Have Less, Live More
“I believe a desirable future depends on our deliberately choosing a life of action over a life of consumption, on our engendering a lifestyle which will enable us to be spontaneous, independent, yet related to each other, rather than maintaining a lifestyle which only allows us to produce and consume.”
Ivan Illich
The lessons I learned in AfterLIFE weren’t intentionally meant to be about minimalism, but stumbled into what many would call that. I don’t like that or the notion of “downsizing” because they imply only doing without and ignore what one is gaining. Conserving the resources of time and money by “minimalizing” offers the freedom to use that time and money in more life enhancing ways.
After my divorce, I simply had fewer things, a smaller home, and no yard. My first impulse was to work hard to replace all those things, but then I saw I had less things…but more time. More space for living, learning, growing, creating, and experiencing. As a father, I could say “yes, I do have time to play” instead of “no, we have to do yard work this weekend”. I haven’t mowed, raked, weeded or any of those, for me, mind numbing wastes of life in 11 years and haven’t missed them one time. If you have a home and enjoy those things then you are living your life as you wish and good for you! But, most people I’ve met do those things because they think they have to. I’ve saved thousands of hours of life, and tens of thousands of dollars by “minimalizing” and “downsizing”. I did something that implied doing without or having less, but I used the freed up time and resources to have a life time of adventures, learn new skills, and build financial security for myself. Less consumption has lead to more time, freedom, and joy. Less stress and anxiety, and less waste of life.
My time in the COVID lockdown reinforced this again. Suddenly there we 500 hours of time freed up by things I couldn’t do and things I didn’t have to do. I used that time to finish and publish my book, launch a podcast, structure a deal to sell my financial planning practice and being a new chapter in life, and dive into some therapy to work through some shadows that the pandemic stirred up. Instead of focusing on the things I couldn’t do, I dove into things I could do with all the found time. (IMPORTANT NOTE: I want to acknowledge what a privilege it was that I had a profession that allowed me to keep working safely at home. I know millions couldn’t do that.)
During my years as a financial planner it broke my heart when someone believed they couldn’t do the things they wanted to do…have a life of action, because of the things the felt they “had to do”, which was work to support a life of consumption. Housing, cars, clothes, food, entertainment were often the things that robbed people of their freedoms. I met man years ago who wanted to quite his stressful 70 plus hour a work week to spend time with his kids and grandkids before he died. He was approaching 60 and men died young in his family…but he couldn’t “afford” to do so because he and his wife were unwilling to let go of their 4,000 square foot home. They were embarrassed to “downsize”. In my opinion, that was tragic. He was afraid he had less than a decade to live and spend time with people he loved, but trapped working a job that wasn’t fun, fulfilling, or enjoyable and was likely adding stress to his life that was bad for his health all over the “more” of a bigger home for 2 people. I’m not judging, just observing one example of someone who couldn’t live their dream because of a life of consumption as Ivan Illich put it. And I was in the same boat until a storm blew into my life and shook things up. (The story I told in AfterLIFE, Waking Up from My American Dream)
What about you?
Are there habits or things in your life that are eating your time and money that keep you from your dreams of doing something or building financial freedom?
Could you get by with a smaller home, one less car, eating out less, or some other thing?
I’m not preaching or judging, I just know from my own experience and 27 years of working as a financial planner that many people dream of having the time and money to do things that are being robbed from their current actions and consumption. Start tracking your time and expenses and look at the joy you get from those things. Look at the things you want to do before you die and weigh out the consequences of your actions and trade offs you are making. Doing that save me decades of life and allowed me to do things I had written off as impossible years ago.
Say yes to building a life of action…right now. You’ll thank yourself later.