I have recently decided to take a more minimalist approach to my life. In the past, I have spent most of my time in the pursuit of stuff. Whether it was a newer, nicer car, a bigger, better house, or a flashy new computer, I was always trying to get more. This is not a good cycle to be in. It’s also not something I want my children to pick up from me (not that I’m blaming my Dad for my tendencies…but if the shoe fits <grin>). In any case, I need to make a change, and one that I believe is for the better.
A few weeks ago, I watched the movie Minimalism, and it really resonated with me. Over the past year or so, we have been working on reducing our monthly expenses, including “downsizing” from my 3 year old leased car to a 30 year old truck. This has, in turn, enabled us to pay off some of our debt, and has put our family on the path to financial freedom. That is not to say that we will be debt free any time soon, but it is now something we are actively working towards. We’re probably a good 3 or 4 years away from where I’d like to be, financially speaking, but we’ve made more progress in the past six months than in the previous three years.
For the past year or two, our plan has been to downsize to a smaller house. We have also wanted to move out of the suburbs to where there is more open space. Ideally, somewhere not too far away from the city, but where we can have 10-20 acres of land. We would like to be able to hobby farm, as well as have room for additional buildings (like a barn/shop for me). Our goal is to be able to build ourselves a small house, ideally out of old shipping containers. To be fair, we are looking for something in the 1600 square foot range, so it’s not exactly what you would call tiny.
More recently, we have decided to take a slightly different road to get where we are planning. This will likely push our smaller house plan out by a few years, but will actually fit more into the minimalist lifestyle. Specifically, we plan on moving into an RV, and spending a few years “road-schooling” our children. This will involve roaming the country in our RV, while I continue to work and my wife teaches the children (she home-schools them currently). We want our lives to be more about experiences than about “stuff”. We believe this plan will get us closer to that goal in a much quicker timeline.
You can follow our road-schooling adventures on our new family blog:
The first challenge to this new approach in our lives will be this holiday season. We have a plan, and if we can stick to it, the amount of “stuff” we will accumulate (as a family of 4) throughout the holiday season should fit in a small suitcase. We also plan on paying off a couple of credit cards during the month of December, which is something we’ve never done before…usually quite the opposite, in fact.
Well, if it hadn’t been for the guy in the red suit, I think we would have achieved my goal. The kids each got a giant squishmallow, that are about as big as the average 4 year-old child, from Santa this time morning. Everything else we got meets my criteria of being able to fit in a single suitcase. Maybe if we use one of those vacuum storage bags…oh well, at least the kids can use them as body pillows.
We only went a little over budget (switch games are expensive), but did manage to pay off both credit cards, as planned.