and intentional living?
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. I spent around five years building this site on the side, and it generated a reasonable amount of interest eventually. Now I want to translate my passion for sustainability and personal finance into this new project.
Slow Down and Save’s story began back in February, when I first put live this website’s predecessor Consider the Climate. I blogged about things that interest me the most on an occasional basis: minimalism, climate change/weather, investing, fitness and intentional living. However, I never managed to spend quite as much time on it as I liked. Eventually, I realised that the name did not really fit with what I was taking about. While I’m passionate about climate change, the site was never as climate focussed as the title implied. I was worried the title gave the wrong impression and would discourage the audience my writing was aimed at – so I changed the name to Slow Down and Save. 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 here we are… just 24 hours after I made the switch, I’m now writing my first blog post using the new software. I still barely know how to use the platform, and to be honest, I’m not even sure when this post will go live. I still need to build the rest of the website to a reasonable standard first! But I’m incredibly excited at the potential routes for website development and growth WordPress offers. Even if I’m shouting into the void for the next year, I won’t mind too much as this site will be an outlet for all the things that I’m really passionate about. It would be nice if some people come to read what I have to say eventually though!
I hope you find it interesting. 🙂
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