The Minimalist Way Read online

  —Maren S., Columbus, Ohio

  “My background is in accounting, so while I’m conservative with my day-to-day spending and choose to almost never carry consumer debt, I own a few rental properties—all of which are mortgaged. In each case, the rental rate covers the mortgage payment, and I make sure I always have enough in savings to float a property for up to six months if it were to go unrented for some reason. I’m comfortable with home loans when they support my long-term financial well-being.”

  —Andrew J., San Jose, California

  There’s No One Path to Financial Freedom

  As you can see from the examples I shared, there’s no one path to minimalist finances. One minimalist could have his home paid off but always keep a loan on his car, because cars are his passion. Another minimalist could live in a true “tiny home,” with a shed out back to store her well-loved, well-used (and not cheap) art supplies, because painting is her passion. One minimalist family might decorate sparingly, buying the best pieces they can afford—and little else. Another minimalist family might choose to shop almost exclusively secondhand and to decorate their home with meaningful trinkets they pick up on their travels.

  This brand of minimalism isn’t a one-size-fits-all equation. It’s about making financial decisions with intention, instead of by default—spending your money on what is necessary and important to you, and forgetting the rest. With this approach, we each gain the space to live our own values. When you understand that minimalism can look different for everyone, you begin to release judgment and instead offer others love and respect no matter where they are in their journey. Now that we’ve explored the magic that happens when your finances and your values are aligned, let’s dive deeper and explore a minimalist’s mind-set around shopping—an action that plays a leading role in our ability to live with less.

  Strategies for Minimalist Shopping

  I walked through the box store like I did every other week, using one hand to keep the toddler from escaping the cart’s safety buckle and the other hand to grab what we needed and throw it in—all while fielding question after question from my then 4-year-old son.

  “Mom, can I pleeeease get a new swimsuit today?”

  “Mom, how about these flip-flops?”

  “Oooh, Mom, I need these Ninjago LEGOs!”

  So many wants! I thought.

  As I walked toward the grocery section of the store, I looked down at my cart and suddenly evaluated its contents with fresh eyes. Children’s pain reliever, double A batteries, three boxes of tissues to donate to our son’s preschool classroom. Those were fine, but what about the new hair product I’d throw in just because I’d seen someone talk about it on Instagram? Or how about the after-Easter clearance decorations I’d picked up? Sure, those cute polka-dotted mason jars were from the dollar section, but did I really even have a use for them?

  How could I expect my 4-year-old to know the difference between needs and wants—and to be judicious with our money—when I was barely practicing it myself?

  Most of my impulse buys went back that day, and that particular Target run became one of the guideposts on my path to a minimalist lifestyle. Now that we’ve explored the magic that happens when your finances and your values are aligned, let’s dive deeper and explore a minimalist’s mind-set around shopping—an action that plays a leading role in our ability to live with less.

  “If we can’t be happy with what we have right now, how will we ever be happy with more?”

  1. HARNESS THE POWER OF STRATEGIC INCONVENIENCE

  For many years, the dating website eHarmony required its users to fill out a 150-question survey before joining, stating that the process was key to their success rate for long-term relationships. This laborious signup process, designed to help secure great matches for their users, naturally weeded out people who weren’t willing to invest 30 minutes of their time into making a potential love connection.

  Before you start worrying that I’m trying to marry you off, let me ask this: Is there a way we could use eHarmony’s strategy of inconvenience to help us keep our shopping in check?

  A reader recently told me that her best solution has been moving to a town with nothing more than a Dollar Tree and a mom-and-pop grocery store. The nearest Target, she said, is almost an hour away—inconvenient. Other (less drastic) measures include canceling your Amazon Prime subscription so you actually have to pay attention to shipping charges; changing your driving route to work or school so you no longer pass the store that always calls your name; or canceling your store credit cards so you no longer earn points or get their mailers.

  Even the smallest inconvenience can hold us back. Use it to your advantage.

  “One thing that continually astonishes me is the degree to which we’re influenced by sheer convenience. The amount of effort, time, or decision making required by an action has a huge influence on habit formation. To a truly remarkable extent, we’re more likely to do something if it’s convenient, and less likely if it’s not.” —GRETCHEN RUBIN

  2. REDUCE YOUR EXPOSURE TO ADVERTISING

  We’ve already touched on how pervasive—and how effective—advertising has become. It’s also made shopping infinitely more convenient. If you do a search for, say, cross-country skis or cordless vacuums, you’ll start seeing skis and vacuums pop up on Facebook, the header ads on the websites you visit, and the in-feed ads on Instagram—and across any of the devices you use. On top of that, when a price gets reduced on one of the items you’ve looked at, you’ll know within minutes by way of the ads you see, and we all know how hard it is to resist clicking through when you see a slashed price.

  The obvious answer here is to reduce the amount of advertising you see. The less obvious answer is how to go about that. Try experimenting with the following:

  1.Unsubscribe from brand email lists. The (unfortunate) power of those “20% off!” coupon codes cannot be understated!

  2.Install an ad blocker to reduce the amount of advertising you see while browsing online. This idea is controversial because many small businesses and solopreneurs rely on the income they earn from third-party advertising, so an alternative is simply being more selective about the websites you visit. If you find that the advertising on a site you visit frequently is disproportionately influencing your consumerism, take a break from that site.

  3.Unfollow any social media influencers who make you feel like what you have is not enough—or who continually share products and post sponsored content with the hope that you’ll click through and buy.

  4.If your budget and your personal values allow, upgrade your subscription-based entertainment accounts (like Pandora, Spotify, or Hulu) to the ad-free plans.

  5.Consume less media in general, and read more books, which are ad-free!

  3. TRY A SPENDING FAST

  If you’ve tried—without much success—to reduce the amount of shopping you do, or if you’re struggling to stick to your category budgets, a spending fast might be the clean break you need. The parameters are yours to shape; you can choose how long you want to do it and exactly what kind of shopping you want to fast from.

  One reader told me she does a spending fast every time her husband goes out to sea. She makes it a game for herself to see how little she can spend for the month he’s away. Another said he does a spending fast every time he’s saving up for a big purchase, like a new piece of furniture or a mini-renovation within his home. The fast from all other purchases allows him to reach his goal dollar amount much quicker, and it saves him from putting the expense on his credit card.

  Yet another reader, a musician living in Sweden, told me she recently fasted—much like Tim and Emily—from all new purchases for an entire year, only spending money on essential toiletries and experiences, like travel.

  “The small debt I had disappeared. I didn’t worry about needing new clothes for events. I wore jeans and a black top for everything except my brother’s wedding, where I wore a dress I already owned. I found I was far l
ess concerned with appearances; I stopped judging people to be similar to me just because of what they wore. As such, it was the year my social life took off. I introduced myself to new people. I went traveling for gigs with new friends of all ages. Maybe best of all, my hiatus from shopping freed up so much time! I no longer spent hours deciding what to wear before an event or scrolling through a sale every time a retail email arrived. I learned how much time we waste making unimportant decisions and buying things that ultimately don’t matter.”

  —Erin Edwards, Stockholm, Sweden

  4. THINK OF YOUR “CLOSET AVERAGE”

  This concept has stuck with me ever since I heard it shared by Sherry Petersik, of the well-known “Young House Love” blog and podcast. Sherry keeps a minimal wardrobe, only owning pieces she thinks of as 10 out of 10 for fit, quality, and her personal aesthetic. When she considers buying something new, she asks herself if the new piece will keep her closet average at a 10—or bring it down. If she likes the piece but doesn’t love it, rating it at a 7 or 8, it will lower her average, and her goal is to keep her closet average at a 10.

  While most of us aren’t currently working with a 10-out-of-10 closet average, I’ve found this strategy powerful no matter what kind of purchase I’m considering or where my “average” currently falls. If I want to raise the average of my closet (or my kitchen appliances or my linen collection) over time, not lower it, I’ll purposefully invest in quality over quantity.

  5. PRIORITIZE QUALITY OVER QUANTITY

  I was getting ready to leave the country on my own for the first time when my grandma took me to a classy department store to pick out a pair of shoes.

  “These?” I asked, with doubt in my voice.

  “Yes!” my grandma answered, with the spark in her eye that I’d seen all my life. “Those.”

  She was right; the pair of shoes I held in my hand offered the perfect combination of comfort and style. And the brand had a reputation for making shoes that would last. But the price printed neatly on the soles of the shoes? That was more than I was used to spending.

  My grandma insisted that I shouldn’t go to Europe without a pair of reliable shoes—shoes I really loved. She bought me those shoes that day and, without knowing it, forever changed the way I shopped. I slowly began buying less but buying what I loved—and pieces I trusted would last.

  Would you rather own three shirts you bought on clearance but will fall apart after a few washes … or one well-made staple that you’ll love for years? Would you rather buy makeup you can grab at any convenience store … or makeup you know wasn’t tested on animals and is free of harmful substances? Would you rather buy a blender with mediocre reviews and end up needing to repair or replace it in a matter of months … or a blender with top-notch ratings and an endorsement from a knowledgeable friend, even if it means spending more up front?

  Buying the best isn’t right for every situation, but when your purchases align with your values, you’ll find yourself gravitating to quality over quantity more often. In most cases, you’ll save money, reduce waste, and free up mental space by taking this approach.

  6. MAKE PEACE WITH NOT HAVING THE NEWEST AND BEST

  Though this strategy may seem to contradict the previous strategy, what ties them together is intention. In one area of your life, you might intentionally choose to buy the best you can afford (thereby raising your “closet average”). In another area, you might intentionally choose to be content with what you have. Both are minimalist practices, and it’s up to you when and where you apply each one.

  What makes this strategy so hard to practice is that it requires us to let go of what others think. Your co-workers may misjudge your financial footing when you pull up every day in a car you’ve owned since 1998. Your children may, at some point, feel a little embarrassed because they live in an older neighborhood while all their friends live in the brand-new development three streets over.

  A friend once told me that one of his favorite feelings is walking into a shop or a restaurant and sensing that the staff and patrons don’t think he belongs there. I’m sure my jaw dropped a little when he told me this, because most of us—including me—don’t particularly enjoy feeling out of place. When I asked why, he answered that each of these moments is an opportunity to practice contentment and a sense of alignment that comes from within. When you know your life matches your values, it’s easier to let other people’s perceptions fall to the side.

  7. VALUE THE BASICS

  When you’re continually focusing on your material wants and needs, you lose touch with your ability to see beauty in the small things. The way the air smells first thing in the morning when you leave your house. The soft pink shade of the sky out the kitchen window as you do the dinner dishes. The sound of your partner rolling in the trash bins (so you don’t have to) at the end of the day … The power of nature, the connection of human touch, the satisfaction of a meal shared with people you love … These are the ever-present basics that get pushed out of our attention when we’re preoccupied with the things we want to buy.

  8. PRACTICE GRATITUDE

  For those of us who have always turned to shopping—good ol’ retail therapy—as a source of comfort and pleasure, I’d like to propose a deceptively powerful replacement: a regular gratitude practice. The emerging research on the effects gratitude has on the brain—from stress relief and improved sleep, to a decrease in anxiety and depression symptoms—is fascinating.

  But what I find most compelling in relation to our consumption is the simple truth that both activities—shopping and practicing gratitude—release a burst of dopamine, the neurotransmitter in the brain that’s activated when something good unexpectedly happens. While shoe shopping may sound a bit more appealing than sitting down with a gratitude journal, if you challenge yourself not just to do it but also to really lean into those positive feelings, the resulting flood of happiness will last much longer than the rush you’d have gotten from a new pair of shoes.

  On top of that, if you keep practicing gratitude daily or even weekly, the positive effects will only multiply. For example, the brain has limited attention, so if you’re focusing on what you’re grateful for, you’ll naturally crowd out your more negative thoughts. Additionally, the brain is constantly looking for things that prove what we already believe to be true. (It’s called confirmation bias.) So, by regularly scanning your life for the good—the warmth of your heater, the shelter of your umbrella on your walk home—your mind will find even more good for you to appreciate.

  Which would you rather experience the ripple effect of—a regular gratitude practice, or a frequent shopping habit?

  When Your Values and Shopping Habits Align

  By halfway into their year of not buying anything new, Tim and Emily had stopped shopping (even at thrift stores) as a form of stress relief. As Emily said, when you know you won’t be buying anything there isn’t much of a point. By the end of the year, they had decluttered every room of their house, one by one, and felt—in their own words—”a million times lighter.”

  Where once they had thought of themselves as frugal, they now thought of themselves as conscious (and a bit frugal, too, because some things never change). They could finally see the bigger picture of their consumption—the social, environmental, and emotional cost. And they certainly weren’t complaining about how their personal finances had changed in that year. Their choice to purposefully underspend, to buy only the essentials, resulted in a noticeable spike in their kids’ college accounts and their own retirement funds, which has given them a much more powerful form of stress relief than going to the store ever did.

  Even better, after years of feeling inexplicably “off,” Tim and Emily were now experiencing the comfort and confidence that came from knowing that their spending habits were in line with their personal values. Their life as a whole had completely changed, all because of one choice: the decision to change their relationship with money.

  7

  time and
time management

  It’s funny what the memory chooses to keep and what it allows to slip away. I can’t remember the topic of the lecture or even the name of the course; I can’t picture the features of my professor’s face. But I distinctly remember the way he rested one arm on a desk and leaned in when he said it. To him, and I’m sure the rest of the class, it was only a passing comment, but it stands out in my memory like a football player in a chorus line.

  One of my fellow students had said something about being busy, and the professor replied, “You guys think this is busy. But just wait. This is only a taste of busy.”

  Internally, I balked at what he’d said. I was working, taking a heavy course load, applying for a grant, getting ready for a summer in Africa, and trying to make a bit of room for a social life. This is legitimately busy, I thought. He just doesn’t remember what it’s like.

  It turns out, he wasn’t wrong.

  That was busy, but that kind of busy was almost entirely of my own creation. Since then, I’ve learned that the deeper we wade into adulthood, the more we have to navigate the needs of others as well as our own. We have friends and family we want to support; churches, schools, and other organizations to volunteer for; and bosses and colleagues to be responsible to. For those of us who have kids, we also have the physical, mental, and emotional needs of each child. Cumulatively, that is a lot of people to tend to … a lot of needs to meet.