Modern society has been constructed in such a way that mandates that we spend money. It is impossible to live a life without consumption. However, it is essential to think about how we can reduce consumption.
Many of the things we take for granted in life could not be accessed by us without trading money for them. Technology & the internet, access to clean water & food, and electricity & fuel all require money. Due to this, money becomes the central focus of society. It’s almost impossible to live a life where money isn’t a big part of your life.
Learning about money, increasing your income, and saving & investing wisely are all essential skills to survive in modern society.
Our ancestors required other skills —how to ride a horse, how to catch a fish, how to hunt. Nowadays, many of these skills have been made redundant due to being able to buy whatever we need or want.
Unfortunately, society wants us to spend as much money as possible. Living sensibly and frugally while saving for your future is an alien concept to many.
Welcome to the first article in the Saving Series. This series focuses on freeing yourself from the traps of modern society and gaining independence from the forces that seek to control your life.
It is your duty to not fall for the schemes of the world we live in. In doing so, you learn to thrive as an independent individual in the modern age. Reducing consumption is one of the most powerful means by which you can do this.
But don’t panic! You can spend money on things you love and save your money and time.
The Problem
I believe that our society has been poisoned by the idea that we need to spend money to be happy.
We see it in media, fashion, food deliveries, and just about anything else you can think of. Society wants to part us from our money, in exchange for things that it wants us to believe will improve our lives.
Most of the time, these things do add some value to our lives. But it’s often not as much as we expect, or has unexpected costs in addition to what we’ve invested upfront.
In addition, we are bombarded with advertisements everywhere we go. From advertisements on podcasts, websites, and radio, to billboards and signs around town. There is no way to escape the reach of marketing corporations’ attempts to extract wealth from you.
It’s too easy to believe that we need to spend money to look good, feel good, or be happy. Marketing companies create these ideas in order to shape consumer behaviour.
There is only one way to not succumb to their reshaping: reducing your consumption.
How Overconsumption Affects Us
Society makes it very easy to fall into the trap of overconsumption. Falling down into this trap makes it difficult to save once it has you in its clutches. Especially with regards to clothes, food, and electronics.
A massive amount of money can be spent in these three categories. For many people, that means new clothes for the season, a new phone each year, and Uber Eats on demand. In many cases, we either buy more than we need, out of laziness or pre-programmed desire. For many people, buying new clothes or nice food is a pastime. The money is used excessively to live an ideal lifestyle, regardless of the impact on their person’s financial situation.
I don’t write this to encourage people to stop doing the things that matter to them. My goal is for you to consider how you spend your money wisely. Then, determine whether or not you spend that money in ways that actually improve your life.
I believe that everyone can reduce consumption by finding cheaper alternatives, or changing their habits to avoid overconsumption entirely.
For anyone looking to save money who has fallen into the trap of endless consumption, it is vital to find ways to reduce spending without sacrificing what you truly enjoy.
Why Reduce Consumption?
If you reduce spending on the things that don’t matter to you, you’ll end up with more money. What you do with that money is entirely up to you.
If you have more money, then you gain the means to free up more of your time. This happens gradually over time and isn’t a straight trade. If you desire greater freedom, then saving your money and protecting your time is the only way to achieve this.
A few good reasons to do this (and how you benefit from doing this) are below.
Avoid Consumerism
If you reduce your overall consumption, you can begin to ignore the tricks that marketing companies use. You avoid the ability for these companies to sell you things you don’t need. By doing this, you can avoid playing the game of comparing yourself to others.
Avoid the belief that you need to buy the new thing to stand out. This is also useful to not stand out in public. Don’t wear wealth, own it – protect yourself financially with saving and investments instead.
However, if your goal is saving money, the two cannot coexist. You need to be able to understand where you are overconsuming and why you are buying those things. Then, decide if that thing is something you wish to forego in order to achieve your savings goals.
Be Content With Less
By intentionally reducing your consumption, your mindset around money will begin to shift. Your mind will begin to desire those things less than you did before. You are creating a lower baseline for yourself with which to be content. You can only do this by reducing your consumption.
The idea is to find your “enough” – what are you comfortable forgoing without feeling like you’re making sacrifices?
Building a lower level for your “enough” allows you to very easily scale back in times of hardship. This enables you to bounce back more easily in the future should you find yourself in a misfortunate situation.
Create a Simpler Life
If you consume less, you will own less. If you own less, you have fewer things to worry about. Consider this story from the philosopher Epictetus. Upon having his prized lamp stolen from his home, he realized that he became freed from worrying about it. Instead, he chose a humbler lamp for his next purchase – a sensible purchase for an item he required.
The purpose of this story is not say that you can’t own nice things. What it suggests is that if you do own nice things, be prepared for something bad to happen to them.
If you rely on certain things to live your ideal life, you need to ensure you can afford to maintain them. Your ability to do this rapidly decreases on a per-item basis the more items you have.
It is therefore essential that you prioritize which items, experiences, or possessions are most valuable to you. The rest you don’t care about can be safely removed from your life, saving you money and time.
Avoid Unnecessary Stress
Owning a large number of possessions is stressful. If you’re forced to move, you have a larger amount of work ahead of you the more things you own. Many of the things we own we don’t use every day or even every week, or possibly months or years. We spend a lot of our money on things that are not used, and our time is spent paying for the space we need to store them.
We have to reduce the number of items we own. In doing so, we ensure that our items do not overwhelm us and lead to stress. A house full of possessions will not save you in financial hardship. Many of the things you own may lead to additional costs.
If saving is the priority you are focusing on, then you must reduce your expenses. Reducing overconsumption is an easy lever to pull to improve your wealth and your health.
Save Money
Reducing the amount you consume will save you money.
If you do not spend your money, you will still have your money.
Misfortune can strike at any time. You may need to spend money in an emergency and reduce expenses. In this scenario, you need to reduce consumption to only what is necessary.
Training that muscle, even in times of abundance, allows you to better weather misfortune. Create a lifestyle that doesn’t rely on spending for your fulfillment.
Create a life where you are happy without overconsuming and without relying on others. An independent, sensible consumer who has “enough” for a happy life is truly wealthy.
Save Time
Owning fewer possessions and focusing on things that don’t add value to your life will save you time. Replace or eliminate habits and possessions that do not serve this purpose. This gives you the ability to create pockets of free time throughout your life, which you can dedicate to things that matter to you.
In all scenarios, limiting what you own will result in less of your time being spent thinking about them. This applies to physical possessions and also the habits, activities, and experiences you engage with. Your free time can then be deployed more effectively towards the things that matter most to you.
The point isn’t to live a boring life devoid of meaning. The point is to intentionally design your life such that you avoid things that you don’t want to do that don’t add value to your life. If you do that, you can maximize the value that your actions and habits provide you.
Discover What You Truly Love
With more money and more time, you are free to work on things that matter most to you. For some people, this may simply be relaxation, enjoying time away from work. Others may want to pursue a goal in a hobby or interest that they derive meaning from. More free time gives you the ability to experiment and discover what makes you happy.
A lifestyle that avoids overconsumption of money and time allows you to focus on what you love to do. To Choose Work You Love.
Save The World
By discovering what matters to you, you can change your focus from looking inwards to looking outwards. This may allow you to help others to do what they love and avoid what they don’t.
For other people, freedom allows them to look at the world around them and find ways to improve it. This could be their family life or their community, but it may be something larger and more drastic. Not everyone will change the whole world, but everyone can change someone’s world.
In addition to changing the lives of the people around you, it’s also important to consider the impact of consuming fewer material goods on the world at large. Consider not purchasing new goods and instead buying second-hand. Find goods of high quality that you’ll only need to buy once. Reducing your consumption may also be a small step in reducing what humanity consumes from our finite resources.
For many people, this is a big reason why they pursue minimalism. For others, they may be entirely financially motivated. Pursuing a life of lower consumption will have benefits both for yourself and the world at large.
Closing
I believe that one of our highest purposes in life is to find a way to do less of what we don’t want to do. We can then focus on making the world a better place in a way that matters most to us.
Slow Financial Independence is the means by which I plan to achieve this in my own life.
By creating a lifestyle built upon high-quality work, dedicated goals outside of employment, and enough time to pursue the things that I enjoy, I believe that I am in the ideal position to better myself, my family, my community, and by extension, my world.
Part of how I want to give back is by sharing my thoughts on these concepts. And I hope that some of it resonates with you.
Thank you for reading.
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