When I first started blogging back in summer 2017, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing and knew no one in the online community. Months before I had even figured out that Twitter was where I would find the majority of my personal finance friends, I’d somehow connected with a few other new bloggers.

One of those very first blogger friends was Kristine Vike-Jonas, who wrote over at Frugasaurus. She and I connected immediately over our shared love of both finances and the environment, where the environment always came first out of the two. There are a few more people writing about that overlap now, but back then it was a very limited few, and we felt a shared passion of that intersection.

Kristine also wrote one of my very early guest posts on this blog, about her journey with imperfect zero waste. And after I shared this post from That Frugal Pharmacist about #PrepperFI, Kristine followed up with her own on climate anxiety. Again and again, I felt true kinship with this woman who lived thousands of miles away from me in a different country. We may have different stories, but our true passions connect deeply.

More recently, she and I had begun to use the hashtag #ecofrugal to describe that connection between frugality and sustainability, be it walking to work or mending torn clothing. In our everyday lives, it’s hard to separate the threads of sustainable choices from money saving ones.

Ecofrugals.com is born

Just last week, Kristine mentioned to me that she was looking into buying a new domain because she had stepped back from blogging for a while and had given up her domain name, going back to a free WordPress.com site.

Her idea this time around was to go with something related to that ecofrugal concept we had been using for a while on social media. When she shared that, I let her know that I had also been considering an ecofrugal project and had even purchased a domain name a while back for that purpose, though I hadn’t done anything with it yet.

And with that conversation, it was quickly clear that it was a project we wanted to work on together. Within a week, Kristine had the back end of the website up as well as a beautifully painted watercolor logo (the two parts of blogging I’m particularly not good at!) and I’d tossed out quite a few ideas for what the site might look like. And with that, the Ecofrugals.com site was live.

Launching the Ecofrugals site

If we were *professional* bloggers, we would probably wait until we had a good handful of blog posts ready to publish and fully formed resources and site pages (I should probably be following the excellent advice from the Gold City Ventures blogging course). But we aren’t, and we’re just too excited to wait to share. We have social media up and running (you can find us on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook) and a couple blog posts on the site, but you’ll notice that we’re early in the process yet.

Even so, in the almost three years since we started blogging, we’ve learned a whole lot, and even this beginning of a site looks quite a bit different than our fledgling blogs back in 2017. We are so excited for this project, and we will be adding content regularly in the coming weeks. Come follow along with us as we dive into what ecofrugal means and how you can live life accordingly! Spoiler: there’s no one way to do it, but we’ll share a bunch of different ways to be #ecofrugal.

What about Tread Lightly Retire Early?

Wait, so what about Tread Lightly Retire Early? Am I shuttering this site?

Absolutely not!! Tread Lightly Retire Early will continue on as it has, with three posts a week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. In starting this new Ecofrugals project, I have no intention of abandoning this site, and I see them having different focuses, which I’m excited about.

When I asked you all what I should write about next, there were quite a few votes for more sustainability content. And believe me, there are few things I love writing about more than the environment.

However, this site has always been from a focus of personal finance and financial independence in particular, and I’ve felt like I’ve needed to write at least as much about money as I do about sustainability. Plus, the impetus for this site as about personal accountability as well, chronicling my money journey with monthly financial updates and working through my thoughts on slowfi and no spend days, among others.

Tread Lightly Retire Early has become a big part of my life, and I don’t see it disappearing anytime in the future that I can see. This site will forever be mine, and about my story (and the stories of others, including non-bloggers). But I’m also thrilled to start this new site with Kristine with a focus on ecofrugality.

What will you find on Ecofrugals.com?

Our goal with ecofrugals.com is to be the place to find information and resources on all things ecofrugal. We’ll be sharing personal stories and reviews, links to other relevant content, recipes, and anything else helpful to living an ecofrugal life. Kristine and I live ecofrugal every day, but we aren’t perfect. We’ll be sharing what we know, hosting other stories, and learning right along with everyone else. We’re so excited to have launched the blog this week, and we hope you’ll join us in living a more ecofrugal life to tread lightly on this planet while saving money at the same time.

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