Have any of you transitioned to a minimalist lifestyle?

[SlyFerret]

Hi All!
I figured some of you in the woodburning community might have gone this route.

For a number of years now, my new year's resolution has been to simplify life. In the past, I never actually made any changes, because it was such a vague idea and I had no real goal attached and no real driving force to make changes.

Last month, my wife and I watched a documentary on Netflix about minimalism and it resonated strongly with both of us. We picked up a few books by the guys in the documentary and have been reading them together.

This time is different. I am completely burned out from work. It is time to refocus on what really matters in life. In addition to simply changing our buying/consumption patterns, we are considering downsizing to a much smaller house so that I can walk away from my high tech job and do something completely different.

Have any of you done it? I'm looking for thoughts and insights from anyone who has done so, especially with young kids.

-SF

 

[peakbagger]

Living in a rural area that also is resort destination I do on occasion see folks moving up to "woods" to live the simple life. A few succeed but for many more they don't succeed and they move away. I know a local unemployment counselor who was the office specialist in talking to folks who either were contemplating moving up here or had moved up here and she was the one that had to gently explain the reality of the move. Inevitably unless they come into the area with resources (money in the bank) so they don't have a mortgage and are willing to really down size their lifestyle they end up having to work twice as much to pay the bills. Especially with kids, health insurance is not optional, if you show up at hospital without it you will end up signing a promissory note which ultimately could take away any assets you have saved or own. Frequently I see the wife ends up with a low paying nursing type job so the family has benefits and the husband works the minimalist job. I also have seen more than few cases where the breadwinner gets seriously injured and is out of work where things fall apart. It can be tough if after a couple of years into it that one spouses goals don't line up with the other.

I will say that in my area even though its rural the voters do tend to support good schools, the facilities may not be state of the art but academically they are in the top 10%. Unlike in many areas where the public schools are the dumping grounds for those who cant afford a private school, there is no appreciable interest in private schools. Heck one of the locally educated kids just ended up governor of Kentucky

The strange thing is for the vast majority of folks, there is no need to move to live a minimalist lifestyle, they just have to decide to stop keeping up with the Jones's which is a very powerful thing that most cant do. Sure two cars and a big house is convenient but folks live well with less, it just means that they may need to find a new set of friends as their old friends will be constantly encouraging them to raise their lifestyle. A piece of recommended reading that I expect you would think is not applicable is the book the "Millionaire Next Door". http://davidbeitler.com/temp/The Millionaire Next Door [Book]-MANTESH.PDF.pdf You may not think it applies to your goals but a lot of it does as it advocates getting off the consumptive lifestyle that many people inadvertently fall into.

If you haven't seen it, look around for a copy of the Harrison Ford movie the Mosquito Coast, definitely not one of his block busters but food for thought. Definitely minimalist to the extreme.

 

[firefighterjake]

I think going this way often starts with small steps . . . and discovering if it works for you or not.

For the past year my wife has not been working due to an injury . . . I wouldn't say we have a minimalist life style, but we have been fine financially. We also have not been very extravagant -- i.e. no vacations, no cable TV, etc.

 

[Lloyd the redneck]

I used to live pretty minimally. An old 70's 20' camper that was a pos parked out under a tree behind the shop on the farm I worked for. No water or anything. The shop had a toilet and a shower but was a good walk in the middle of the night. No tv no internet. Worked sun up to much past sun down. Had my dirt bike and old car. Life was great. (Still is). Now I still try to get by with no frills , my wife and I have a little farm and drive old vehicles and don't buy anything new. We also decided for New Years to get busy and be as close to off the grid as possible. Mainly to save money and be better stewards of the environment.

 

[SlyFerret]

Thanks for the insights so far.

Our house is not extravagant. Was just shy of 1600 sqft when we bought it. We added a detached garage and then finished the attached garage as well as some space that was previously an oversized unfinished laundry room. That makes the house roughly 2000 sqft today. As a percentage of income, mortgage, taxes, and insurance is about 17% of income. Well below average already, but that is based on my remote job for a silicon valley tech company. I'd like to switch industries and do something different and local. I save aggressively and don't want to stop doing that just because I change careers.

We are currently single income. My wife has been a stay at home mom for over 5 years now. She is getting her children's book illustrator career going now so we will be back to two incomes soon.

We would stay in the area, but downsize to something about half this size, if we actually do move. The house works very well for us, so I'm not sure something smaller could provide the same value to us unless we did a custom build or stumbled across something perfect.

Also, cars are paid off and have been for years. Credit cards get paid off every month. Overall, we already aren't the average American household, financially. This is about further alligning our life and our priorities.

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[SlyFerret]

I think going this way often starts with small steps . . . and discovering if it works for you or not.

For the past year my wife has not been working due to an injury . . . I wouldn't say we have a minimalist life style, but we have been fine financially. We also have not been very extravagant -- i.e. no vacations, no cable TV, etc.

That is part of it. The minimalist lifestyle that I'm referring to centered around getting rid of things that don't actually add value to your life and focusing on only spending resources (money, time, etc...) on things that do add value. You could consider it an application of lean concepts in personal life instead of industry.

Traveling, for many does add value, so minimizing elsewhere can actually better facilitate vacations.

We did get rid of our satellite TV service and actually removed the TV from the living room where the stove is. We kept the TV in the kids play room, but only use it for OTA and Netflix/Hulu streaming.

-SF

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[SlyFerret]

The strange thing is for the vast majority of folks, there is no need to move to live a minimalist lifestyle, they just have to decide to stop keeping up with the Jones's which is a very powerful thing that most cant do.

This is a huge part of it. Breaking the cycle of consumption that results from the barrage of marketing that we are exposed to every day is critical to making the kind of deliberate purchasing decisions required by the minimalist lifestyle.

I haven't read The Millionaire Next Door yet, but I have heard of it. Based on what I see in the table of contents, it is 100% applicable. I'll add it to our reading list. Thanks for the suggestion!

-SF

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[firefighterjake]

That is part of it. The minimalist lifestyle that I'm referring to centered around getting rid of things that don't actually add value to your life and focusing on only spending resources (money, time, etc...) on things that do add value. You could consider it an application of lean concepts in personal life instead of industry.

Traveling, for many does add value, so minimizing elsewhere can actually better facilitate vacations.

We did get rid of our satellite TV service and actually removed the TV from the living room where the stove is. We kept the TV in the kids play room, but only use it for OTA and Netflix/Hulu streaming.

-SF

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Sounds like you're well on your way then . . . and definitely living life more frugally and sensibly than many Americans.

I would suggest however that "value" is variable . . . one person may value travel (I do for example as I feel it is good to experience new things, cultures, etc.), but another might be happy not traveling and may value a new ATV or snowmobile for example . . . or value saving more money for retirement . . . or value the latest tech gizmo . . . or paying off their bills -- all of this instead of travel. Value is very subjective.

 

[jatoxico]

peakbagger makes a lot of good points that resonate with me. Getting caught up in trying to impress others is a trap and any "positive" feelings that come from that motivation isn't a beast I want to feed.

I have family that chucked it all, or most of it. They now like to say that you don't own stuff, the stuff owns you.

 

[peakbagger]

I don't have a lot of "Joneses" to keep up with. My long term friends tend to be the same.

Years ago I wrote up an excel spreadsheet to figure out how long it would take to pay off my mortgage if I made extra payments. It calculated the monthly principal and interest split on my payment. One time I was messing with it and put in a future date long after the mortgage was paid off, The results were how much I would have saved if I kept making the same payments, it was a pretty big number. I did what I could to get the mortgage paid down and then swore off long term debt. The reality is that for most folks until they get the mortgage out of the way, long term savings is tough. Unfortunately the entire US system pushes the "get it now and make payments forever concept". I don't look at housing as an investment, sure I would like to make some cash if I ever sell but I just regard it as paying enough rent that at some point I don't have to pay rent anymore. I spent a couple of years sleeping on a couch in a dining room growing up as my parents would buy a house with an unfinished second floor and then finish it. I was just a kid but I learned helping my dad and it has served me well. I learned the basics on home repairs and it been very rare that I have ever had to hire anyone to fix things. I had other friends who shared a bedroom with a sibling for years. I expect some folks would regard this as child abuse these days but we survived.

The time value of money is some pretty basic math which many folks just don't understand. Back when I was a teenager I had a paper route for a couple of years. Over the years I bought some camping gear, a Schwinn 10 speed bike and $150 worth of shares of GTE phone company stock at my dads insistence. The camping gear is mostly long gone or worn out, the 10 speed is still in my garage but not used very often and the shares are now worth around $20K. I didn't buy any more shares on my own I just have let it sit and set it up for automatic reinvestment of the dividends for 40 years. I did a similar thing with the proceeds of small IRA account from my first job. I just put it in safe diversified mutual fund and left it there. Its now at the point where I could retire a couple of years earlier on what is in the account.

I don't have any kids but did set up a college savings plan for my niece's kids. I set aside my spare change over the year and roll it up then cash it in once a year and make a contribution and usually make a contribution instead of Christmas presents. It wont cover an Ivy League education but in about 5 years it will make a good dent for a state school. The only thing I told my niece is her and her husband are the ones who decide which kid gets a share.

The great point was a few years back when I got laid off from a job and realized that I really didn't have to rush out and find a new job. By taking a few months off I ended up with a far better job. My priorities are different then yours but if you can make the jump off the merry go round now and live below your means by going minimal in a few years your options will really open up. If the kids are young they really aren't going to know the difference although you will on occasion need to explain some excessive birthday parties they inevitably will get invited to.

 

[SlyFerret]

I have family that chucked it all, or most of it. They now like to say that you don't own stuff, the stuff owns you.

That quote has come up in more than one of the books we have read recently. It is very true, I think!

-SF

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[SlyFerret]

I would suggest however that "value" is variable . . . one person may value travel (I do for example as I feel it is good to experience new things, cultures, etc.), but another might be happy not traveling and may value a new ATV or snowmobile for example . . . or value saving more money for retirement . . . or value the latest tech gizmo . . . or paying off their bills -- all of this instead of travel. Value is very subjective.

There is quite a bit of soul searching involved to really decide what value means to us.

The hard part is discerning whether or not that value comes from personal priorities or from external sources like marketing or "the Joneses" so to speak.

-SF



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[SlyFerret]

live below your means by going minimal in a few years your options will really open up. If the kids are young they really aren't going to know the difference although you will on occasion need to explain some excessive birthday parties they inevitably will get invited to.

We have been living beneath out means for quite some time now. It definitely makes things easier.

The kids are indeed young (3 and 5). They will adjust to the changes I'm sure.

I'm curious how others who downsized significantly with kids went about determining how much house they really needed vs wanted. That's an area where I have to make a decision that is less easily changed if wrong. Sure, you can always move again, but I hate house shopping and moving.

-SF

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[Easy Livin’ 3000]

Hi All! The
I figured some of you in the woodburning community might have gone this route.

For a number of years now, my new year's resolution has been to simplify life. In the past, I never actually made any changes, because it was such a vague idea and I had no real goal attached and no real driving force to make changes.

Last month, my wife and I watched a documentary on Netflix about minimalism and it resonated strongly with both of us. We picked up a few books by the guys in the documentary and have been reading them together.

This time is different. I am completely burned out from work. It is time to refocus on what really matters in life. In addition to simply changing our buying/consumption patterns, we are considering downsizing to a much smaller house so that I can walk away from my high tech job and do something completely different.

Have any of you done it? I'm looking for thoughts and insights from anyone who has done so, especially with young kids.

-SF

Indeed! When I was in college I used to spend time reading about this type of lifestyle at the bookstore, and i subscribed to Mother Earth News, which was all about this. I knew then, I was headed in that direction. All efforts have been made to get there as early as possible since.

I second the recommendation of The Millionaire Next Door, it was required reading at my first job (as a stock broker, no less!), as the management wanted us know where to hunt for the money. Extremely valuable insights.

I adopted the lifestyle, as a working adult, that I had grown accustomed to as a poor college student. I figured I was as happy as I could hope to be while in college, so chasing possessions would not improve on that. Minimalist all the way.

Additional recommendations: Living The Good Life by Scott and Helen Nearing, and the website Mr. Money Moustache.

Two things that I have concluded in this pursuit: You never really own real estate, you just rent it from the local municipality; and, health insurance is the single biggest thing in the way of independence.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Reading about warren buffet will give you some insights also.


Why move? Pay off your mortgage and then reevaluate everything. Start playing the game of how to reduce all expenses down to the minimum. Then start pondering things like improving insulation to cut down bills further.

 

[firefighterjake]

There is quite a bit of soul searching involved to really decide what value means to us.

The hard part is discerning whether or not that value comes from personal priorities or from external sources like marketing or "the Joneses" so to speak.

-SF



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Very true . . . I am fortunate though as I have never been in an area or been around folks who were always chasing after the Joneses. While I would not consider myself frugal, I also am not one of those folks who always has to have the latest and greatest thing . . . which is probably why I am quite content with the flip phone I get from work and my wife has a Tracfone which she rarely uses unless on a trip or an emergency when the power goes out.

For the record . . . I think travel is often worth the expense . . . especially if it enriches one's life by exposing one to nature's beauty (i.e. national and state parks), edifies one's mind (i.e. museums, historical sites) or simply allows a person to recharge their soul (i.e. sometimes you just gotta get away and de-stress.)

 

[firefighterjake]

We have been living beneath out means for quite some time now. It definitely makes things easier.

The kids are indeed young (3 and 5). They will adjust to the changes I'm sure.

I'm curious how others who downsized significantly with kids went about determining how much house they really needed vs wanted. That's an area where I have to make a decision that is less easily changed if wrong. Sure, you can always move again, but I hate house shopping and moving.

-SF

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I don't have children, so take this with a grain of salt . . . but for me my childhood was a pretty good one . . . although looking back I could say we were lower middle class. What I remember is not that great gift I got on my 2nd birthday or that awesome Pong video game system (OK, I lied about that -- I remember getting that in a yard sale from my cousin) -- what I truly remember and cherish most vividly are the memories of the family going to Washington, DC and my dad getting hopelessly stuck in a Clark Griswold moment on the roundabout . . . playing hide and seek in the cornfields with my cousins in the fall . . . going out on a Christmas morning after an ice storm and riding a sled down the road outside the house with my brother since there was absolutely no traffic and the ice made the road into a luge track . . . and so on and so forth.

 

[jatoxico]

For me though the idea of minimalism is not so much about where you live or the size of your house but is a mind set that has a lot to do with just not being wasteful. We moved when our kids were in grade school for the school district so taxes are high but housing is still around 12% of income.I repair what I can before throwing things out, we buy nice, but used cars cash to avoid debt and try not to make too many deposits in the landfill. I consider it a victory that our family of four only throws out one full garbage a week as opposed to some I see in my neighborhood that seem to toss out 3 cans of trash and a TV twice a week. Same people that got upside down in their mortgages when the market took a down turn.

 

[peakbagger]

Extending Jakes observation is that most studies show that the best long term value are spending money on experiences not stuff. I know a few families who really concentrate on buying holiday gifts that are tools for experiences rather than short term entertainment.

Buy them a backpack instead of a Barbie.

I will say we had the old fashioned lego sets (standard blocks) versus the kits they sell now and had a couple of erector sets mixed into one box that got a lot of use. I think at least a few erector set pieces are probably buried in wall or keeping some plumbing hanging up in a few former houses.

 

[Ashful]

I'm curious how others who downsized significantly with kids went about determining how much house they really needed vs wanted. That's an area where I have to make a decision that is less easily changed if wrong. Sure, you can always move again, but I hate house shopping and moving.

I've never lived in a place where I can choose my house by it's size. I'll never be accused of being minimalist, but I've always bought for location and setting, then modified the house to suit my needs.

 

[sportbikerider78]

For me, I think it would be easier to be a minimalist living in the city not the country. You need much more to survive and be comfortable in the country than the city.

Living in the country has greatly complicated my life, not simplified it. I have chainsaws, wood splitters, snow blowers, leaf blowers, bigger mower, and spend more time outside doing maintenance related activities. I'm also talking my way into a tractor..which I would love to have.

 

[SlyFerret]

For me, I think it would be easier to be a minimalist living in the city not the country. You need much more to survive and be comfortable in the country than the city.

Living in the country has greatly complicated my life, not simplified it. I have chainsaws, wood splitters, snow blowers, leaf blowers, bigger mower, and spend more time outside doing maintenance related activities. I'm also talking my way into a tractor..which I would love to have.

I have brought up the idea of moving into town for that very reason.

-SF

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[Easy Livin’ 3000]

Goo

For me, I think it would be easier to be a minimalist living in the city not the country. You need much more to survive and be comfortable in the country than the city.

Living in the country has greatly complicated my life, not simplified it. I have chainsaws, wood splitters, snow blowers, leaf blowers, bigger mower, and spend more time outside doing maintenance related activities. I'm also talking my way into a tractor..which I would love to have.

Good point, after reading your post I realized how much stuff I've accumulated to manage the acreage. It's all been acquired via gift, Craigslist, yardsale, and "Sunday night trash pickup", but it's still is in contrast to a minimalist lifestyle. And I suppose the cords and cords of wood that I've scavenged that are scattered among the property also apply. I think I'll have to think about this more and perhaps have a yard sale of my own this spring to consolidate.

 

[Ashful]

Goo

Good point, after reading your post I realized how much stuff I've accumulated to manage the acreage. It's all been acquired via gift, Craigslist, yardsale, and "Sunday night trash pickup", but it's still is in contrast to a minimalist lifestyle. And I suppose the cords and cords of wood that I've scavenged that are scattered among the property also apply. I think I'll have to think about this more and perhaps have a yard sale of my own this spring to consolidate.

Church yard sales are a lifesaver, here. I never want to bother with the effort of setting up my own (who has the time?), so all old stereo speakers, coffee tables, televisions, baby cribs, and the sort of stuff that might normally fill up your basement or attic get donated to the church yard sale each spring. It helps them with their fundraisers, and gets it out of my house!

 

[jatoxico]

I see the point about country vs city or more urban living but not sure I agree entirely. IMO having basic "stuff" that is used doesn't contradict the concept. Having 2 jet skis, a boat and a pool that never get used (guilty of pool) is not in line.

You guys have mentioned a few books I'd like to read. Maybe after reading more on the topic I'll change my tune.