Maximum Gratitude, Minimal Stuff

One of the best ways I've found to save money and live within a budget is to learn to enjoy staying home.   I know that not all of us live in the dream home we imagined when we were young, or the ones we collect images of on Pinterest.  I live in a small apartment, not the cozy cottage in the forest I might wish for.  But making the most of home and the time we spend there can make a huge difference to our spending and saving patterns.  Becoming a frugal homebody might be the best way to live within our means and stay out of debt. Why stay home? Obviously, staying home saves on gas, but it also rescues us from a multitude of temptations.  The minute we leave home, most of us are hit with marketing.  I only need to walk a couple of blocks west to arrive at a small shopping area with a convenience store, a Mexican restaurant, and a consignment shop.  If I drive about a half-mile further, I reach Highway 99, and turning north I see billboards and sho...

Back in 1906, an Italian economist named Vilfredo Pareto noticed that just 20% of the population of Italy owned 80% of the land. That makes sense.  Few people are rich, and they're the ones who own most of the stuff.  So, Romanian-American management consultant Joseph Juran developed the concept further, by observing that 80% of results come from 20% of causes .  For example: In 1988, the New York Times reported that about 80% of video rental revenues came from just 20% of the stock. Microsoft has noted that 80% of crashes can be prevented by fixing 20% of the most-reported errors. 20% of the best professional baseball players account for 80% of total wins. Studies show that approximately 80% of healthcare expenses accrue to 20% of patients. The frequency of words used in most languages, the size of cities, the magnitude of earthquakes, and even the intensity of solar flares all follow similar distributions. If the Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule, shows up in so many...

I lived in five different houses before I went away to college at age 17.  That's a move every three to four years, each time for a slightly larger house.  My mom never felt we had enough space, enough closets, a big enough kitchen, a large enough yard. Her feelings weren't unusual then (the 1960s and 70s), and they're even more common now.  The average home size has grown from 983 square feet in 1950 to almost 2,200 square feet today.  Families are smaller, but we seem to need more personal space.  Or at least we think we do. There are some things a lot of us do that make our homes feel smaller.  I think we can be happy with less square footage if we learn to make our spaces look and feel larger.  Read on for my best tips. 14 errors that make your home feel small, and how to fix them 1.  Shoes If your entry hall hosts a pile of shoes, that's what greets you every time you come in.  Not only does it look like a mess, but it makes the entry f...

Consider this:  More than three-quarters of the people in the wealthiest country on earth say they worry about money .  What's more, 87% of millionaires don't feel rich . You read that right.  For those who are wealthy, what they have is never enough.  John D. Rockefeller, once the richest man in the world, when asked how much money is enough replied, "Just a little bit more."  That's apparently a sentiment shared by today's richest man in the world and the vast majority of his cohorts. Author and minimalist expert Joshua Becker calls this the Prosperity Paradox.  It's sad, really – the more money we have, the more money we believe we need. If our goal of achieving financial freedom is simply to accumulate more and more money, we'll never arrive.  The finish line keeps moving, and we can never reach it.  If we think that financial freedom means we can buy whatever we want whenever we want it, we're always going to feel we're lacking. What is fi...

I hope you found my last post , "Ease Into Minimalism with this 7-Item Checklist," a helpful and inspirational roadmap for a better, simpler life.  That's what I intended it to be.  But this blog is called Maximum Gratitude Minimal Stuff for a reason.  If you want a richer life , and if you want to be able to make the most of minimalism, you need one more ingredient.  Gratitude. A lot of people talk about gratitude, many people pay lip service to its value, but until it becomes our default mindset, we won't know its power to make life more joyful and fulfilling. I believe that we find what we look for.  If we read all the bad news, we'll feel bad.  If we focus on the drivers who are speeding, weaving, and cutting others off in traffic, we'll fail to see the vast majority of people who are driving safely.  If we stare at the rude person in the store or restaurant, we won't be able to see the many pleasant patrons. The good news is that if we look for t...

COMING IN SEPTEMBER!  My new book,  The Wealthy Minimalist .*  The e-book edition is available for pre-order now, at a discounted price. *   Thank you for supporting this blog.  If you choose to buy through my links, I may earn a small commission. You've been hearing a lot about minimalism, and you'd really love to make your life more manageable.  But isn't there some way to ease into it?  It seems crazy to just dump everything and go live in a tiny house.  You have a spouse (and he/she loves their stuff).  You have kids (and all of their stuff).  You have a job, or volunteer commitments, and you can't see yourself taking on the huge task of completely decluttering your home any time soon. So what can you do if you want to try "minimalism lite"?  Is it even possible to enjoy some of the benefits without taking drastic steps? Yes, and here's how. 7 steps to minimalism ▢   Declutter duplicates. This is so simple, you can do ...