Going Minimal

Leo Babauta at Get Rich Slowly and Trent Hamm at The Simple Dollar are both fans of a minimalist approach to personal finances. Monetary minimalism involves taking stock of the ways you spend your money and your time, and then streamline them so you have 1) more money, 2) more time, and 3) a more rewarding life.

Leo's's advice can be boiled down to: "Don’t buy it unless you need it -- and only if you have the money." Trent says going minimal doesn't mean giving up the things you love. Instead, you should "figure out what about them you truly do love" and then create inexpensive and efficient ways to keep loving those things without ruining the experience.

Here's my "going minimal" story: As a music lover, I used to spend a lot of money on CDs and music from iTunes. But then I signed up for a yearly subscription with Rhapsody for $100 and I've stopped buying music. With Rhapsody, I rent it (on my iPhone I use the free and great Pandora application). I don't have to store CDs or files on my hard drive. I don't have to worry about organizing the music or whether or not the music will play on another computer that's not authorized to play the files. For the price of seven or eight CDs, I have access to millions of songs. Some people might say a digital music subscription service isn't "minimal," but my life has become simpler because of it.

What are some ways you've "gone minimal?"

Mark Frauenfelder – Editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine and the founder of the popular Boing Boing weblog, Mark was an editor at Wired from 1993-1998 and is the founding editor of Wired Online.

Comments

[Charlie Park]

Recently, my wife and I moved closer in to town, from a house we'd built in the country. We were finding that the long commute was taking a toll on us — time, energy, and money was going into commuting — not into being with people, building relationships, making things, or doing the other things we value.

Although we're spending a little more each month on rent, we find that we're not having to buy as much to compensate — specifically, we're spending less dining out and on coffee while out — as we can just pop on home and make a sandwich or a pot of coffee.

Also, we're a lot closer to the public library, which has enabled a more minimalist lifestyle, as we're borrowing many more books, movies, CDs, and graphic novels than we were before. It's wonderful to enjoy a book, then drop it back off at the library, realizing that you didn't have to pay for it, that it's not going to be taking up space on your shelves, and that someone else is now going to get to read it.

We're big fans of the “more fun, less stuff” mindset, but we hadn't realized how being so far from civilization would compromise that. Popular mythology sees being “away from it all” as a surefire route to a minimalist lifestyle. But when you're driving back into civilization six or seven times a week, it kind of defeats the purpose.

[Kyle]

We don't make a lot of money (wife and I combined make less than the national household average of $45k, and we are raising a baby), but the minimalist approach has really helped us improve our lives.

We only spend money on what's truly important to us. One car, one cell phone between two people, rarely eat out, no cable, and a small, one-bedroom apartment. On the other hand, we have a desktop and a laptop with a good internet connection. That's important to us.

We live on only about half our income and use the rest to pay back debt and save. I have friends who can't believe what we're doing, but make twice as much and have to wait until payday to buy groceries.