One of the first things I do after the Christmas period is to address my belongings. My family & friends have really got into a rhythm with what to buy me each year, so I don’t tend to get anything which throws me off my minimalist lifestyle, but I do get some really handy gifts. I tend to get new underwear, toiletries, a new aftershave and a couple of books to read.

I’ve asked my family to buy me the same kind of things each year, generally consumables. By getting a few sets of underwear each year I can go through my drawers and get rid of the tired looking items. I have a strict one in one out system now, which I find helps me to keep on top of my belongings. I also find that I personally feel better because I’m only replacing something that is worn out & due for a refresh.

With the toiletries, I tend to get enough deodorant, razor blades & aftershave to last me the entire year, until next christmas. So I start off the year with a few extra items than absolutely necessary, but they do get used up before I receive a fresh batch & I can live with storing a couple of essentials in the bathroom cabinet.

Christmas time used to be really hard for me as an aspiring minimalist. I’m super appreciative of all the gifts I receive & they are by no means bad gifts, but when you are trying to reduce the amount of stuff you hang on to, it can prove challenging. I used to get a lot of novelty items, fun presents which made you laugh & smile on the day, but then went into a drawer never to be seen again. After speaking with friends & family I have managed to save them money  by asking not to buy those items & requested only items I really need. I have a small Amazon wish list to which I add specific things I need & each family member also has set things they now tend to buy me. I find this works best & it makes their life easier if they do decide to give me a gift.

January is also a great time to address your wardrobe. For a few years now my wife and I have shared a single clothes rail. It wasnt always like that, we used to have a walk in wardrobe back in 2012 (walk in closet) and we had hundreds of different items of clothes collected over two lifetimes.

When we first started getting onto minimalism, sorting out the clothes was really hard. Many items had sentimental value, even though we knew we would never wear them again. Since minimising our wardrobe to a single rail, we have found it really easy to stay on top of clothing. Again we have a one in one out rule & with limited space we find we stick to it. If an item wears out we can replace it without feeling guilty & all the remaining items of clothing we have are the ones we wear daily.

I would recommend starting with your wardrobe if you are new to minimalism. It’s a good way to get used to letting things go & it is one of the best examples of how minimalism can make life easier. Just by selecting a daily outfit, you will feel lighter & less burdened by choice.

This year I also decided to address my smartphone & social media accounts. I had far too many time-consuming apps & so many twitter accounts which I followed that it was becoming less useful to me. I wrote about that earlier this week, but the general gist is that by reducing apps & information consumption on your smart phone, you can save a crazy amount of time & regain a lot of focus. With the time I’ve regained I intend to learn Dutch & play more guitar.

Another thing I like to do each new year is to address my finances. I am still paying down student debt on credit cards & I always shift my remaining debt to a 0% card in January. That way I’m always only paying off the debt & not the interest payments. I’m not sure how the banks feel about that, essentially giving me a free loan, but I find minimalism can be applied easily to finances if you treat the digital pounds just the same way you would treat physical clutter. To me, debt is clutter, it’s a burden & it has the ability to cripple you with worry & also to trap you in a situation. I intend to move to Amsterdam & debt is one thing I will not be taking with me.

You can also take this time to check all of your current bills, direct debits & subscriptions. See if you can reduce bills such as your phone or internet, cancel any subscriptions you no longer need & give all of your finances a health check. It’s surprising what a £5 a month subscription costs each year if you no longer read that magazine or watch Netflix.

Moving on to books. I no longer have many physical books. I used to have a massive collection of books in paperback and hardback format however I bought an eReader last year (kindle) and started to get most of my books in a digital format. I still buy the odd second-hand book or text-book, I don’t tend to buy new books as there are an abundance of used books out there for a fraction of the cost. I found moving to ebooks freed up a lot of my belongings. I’ve moved house before with perhaps 30 boxes of books. They are heavy & cumbersome. I now have most of my books on the kindle which can fit in my coat pocket. My kindle library is around 140 books strong. This is all part of a lifestyle I’m crafting to make it easier for me to pick up & go when I like. To a new house, to a new country. I’m no stranger to putting things in storage and moving around for a while. I like the freedom & it’s one of the things that attracted me to Minimalism in the first place.

If you have books, sort through them & give to charity any you have read & won’t reference, or those you have no intention of reading. If you do this every few months you can regain a lot of space, shed a lot of weight & if you give them to a charity shop you can help a good cause in the process (not to mention people can get great books for a fraction of retail & it saves them from landfill).

January is always a quiet month for me work wise. My business customers are coming to terms with a new year & the serious overspend of the previous months. I used to get quite low in January, but I’ve now come to terms with the fact that it is quiet & treat it more as a holiday. It’s the perfect time for me to sort and organise. I normally take a drawer at a time & sort it out. I do this often, but it’s surprising what you find in them. Old bank statements which should have been filed, batteries long since flat, packaging & junk. Minimalism for most is an ongoing process, and I’m still finding things I missed the first, second or tenth time I sorted out a drawer.

If you are new, start small. Choose a drawer a day and sort into three piles, keep, donate/sell & rubbish. Then organise your keep things back into a home, somewhere you know where they will be when you need them. The donate/sell pile should be dealt with ASAP to make sure you don’t start taking things back out, as should the rubbish pile. It’s a great way to start out organising by taking small steps. Decluttering takes time & patience.

I no longer buy CD’s or DVD’s as I tend to rent, stream or buy digital versions. I used to have a large collection of media but I donated and sold the whole lot when I started minimising. I do buy the odd Xbox game on a disc, but I buy these second-hand from shops in the UK like CEX and Game. This way I make a huge saving & I’m reusing media. Once I’ve finished I pass them on to friends or put them up on ebay for a nominal amount. I’d rather someone else benefit from them when I finished, just as I have. It’s a nice process to be involved with.

There are loads of things you can do to get started on your decluttering & simplifying journey. These are just a few to get you started. Please do let me know in the comments if you have any other suggestions or personal preferences for starting a minimalists new year.

Beyond the physical act of sitting & paying the bill, I also have to be conscious of the date & remember on the 15th of each month to pay the bill. This is absurd & it is one of the last parts of my financial minimalism journey.

This morning I took an extra 10 minutes to sit on the website & set up a monthly direct debit. I have now freed myself from the tyranny of the monthly water bill. I still need to set up another direct debit for my council tax bill & I’ve decided to do that later this evening.

My Financial Minimalism Journey to date

Things used to be a lot worse than this before I started my Minimalism & simple living journey. When I started I had so many bills & so many due dates. I had a student loan to pay each month, a student overdraft to clear, 5 separate credit cards all carrying an outstanding balance & all of my utilities had to be paid manually on receipt of a bill.

Luckily I didn’t have a car payment to make as I’ve tended to buy cars for cash since 2008 when I handed back my lease car, but I did have car insurance and breakdown cover to pay. I also had excessive debt to try to clear & a massive rent bill which I would pay via a bank transfer each month. Paying by bank transfer meant I had to login each month & manually transfer cash to my land lord. Not cool.

The problem I had was a lack of fluid cash in the bank to commit to direct debits. With so many commitments and around 15 separate payment dates each month, I needed to pay them manually just in case I didn’t have enough money to cover the bill. That way I could manage the bill, wait for a reminder or red-letter & hopefully buy time to pay off the outstanding bills. This was largely due to overcommitment.

Managing so many payments when you owe a lot of money is hard work. It requires a lot of thinking time & financial planning. It also introduces a lot of stress.

In 2012 I finally committed to living a more minimal & simple life. I sold the flash cars, handed back the keys to my house, sold a ton of stuff & moved in with family to get the finances under control.

Using money from the sale of the car, I instantly cleared an overdraft and one of my credit cards. I then started redirecting those payments to other cards to snowball them and bring them down more quickly. Over 18 months I managed to clear off all but one credit card, pay off all student debts & even get into healthy credit in my current account. Minimalism helped as not buying stuff quickly leads to you saving money. Also, when a married couple share a single room in a family members house, you quickly learn what your most valuable possessions are. It was like a crash course in minimalism & we became badass mobile people in days.

We had a small storage unit for all of our remaining house possessions & just enough stuff in the bedroom to live our daily lives. The funny thing is, when we moved in 2015 to our current house, we had the task of unboxing everything that had been in storage for so long. If I’m honest, apart from the very odd item, we had forgotten owning most of the stuff.

It was an instant realisation that we had lived for 18 months without any of this crap & lived good lives. We had travelled extensively. We could pack up everything we had into our small car and travel anywhere in the UK. At the drop of a hat we could pack up and go and stay with friends, or stay with family in Scotland. We shared a single set of drawers for the entire period & had more than enough clothing.

Packing for foreign travel was a cinch. We could share one bag, or take two small backpacks. When you remove your stuff, you realise that most of it is just useless crap or distracting rubbish.

Anyway, back to finances. Following this period as we neared the end of our 18 month pay off period I was left with no debt besides two credit cards. The balance was low enough that i could transfer one balance onto another card & be left with a single card. I actually did a double balance transfer. I transferred the balance from card A to card B leaving card A empty. I waited less than a month to be offered a balance transfer offer on the empty card A. They offered me 6% interest for the life of the balance, which made it more manageable and more like a loan. I then transferred the total balance from Card B back to Card A so all of my debt was on one card & at 6% for the life of that balance.

I had managed something I thought was impossible 18 months earlier. I only had one single payment to make each month. From 15+ payments to remember to pay each month to a single payment. Granted I no longer had rent to pay & would soon add that back into the mix, but one item, The pressure lifted was insane. I felt like a new person. The ultimate goal is zero debt & zero finance, & I’m working towards that goal daily

I instantly setup a direct debit for this remaining credit card payment & I haven’t given it a second thought since.

I’ve carried this financial minimalism with me since. When we moved house I used cash for everything. No credit or finance, just savings. When I needed to insure the house, I paid the entire premium cash up front. Better to pay all at once & save on interest payments. This also means I know exactly what’s coming out of my bank each month. The same went for car insurance, which I now pay annually for a significant saving. The same also goes for car tax, which I pay for a year at a time.

I setup direct debits for my rent, Internet & mobile phone, my credit card is still paid automatically each month. In fact the only things I still have to pay manually are my Council Tax & Water bill. That will be sorted by the end of the day on the 15th August 2016, I promise.

Financial minimalism is something that not many people write about. But it does work. You can take it even further like I have and cut out any unnecessary payments. I cancelled all subscription payments, I no longer have pay TV channels, I cancelled my Xbox live as I never use it. Thinking about it, the only things I do pay are the essential utilities (my internet is essential, right?). I don’t pay for any luxuries, subscription services or anything with a monthly commitment.

I like knowing that not many bills come out of my account monthly, it’s less to think about & surprisingly it is exponentially easier to manage your finances. Having a load of separate things to pay each month is no different from having loads of stuff. It’s distracting, it consumes far too much of our energy and thoughts. It’s just bad.

if you treat your financial commitments with the same minimalistic principles you apply to your stuff you will see a huge pay off. I’d go as far to say that financial minimalism is even more important than minimalism with your possessions. Finances can haunt people, they keep people awake at night.

One handy side effect of adopting minimalism is that you will find you have loads of stuff you no longer need or want. sell that stuff & you can go some way to paying off your debts. I’d guess that the sale of my stuff cleared around 35% off my debts overnight. That’s a great starting point.

I find that I feel much more content since addressing my finances & applying minimalism to them. They are easier to manage and easier to forget about. Address your smallest debts first. I know that is contrary to everything people tell you, but owing 1 person is much better than owing 5 or 10 people. The sooner you can shed creditors the better.

My aim now is to clear that last card, plan a trip to New Zealand to visit one of my best friends & to move to Amsterdam within 12 months. I’m now in a place to do all of those thanks to some major changes to the way I view possessions & finances.

Have you tried financial minimalism? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. I’m sure some people will be saying “easy for him to say, I owe loads of money & make very little”- trust me, I sacrificed a lot to pay off a huge amount of money & I earn a very modest wage from self-employed work, much less than I would in a ‘Real Job’. Anyone can do this & I implore you to give it a go. If you have tried it, please leave your tips & advice in the comments section.

If you are new here, be sure to checkout my Introduction to Minimalism posts

For a long time I was following that pattern. The first few times I moved house as an adult I only needed the space in a car to transfer my belongings, as time went on that car became a few car trips, then small transit vans and finally large removal vans. At the same time, the size of my property was also increasing. We started out in a tiny 1 bedroom top floor apartment which was owned by family, sparsely furnished and housing only our most important possessions (which at the time where are only possessions).

Our next apartment was even smaller, it was essentially two rooms in a converted Victorian house in Manchester, which had both been split in two, giving us a small living room & galley kitchen downstairs, a small spiral staircase in the living room went up to a small bedroom and tiny bathroom. We physically couldn’t fit much into that space & as a result we had the bare essential items. We didn’t feel deprived & the rent was so cheap. Our bikes were locked in the communal hallway & as the rent was so cheap, we really did exactly what we wanted with our lives.

Fast forward a few years and we progressed to a bigger 1 bedroom apartment, then onwards to a 2 bedroom house, then to a 3 bedroom house before finally moving into a 4 bedroom town house with garage and driveway. We haven’t had children and our core belongings haven’t changed. We still value our computers, cooking equipment, books and media centre, but the space had allowed us to accrue a load of extras. We had extra seating in the living room in the form of massive armchairs & sofas (for guests). We had a huge dining table to seat 6 people (we are still a family of 2). A garage full of rarely used tools, a spare bedroom, another bedroom used as a dressing room. Another bedroom used as a study and 3 bathrooms. Things where completely out of control. We where earning more money than when we lived in that first 1 bedroom apartment but we had next to no disposable income, the rent was almost triple & we had run up debts.

At this time a very close friend of mine was emigrating to New Zealand. He had been travelling for around a year and had seen a lot of Europe and ended up over in Australia & NZ. While in New Zealand he had made some good contacts & did some voluntary work at a maker space. He had decided to take up an offer of employment at the maker space in Wellington & with a bit of planning was ready to go. I was really sad to see him go, we have been close friends forever but this move was a positive step for him & the lessons learned helped me inadvertently.

On the morning he was leaving, I offered to take him to the train station to start his long journey to a new life on the other side of the globe. When picking him up I was shocked & intrigued by the fact he only had his travelling backpack & a small hold all. I don’t know why, but I expected this move to be like all of my moves. Surely all of his stuff was being shipped over. That wasn’t the case, he was literally starting a new life with only the things he could carry.

For some reason that really resonated with me.

I guess we both had similar upbringings & we both seem to have an issue with being tied to anything for too long. Be that work, a location or a routine. We always seem to change things up & make drastic moves or changes. He has always been a bit of a minimalist. Never owning much stuff, never buying into the latest crap. He even held off buying a mobile phone for years & always seemed to have money. Probably, because while we were busy buying rubbish, he was saving.

Suddenly I realised that if he could start a new life with only his most important & personal items, I could slim down my life to a much more manageable level & start to downsize property & belongings. It didn’t take long.

Within a few months I’d given notice on our 4 bedroom house, sold my fancy car, sold off a ton of the extras we had acquired, donated most of my clothing & started culling every aspect of my life. Within a few months everything was sold, the house was gone & we filled a small 80sqft storage unit with our entire life. We moved in with family for a year to clear off the debts we had run up over 10 years of ‘maximum-ism’. Each day we paid off a bit of debt & regained some of our old spirit. After a year, we had paid off almost £18K & bought a tiny 11 year old Fiat Panda car. It was the start of a new chapter in our life.

The next step was to move to a new property. We found a lovely church conversion in Cornwall which was 350 miles away from where we lived. Within a month we had moved in. It’s a modest two bedroom property. One bedroom is our work office and the smaller room is our actual bedroom. It has one bathroom, one living room & a kitchen.

We are still on our Minimalism journey. Just last week I bought a kindle so I could start to give away my physical book collection & move to a much lighter digital library. All of my music is digitised & we only use streaming services for movies now so no DVD’s. I do most of my work (including writing these posts) on an old Thinkpad X200 laptop I got on eBay for £50. Before it would have been the latest & greatest Macbook. This U-turn was life changing & in part I need to thank my friend for showing me the true value of stuff in your life & how it can hold you back. If he could make a new life in a new country without all the trappings of his old life, so can I.

Minimalism is definitely something I would recommend if you have itchy feet & constantly like to be on the move. My boredom threshold is quite low & routine while useful, tends to stifle me. I like to change things up constantly. Becoming minimalist allows me to do this with much more ease. When we moved down to Cornwall I still felt like we had too many belongings. We filled a van & the panda to get down here. It’s definitely a work in progress & I would expect that most minimalists are in constant review of their belongings. We are still sorting & downsizing & we aim to pay off all remaining debts & move to Amsterdam in the next 12 months. Following in the footsteps of my friend, we may not move with just a backpack and hold all, but it certainly won’t be any more than what we can fit in the car. This prospect really excites me.

The friend in question is still one of my closest, we talk often on Skype & Whatsapp & I’m hoping as my downsizing & simple living continues, I’ll be able to afford the air fare to go & see him in his new surroundings. We haven’t seen each other since that morning at the Train Station & it would be great to see inside each others lives again. To meet his new friends & family. The day is fast approaching when that will become reality. He also currently works at a micro brewery in Wellington, so that can only mean good times, right?

If you are new to Minimalism, feel free to ask me any questions in the comments below. If you are experienced, why not share some of your best advice with new readers.

My wife & I sat down to watch the documentary last night. The great thing about buying on Vimeo is that you can download a 1080p version of the documentary (HD) and watch it on any device you choose as it’s DRM free. This meant that I could watch on my media centre without worrying about having the Vimeo app installed & also means I can copy it to my laptop or tablet for watching on the go. A real bonus for me.

The documentary itself follows Ryan’s & Joshua’s book tour across the USA. They interview various bloggers, scientists and minimalists along the way & they really do highlight the benefits of living a more minimal lifestyle. I can totally relate to a lot of the issues raised in the documentary. My upbringing was very similar to Joshua’s & I feel a need to constantly reassess my life & check that everything is going in the right direction. I also have a real issue with wasting time & not wasting my day doing something that is meaningless.

I’ve already adopted a lot of minimalist values in my life. I only buy high quality items & I limit the items I own to ensure they meet multiple needs & add value to my life. It’s certainly an ongoing process and I find reading blogs & watching documentaries like this enable me to stay on track and address issues I’m having based on others experiences.

The documentary suggests that there is a real movement of people rejecting the modern norms of mass consumerism & debt. In their year of travel the boys start off giving talks to a few people in small halls & end up doing TV interviews and selling out talking venues & book shops. There is one scene in a Barnes & Noble store where people are literally standing on the bookshelves to listen. It’s nice to see that other people are adopting this lifestyle & with that brings more experiences and ideas.

I like it when Joshua mentioned someone he had met who kept a library of books & derived real joy from his book collection. Joshua’s answer to that was that it’s OK to keep things that bring you real value, but most things we bring into our home are faddy and don’t contribute anything to our lives in the long run.

Books used to be something I couldn’t part with, but I’ve slowly been converting my book addiction over to ebooks. I got the Amazon app for my iPad and just yesterday I took delivery of my first Kindle. My wife has had a kindle for years, she tends to read a lot of novels & never feels the need to hang onto them when she has finished. I, on the other hand tend to read a lot of non fiction, technical & text books. I find real value in having these available for reference, but I’ve actually found that having digital versions of these allows me to carry them everywhere with me on a single small device & makes me much lighter as a human being who tends to move house a lot (books weigh an absolute ton when moving house). The biggest benefit I’ve found however is the ability to search within the text of ebooks. It’s a game changer.

Anyway, back to the documentary. So far I’ve watched the documentary itself, which if you are even remotely interested in simple living or minimalism, you should watch. I’ve also watched the 40 minute full interview with Leo Babauta of Zen Habits which is well worth a watch. I’m nowhere near as far into this journey as Leo, but I do relate to what he said about thinking of himself 10 years ago & giving that person advice. It definitely helps me to see how far I’ve come & the work I’ve still got to do. I’ll be working through the other bonus features this week.

For £13 you get the documentary which is 1 hour and 18 minutes and you also get over 6 hours of interviews. This is an absolute bargain. Go watch it now! Other people included in the documentary are Joshua Becker, Tammy Strobel of Tiny House fame, Colin Beavan (the Low Impact Man – another great documentary) & Patrick Rhone along with some neuroscientists, sociologists and other scientists.

Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things from The Minimalists on Vimeo.

From the outside it would have appeared that I had everything. The truth is I was running up massive debt’s working harder than ever & not really achieving anything I initially set out to achieve. The strange thing is, I can’t actually pinpoint exactly when it all went wrong, but I think for me it was a combination of too much social media, FOMO (fear of missing out) and earning a little more money than I used to.

Going right back to when I was a child, I had very little. I would make do a lot & our family in comparison to most other families would have been classed as quite poor. We had money to eat & pay the bills but nothing extra. I never really had much but what I did have I treasured.

My first real computer (the one that got me into computing in a big way) was an Amiga 1200. I used to deliver huge bundles of news papers to pay for it. I saved for months. It would take me 2 nights to deliver 360 newspapers and I would make £6.50 a week. I treasured that Amiga 1200 so much and it really inspired me & got me started in the world of IT. The next machine I had was a 386 which was donated to me and then my big rig was a Cyrix 300Mhz processor powered machine. Cyrix are long out of business but it was a pentium alternative and whilst not the fastest machine it taught me so much.

Contrast this to later in life, when I had iPhone’s, iMac’s, Macbook’s and a plethora of tech. Most of which was bought on finance or on a whim and non of which influenced me as much as this early kit which I had to fight for. I put a lot of money into this kit but no value.

I have loads of examples of this kind of thing. As a student I lived on hardly any money. Without parent’s to help me through University I scraped by on a very minimal financial existence but lived a very full life & I was so productive & happy. Again I didn’t have all the latest kit but I would beg, borrow & make do with all of the computer kit I could get my hands on & I never felt like I was missing anything.

Somewhere along the way this all changed and I got flash. I went from only having a bicycle, to a lease car, to a 4X4 to a fancy Mercedes estate. The same with the houses, which went from a crummy one bed apartment, to a nice apartment, to a two bedroom house then a three bedroom and onto a four bedroom quasi mansion. I was still the same person as was my wife. We still had the same needs & the same passions, but we became distracted & started placing value in the wrong things.

Up until the point in which we got into huge amounts of debt acquiring crap we didn’t need, I would have placed my value in my eagerness to always learn, to always study & seek out information. I would also place my value in being a reliable friend, a trustworthy friend, a caring person & someone who always had time for others. I was the kind of laid back person most of us will meet along the way in life. I was always surrounded by people & I always seemed to be a social anchor, with people looking to me for leadership & organisation. Around 2008 when things started to change I had so many amazing people in my life who I would class as close friends. I had the best, real social network. Then things started to change.

Around the end of 2008 when I was finishing my Masters degree, we decided to move back to my home town. We moved into a 3 bedroom house (we only need one) and unfortunately we put distance in between us and our friends & also the things which I held value in (education & simple living). We now needed a car, so we had a lease car. Our costs started to spiral and we started feeling more disconnected. This pattern continued until around 2012, at which point we had already decided things weren’t right & to start to make changes.

The thing that happened next was both extremely difficult & life changing. My wife’s dad had a massive stroke. We aren’t talking about the kind which most people are aware of, where a little paralysis and brain trouble occur, we are talking Life & death, 4 days of a major blood clot on the brain followed by extremely dangerous surgery, weeks in intensive care & then months & months of daily rehabilitation in a brain injury unit. A stroke is always pretty devastating but this was the kind which people normally don’t survive. But he is tough & he did. We spent all day, everyday at the hospital. We lived & breathed his recovery, attending physio classes and all the other things that go along with it. We watched as bit by bit his friends, colleagues & people closer stepped away. His savings disappeared in care costs & 4 house moves later, into ever smaller properties we watched as his belongings had to go. This episode was life changing for my wife & I. An event like this can’t help but change your outlook on life. Seeing the other people in the Brain Injury unit was humbling. When people’s health suffers all of the trappings of consumer life go out of the window. The one thing money can’t buy is health & in that unit I witnessed determination, kindness and gratitude on a completely different level.

We are now years on and each day is still rehabilitation. Something like a stroke really highlights the inner strength people can find & the kindness of others. While most people are busy chasing their own dreams of wealth & success, there are people who selflessly, day after day, help others without any recognition. When you are exhausted from helping and a stranger offers help, even if it’s just a lift somewhere or a favour, it is a greater gift than money or any job promotion. People offer my father in law help daily & there aren’t words to say how thankful I am for that.

We now see the world completely differently. Unfortunately for me, this isn’t the first time I’ve been through a situation like this. I went through issues first with my dad as a young teenager spending months in Intensive Care, his subsequent death when I was 17 and various other family crisis as a teenager. I now realise that value can’t be attached to stuff or a job title. I’ve seen how it can all be lost overnight & when it is, people don’t mourn the loss of the stuff, they just hope to be healthy & loved. My father in law was always busy working before the stroke. Nowadays he is genuinely excited for us to visit. He values other people, kindness, being included in peoples lives & being loved. This is a man who spent a long time in the British Army, did tours of the most horrendous conflicts of recent memory as a medic & after leaving the army would often work 80+ hours a week.

I feel that if I didn’t look at this from the point of view I bring to most things, that of being a scientist, I would be wasting one of the most valuable lessons I’ve encountered. A new TV might make you happy for a few months, but a brilliant friendship & time spent with that person will make you happy for a lifetime. Working a job that pays well may top-up your bank balance & make you feel secure, but if you don’t love what you do you will never meet your potential. And if something life changing happens tomorrow, you wouldn’t want to regret not following your passions for the sake of a well paying job!

Since downsizing & minimising I’ve found I have much more time to dedicate to people & the things I love to do. I can spend a day doing a bit of work or I can decide to go off exploring with my wife. I can do a few hours work in the morning & spend the rest of the day pondering on an idea or reading a book. I can take time to learn instead of earn. I could earn a lot of money if I put my education to use, but the fact is that I love to learn. It’s the process I love, not the certificate at the end. I find my value in being able to become absorbed in new research, or researching things myself. I love learning about new technology or different ways to re-purpose old tech. I probably live on an average part time wage but I feel wealthy. I have time for myself, time to dedicate to things I love to do. That, to me is more valuable than trading my precious hours for cash.

I intend to downsize even further. By the time we move next, I’m hoping all of our belongings will fit into a single transit van. I find value in the ability to change my situation, move house, move country, change everything with ease. I no longer find my value in stuff. I write this blog on an ancient Lenovo thinkpad X200 laptop I bought on ebay for £50. That is the old me, the true me. I’m sat on the sofa, with a cup of tea, during the working day, writing for myself.

So my question to you would be this. If you didn’t feel the social pressure to be successful in the traditional sense of the word, what would you spend your time doing? And would you need a lot of money to do it? It’s time to stop comparing yourself to others. in most cases those people feel as though they are winging it just as much as you do, they just happen to take on more debt or work longer hours. Most of us could live with less & by needing & wanting less, you need to earn less money, which means you free up time to do more of the things you love.

If I could give you one piece of advice (which I would also go back and tell the version of me in 2008) it would be to always follow your heart & do what you love, no matter what it takes. Life isn’t all about how much you earn, it’s how much you enjoy what you do while still being able to afford to live. If I had the time over I would never have moved from my small city apartment & I would have gone straight into studying for my PhD. I’ll get back there, it just takes longer to right the wrongs of bad decisions & to get my mindset away from consumerism and back on living a full life.

The thing I value more than anything is friendship. I have the best friend in my wife. We have been through a lifetime of pain & joy in 16 years and we are stronger for it. I love spending my days with her and working towards our own goals. I value the friendships I have with my close friends. They are all amazing & would do anything for me. That offers me far more security than a hefty bank balance. Money can disappear in no time, but a good friend is more valuable than anything I know of. And if you are ever in need, you will feel the same.

I’ve had debt for a long time, first I was given a credit card at 18 when I first applied for a student account. At that point I was also given an £1800 interest free overdraft. I didn’t apply for this overdraft, or require it but I kept it simply because at that age I didn’t know any better.

Roll on a few more years and I have a few more credit cards, a maxed out student overdraft and lots of Student Loans. That is a lot of unsecured debt for someone in their mid twenties & recently graduated. I lived with it for a few years, paying minimum payments & juggling here and there.

Then came the sting in the tail. My student overdraft was converted to a standard overdraft at 29.9% apr & all of my credit cards came out of their interest free/low interest introductory periods. The interest alone now cost more per month than I was previously paying in minimum payments. This meant my repayment amounts shot up and the balance wasn’t actually coming down. I barely covered the interest. This became a cycle for years. Add to that a real quiet year in our business, a terrible few years personally with a major family illness, car troubles (expensive, posh cars) and generally a complete lack of common sense & things got very interesting indeed.

This was a low point for me & also a major turning point. I sold a lot of stuff, including my car, gave up my house & moved back in with family to pay down the debt. My wife & I gave up everything to start again & I’m so glad we did.

Our debts are by no means cleared, but they are much more manageable, all at 0% and we are paying large chunks off each month. We no longer have any overdrafts and only have one credit card each with 0% apr.

At this point in my life I would say that there is no such thing as good debt. There are necessary debts such as a mortgage and student loans, but I would advise anyone to stay away from the others.

Car finance is not a good debt. Even if you get a good APR on your car loan, you take on all the risk in owning the car & you take the depreciation hit. I run a 12 year old small city car (Fiat Panda) which I paid £2000 cash for. I saved up the cash to buy it and I maintain, service & repair it as much as I can. Your best investment when buying a car would be a Haynes manual and a set of tools. I’ve saved many £££ in car costs in the 18 months or so that I’ve owned this car. Before I had big flash cars, now I have a cheap and cheerful used car.

I do around 12,000 miles a year in this little car, regularly driving the length of the UK and I don’t have any problems. I don’t owe anyone for this car & if the worst thing happened I can cut my losses and pick up another cheap car. No commitments and no payments.

Credit card debt is an awful debt. There isn’t an end point with credit card debt. You clear a bit and then you put something else on them. We use them like a crutch to support us when we need a little cash, but if we never pay that back the only winner is the credit card company. Also, if you are maxed & overcommitted you can’t play the companies off against each other & bounce the debt around. Steer clear of Credit Cards.

Overdrafts are handy if you don’t count them as your own money. If you are nearing zero in your current account, live like you are. An overdraft is an emergency buffer, but useless if you live in it.

Store cards, insurance paid monthly with APR and anything else with an interest rate that costs you should be avoided. I know it’s hard to claw your way out of debt, I really do, but until you start you will always be at the mercy of the banks. Also if you have no debt and little money you are much better off than the person with all the latest stuff & a mountain of debt. You can’t take risks in life & career if you owe a monthly payment. It’s an ongoing commitment and a drain on your finances. Payments always need to be met or the costs can spiral.

My first secret to living a simple life is to pay of your debt. Sell whatever you don’t need or want, once you clear a balance, focus all of your attention on the next balance and don’t spend on any debt. If you owe nothing, you aren’t trapped. You are free to give up your lease or sell your house and pursue something entirely new. Quit your job, go back to college, start a business, spend some time travelling. It’s all so much easier when you are starting from zero, or even better from savings.

A big part of this will be controlling your spending. I no longer buy anything on a whim. I consider every purchase & never make impulse purchases. I cancelled all of my TV subscription services (Sky/Netflix/Amazon Prime etc.), and make sure everything I buy is paid for with my own money. It’s so much harder to spend when it’s your cash. I’ll go more in depth with this too in my next post

I will go deeper into my own story in later posts. In these initial posts I want to give a brief outline of the things I’ve learned since starting simplifying. I’m sure some people will disagree with these points & I’m no finance expert, just someone who has learned hard lessons from personal experience.