Money Talks No. 2: Some Minimalism Minimums

by Dan Masterton

(This is the second of my Money Talks. I invite you to read my intro note before reading this reflection.)

I am very practical minded. So when it comes to money, things, and simpler living, it has definitely helped me to identify some practices that help smooth the path.

Some of this stuff is pretty accessible – basic stuff that most anyone could try doing if they wanted to go for it.

Some of the things are certainly more doable because of the privilege I have. My wife and I studied hard and try to work hard, but we are aware that we were born with many advantages. Our parents’ steady marriages, our stable family lives, our parents’ prosperity, their ability to get us through good schools, our race, and more have helped advantage us in ways we definitely acknowledge. One of the ways I want to respond to that privilege is voluntary simplicity and resisting excess.

Here are a few ways I recommend.

Join the Buy Nothing movement.

Buy this great book here.

I first discovered Buy Nothing when reading The Grace of Enough, a great personal reflection by Haley Stewart about simpler, more sustainable living that I highly recommend. In short, Buy Nothing facilitates local person-to-person exchanges via message board. People can post giveaways or requests and seek matches by comments and messages.

The positives are myriad: diverting waste from landfills, finding secondary uses for items no longer needed or wanted, connecting people with neighbors, saving money and reducing new-item consumption, and avoiding passive donations that often lead to landfills anyway (much is resold but a non-insignificant excess gets thrown out).

The main caution is to protect your safety. Share your address by DM only with committed pick-up people only, never in public posts. Offer porch pickup so that you can receive neighbors outside rather than having to invite them in. For smaller, portable items, consider using a police station or local government building for a public meetup.

This group has been great to help me get extra items to people who can use them – everything from old closet hangers to used birthday party decor to the dress/work clothes I wasn’t wearing any more (took me five years of part-time work to realize it and pare down). It’s been fun to briefly meet and greet neighbors and know the items are going into new, local use rather than the goodwill abysses.

Additionally, while many groups are housed on Facebook – search locally and apply to join yours – Buy Nothing now has an app where some folks are migrating (myself included) to have an alternative to Facebook.

Revise clothing standards.

I’m not saying everyone should buy used/thrift clothes (admittedly, I don’t), though it’s a decent option. I do steer clear (most of the time) of rationalizations like “freshening up” my wardrobe, using sales to buy items I didn’t previously explicitly need, or saying “if you like something, get four of five of it.”

I try hard to wear something until it wears out, not just until I’m tired of it. I still have t-shirts from middle school sports leagues and camps, dress shirts from high school and college, and undershirts from before I got married. Some poke fun at me for this, and I enjoy the recognition. It’s a low-key statement that I don’t have to displace these old reliables with unnecessary new items.

My pride and joy:
the shirt from summer baseball camp
at Harper Junior College in 5th grade.
Why did they give us adult large t-shirts?

When I think I have a clothing need, I make myself sit on it. I put it in a note or on a list. I look around for the item, maybe bookmark a possibility or leave it in a cart. And I wait. I see if I feel like I still think I need it days or weeks or months later. In the fall or winter, I’ll toss it on a Christmas wish list note in my phone or Google Drive. And then after a while, I sometimes get it.

I also have successfully done clothing-purchase fasts for a year at a time. It helps reset things.

Try composting.

When we lived in an apartment, I didn’t try this. In the city, I could’ve joined a pickup service; in our last suburban apartment, I could’ve gotten an elevated compost barrel for our mini-deck. Once we got our house and a yard, I took the plunge, and it’s been great.

As far as minimalism goes, I enjoy that it makes me face waste more confrontationally. Dumping stuff in a garbage can and taking it out to the curb is rote, and easy; the compost bin under our sink and the barrel out back nudges me to think and act more carefully with shopping lists, grocery buying, and food prep and use. While I do love creating compost, I don’t want to artificially add to our barrel by wasting food in our kitchen.

Produce cores, rinds, peels, etc. are good compost. So the compost novelty is a good companion to trying to incorporate more fruits and vegetables into my diet, and my family’s eating. And that has improved gradually as we improve our eating habits.

The minimalist in me loves it even more for yard care, especially lawn mowing. I mulch-mow, meaning I let the cut grass fly out a side-chute and “grass-cycle” it into the lawn. I typically allowed myself one bag-mow during the fall – our big trees drop a massive amount of leaves, and bagging one time made the fall manageable. But I’ve since learned that incremental additions of leaves to the compost barrel works well (dumping a ton all at once can get super dense, especially when wet). And I can move leaf layers to other parts of the yard to mimic the grass-cycle effect for ground cover, planter beds, pots, and more. So I’m ditching the bag-mow this year.

And the humus that composting produces is a great nutrient-provider for us to spread back over the lawn or bury in the ground, and save us money on buying manufactured products.

Embrace generic brands, especially with groceries.

Even though I periodically enjoy treating myself to a nice item, I really try to limit it to things I’ll truly use constantly and run into the ground. I asked for a North Face jacket for Christmas in 2007, and it definitely felt like a splurge – I still wear it in fall and spring and layer with it in winter fifteen years later. For many or most other things, I’m a generic brands guy. And not just to use it for a bit and antsily replace it soon after, but because most times they’re pretty good.

This is especially true of groceries. It’s worth trying the generic of everything at least once, and trying to figure out the items for which one’s taste or health just needs the name brand. For example, generic chocolate syrup doesn’t cut it for us – it’s got to be Hershey’s; sodas like my favorite, Mountain Dew, need to be name brand, partly for taste and partly because the already high sugar and calorie count are often even higher in store brand soda. On the other hand, I’ve found that staples like bread, eggs, milk, cheese, cereal, pasta sauce, condiments, and more are at least serviceable in store brands, and often every bit as good. And the savings is good, especially in the aggregate. (Cheers to go-to, Meijer!)

Two quick reasons for this – first, saving money here feels easy and can preserve money for more important things; second, brands and marketing are designed to make you think that a name brand is the only option, and I don’t want to get my mindset hardwired to subscribe to that if I can help it!

Identify a few hobbies and limit splurges to those.

Sometimes I see folks who are really into shoes or handbags or even cars, and I think, “Man, those are expensive hobbies.” But I also think, “They didn’t necessarily pick those hobbies.” And I kind of settle here: we all can and should have hobbies – and some of us might like things that are pricey – so perhaps we can each identify a small number of favorite hobbies and limit splurge-spending to those.

For me, it’s sports and writing. My choices and spending on sports fan gear, game tickets, and TV plans certainly don’t fit cleanly with most of the rest of my principles. So, too, might someone fairly criticize my spending on a nice home-recording microphone, a vanity publishing project, and paying postage to mail friends books.

I can’t square this spending totally with the rest of my outlook. I think it just comes down to allowing myself a few hobbies.

Identify your favorites. Allow yourself to spend a little. Have some grace, ensure some sanity, and hopefully do some self-care and growth along that way.

Be wary of rationalizations.

Limiting myself to a few intentionally indulgent hobbies also limits the breadth of rationalizing I try to do. Within those silos, I can spend more without greater justification; outside of those, I try to stick to the tighter belt.

When it comes to my kids, I certainly want them to have opportunity, memories, and chances to grow into all they can be. But I don’t think that necessitates having a ton of things. There are only so many toys, clothes, and chotchkies that a kid can play with; you saturate their monkeysphere of play. The danger here is saying new clothes “will look so cute” on them or that “they’ll be so excited” for some new toy; the problem is that basically all clothes look cute on kids because kids are cute and that basically all new toys are exciting for kids because kids like new things. By these motivations, one could essentially buy things for kids nonstop. It gets out of hand.

When it comes to adults, I think we tell ourselves things like “it will make life easier,” “it will do a better job,” “it will last longer,” or “it will pay for itself.” God knows I’ve used these lines in my head before. And once in a while it’s the honest truth. I think the challenge for adults is to limit the bloat. Follow the previous ideal for hobbies, but then try mostly to box in the other stuff, too.

One area that’s nuts to me is home-cleaning. I would feel pretty confident with just a vacuum, a broom, a mop and bucket with dish soap, a good versatile spray cleaner, and some washable rags. The differentiation of all the specialized items for different surface materials, different tools, different scents, different finishes, different appliances, etc. is seemingly limitless. I understand different soap is needed for laundering fabrics than for washing dishes, but I have no problem using the dish soap also to clean the dishes as well as to wash my hands and fill my mop bucket. The range of options marketed to us as necessary or impactful is overwhelming.

Prioritize spending that facilitates experiences and relationships.

So if you never spend any money, Dan, then what is the stinkin’ point of it?

Short answer: having money should help individuals, couples, and families gain stability and basic comfort from which to seek experiences together and gain and deepen relationships with family and friends, new and old.

Because of that, I generally say no to upscale items and upgrades across the board on furniture and decor and other bells and whistles. It just feels like it will fuel a neverending churning and tweaking of my environs.

I say no to preponderant subscriptions and recurring costs like year-round exterminators and lawn-care companies. These treatments may be effective, but they bank on breaking down the cost into months or quarters, having you forget the aggregate cost, and then your subsuming another automatic charge into the monthly budget.

A visual approximation of me, late at night
when I've taken off my normie look
so I can just revel in my miserly ways.

I say no to excessively enabling services like Amazon Prime that are certainly convenient for emergency needs but massively grease the skids toward easier, more frequent impulse buying and consumption. (I do admit to having used loved ones’ Prime accounts in a pinch and acknowledge their efficiency.)

What a miser! I know.

Do you ever say yes? Indeed!

Yes to TSA Precheck and the frequent flier card on our preferred airline. These are the gateways to free checked bags and whisking touchy children through travel transactions more smoothly and quickly. These remove barriers to traveling so that we can see friends, spend time with family, and enjoy getting away together. (Children under 12 join adults’ clearance automatically!) And yes to having a car that is comfortable and roomy enough and an attractive way to get us all out together on road trips to vacation.

Yes to a Costco membership where I can buy inexpensive, high quality meat for cookouts we host, staples for my kids at great prices and high volume like wipes, diapers, and supplemental formula, and discounts on rental cars for aforementioned travels.

Yes to meetups at breweries and restaurants, even when the tab feels majorly overpriced. We try to pick local and small businesses; microbreweries are our favorite. We try to go places where our kids, our nephews and nieces, and our whole families can all be together. And I swallow the tabs because the good food and drink and fun time together is what money is for (and a reason why I increasingly can stomach high costs of birthday parties, too).

Yes to spending when it’s done to meet others’ tastes and expectations. Part of not being an asshole is acknowledging when going out of my comfort zone can be a loving gesture for someone I care about. I think it’s silly to “bring something” to a party when you’re specifically told not to bring anything, but I will do it if I feel like, even in a socially confusing way to me, it is indeed still expected and/or appreciated. I will go to a restaurant I don’t expect to like if a loved one wants us to come try it. I will rent a tux or suit and match the party to be in a loved one’s wedding even though I think my suits and ties are plenty nice and presentable.

Yes to giving treats and gifts to others, for special occasions or just because. While there is a unique satisfaction in pinpointing that perfect surprise gift for someone, I don’t actively aspire to it. I like to bring that favorite sweet treat or adult beverage to someone who will enjoy it. I love to write a heartfelt personal note by hand. And I love to donate to causes that match a person’s passions and interests, especially for people who are marginalized, and briefly note that in their letter.

And finally, especially for those parents and families out here, I spend less to save so I can then spend later and differently. I contribute the kids’ 529 education investment savings plans and maintain a modest monthly auto-debit. I leave the equity in our starter house untouched. I scrape the extra bit off the top of our rainy day checking account to build the strongest baseline I can for the forever house. I maintain an IRA with a smidge of my monthly part-time income, and we aggressively contribute to my wife’s retirement to max out her matching benefits.

I want to maintain as much home equity, retirement asset value, and brokerage investments and bonds so that I am maximally prepared. I want to get my kids through Catholic high school and university education with minimal debt for them and us; I want to maintain a comfortable and welcoming family home; I want to be ready for emergency health situations; I want my wife to retire from full-time bread-winning when she is ready to retire and not work forever because I didn’t set it up well enough for her with my management.

And for better or worse, I do, at least partially, see that extra piece of new furniture or that unnecessary wardrobe refresh as eating into the longer-term plays and the ways I can max out in helping these core hopes become fullest realities.

* * *

For a simple guide to simple living, it’s not all that simple, right!? I definitely have times where I think and do things that I worry, or know, are hypocritical. I try to admit it pretty forthrightly. My goal is thoughtful fidelity, with perfection an idealized goal and not a likely outcome. The deviations are chances for humility and introspection, and a way to keep thinking and acting with fresh insight.

Cubs great Miguel Montero put the range of possibilities well. When the 2015-2016 Cubs teams were hitting their stride, Miggy said, “We are good.” When things started to fall apart after that, Miggy remarked, “We stinks.” I feel this.