Less is More

I'm no life coach or apostle, not by any stretch. I'm just someone who has made plenty of mistakes and lived through it. Throughout life I fumbled around trying various jobs and career paths but nothing ever stuck. I did have some nice successes occasionally but they were inevitably alternated with stupid mistakes or just plain bad decisions. Two steps forward, two steps back, my whole life. I'm old now (64m) and feel like I've finally figured some things out.

I'd always struggled to keep up with my friends who were either more intelligent or born into more successful/stable households. I mostly felt like a poser in my group of friends. I am/was fortunate that I rarely felt any judgement coming from them. I'd opt out of things that were too much for me financially and it was kind of an unspoken understanding (I think.)

In private I struggled with self-esteem and a constant "want" feeling. Often overextending lines of credit just to have a few of the normal things that others had. Predictably, my wife eventually became fed up with me and divorced me at a very low point. I think she'd been waiting for the perfect moment when I would be most vulnerable. Her sisters all married professional, successful men and she routinely brought it up (like the hapless sap in the show Fargo.)

After being divorced a while, in the mid 2010s, I started contemplating consumerism in the US, which led to thinking about minimalism. I was fed up with the culture of more, more, more when it came to "things." Here's where it gets better...

I simply made a decision to stop trying to appear successful and put all of my focus on living cheaply, and reducing debt. It took a while but eventually I had a couple of credit cards that weren't maxed out. I lived in a ghetto apartment, it was awful, but I felt good about the money I was saving. In my searching for ways to live cheaply (on the web) I curated a flow of related articles into my feeds.

One thing that kept appearing was living abroad. This fascinated me, as it would many people, but it seemed completely unattainable. The more I read about it the more obsessed I became, gobbling up every article I could find. All the while I kept my focus on living cheaply in my current life and reducing dept (a penny at a time, it seemed). The day finally came that I found a remote job (average pay at best), it took a lot of looking.

**Here is the Turning Point**

I made a rash decision to execute a major life change by completely embracing a minimalistic and nomadic lifestyle, cold turkey. Once I was established that the job I had was legit and stable. I did the homework and found a cheap country I could go to. I was so anxious I didn't even try to sell my apartment full of stuff. I just called the Salvation Army and had it all picked up. I only kept a suitcase and a carry-on full of clothes, and a laptop. To get started I had to run up my tiny bit of available credit again, but overnight my living expenses became about 25% of what they were in the US. - AND - my quality of life went through the roof. While I was having a lot of fun, I also increased the rate in which I was reducing my debt.

I'm going on 5 years since my rash decision and I could not be happier. Those friends I was talking about...they now tell me that they're jealous of me. That's a first. To me it seems like their possessions own them. I don't have anything and I'm basically homeless, but I feel the most happy I've ever been. I've lived in about 20 different countries so far. I'm constantly doing new things and collecting experiences.

**The Point**

Everyone has a different situation and the traveling/living abroad life is not for everyone. But the general concept of getting more by focusing on having less; not rating yourself against others; and at all costs avoid or reduce debt.... it works. It's easier said than done, kind of like losing weight (which I'm also working on lol)

I hope this can be helpful to someone.🖖