Posts in category "minimalism" - page 2
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More Ideas On Minimalism
I have already written a few articles on minimalism. Yet, from time to time people still ask me to teach them how to get started on minimalism. Unfortunately I don't know how to help them. There are perhaps some books and youtube videos on the topic. May be that will help. But here is one way to go about it.
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The Minimalist Wardrobe
If you have read the post on my expenses, you would have noticed "wardrobe" expenses conspicuously missing. I quietly shoved them into the miscellaneous expenses. Still, a few people noticed and asked me -- "what about your clothing, shoes etc expenses". Well, I am not much of a shopper and after the brush with minimalism, the desire to buy more clothes has vanished into oblivion.
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What Does Minimalism Mean To Us
Like many things in life, what something means to you may not mean the same to others. Take minimalism for example. It has a different meaning to different people, but the core tenets remain the same. Some people confuse minimalism with cheap or frugal. While it does help to be frugal, it does not necessarily mean minimalist. What does minimalism mean to us then? We'd like to think that minimalism means owning or buying the minimum amount of things that will let you lead a comfortable but simple life. That's a mouthful. Lets break it down.
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Year In Review - 2019 Expenses
This is the continuation of my 2019 year in review series. See my previous post if you missed my returns report. As you probably know, I maintain two set of expenses -- one for monthly expenses and another for annual expenses. The monthly expenses include expenses that occur more frequently than once a year and the rest of the expenses go into annual expenses. Lets dive deeper into the report.
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Sold My Car!
I might have mentioned in passing on this blog that I own three vehicles. Now, having started on my minimalist journey, I have been wanting to get rid of an expensive and yet not so used car. And that finally happened yesterday! It is sort of a bitter sweet moment really. On the one hand I feel like a part of me is gone now and all I am left with are the memories. On the other hand, I am happy to have reduced "stuff" from my life. Read on to know the whole story.
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Practice Minimalism
After watching my talk on early retirement, one of my friends tells me that while the audience asked a lot of questions, no one asked me "How do I practice the art of minimalism without compromising much on what your heart wishes for?". Well in this case, I am not really sure if minimalism is a personal trait or if it is something that can be acquired. You already know how I started, which was basically after reading about Stoicism.
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My Annual Expenses Explained
In my last post, I went over my monthly expenses. In this post I will go over my annual expenses so you too can plan your annual expenses along those lines. For the year 2018, I budgeted an annual expense of Rs. 3,60,000. That comes out to Rs. 30,000 per month. Annual expenses are those expenses that occur less frequently than a year. So things like property tax, buying a car, painting your house etc will come under annual expenses. My annual expenses planning is shown below.
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My Monthly Expenses Explained
In one of my previous posts, I briefly mentioned that I planned my monthly expenses to be around Rs. 50,000 per month. In this post, I want to explain a bit more on how I arrived at those numbers. May be it will help you figure out your own expenses in your retirement.
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Year In Review - 2018 Expenses
Continuing the "year in review" series, this time lets go over my expenses last year. Did they go according to plan? Did I over estimate or under estimate? I wrote a couple of posts explaining my monthly and yearly expenses. You can check those out for more details. But for this post, I will just go over them briefly and how they panned out over the course of last year.
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Would You Rather Have Freedom or Stuff?
One of the most important trait that people who want to retire early need to practise is minimalism. If you keep buying more stuff, you will take longer to retire. I made this mistake early in my life, but I was not too late to correct course. Especially because some of the things come with a burden of lifetime maintenance; for example owning a car. The constant repairs, upkeep and insurance keep adding to your expenses. Not just vehicles but every single thing that you own, ends up owning you. So if you would rather have freedom, you have to give up stuff. This is in continuation of step 2 of How to Retire Early in 5 Steps — Rid Yourself of Debt and Save Aggressively.
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