![]() What about your closets, living rooms and bedrooms? How much joy does all this clutter bring you? What clutters you physically also disables you mentally. Just look at the desk you are sitting on: how many items does it contain? Is your desk surrounded by papers, notebooks, books, pens and pencils? The concept is simple but achieving it is hard. Minimalist living, in simplest terms, is to live with as less as possible, mentally and physically until you achieve peace of mind. I am here to provide you with information (tips, applications, resources) that will help you with this life changing endeavor it is something that I started with about 9 months ago and I remember how hard it can be in the beginning. We’re glad you are here to learn about minimalist living. I consider myself to be a “Go-Giver” and my approach with a lot of things in my life is to help those around me, in turn helps me help myself. Please come back often and allow me to share this with you. The purpose of my blog is to share my experiences with the minimalist lifestyle to help others get out of debt, eliminate the depressing clutter, along with anything else that I can share that may possibly improve the lives of others. In future posts, I will go through everything that I did to do this. I did not do this by keeping up with the Joneses. Luckily, within a few years, I was able to completely get out of it. The job that I took in Chicago paid me exactly that as my yearly salary. My debt, due to the 25.7% interest rate, accumulated to about $40,000. My credit cards were maxed out and I couldn’t even keep up with the minimum payments. My battle came in my late 20s when I moved to Chicago. I know, sounds weird, but that was the way it was. Others within the larger city could not use any of these unless if you were a taxpayer of the village that was within the city limits of the larger area. We had our own village council and even our own public dump site. Even though we were situated in the middle of a somewhat larger metropolitan city, our village had it’s own police, fire and sanitation departments. Yes, it was “public”, but you had to pay the outrageously high property taxes there to be part of this “public” school district. It was and still is the #1 public school district in Ohio. My parents originally moved to this area because the school district was excellent. When I grew up in upper middle class America in a well-to-do suburb, I felt that I needed to perpetuate this lifestyle and keep the image of success. Most are two paychecks away from complete financial disaster! I was once at that point and was so overwhelmed with debt that I was not only swimming, I was drowning in it. What it came down to is that although THE economy was horrible, MY economy was excellent! Even after losing my 6-figure job. How bad the job market was…along with everything else. As a matter of fact, when I lost my job in 2009 (11 years with the company), I continued living very well! Everyone was yelling about how bad the economy was (and still is). ![]() I wear Italian suits ($40 – $120 each – I will share sources) for my profession, but I do not “break the bank” to live this way. Now, don’t get me wrong…I dress nice (not name brand) and drive a decent car (10 years old but near perfect). Leasing a car is worse than renting one – they are still responsible for all repairs and more than likely when the lease is up, they will have to pay more for the mileage overage to even be able to just give it back and walk away with nothing. Some even personally lease their cars to have a low payment. As a matter of fact, along with the Joneses, almost everyone that I know that looks like a million bucks owns virtually nothing to their names (financed to the max) and have minimum credit card payments that they can barely make (high interest). No thanks.Ī big part of my simpler life was getting rid of the mindset that I need to have the BMW (although I love the 80’s models of the 6-series), big house and designer clothes to impress my friends. In fact, I could care less about what Mr. The minimalist lifestyle to me is a way of life that doesn’t require the big fancy house, shiny sports cars and “keeping up with the Joneses”. Minimalist Living, as some may call it, can be anything from the visual appearance of a streamlined living space with an arrangement of minimal furniture, no clutter and/or merely a simple approach with your lifestyle. This can be MANY different things to a number of different people. As a general rule, it is scaling down and minimizing your life. A great question that has many different answers in the Minimalist world.
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