Tag Archives: minimalism

Irrational Frugality

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Before a gaggle of dudes lost their jobs, I couldn’t get enough of the Secret Service-Columbia prostitute story mostly because the primary agents’ irrational frugality makes me feel better about my own litany of dumb-ass money saving moves. Allegedly, the prostitute, I mean escort, wanted $800 for spending the night with the Secret Service agent. He offered $30. For $770 several Secret Service careers are over. In the still-to-be-built Irrational Frugality Hall of Shame that “misunderstanding” should be front and center.

Take-away. Always pay your escort the agreed upon price.

One example of my irrational frugality took place in Chengdu, China in 2003, in a Carrefour store, a gigantic, French-owned, everything store. I bought some socks on sale. They probably cost $1.00 originally, but were on sale for 60 cents. While being rung up, I realized I didn’t get the sale price, so I politely pointed that out. After getting blown off, I persisted, and asked if I could talk to a manager. They found my sense of efficacy oddly entertaining and soon, the cashier, manager, and I were engaged in a mangled Chinglish conversation over forty cents.

Like most imbeciles in similar situations always say, it was the principle. After about 20 minutes, I got the 3 yuan owed to me. So my time is worth about $1.20 an hour. But then again, it’s not everyday Big Red gets to stick it to Red China.

"Escorts" not hookers

Life and Death as a Minimalist

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Mark Albert was one of my best friends when we taught together at the International Community School (I.C.S.) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia twenty-two years ago. A University of Pennsylvania grad, Mark was super smart, quirky/funny, outgoing, sports crazed, and overflowing with energy for middle schoolers and math. After watching most of his classmates go to Wall Street, he decided to teach math in West Africa as a Peace Corp volunteer. After three years in Gabon, he started his international teaching career at I.C.S. He arrived with a treasure chest filled with all of his worldly possessions which consisted mostly of math textbooks, some beautiful West African shirts, and an acoustic guitar. A model of minimalism. Maybe one can’t help but be a minimalist when living on a Peace Corp stipend.

Today, like me, Mark is 50 and a part of the Sandwich Generation (SG). The SG consists of people mostly in their 40s and 50s who are “sandwiched” between aging parents who need care and their own children. According to the Pew Research Center, just over 1 of every 8 Americans aged 40 to 60 is both raising a child and caring for a parent, in addition to between 7 to 10 million adults caring for their aging parents from a long distance. US Census Bureau statistics indicate that the number of older Americans aged 65 or older will double by the year 2030, to over 70 million. SGers face many challenges including saving for their own retirement while trying to save for their children’s education.

The Wall Street Journal recently wrote about common challenges SGers face after elderly parents die:

As older parents approach death, they often leave lengthy to-do lists for their children. The tasks can be both physical and financial. Some children must deal with a tangle of arrangements—everything from heating-oil contracts to trusts—along with jumbled stock certificates, car titles or life-insurance policies for which there may be no backup copies. Others must sift through boxes or rooms full of belongings. Sometimes siblings get involved, complicating matters further. When the chores become overwhelming, it can be difficult for family members to recover sentimental treasures or tie up financial loose ends. At the extreme, the sheer volume of stuff can clutter a house and weigh down its value—a problem if the home must be sold quickly.

Often the heir(s) get so overwhelmed they procrastinate indefinitely. I didn’t realize how many estate sale and related companies exist to help heir(s) tie up every imaginable loose end. Probably a growth industry given the aging population.

While reading the article I reflected on how extremely lucky I am that my mom and in-laws have wills; have made arrangements for and already paid to be cremated; and have provided detailed, organized info on their finances. Their end-of-life planning is a natural extension of their lifelong love.

Another blessing, they’ve begun giving away things, but all that means is they have a tad bit less than a lot. Which got me thinking about my own death and how radically simplifying my life could be a powerful final act of loving kindness for my wife and/or daughters.

The mindless cliche, “He who dies with the most toys wins,” is exactly backwards because the larger your material footprint upon death, the more onerous the task for your heirs to divide up, toss, sell, and just plain deal with everything.

What if, as I age, I gradually shift from run-of-the-mill decluttering to radical minimalism. And how cool if I could time my death to give away everything except a token or two for memory sake—say my iPad 56 with pictures and video of our life together. So after the funeral, my heirs return to a near empty house, relax in a peaceful unhurried manner, open a bottle of wine, and say nice things about the guy who left so few loose ends.

How to Increase Your Living Space Without Spending a Dollar

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By decluttering of course.

Jane E. Brody reviews a new book by Robin Zasio titled “The Hoarder in You: How To Live a Happier, Healthier, Uncluttered Life.” Brody says it’s the best self-help work she’s read in her 46 years as a health and science writer. That should help sales.

After that endorsement, I was disappointed by Zasio’s advice, which I’d describe as decluttering orthodoxy based on Brody’s highlights.

Here’s the gist of it. If you’re familiar with the decluttering literature skip ahead a paragraph. 1A) Tackle just one project at a time—a closet, garage, room, dresser drawer, file cabinet—and stick with it until it’s done. 1B) To create positive momentum, work from the easiest project to the most challenging. 2) Schedule time for decluttering—an hour a weekday or weekend day for example—until done. 3A) Use three containers labelled “Keep,” “Donate,” and “Discard”. 3B) Brody adds her own advice here. To force yourself to decide among the three, be careful not to add a fourth “Undecided” container.

Simple, huh? So why do I predict, six months after finishing Zasio’s book, that the majority of her readers will still live clutter-riddled lives? Because no matter how faithfully one implements that logical plan, there’s still a cultural, even spiritual element to our tendency to buy far more than we need.

Every day, all day, we’re subjected to a one-two punch of extremely sophisticated and ubiquitous advertising that plays on our insecurities and to what sociologists refer to as “relative deprivation” or wanting what others wealthier (or more in debt) than us have. Regardless of whether we have the three containers labelled correctly, we want what we see advertised and and we want what our next-door neighbors have. Until we figure out how to resist those two things, our “stuff” will continue to overwhelm us.

I’m not immune to the one-two punch. I owned a Porsche once, an incredible machine, but I sold it (at a loss of course) because I felt self-conscious in it. Weird, I know. Most Porsche owners want you looking at them at the light or getting out of it at the restaurant. I was the opposite. I didn’t like pulling into the church or school parking lot. Insufficient swagger I guess. But then after reading Irvine, and getting fired up about Stoicism, I learned Stoics aren’t supposed to care about what others think of them. There’s something to work on. With that in mind, maybe I should give it another shot. The new 2012 911 looks damn nice. An exercise in applied Stoicism?

Xmas 12?

House Hunters International on HGTV

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Love it.

Or I should say “really like it” since moms always says, “You can’t love something that can’t love you back.”

Each tightly packed episode is a thirty minute long travel/house hunting fix. A person, couple, or family chooses among three residences in some foreign country. Recently, while watching a college football game, I caught most of two episodes*. The first was about a British man and an American woman who met in Orange County, California. They were moving to England. Immune to our recession apparently, he needed a large garage for his cars and she needed a dance studio.

The second couple, an Irish man and an American woman moving from Chicago to Ireland, had two small girls. Appears as if Euro men are stealing our women, but I digress. Their Chicago house had a small yard “where every time the girls kicked the ball it hit the wall”. He wanted at least an acre which they eventually found a few minutes from where he grew up.

A few times in the episode he implied his girls needed a large yard, but I couldn’t help but think he was projecting his past on their present. We all do that to some degree don’t we? Recreate our childhoods for our own children in some form—whether tangibly in terms of the house and neighborhood environment or intangibly in terms of norms, expectations, ethos?

Did the toddlers really “need” a soccer pitch-sized backyard? Would their lives turn out much differently with a small yard or if they found a house near a public park? All I could think of was how much of his time and money he was going to have to spend maintaining his giant patch of grass. To each is own.

Dear HGTV network. How about a show with the same format, but focusing on minimalists proactively embracing our new economic realities by looking for smaller yards, less space, less clutter, lower energy costs? People convinced that some cliches, like “less is more,” might just be true.

House Hunters Downsizing. Or Downsizing House Hunters. Either way, I’d watch it during college football commercials.

• This requires deft remote controlling. And I’m the deftest. Which brings to mind the best sports story from the last month. A 97-year-old man who wanted to watch a Milwaukee Brewers playoff game called 911 to report someone had stolen his remote control. According to the Greenfield police report: The man called 911 to report someone had stolen his remote control from his residence in the 9300 block of West Howard Avenue prior to 8 p.m. Sept. 26. The remote control was found after police responded, so the man was able to watch the Brewers game.

What If Your Street Was Joplined Tomorrow?

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Glad or sad I’ve run out of athletes that we’re all alike?

Utter devastation. Joplin, Missouri, before and after.

What would you do if you knew, tomorrow, the place where you store your stuff and sleep at night was going to be demolished?

Not long enough to rent a storage space and move everything into it.

My approach is muddled by the wife and daughters. The daughters are locked into a hoarders-like “Queen of Clutter” competition. Whomever wins the tiara won’t be able to find it in their bedroom.

So my first decision, the family is on their own. I’m taking one car and leaving them the other. When the GalPal stuffs her Clutter Queens and all of her bulky, three-ring 1970’s and 1980’s photo albums into the Hyundai, there won’t be any room left for things like clothes, shoes, water, and food.

Already in my trunk is one of the top priorities, my new golf clubs. On second thought, I’m taking the Hyundai because the bike is going on the roof rack. Next, bike gear, the laptop, iPad, and backup drive. After that, some hard copy pictures. Also, water, dried Mangos and apricots (current addiction), and important papers—birth certificate, tax returns, personal finance deets, passport. Next, some of the CQ’s childhood artwork and the letters my dad’s friends and colleagues wrote following his passing. Note to self, scan those before the big one. Then, half of my relatively small wardrobe (of course including Puff Daddy), my pillow, comforter, and shoes. Almost forgot some dishes, the blender, and bottle opener.

And last, but not least, the third “D”. After the Digital info and Down, the Dog.

One advantage of simplifying and then choosing selectively is I’ll have ample room left over in the car. That way, when the inevitable happens and the Girls Club begins pleading with me to take some of their spillover, I’ll be able to, thus earning valuable points in the up and down game of family life.

Two Roads Diverge 2

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Part 2 of 3—The left, the President, and my evolving thoughts on the fork.

The left attributes stagnant wages, high unemployment, and heightened economic scarcity to conservative Republican ideology, unregulated Wall Street bankers, and all-powerful corporations. The U.S., the left contends, is not a meritocracy. Within our laissez-faire free-market capitalist economy the wealthy have many more opportunities to advance than the poor; consequently, the rich get richer and the poor poorer. Increasing the wealthy’s taxes will reduce inequality, help more people find jobs and pay for health insurance, and give the majority of people with ordinary means a fighting chance.

The right, because they insist our economic problems can be fixed by a kind of American exceptionalism positive thinking, is failing to provide any kind of realistic roadmap that might help us negotiate the fork and create genuine, lasting forward momentum.

The left, because they insist it’s impossible for individuals and families to create any kind of economic security because the gap between the “haves” and “have-nots” is so wide, is also failing to provide a hopeful, credible, compelling roadmap.

With an eye towards November 2012, the President tends to split the difference and articulates an American exceptionalism-lite that he couples with an unfailing belief that a renaissance in math and science education will help us reclaim our role as the world’s undisputed economic hegemon.

Neither political party’s platform offers any assurance that nearly enough decent paying jobs will be created, we’ll transition to alternative energy sources, health insurance and Medicaid will be affordable, and anyone but the already well-to-do will enjoy prosperity.

Despite the understandable fear and foreboding, I’m finding more inspiration from ordinary people living humble, simple, selfless lives, than from any political figure, party, or platform. People unmoved by materialism. People attuned to the limits of time. People who identify more as writers, artists, peacemakers, ecologists, and global citizens, than consumers. People relatively unperturbed by the fork because they’re on simpler pathways.

The wrap against minimalism or voluntary simplicity is that it’s boring. Sometimes minimalists deserve criticism for a one-size fits all mentality, but not for being boring. What’s boring is subjective. For me, inexpensive things like writing, preparing and enjoying a healthy meal with a few family members or friends, reading a good book, seeing an excellent film, working out, and watching basketball with the labradude are sufficiently exciting. I’m cool with other people thinking those things are uninteresting.

The natural reaction to our tough economic times and the fork in the woods is to be disappointed with having to live with less. On the other hand, it could be a catalyst for rethinking our taken for granted consumerist-materialist lifestyles.

Some will conclude, “An out-of-touch sentence that only a person who doesn’t have to live month-to-month or worry about basic needs could write.” I get that. I’m beyond fortunate. I’m not sharing my evolving thinking to convince anyone to give up anything, I just hope my musings about how much is enough and what’s most important resonates with some readers.

There’s a big difference between “voluntary simplicity” and “forced frugality”. A forced frugality mentality, “damn we can’t afford anything anymore,” breeds ever-increasing resignation and frustration. In contrast, a voluntary simplicity orientation that prioritizes health, interpersonal relationships, and service is liberating because not as much money is required, meaning not as many hours or years of work may be needed.

This reorientation is similar to my learning to eat more healthily. Initially, I didn’t particularly care for low sugar, non-fat, veggie and fruit based meals, but ten years later I prefer them. I don’t have to force myself to eat healthily, I prefer it. I don’t have to force myself to live relatively simply (by 2011 North American standards), I prefer it.

Wherever this non-work, simplicity journey takes me, I doubt I’ll ever reach a state of buddhist nirvana. I like to travel, I like cars, carbon fiber bicycles, nice hotels, and massage “therapy” too much. And not too proud to admit, I even like Million Dollar Listing on Bravo. Ample room for growth.

Next—The conclusion—Our children and the fork.

One Less Car

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As I suspected, I didn’t make it twenty years and 200,000 miles. Sold the 1993 Camry wagon last week. Kelly’s Blue Book and Edmunds had it valued at around $1k which is sad considering I’m considering buying a bike frame for $2k. I sold it for $2,500 because of the $1,500 “The Positive Momentum blogger used to drive this” premium. Annual car insurance premium dropped $500. I was spending $1k/year on repairs. In 12 months we’ll have an extra $4,000. Past that point, we’ll pocket at minimum an extra $1,500/year in savings. At minimum because the three or four of us will drive slightly fewer total number of miles in cars that get better mileage (and as bonus, are on average, more safe).

Maybe one of the most vexing questions of 2010 is how does one meet daily expenses, save for children’s college education, and save for retirement when wages are flat? Economists report that it costs just over $200k to raise a child for eighteen years. Social security will be delayed and reduced. Medicare will cost more. Taxes will increase. The few people with pensions will see companies renege on promises and reduce benefits. Today, $100,000 in savings might generate $4,000 in investment income.

It’s easy to gain weight and fall into debt fast, but it takes decades to get physically and financially fit. A frustrating paradox. The question is whether you earn more dollars each week, month, or year than you spend on average.

I’ve written before about how financial journalists and pundits focus far too narrowly on the perfect investment strategy and not nearly enough on defense or reducing overhead. One of the best ways to reduce overhead and one of the quickest ways to balance a personal financial budget, is to figure out how to live with one less car.

Tammy Strobel, is a Portland, Oregon based blogger who has published an electronic book on how to live completely car-free. I’m not there, but appreciate the challenge. Note that one of her chapters is titled “Saving $8,000 a Year”.