Author Archives: minimalismrules

Do you have to say goodbye to everything?

Leave a reply

I never travelled much as a kid. I moved house only once before I came to university. For various reasons, the only time I had been on holiday was when I was five.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to travel. In fact, it makes me want to travel even more. I chose to do a language degree and a ‘Teach English as a Foreign Language’ (TEFL) course specifically so that I can travel. The desire for adventure has always been in me, which, I think, accounts for my minimalism. I believe it gives me freedom.

A few weeks ago, I said goodbye to the place where I had been staying for a year. I said goodbye to all of the stuff I had given away. I said goodbye to the people that I would never see again, and the people that had become my friends.

It’s always difficult to say goodbye, and it makes sentimental people like me feel a tiny bit heartbroken everytime.

  • It’s easier to not buy something, than to let go of something old.
  • It’s easier to meet new people, than to say goodbye to friends.
  • It’s easier to visit a new place, than to leave a familiar place.

But it would be impossible (and very boring) to live a life where you never bought anything, met anyone or went anywhere. Slowly I realised, if it hurts so much, why even say goodbye? ‘Goodbye’ is sad, it’s another way of saying ‘I’ll never see you again’.

One of the most essential ‘skills’ a minimalist can have is the ability to let go. If you attach enormous amounts of emotional baggage to everything and everyone, you’ll have little left for yourself.

So instead, why not think a little differently? The people you will never see again will continue with their own lives, so wouldn’t it be better to wish them ‘Good luck‘? Or if it’s a place where you spent a lot of time, how about ‘thanks for the memories‘. Sometimes, it’s difficult to say goodbye to our things, like old clothes for example, but even if it sounds silly it really helps to think ‘thanks, and now you can go to someone who will find a better use for you‘.

This summer, I will be leaving home to go abroad to a far away place for a whole year. Just like this past year, I know there will inevitably be many people and places that will come in and out of my life. I can either:

  • get too attached to them, and be upset when I have to leave,
  • or I can enjoy it while it lasts and depart with a smile and a headful of great memories.

Do you have to say goodbye to everything? Or can you say goodbye without having to say it?

Why Minimalism Brings Happiness

Leave a reply

When I was packing for university, I found it extremely difficult to let go of some of the things I owned. I knew I couldn’t take everything with me, but I kept asking myself ‘how could I possibly throw this away?’. What if I need it one day? What about all of the memories?

Now that I’ve moved, and left that stuff behind, I don’t even miss it. Whether or not I got rid of it, it barely makes a bit of difference to me now.

I’ve learned that over time people forget, or their need for a particular object eventually diminishes. Either they store it away or they get rid of it.

You might think nostalgically about the toys you cared about when you were a child, but what is making you smile now is not the thing itself but the memory of it. I’ve heard it a hundred times, “you don’t need things to make you happy”. It takes something life changing like moving across the country to realise how true this is.

Speaking of which, for a lot of people, minimalism is about being able to move. It’s about being able to go almost anywhere at any time because you don’t have many possessions to carry. When you keep things you don’t need they become a burden that tie you to a place. Moving to university was a good time to let go of a lot of stuff. And when I visit for the holidays, I’ll probably get rid of even more, to lighten the burden.

Of course, there are exceptions. There are some things that are irreplaceable, very rare or expensive or we simply love and cherish for some reason or another, we are human after all. But after we keep those, how much is left that we don’t really need?

Hence, minimalism. And why does minimalism bring happiness? This was a bit of a roundabout way of saying that it’s because what really makes me happy is freedom. And the key to freedom is minimalism because minimalism reduces our attachment to things.

Attachment to too many objects create clutter and can severely hinder our freedom to do whatever we want, whereas minimalism helps us start new projects, move, travel, learn new things, meditate, work, expand, be debt free, be healthy – really living life to our full potential.

I left the nest to fly onwards and upwards, I can’t do it with old things weighing me down. And that is why I have adopted minimalism with open arms.

A Student’s Guide to a Minimalist Diet in 5 Steps

Leave a reply

what is a minimalist’s diet?

True to the minimalist mind-set, a MD (Minimalist Diet) is about reducing food down to what is essential. Although I refer to it as a diet here, in this case I mean diet in the case of ‘a way of eating’ or a long-term lifestyle, not a fad diet that claims you can lose several pounds in 30 days.

When it comes to diets, the important thing is to find a balance and to keep trying new things until you find what is best for you. Our bodies are all different in a thousand subtle ways; we all react to food a little differently. I am not a nutritionist, so please don’t take this as medical advice. I have also taken into account my current lifestyle, I am a student, with very little money to spend, so some of the steps have come out of necessity rather than choice.

For me, an ideal model for a MD is the traditional Japanese diet. Japanese cuisine is well known for the little cooking that is applied to the food. A lot of food is eaten raw or lightly vinegared, such as Sashimi, or otherwise just steamed or boiled. As for flavouring, the Japanese tend to season lightly, or use simple dipping sauces such as soy sauce. This doesn’t mean the food is bland and tasteless, it simply means that food is eaten the way it is, as close as possible to how it occurs in nature.

My take on a good MD is cutting down on too many foods that are processed and cooked for long periods of time. A lot of people cut out meat as well, and although a vegetarian or even vegan diet is definitely very ‘minimal’, you don’t have to abandon meat if you don’t want to.

what are the benefits?

Some of the advantages of a Minimalist Diet are that:

You spend less money. You’re on a student budget, which, unless you’re very lucky, isn’t much. Processed food tend to cost more because the manufacturer needs to make a profit over all of the ingredients and chemicals they used to make it. Buying carrots and chopping them up yourself makes a much cheaper side dish than oven chips which the food company had to grow, chop, flavour, process, package, market, distribute and store whilst making money to stay in business.

It is healthier. Most food companies, and restaurants, don’t care about your health. They care about money. So, they make their food products tasty and convenient because that is what will encourage you to buy them again. But at what cost? The tastiest foods are packed full of sugars and fats. And the most ‘convenient’ foods are sprayed full of chemicals so that they can be stored longer and cooked in less time. Cutting out processed foods means you’ll be filling your body with natural foods, so there are fewer ‘sugar rushes’ or ‘oily breakouts’, which leaves you in a much happier mood and better able to focus and concentrate.

 

Moreover, I was in the supermarket one day and I noticed that a burger costs £1, whereas a bag of salad was about £1.50. The question occurred to me: What is in that burger that makes it cost less than a bag of leaves to make? A bag of leaves!?

It’s better for the environment. Eating foods that don’t come with copious amounts of packaging saves from adding to landfill. Plus, eating fresh food means it probably spent less time travelling, which saves enormous amounts of oil and carbon dioxide emissions. If you cut down on meat, you will be ‘saving food’, since raising livestock costs more plant material than the energy and nutrition you would get from eating the plants themselves. There is already a global food shortage problem, and although realistically you won’t make much of a difference by yourself, at least you would know you are doing you best not to make it worse.

how to get started

Here are a few steps you can take towards a Minimalist Diet:

1. Make your own. Takeaways are extremely expensive compared to the cost of making a meal for yourself. You don’t have to make a profit over the effort you put into making your own dinner. Of course, there is a need for one every now and again, but if you make meals in bulkthen all you have to do is heat up a portion for the next night. One of the biggest money-saving things you can do is making your own sandwiches for lunch. A quick price comparison shows how much you can save, the average cost of a sandwich is £2.00, if you buy 4-5 a week that comes to almost £10. But a supermarket loaf of bread is only about £0.60 and even adding the cost of most fillings like tomatoes, cheese, salads and butter that will last you more than one loaf still makes bringing your own much cheaper.

2. Cut out junk. If you know you eat a lot of chips, biscuits, crisps, cakes, pastries and drink a lot of fizzy drinks, you don’t have get rid of it all straight away, otherwise the chances are you won’t last very long and you’ll be tempted to switch back. Instead, you can just cut down little by little, and substitute foods at the same time (see below) to make up for it. This step can be difficult, and I know it is easier said than done but it is one of the quickest to implement and the results can be very rewarding.

3. Substitute. Replace the junk you left out with healthier snacks. If you can cut out fries as a side part of you main dish, replace it with vegetables. Perhaps replace your morning cup of coffee with green tea instead.  Try stirring honey into your tea instead of sugar. If you really feel like something sweet, try a handful of grapes, they’re packed full of the fruit sugar fructose. Instead of taking a bag of crisps for lunch, switch it for an apple. Get creative!

4. Think simple. If you’re not very good at cooking, or can’t afford to buy much (I mean, we are students), why not just make something simple? Buy simple ingredients. When cooking, instead of going for complicated recipes, why not try methods like steaming and boiling? These procedures are fairly easy and usually don’t take very long either. One of my favourite tricks is steaming practically any vegetable, or even fish in a sieve over boiling water with a lid on top, what is more simple/frugal/MacGyver than that?

5. Eat less. Now, I’m not suggesting you go anorexic here. But if you are overweight, it may be worth calculating a rough estimate of how much you eat in terms of calories and seeing if you’re over your Recommended Daily Allowance. If there’s one thing that remains consistent between all diets, even those dreaded fad diets, it is that in order to lose weight, you should replace junky carbohydrate heavy foods with simple, protein rich foods. Consuming minimally can help you slim down, reduce landfill, save money and improve your overall well-being.

Please remember that all of these tips are just suggestions. There isn’t an ‘Official Minimalist Diet’ rulebook that states you should not eat meat, or that you must eat less than you do now and so on. These steps are a result of combining some of the things I have learnt as a result of having an interest in health, nutrition and of course minimalism. I do realise that some of these points apply to a healthier diet in general, but I guess that is what a MD really breaks down to. This is an approach to food that I have found to work for me, I hope it will help others but of course anyone can change it around as they like.

What does a ‘Minimalist Diet’ mean to you? Do you have any ideas about how to be more minimal when it comes to food?

5 Ways to Get Rich for Free

Leave a reply

A lot of people hate talking about money. One of the most annoying things I hear is that “there are more important things in life than money”, and while I agree to some extent, it should be more like, “there are more important things in life once I have enough money”, because the kind of people who say the former tend to be those who can’t sleep at night worrying about the bills, dread Monday mornings, are working 40+ hour weeks, can’t afford to do the things they really want to do, or don’t have enough time to spend with their friends and family.

Accumulating money for the sake of it isn’t the point. Money is a tool, like a boarding pass, it is your ticket to where and who you want to be. With it, you can get away from the long office hours with the boss you hate, the debt collectors or the mortgage hanging over your head and towards a life of freedom and fulfillment.

It’s not difficult either. There is a very simple formula. The money you have is the difference between what you earn and what you spend. That’s it. So logically, there are three main ways to get rich:

1. Spend less. Want fewer things, and you’ll end up spending less. Care less about what other people think and stop trying to keep up with the neighbours and you’ll end up spending less. Have some discipline and care more about your future self and you’ll end up spending less. You don’t need to live a monk-like existence, but everyone has something they can cut. It’s a matter of thinking before you spend and prioritising what’s really important to you over what only seems important to you right now.

2. Save more. First, and most importantly, make sure you have a rainy day fund that will pay for all of your essential expenses for at least 3-6 months in the event that you lose your job, or can’t work temporarily. Unfortunately, too many people live pay check to pay check, unprepared for things like illness, or a downturn in the economy, or any number of things that are outside of their control. You should also prioritise paying off the most expensive debt(s) that you may have, starting with the ones that charge the most interest, leaving the least expensive debt until last. You might consider not paying very low interest debt off yet if a potential investment yields more than the interest charged, but more on that below.

3. Earn more. Another way to get more money is to simply earn more. Ask for a raise, take on another job, or start something on the side. Don’t fall for lifestyle inflation, which is when you spend more because you’re earning more. Although the occasional treat is fine, too much normally results in very little net difference in savings. That’s how you get people on £60k salaries relying on each paycheck to cover their inflated bills.

Now, once you’ve saved your emergency fund and have accumulated a little extra, what do you do with it? Money isn’t made for collecting, you need to put it to work…

4. Switch your earned income to passive income. Most people think that the only way to make money is to earn it by doing some sort of office or labour job. This is simply not true. There are plenty of people who continue to make money even after they stopped work. Like the singer who earns royalties for a song she made years ago, the writer whose book continues to sell, or the business owner who leaves the day-to-day running to a manager. These kind of people put in an initial amount of work that took some time, effort, skills, and knowledge, but were rewarded with a passive income long after they stopped working. They had the freedom and income to do what they liked, move onto other projects, or to do nothing at all. You can switch your earned income (the money you make by working) to passive income (the money you make by not working) over time, by investing (see below), or starting a side business or income generating hobby. Eventually, you might be able to reduce or stop working, but even if you don’t get rid of your earned income source, at least your passive income can provide an extra layer or security, or luxury, that you otherwise wouldn’t have had.

5. Invest. Apart from inheriting or winning the lottery, investing is the only way to earn money outside of conventional work. All investing can be boiled down to a return percentage with a certain amount of risk. From low risk/low yielding bonds to high risk/high returning startups, there are thousands of way to invest, and it would be outside of the scope of this blog to explain and review individual methods. However, I have found property to be a good investment (in my city/country) in various forms including buy-to-let and crowdfunding. An important thing to remember is that inflation is eating away at your savings at a rate of between 2-6% per year or more, depending on which country you live in, so if you do nothing, you are essentially losing money. Make your money work for you, in the form of immediate/short term returns, or long term capital growth. Which you choose, or how you balance these is up to your own financial situation and goals.

There is a lot more I have to say, which I will detail in a future post. I am not a financial expert, and you should always consider any financial advice carefully. However, some things are common sense, and yet there are so many people stuck in debt, living on their paychecks, or in jobs they hate because they wouldn’t be able to pay the bills if they left. Worst of all, they complain yet do nothing about it, or they resent people who do have money. As a child of immigrant parents, I was not given anything more than most kids my age. I had exactly the same opportunities that were there for anyone who could identify them to take, and I worked extremely hard for them. I’m very grateful for the knowledge and experience I’ve accumulated, and I’m proud of how I was able to steer my finances to where they are now.

Finally, the more I earn, the more I’m able to give, which is one of the only reasons why I would want to earn above my means. I’m not interested in fast cars or fancy shoes, if I have more than I need, I would give it to the people who need it most, so that they could have some of the opportunities I was so lucky to have.

Resources

Ever wonder how people become millionaires and how lottery winners manage to lose it all? If there’s one book that helped me see things with a better perspective, it must be Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth by T. Harv Eker which talks about our money mindsets. You can learn all you want about investing, but unless you have a rich mindset, you’re unlikely going to be able to succeed, and even if you do, you might not keep it for long. Having the right ‘money blueprint’ is the first and most important step to becoming truly rich.

When Minimalism Matters Most

Leave a reply

This is what practising minimalism has taught us from the beginning, that life is not about impressing others with your fancy clothes. Your net worth isn’t your life worth. Sure, it’s easy enough to agree in principle, but many of us dedicate our lives to doing exactly this—getting into debt or working long hours at jobs we hate to earn money to pay off the credit cards for things that don’t actually add value to our lives.

You don’t have to live like a monk, or go backpacking around the world, everyone has their own happy medium. Most people live on autopilot, going about their cycles of hedonic adaptation without stopping to question what kinds of things are most worthwhile. Unfortunately they don’t realise they’ve wasted their life until the very end, by then it’s too late to do anything about it.

If we’re lucky and open minded enough to discover minimalism before we’re near death, then we can count ourselves in the fortunate minority. Starting today, we can make wiser decisions on how we will spend our limited lives so that when we reach the end, if there is one thing we will have, it’ll be fewer regrets.

On how to get the most out of life with a dose of reality

Leave a reply

Lately it has become fashionable in the media to bash on millennials (people in their late 20s-early 30s today). To be fair, we are an easy target, at least most of us who were raised in developed countries.

We grew up being told that we’re unique and exceptional, that we can ‘make an impact’, or if we’re really special, ‘make a dent in the universe’.  We think there is such thing as ‘fair’ and ‘not fair’, as if there is some divine points system that means good things always happen to good people and bad things should happen to bad people. We think if we do our best and work hard we deserve the perfect life promised to us by our parents, the media, or Instagram.

This hasn’t translated well into real adult life. With our generation going into our 30s and 40s, we’ve had to learn some hard truths. Ambitions we had as children, of becoming  CEOs, celebrities, millionaires by the time we’re 30, of changing the world… we’re realising were just fantasies and it’s not going to happen for 99% of us. No, we’re not that 1%, and we’re not so special after all.

This is the reality check many of us need. We might try to blame our failures on our parents, teachers, managers, the government, the economy… but putting the blame on something external is just a way of shifting responsibility away from ourselves because we don’t want to admit that there are more things that are up to us than aren’t.

It’s up to us, individually, to decide if we’re going to lead happy fulfilling lives. We choose whether or not we are happy. Sure, there are things we can’t control, but in life you don’t get what you deserve, there’s really no such thing.

The universe doesn’t owe us anything. Instead, we get what we work for, what we negotiate for, and what we fight for. Most importantly, we get what we take responsibility for, including our own happiness.

And if we want to be happy we have to learn to be content with ‘normal’. This means being OK with a normal job on a normal salary, relationships with normal people, normal every day lives for most of us without vast fame and fortune. We have to accept that we’re only human, and life is just what you make of it.

This is not the same as settling for mediocrity. It doesn’t mean we don’t work hard to make changes for the better, or fight for the things that matter. But we need to learn that accepting what is good enough is OK, we don’t always have to strive for more and more. Once we let go of other people’s expectations and stop trying to be ‘busy’ all the time, we realise we don’t have to chase after something that is never going to be enough. We can stop the endless pursuit that doesn’t really take us anywhere.

A truly remarkable life is one that extracts the best out of it. This isn’t done by being rich and famous and successful in the sense that our generation thinks it means, but quietly and contentedly. Those who are the most successful at the game of life aren’t the ones who have collected the most money and possessions and are loudest about it, but are the ones who patiently found the most joy in the ordinary.