Welcome to our new series, showing you how the changes you want to see in the world actually happen!

It’s all connected – your spending with your values, your investments with your spending, your everyday choices with your financial identity. But money isn’t everything. Right?

The Better Life Initiative is a project that really gets that. The people behind it – the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) – know that when it comes to national health and identity, a real understanding requires more than economic statistics. They’re not the first to realize that, of course, but they are the first to turn that philosophy into a majorly awesome interactive online experience.

This kind of information used to come from a group of analysts crunching numbers and telling us who ranked where in the great global economic struggle. The Better Life Initiative collects data, yes, but YOU choose how it’s ranked and displayed.

What’s the wealthiest nation that has affordable housing for its citizens?

How about the poorest nation with the highest life satisfaction?

Tweak the knobs to your soul’s content and see where your own personal life desires are really being played out in the world. Whenever someone creates and shares their ideal index on the site, OECD records it in a giant “what the people of the world really care about” database.

We picked Luxembourg as our favorite country, though we’re not sure where exactly it is.

What does your ideal life look like?

(© Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images)

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be a kid with a horse and a dream and a billion dollar inheritance, now’s your chance to find out. Georgina Bloomberg, the 28-year-old daughter of the mayor of New York City, has just published a young adult book that is technically a work of fiction, but clearly based on her life in the inner circle of Manhattan heiresses.

While it’s not fair to read too far into Georgina’s life based on her book, there are some interesting themes – mostly around the unwanted fame that comes with wealth and good old arguments with dad. What do you do when your father’s fortune allows you to excel at an expensive sport – horse riding – but his business sensibility dismisses it as a career because it doesn’t pay?

It’s kind of nice to see that the tension between parents who want the best for their children and the children who want to follow their bliss is pretty much universal. No matter what your net worth.

(photo: Lazurite on flickr)

Remember those frigid winter mornings when Dad would tell you to quit whining already and put on a sweater if you were so cold? Well if you haven’t figured it out by now (which, duh), he was trying to save energy (i.e. money) by keeping the thermostat low.

Today, the Japanese government is doing essentially the same thing. But… kookier.

They’re pushing a new program called “Super Cool Biz.” Participating companies are encouraged to save energy by keeping their thermostats set to 82 degrees Fahrenheit this summer. After all, the nation is still trying to manage with reduced energy availability after some of its nuclear power plants were destroyed in the tsunami. But a nice side effect will be lower electricity bills for participating companies and a smaller carbon footprint for the entire nation.

The super cool part? Shorts, sandals, and Hawaiian t-shirts are all suddenly upgraded to “business casual.” We want pictures of super cool board meetings.

How are you staying cool this summer without contributing to a scorched earth?

Welcome to American Philanthropy! The charity scene has changed quite a bit in the past 100 years – from the elite ranks of oil barons to the democracy of text donations. Learning a little about the history of philanthropy in the U.S. will help you understand the present and future – and make you a smarter philanthropist.

(credit: mandolin davis)

Your spending habits have changed in the past month, haven’t they? If you’re in the Northern hemisphere, you’re probably entering something called “summer,” which is a sure sign that wallets are creaking open after a long winter. Why? Well, basically, the days are longer, the sun is shinier, the calendar is overflowing with vacation days, and people are just generally having more fun. Which means more ways to spend that cash!

But it’s not just summer that has us pulling out our credit cards like a bunch of capitalist lemmings – the entire world economy changes with the seasons, and your money habits are a bigger part of that than you may think.

So here’s how it usually goes:

Spring & Summer = Spend

Besides the obvious expenses, like vacations and the new clothes you need now that you’re actually leaving your house in broad daylight, the warm-weather months just seem to tap into a spendy part of our brains. At least one study suggests that consumers consume more when they’re exposed to more hours of sunlight. Because they’re happier. And happy people like to buy stuff.

Fall & Winter = Grow

More specifically, Summer = sell stock & go on vacation; Fall & Winter = buy stock & hope it performs

There’s a saying on Wall Street – “Sell in May and Go Away.” It refers to a pattern of higher stock market returns from November to April and lower returns from May to October. So if your stock has done well all winter and you’re pretty sure it’s going to dip in the spring, you want to sell while it’s still high. And if you think the price is going to skyrocket again around Thanksgiving, you’ll want to snatch it up while it’s still low. Get it? Interestingly, no one can explain this pattern. (Though plenty of people are trying.)

December = Give

December is hands-down the biggest fundraising month for charities. Not only are people swept up in the generous holiday spirit (and probably feeling a little guilty about all the money they’re spending on pie and presents), but December is the last time to make tax-deductible donations for the year. And since many people don’t give much (or at all) during the rest of the year, the last week of December is when nonprofits see most of their donations pour in.

Everyone has a different reason for giving in winter, but a common one is that donors are busy going on vacation and spending money on themselves in the spring and summer. And who knows? Maybe there’s something about the bitterness of winter that makes people think more about world suffering.

But that’s just most people.

Do you see your own money behavior in any of these trends? More importantly, do you want to make your financial decisions based on the weather? After all, charities depend on donations year-round, and we all know you can’t really time the market.

If you’ve been unconsciously following the crowd, ask yourself: is this how you want to spend (grow, and give) your summer?

(click on the map to go to the interactive graphic)

Are you surprised by the average credit score for your state? Do you know what your credit score is?

(Via Column Five for Credit Sesame)

(photo credit: bredgur)

It’s not often that the Wall Street Journal writes for readers under 40, but they just published a really good article with financial advice for the pre-college population. Now, we’re not trying to get all parenty on you, but as pseudo-grownups we can assure you that a little planning goes a long way.* (And it really doesn’t take that much time out of your schedule.) Here are some of the points writer Zac Bissonnette makes:

• > Debt becomes part of your life once you take it on. If you’re planning to use student loans to pay for school, remember that paying back those loans after graduation means part of every paycheck will belong to the bank.
• > Speaking of paying for college, do you really need to pay for an ivy league degree? Success doesn’t depend on which school you go to – it depends on the effort you put in.
• > Don’t get sucked in by materialism. The vast majority of people are not rich but still perfectly happy. But there are a lot of forces around you conspiring to make you feel poor and deprived. Tell them to go away.

(TILE Fun Fact: A small amount of debt can actually help you, by rounding out your credit history and boosting your credit score. But ONLY if you use it responsibly – that means pay it off, and never miss a due date.)

The most important question you need to ask yourself is this: What is this college degree really going to cost me, in terms of my dreams? Maybe you’d like to travel the world after graduation, or take an entry-level job in the nonprofit sector, or buy your first house before you’re thirty. Massive debt can really screw up your plans, so plan accordingly.

* For example, if you chose to invest $1,000 at age 18 and earned a paltry 3% return, you could have $3,500 waiting for you when you’re 60. (And by the time you’re 60, 60 will be the new 30.) All that with absolutely no effort. Well, you do have to take an hour to invest that $1,000 when you’re 18. See what we mean about planning?

(credit: JASON ANFINSEN)

Going to Bonnaroo this year? Prepare to wear your credit card on your sleeve. Er, wrist. Concert producers have switched from a paper-based to a microchip-based ticketing system, which means you’ll be wearing your right to be there in a little plastic bracelet on your wrist.

But wait, there’s more! Concertgoers can also choose to embed their credit card information in their bracelets, so they’ll be able to pay for stuff without searching for their wallets. (We all know how much of a hassle that is, right?)

You’ve got to love how easy it’s becoming to spend money. Okay, maybe it’s not such a good thing for our budgets (or our souls) here in the U.S., but think about the implications for people who live in countries with developing economies… Technology like this could eliminate a lot of hurdles to economic participation – kind of like how the invention of the cell phone ended up democratizing long-distance communication in Africa. (In 2005, 1 in 11 Africans had a mobile plan; only 1 in 33 had a land line.)