Tag: frugalism

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A Year of Buying Nothing: May Report

The month of May went very well, except for one expensive purchase that I couldn’t avoid: I lost my glasses. No idea how I managed that, but I had to buy a new pair. It was very expensive 🙁 However, since it’s not a luxury item or a consumable, I’m not counting it towards this project.

Additionally, I bought a music stand, which I couldn’t find used, at least not the way I wanted it. That’s it. The cost was 16.99 euros.

A few used vinyl records also came my way, but I’m not counting those towards this project either.

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What is minimalism? And how does one start with it?

I will be compiling everything about minimalism in the coming weeks and months, based on my experiences, mistakes, and insights so far. The article will be updated continuously.

What is minimalism?

In addition to being an art movement, minimalism has developed into a lifestyle in recent years. There was even a documentary on Netflix about the topic, narrated by authors Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus. On Prime Video, there was the documentary My Stuff – What Do You Really Need, in which the protagonist brought all his belongings to a storage unit and was allowed to take out only one item each day. The fact that he had to run through the city naked in the snow to get to the storage unit at the beginning should not be interpreted as representative of the minimalist movement. Even German television produced a report on the subject, from NDR, titled How Many Things Do We Really Need?

In Germany, minimalists Christof Herrmann and Verena SchĂźrmann are particularly well known, alongside a few others. Depending on who you read, you may come across very alternative lifestyles, but also people who want to live with fewer things, while still leading a relatively normal life. I count myself among the latter group. Of course, there have always been people living in a minimalist way, not always because they wanted to, and certainly, they wouldn’t have called it that themselves. However, the conscious reduction to fewer material possessions seems to be a trend of recent decades. One of the pioneers, even though he probably wouldn’t see himself as such, is Dieter Rams with his design credo “Less, but better.”

For me, minimalism means, on one hand, that I only buy what I truly need. Of course, the line between needs and desires isn’t always clear, and I focus on what truly fulfills my life— and those are not material things. On the other hand, minimalism for me means surrounding myself only with things that make me happy and/or have high utility. Naturally, I’m not perfect, and I’m not always consistent. For example, I’m writing these lines on an Apple MacBook Air M1 with 16 GB RAM and a 2TB SSD. Is that really absolutely necessary? Certainly not. I could be writing these lines on an old used Linux computer. I could also question whether this blog is necessary at all. But I’ve significantly reduced my gadget collection over the last few months. Since 2007, I’ve gone through stronger and weaker phases of minimalism; back then, I even tried not buying anything new for six months. But I wasn’t always strong.

What are the benefits of minimalism?

There are quite a few benefits, and here are probably the most important ones:

  • The less you have, the less you have to clean. You spend less time tidying up or looking for things.
  • When you have less, things look tidier right away. That’s incredibly calming.
  • The less you have, the less you have to take care of. Every item comes with additional costs, whether it’s the space it takes up or the time it requires.
  • You save your family a lot of time. If something happens to you and your family has to empty your place, they’ll be grateful if there aren’t thousands of things cluttering the apartment.
  • You’re helping the environment. Because everything that isn’t bought doesn’t have to be produced, doesn’t consume raw materials, and won’t later end up in a landfill, polluting the environment. Now, that’s a good argument!
  • You save a lot of money. Often, the things we buy aren’t really worth as much as we pay for them, something we realize when we try to get rid of them.
  • Getting rid of things is a topic in itself, because it’s often associated with effort. You don’t have that issue if you don’t buy anything in the first place 🙂 In the last few months, I’ve sold quite a bit on eBay/eBay Kleinanzeigen, and aside from the fact that in most cases I got far less for the items than I paid, it was often quite annoying. Even though I met a lot of nice people.
  • You need less space, possibly fewer pieces of furniture, and ultimately, a smaller apartment.

My “wardrobe” is a good example of how little you really need. And there are certainly people who have even less.

What are the disadvantages of minimalism?

Living minimally is just as unconventional in society as, for example, not drinking alcohol.

When I sold my car in 2011, friends and acquaintances told me that I was selling my freedom. In reality, I gained freedom because, as stated in Fight Club, the things you own actually own you. A car requires maintenance, parking, washing, etc. Okay, I have an advantage – I live in the city. But even with other examples, like not having a TV, questions arise. Many people won’t understand this, maybe because they’d have to question their own behavior. I can definitely say that it’s always a conversation topic, just like when I don’t drink alcohol at a business dinner. You easily get suspected of being a recovering alcoholic.

What’s the difference between minimalism and frugality?

Frugality is about learning to live with little money and saving enough to either reduce work hours or eventually stop working altogether. There are obvious overlaps with minimalism, but not every minimalist is necessarily part of the FIRE movement (Financial Independence, Retire Early). On the other hand, every frugal person will have to live minimally to achieve their goals.

I live somewhere in between. I haven’t resorted to eating from the trash, and I don’t constantly calculate how much interest I’ll lose by buying a sandwich at 50. But I don’t buy pointless things anymore, as you’ll see in the next section.

How to start with minimalism?

In my opinion, there are two main tasks:

  • Emptying your home
  • Changing your consumption behavior

For the first point, there’s a lot of literature available, such as Marie Kondo’s books. Kondo focuses mainly on asking what really makes you happy about the items in your home. She also has her own tidying technique. Some of it I use too, for example, how to fold T-shirts. It really does make things easier. But I wouldn’t label Marie Kondo as a minimalist. A good question to ask when decluttering is whether you would buy the item again. Another common question is what to do with something that hasn’t been used in years. Often, you delay the decision, so the items neither go away nor have a proper place. In reality, it’s not necessarily the things that weigh us down, but the decisions we need to make about what to do with them. Making decisions is exhausting.

Additional tips:

  • Sell/donate anything you haven’t used or worn in the last year.
  • Sell/donate anything broken that you can’t repair.
  • Do you really need three can openers? The expensive food processor you never use?
  • Get rid of books that you don’t love.
  • Use public libraries.

If this already sounds difficult, it gets even harder with the second point. Our consumption habits are the biggest problem. If we don’t get them under control, our home will quickly be filled with clutter again. It’s also not made easy for us to resist. And I have my biggest weaknesses with certain things. For example: When I see a new gadget that I think might help me, I’m usually quick to head to Amazon… but now, I close the browser as soon as I realize it. I used to be constantly looking for the next tool that might help. But now, I don’t believe in tools anymore. With every impulse to buy something, you should quarantine that desire. Is the urge still there after one day, seven days, or 30 days? For example: When the Apple AirPods Max were released, I ordered them. I eagerly awaited them. And then I barely used them. I thought I’d use them all the time, but unlike the AirPods Pro, which I’ve been using daily for over a year, the Max were often empty. I didn’t need two pairs of headphones. It was a total mistake to fall for the advertising. And after six months, I lost 200 Euros when I sold them. For maybe 20 uses. That’s 10 Euros per use. An expensive hobby. And surely everyone has examples like that.

When is it done right?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to this. You can only answer this question for yourself.

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Minimalism and Frugality – How to Retire After Just 5 Years of Work

The provocative title correlates with the extremes discussed in Jacob Lund Fisker’s 2010 book Extreme Early Retirement. And by “extreme,” I don’t mean the author’s suggestions themselves, but rather some of the thought-provoking ideas he presents. Fisker’s book represents, according to him, a philosophy that he formulated long before the current waves of frugality, FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early), and minimalism took off (by the way, I had written about living outside of consumerism back in 2007). Instead of just preaching, Fisker actually practiced what he preached. On an average income, he saved 75% of his net salary, learned how to live with little, and then stopped working—or worked only intermittently. One could also distill this down to the well-known wisdom that you don’t get rich by earning a lot, but by saving as much as possible.

This will not be a short blog post, sorry, because such a philosophy cannot be summed up in 150 words.

Reference to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

Fisker starts with Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. To remind you (a better summary is certainly provided on Wikipedia): In a cave, people are imprisoned and have spent their entire lives shackled. They can only look at a wall; they cannot see their fellow prisoners or themselves, and they cannot see the exit behind them. On the wall, they see shadows cast by a fire burning between them and the exit. The shadows that the prisoners see become their reality, and they try to make sense of them.

If someone manages to escape the cave, they would first have to adjust to the daylight, which would be painful, but after a period of adjustment, they would no longer want to return to their old life. According to Socrates, the cave represents the sensory world that people typically perceive as normal. The ascent out of the cave represents the transition from the world of fleeting sensory objects to the idea of the Good, enabling rational action. For Fisker, those who are wage slaves and trapped in their culture are the prisoners of the cave, and by “wage slaves,” he means those who are dependent on a salary. They may switch jobs, but they cannot escape the labor market itself, and like the prisoners, they lack the imagination to leave, as they are focused on the wall.

The wall does not show who they are, but what they own. You see someone driving a Mercedes convertible, but not the debts they incurred or the stress that comes with it. Everyone looks busy, because that’s important, just as it’s important to take on debt, since the most successful people are those with the best credit scores. They are better at getting into debt than others. You work and pay off debts, a cycle known as “earning a living,” yet in reality, you have no time for actual life. The chains represent obligations and debt, but mostly the lack of imagination that other possibilities exist. The best prisons are those without visible bars. Either you win the lottery or earn enough to become financially independent, according to the perception of the prisoners. And if things aren’t going well mentally, you buy yourself something nice and go shopping.

How Do You Escape the Cave?

The core question in Fisker’s book is how to escape the money-earning-and-buying cycle and lead a more interesting life. For example, by learning a skill that saves you from hiring a service, building things yourself, earning money in alternative ways, and interacting with people.

Modern wage slaves, according to Fisker, live lives of material excess. They are consumers with multiple TVs, several streaming services, kitchen appliances, gadgets, phone contracts, vacations, and sometimes even time to play with their toys. It’s become incredibly easy to spend money. Instead of opening a can with a cheap can opener in 30 seconds, we work for 30 minutes to afford a designer can opener that does the job in 30 seconds. Many things that we used to do ourselves have become so distorted that we buy gadgets or services to do them for us. This is convenient, because, as Fisker points out, we’re too busy with the work that we need to do in order to pay for all of this. This is the first thing that must change. Once you can do things yourself, you no longer have to depend on someone else to do them for you. But this only works if you earn enough money. Once you lose your job, you’re lost.

The second step is questioning your consumption. “What do you do for a living, and what brands do you buy to express yourself?” is a question from Fisker’s book. From my own experience, it’s almost impossible to buy a black cardigan that doesn’t have a huge BOSS, Joop, or some other brand logo on it. These brands cost extra, but we get loans so we can spend even more money, because consumption is equated with success. If a new iPhone has only 3 percent more features, it gets bought, and the old one ends up in the trash (fortunately, Fisker’s logic here is not entirely accurate, because most iPhones and other phones are then resold to someone who has no problem with a used phone). But he is right that many perfectly functional things end up in the trash just because they are no longer fashionable (which reminds me again of the Rams shelf, which still looks modern after 60 years).

What’s worse, according to Fisker, is when you finance your consumption with credit. Then you are not only a wage slave, but also a debtor. You pay off a house or an apartment for 30 years (I find this exaggerated in Fisker’s book because not everyone does that), save for retirement, and then try to make up for the lost years and ruined health in the final years of life. You see how questionable consumer loans are in the following advertisement I saw yesterday in Hamburg: