The <FONT FACE="Symbol">d</font>-expansion is a nonperturbative approach for field theoretic models wich combines the techniques of perturbation theory and the variational principle. Different ways of implemeting the principle of minimal sensitivity to the <FONT FACE="Symbol">d</font>-expansion produce in general different results for observables. For illustration we use the Nambu- Jona-Lasinio model for chiral symmetry restoration at finite density and compare results with those obtained with the Hartree-Fock approximation.