How to Save Money at Restaurants
This week’s post is another in our TravlMor series on how to live a minimalist lifestyle so you can afford to travel more often. If you enjoy this article, please see the links at the bottom of this post for more in this series.
How much food do you throw away? If you are the average American, you probably trash about 400 pounds of food per year. How many actual dollars do you intentionally throw away? My guess is none. But if you are wasting that much food, you are throwing away dollars every week that you could be using to go visit Borneo.
When I was growing up, I heard the same thing from my mother that most people my age heard from theirs, “Eat everything on your plate. There are starving kids in Africa/China/India that don’t have any food.” At the time, to be completely honest, Africa/China/India was such a nebulous concept that this line of reasoning did not really work for me. My world was my family, school, neighborhood and friends. I had no idea what kids in other countries were like and did not think about them much.
The point of this post is not to talk about starving children. The point here is to do what your mother told you and eat all of the food on your plate. Every time.
So how do you do this without getting to be 400 pounds yourself? Have you seen the portion sizes that restaurants give you? How can someone eat all of that food in one sitting?
A couple of years ago, Sara and I noticed that when we go out to restaurants and order food for ourselves and our kids, we ended up not eating everything on our plates virtually every meal. There was a bunch of food leftover and we would sometimes bring it home, but usually it was all of the vegetables, or rice, or beans. Certainly stuff that would sit in the fridge until it went bad and then we would throw it out.
It’s funny, sometimes I would catch myself checking the leftovers in the refrigerator to see if they had gone bad. A lot of times, they were on the very edge of spoiled. You could maybe get away with eating them and maybe not. So what would I do? I would put them back in the fridge for a couple more days until I was sure they were bad and then I could throw them out without any guilt. Pretty smart, eh?
Not really. Finally, though, Sara and I did get smarter about our restaurant habits. We noticed that our little one almost never ate all of her food. We also noticed that certain restaurants always give a lot of food on a typical plate. What we found works really well is if we order either two adult meals and share with our little one, or one adult meal and one kid’s meal, split the adult meal and then I typically finish off the kid’s meal.
This has dramatically reduced our restaurant bills as well as the amount of food that we waste. Now, instead of all of those veggies getting thrown out, we eat every bit of them. Most of the time it is plenty of food for the three of us.
Now this sometimes falls apart when we are all really hungry as we are ordering. These are times that we usually overorder, so we really try to control ourselves. Nobody’s perfect, though, so occasionally we do bring home leftovers. Sara is our leftover machine. She tries very hard to either eat them, or assign them to one of us for lunch.
There are naturally some problems with this overall plan. The biggest is the question if you and your significant other like the same food. I would suggest that this is not as big a problem as you might first believe. The key, of course, is to find a choice that you both like. If you are both sufficiently motivated to save money, then it should not be too big of a problem. If one of you is on the fence about the whole thing, then this could become the shootout at the OK Corral.
The thing to keep in mind is that each meal that you eat is only one meal in a lifetime of many. It is not going to kill you to compromise on your meal this one time. And you take it one meal at a time. Over the course of a year, if you save $12 per meal and eat out once a week, you will save around $700 if you include taxes.
Sara is a vegetarian and I am not. We still share meals almost every time we go out to eat. It’s not that difficult when you have a higher goal in mind.
To sum it up, share as many meals as possible to not only save money, but also not waste so much food. You will end up eating all of the healthy items as well as the “good” items on the plate, instead of throwing away the veggies.
This is one set of food. We all shared it. Bumbu Bali Restaurant.
TravlMor Series
How to Develop a Minimalist Mindset (TravlMor 1)
How to Get Rid of Your Stuff – The Extreme Method (TravlMor 2)
How to Get Rid of Your Stuff – The Ease-Into-It Method (TravlMor 3)
Minimalism and Family Life (TravlMor 4)
How to Save Money at Restaurants (TravlMor 5)
Read More
5 Songs That Inspire Travel
This week I wanted to lighten it up a bit and just provide a bit of travel inspiration instead of any minimalist travel how-to advice.
Sara and I are fortunate that we share many, many common interests. Our taste in music, however, differs dramatically. She likes goth, punk and industrial, whereas I prefer Buffett, Ben Folds and hippy music. I thought it would be fun to share with you my Top 5 Inspirational Travel Songs. Maybe I can convince Sara to come up with a Top 5 list of her own.
Please keep in mind that these songs are my opinion and I realize that music is a personal choice. Everyone has their own Top 5 Travel Songs, so I invite you to leave yours in the Comments below.
And so, without further ado:
Phil’s Top 5 Inspirational Travel Songs
#5 – Paradise City (Guns N’ Roses) – OK, the first song on my list is just from a personal memory of my best Spring Break road trip in college down to Panama City, Florida, Disney’s Epcot Center and Savannah, Georgia. Four of us drove down and spent a week having enough fun to fill a book. It was these types of trips that really fueled my love of inexpensive travel. I spent a grand total of $125 that week including gas, food, bars, beer, lodging and Epcot. One of the guys on the trip finally broke down and said, “Guys, how many hot dogs can one man eat? If my mama was here, she’d want me to get a piece of chicken.” It was quite a time and maybe one day that trip will make a good book… if I can find someone who remembers everything.
#4 – Come Sail Away (Styx) – This is a classic song, beautifully sung, about getting away from it all and reaching peace, tranquility and freedom and then, surprise, aliens come and take him away. I am a geek and this is the ultimate geek travel song. Outer space. Even Cartman loves it.
#3 – Pascagoula Run (Jimmy Buffett) – One of Buffett’s lesser known songs. It is the story of a boy going on his first road trip with his black sheep uncle who takes him on a wild ride to see the world and kiss a girl. It is just a fun listen and makes me want to get in the car and drive.
#2 – Down Under (Men At Work) – This song was popular on the radio when I was a kid. At the time I never knew what a fried-out combie was, but with the advent of the Internet, I have discovered that it is an old VW-style camper van. I loved the song then, and love it even more now. It is a story of travel all over the world in a less than posh manner. I really, really want a vegemite sandwich.
#1 – Southern Cross (Crosby, Stills & Nash) – Sara and I love sailing and at one point we dreamed of sailing around the world. I’m not sure if that will ever happen, but this song makes me yearn for it all the same. It is a story of sailing around the world. Yes, it is about a failed relationship, so I try not to dwell on that part. I have seen the Southern Cross and for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, it is a sight never forgotten.
As I was writing this, I was also listening to all of these songs through the links above. Just so you know, they all put me in a really good mood. You should take a listen.
Hope you enjoyed this list and please add to the list by leaving a comment below with your Top Travel Songs.
Read MoreMinimalism and Family Life
This is the fourth in a series of posts about minimizing your lifestyle choices so that you can travel more. Last week’s post shows a good way to ease into minimalism.
Over the last few years, minimalism has really taken off as a movement. There are tons of articles and blogs out there which espouse the virtues of a minimalist lifestyle. Unfortunately, most of them are written by young, single men or women. There even seems to be a competition as to how few things they claim to own, usually trying to reach the magic number of 100 items or fewer. There are arguments as to whether a toiletry kit counts as one item or multiple items. Seriously.
I do not want to denigrate these enterprising youths, but a lot of their ideas and articles just do not apply to me and my situation. I have a wife, a 17-year old daughter, a 6-year old daughter and an ex-wife. I also run my own business with my wife. I will never, ever own fewer than 100 things. It’s not going to happen.
I do regularly read blogs like Zen Habits by Leo Babauta, whom I respect immensely as he lives in San Francisco with six children, no car and blogs full-time. Last summer, he traveled to Europe with five of his children and only carried a 16-liter backpack. For reference, a 16-liter backpack is about half the size of a typical backpack that college students use on a daily basis. He’s got some great ideas and I recommend that you check out his blog if you haven’t already. He will show you how to take minimalism to the extreme with a family.
I, however, subscribe to Aristotle’s philosophy on the Golden Mean. I prefer moderation when I do almost anything and find that even as a minimalist, I enjoy some comforts. I like decorations on my walls and a bit of color in my house. We own two vehicles and I cannot imagine life in San Diego without them. For one, my wife and I are consultants and visit different clients every day. For another, San Diego public transportation is a complete joke. We have a trolley system that goes nowhere. It does not go to the airport, the beaches, UCSD, USD, Balboa Park, La Jolla, anywhere in North County. It does go to Ikea and Costco because people that shop there probably want to carry their new sofa and 42 rolls of toilet paper on the trolley.
Sorry for the rant. I just really like it when I go to a city as a visitor and can get everywhere on public transportation.
My Take on Minimalism
The key that I have found that enables me to do almost anything, to change almost any habit, is to start small and work up to a goal or an ideal. When we downsized from a 2000 square foot house to an 1100 square foot townhouse, we got rid of a little at a time. Things were cluttered for a while, but we worked through it gradually. We took our time and are still fighting the battle against stuff.
The whole minimalist philosophy for me is to try to reduce the amount of stress in my life. It is not a good idea to have it create stress. With a family, you will not have the same needs/wants as a single 20-something just out of college. If you take a super extreme approach and get rid of everything, trying to reach some arbitrary goal established by someone on the Internet, you will just create misery for all those around you. Minimalism is not a competition. You do not win a prize if you can get your family to own fewer than 100 things each. Minimalism is just about becoming aware of what is important and what is not, of what you think makes you happy and what really makes you happy.
Find Your Own Minimalist Style
There is a recent article in the NY Times written by Graham Hill, creator of Treehugger.com, self-made millionaire and minimalist. He writes at length about the benefits he has received from becoming a minimalist. It is an excellent article and you should check it out if you haven’t. Unfortunately, he has come under some serious criticism by Internet heavy hitters like Slate. They complain that he is just a rich guy and it is easy for him to be a minimalist because he can buy the best of everything and still live well with little. They say that the average person cannot duplicate what he has done.
I think that this is just crazy. Anyone can be a minimalist. It is actually quite simple: just consume less stuff. Again, it is not a competition and Graham Hill is not better than anyone else because he consumes less. He has found something that makes him truly happy and he is trying to get other people to experience this happiness for themselves. More stuff will not make you happier, but competing with and complaining about others who are minimalists won’t either.
Minimalism and the Family
The point I am trying to make through all of this is that living a minimalist lifestyle can make you happier and more stress-free, but it needs to be a lifestyle choice, not a competition with others. Get rid of things at your own pace and if family life causes you to have a bit more than that guy on the Internet, don’t sweat it.
Teaching your children that they can survive with fewer toys will benefit them their whole lives. It starts early. When your child begs and pleads at the store for that one item, tell them no. Then explain to them that they have enough at home and they don’t need anything else. The key, and this is really the key so I am emphasizing it again, is that you cannot give in even once. If they throw a tantrum in the middle of the store, rolling around on the ground and screaming and you give in, you will be buying them stuff for the rest of their childhood whenever they decide they want something.
Just recently our younger daughter turned six and had a party to celebrate. We shared the party with another girl in her class whose birthday was the day before. They both loved it because they got to celebrate birthdays for three days in a row (the party was the day after our daughter’s actual birthday). We also told the guests to bring only one present and we would split them up between the girls. This was to try to reduce the amount of new stuff at the house and save a little money for the guests.
Well, we still ended up with a huge new pile of toys, and since we have such a small house, we were forced to do something about it. Sara and our daughter went through all of her old toys one evening this week and got rid of the equivalent of all of the incoming toys. We gave the old toys away and our daughter learned about the value of reducing what she owned and the joy of giving to others. The kids that received her toys were so grateful and she got to see it in their faces.
Some adults feel trapped by their kids into owning lots of things. They feel that they need to constantly buy new things or else the kids will be bored. Instead, I would encourage the kids to learn to entertain themselves with what they have. One of the favorite toys around our house is still the standby that was a favorite when I was a kid: a cardboard box. I am amazed at the creativity that kids have with those things. We have had some seriously intricate bug hotels built at our house recently with Amazon boxes.
If you feel trapped or overwhelmed by all of your stuff and don’t know what to do about it because you have a family. I would encourage you to get the whole family involved in reducing your stuff. Make it a game. Make them some money by helping them sell some of it. Instead of buying them toys, buy them paper and markers, scissors and glue. Teach them to create instead of consume. You might just change their life and make them happier in the process.
TravlMor Series
How to Develop a Minimalist Mindset (TravlMor 1)
How to Get Rid of Your Stuff – The Extreme Method (TravlMor 2)
How to Get Rid of Your Stuff – The Ease-Into-It Method (TravlMor 3)
Minimalism and Family Life (TravlMor 4)
How to Save Money at Restaurants (TravlMor 5)
Read MoreHow to Get Rid of Your Stuff – The Ease-Into-It Method
This post is the third in a series called TravlMor, which is designed to show you ways to redesign your life to enable you to travel more often. Currently, we are concentrating on how to reduce the number of things that you own so you can have more money to travel. You might want to check out last week’s post for a more extreme method of how to get rid of your stuff.
If you know that you want to minimize the amount of stuff in your life, but don’t know how to even start, this is the place. Last week, I covered an extreme method to go about this, but honestly, this is not practical for everyone. This week, however, anyone can take advantage of the techniques we share and in a few weeks or months can make a dramatic difference in their lives.
I have found that just a few hours work in this area makes me feel so much better by relieving my stress. When my house is full of clutter, I have a certain amount of tension that never leaves. I think I have a mild case of obsessive compulsive disorder. Once I organize and get rid of the clutter, the tension magically leaves and I can truly relax.
I have noticed that I have a threshold that I can bump up against and can handle the added stress of stuff. However, just a slight increase in the clutter will set me off and I cannot function until I get things squared away. Sara and I have a term for this. We will ask each other if the other is feeling “dzzzt”. As we say this the one asking kind of shudders all over like they are being shocked. It’s easy for Sara to tell that I’m dzzzt because I get very grumpy and short with her. The only thing that can help is for me to get things back in their place.
Sometimes, though, the task can feel overwhelming. There is just so much clutter that I don’t really know what to do.
The most important step here is to begin. I have found that starting a project like this is actually the hardest part. It is literally more than half the battle. Once I begin, I am ok and can continue on, but getting the motivation to actually start is the tough part.
So how do you make getting rid of things easy?
The first step is to find an area of your house that is not used very often and is not too cluttered already. It can be a spare bedroom, a portion of the basement, even a corner in your living room. If there is a little clutter there already, just move that stuff somewhere else for the time being. You want an empty area that you can use for the next few weeks. Just pile it up somewhere. You need an area that is completely blank.
Think about it. Where is it going to be? Identify it now before you read on. Don’t worry about cleaning it, just think about it. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
OK. Got it? All right, your first step is done. Now, step two. Before today is over, make yourself a promise to clean that area up. That’s all. Just move everything out of that area and let your whole family know that nothing goes there unless they want it thrown out. Once an item goes in that area, it is on the way out of the house. Consider them warned.
Classify Your Stuff
The next thing to know is that as you go through things, they will be classified in one of four categories. There are only four and each item must go in one of the four:
-
trash/recycled
-
to be sold
-
to be donated
-
to be kept
As you go through each area of the house, you will touch each item and you will classify it. If it is trash or to be recycled, put it in a pile as you go through the day’s items and then actually take them out at the end of the session. There are no second thoughts. Get them out of the house as quickly as possible.
If the items still have some value, determine if you think they can be sold, or if maybe a donation would be better. We will talk about options for selling them in a later post, so for now, just make the designation. If they are to be sold, take them to the special area that you designated and leave them there. Don’t worry about them any more during this cleaning session.
If the items should be donated, take them to the front door and leave them by the door. You do not absolutely have to take them to your charity today, but put them by the door so you have to look at them regularly. I actually find it a bit of a pain to take things to charity, so I let them pile up and make the trip worthwhile.
If the item is to be kept, decide whether the place you are currently cleaning is the best place or not. If it is, then put everything to be kept to the side and once you have pulled everything out, then you can carefully pack the keepers back in the same spot. If however, you have a better location for an item, just take it to the new location and leave it there. Don’t worry about finding the exact spot for it. For now, just get it to the general area where you want it to end up.
Now Put It Away, But with a Purpose
Once you have gone through the entire area that you have designated for the day to be cleaned, take every item that you want to keep in that area and put it back carefully so that you can get to it if necessary. This serves as a reminder so you will actually remember all of the stuff that you decided to keep. If you consciously place everything back, hopefully you will not misplace the items in the future. Also, remember that this is now the home for each of these items. When you are finished using them, they will return to this spot so that you can find them next time you need them.
But Where to Begin?
So now that you have a technique and an area in which to work, how do you start the actual purging? I have found that if I think about it too much as one big project, I will put it off and never do it. Instead I will have a daily or weekly goal of one area that needs cleaning. I will make it my goal to go through one room, one closet or even just a drawer. Take the time to go through all of the steps that I listed above.
I have found that I should focus on the horizontal surfaces in the house. If I can keep the counters, tables and even the floor free of stuff, I generally feel better. I have this fantasy that I will one day have furniture that is all somehow built in to the house and raised off of the floor so that vacuuming is super easy. I’m not exactly sure how that is possible. Yes, I have weird fantasies.
The key is to recognize that if it is something that you have not used or needed in the past year or so, you can probably feel safe in getting rid of it. The enemy of minimalism is Justin Case. Most of the time I used to keep things just in case I might need them down the road. Now I really try to get rid of it if I am reasonably sure I won’t need it. I have made some mistakes and gotten rid of things that I probably shouldn’t have, but all in all I don’t regret much.
I think you, too, will find that if you organize your house, your car, your office and any other areas that you frequent and have control over, you will notice a reduction in the overall amount of stress in your life. As you reduce the number of things that you are responsible for, you will feel the burdens ease and the tension lift. The truth is, you will never be able to be rid of everything, but the fewer things that you have to fuss over, the more relaxed you will become.
Once you get used to having fewer things in your life, you will notice that you do not have the urge to buy more things to make you happy. You will actually get satisfaction and happiness from not having things and you will recognize this and not want to add more back into your life (except possibly Apple products – they are exempt from all minimalist discussions).
All of this talk of minimalism has gotten me to think a bit more about the feasibility of a minimalist lifestyle when you are married and/or have children. There are lots and lots of articles out there written by young single men or women who boast of their lifestyle and their lack of stuff. That’s wonderful for them, but frankly, it’s a pretty simple thing to do in that situation. So what do you do when you are married with children? What’s realistic? Next week we’ll be tackling this, so tune in. Better yet, subscribe to our weekly newsletter so you don’t miss a thing. And if you have made it this far, thanks so much for reading!
TravlMor Series
How to Develop a Minimalist Mindset (TravlMor 1)
How to Get Rid of Your Stuff – The Extreme Method (TravlMor 2)
How to Get Rid of Your Stuff – The Ease-Into-It Method (TravlMor 3)
Minimalism and Family Life (TravlMor 4)
How to Save Money at Restaurants (TravlMor 5)
Read MoreHow to Get Rid of Your Stuff – The Extreme Method
This post is the second in a series called TravlMor, which is designed to show you ways to redesign your life to enable you to travel more often. Currently, we are concentrating on how to reduce the number of things that you own so you can have more money to travel. If you have not read the first article, you might want to check it out. Don’t worry, it’s not too long. One quick note. Sara tells me that she is afraid that people will think we are wacko after reading this. So, please, don’t think we are wacko…
For the sake of argument, let’s assume that you have decided that you want to get rid of all of the superfluous stuff in your life. Well, you have come to the right place. I can say from lots of experience, that getting rid of stuff is one of the most liberating things you can do. For me, it is like lifting a burden from my shoulders. Now, truthfully, I think I might have a problem with this sort of thing. If I did not have a wife and two kids, I quite possibly would not be satisfied until I had nothing but what could fit in my backpack. Sara keeps me under control and let’s me know when I’m going overboard on getting rid of things. Sometimes, she lets me run wild, though.
There are many ways to get rid of things, but for the sake of space, I am going to cover two: the extreme method and the ease-into-it method. I have experience with both. I prefer the extreme method myself, but either way works.
The Extreme Method
The best way to force yourself to get rid of things is to move into a much smaller house. This is easier if you are a renter, but you can do it if you own your house as well, you would just need to either sell your house, or rent it out to someone else.
If you look back, you will find that the average house built thirty or forty years ago is about half the size of the houses today. The average family had more kids as well. A large house, a McMansion if you will, is not necessary for most, if not all families. All a large house does is cause you to have to buy more stuff to fill it.
“A house is just a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff.”
- George Carlin
Two summers ago, Sara and I took our younger daughter to Asia for three months. We were renting at the time and our lease was up, so we decided to move everything we owned into storage and save the rent money for those three months. We could then use the money we saved to pay for hotels in Asia and come out ahead. Here is how we did it and what happened.
We knew that our daughter was going to a different school at the end of the summer, so we chose the school we wanted and then canvassed the area for available townhomes that we might like. None were available that far in advance, but we got to know the area we wanted. We were living in a 2000 square foot house and wanted to move to something smaller. The townhomes we liked were about 1100 square feet, so we needed to get rid of a bunch of things.
A month or so before the move out, we had a big yard sale. We also listed things on Craigslist and gave some things away to friends or charity. We got rid of tons of stuff. On moving day, the movers magically packed everything we owned (except the things in our luggage) into a 10×15 storage unit and we were off.
While we were in Taiwan, I was scouring Craigslist for available townhomes and found a promising one. We had one of our friends, Paola, go and check it out for us. She said it was full of college boys and reeked of beer, sweat and a little bit of vomit. OK. Pass.
I found another and Paola went again. Yes, we owe Paola a lot of favors. She liked the owners and said that after they put in new carpet, which they promised to do, the place would not be too bad. Sara has a very sensitive sniffer, and according to Paola, it would pass the smell test. Sold.
I returned to San Diego a week earlier than Sara and our daughter so that I could move us in before they got back. I drove from LAX to the owner’s house in LA County and signed a two year lease, sight unseen. I then drove down to our new (rented) townhouse and walked in for the first time. Truthfully, it is a little dated in its decor, but the carpet was brand new and it smelled fresh.
Next, I had to move in. I had already set it up with the movers to pick up everything from storage the next day. I met them there and they loaded it all in the truck. When they arrived, they started unloading and anything that I did not know where it would go was put in the dining area. After an hour or so, I had to stop one of the movers and ask him if they had gone somewhere between the storage and our house and picked up more stuff. I couldn’t believe how much crap we still had. Even after getting rid of so much.
Once they finished, the house was full and I did not know what to do. It was way too much and there was no room for it. I had been looking forward to a streamlined existence and I was going to be climbing over things just to go to the refrigerator. I made a decision. I would keep the storage unit for one more month. I piled things back into my car and took a bunch back to storage.
Now, here is the key. I was not complacent. I didn’t want to keep the storage unit. That was $75 per month, or $900 per year that could be used to travel. I went crazy getting rid of things that we did not need. I would then go over to storage and bring a few things back, go through them and get rid of the nonessentials, while finding a place for the rest. At the end of that month, I had cleaned out the storage unit and the house was livable. I was also driving Sara insane with getting rid of things, so she made me take a month off.
So Why Move?
I’ll admit that moving when you had not planned on it just to get rid of things is a bit extreme. However, there are some distinct advantages to this method. First, there is a deadline. For some reason, most people know what they need to do to improve themselves, but they tend to put it off. It is always, “I’m going to get around to that,” or “I know what I need to do, I just don’t have the time.”
I am very guilty of this. I have found that a lot of the time, the only way I get certain things done is when I am supposed to be doing something even worse. The only time I cleaned and organized my room in college was the night before a big exam. If you have a forced deadline, though, you will get it done. Moving is definitely a forced deadline.
The thing about moving is, it makes you go through EVERYTHING that you own and at least acknowledge it. At the very worst, you will find things that you forgot you had, or things you had misplaced, or duplicate items, or maybe even an old sandwich under the couch.
The key here, though is to go through every item and decide if it will fit in the new home. You must decide if it has a place. Of course the best time to do this is before the move, because then you don’t have to move the things that you won’t need. Unfortunately, the reality is that you will probably move a lot of things that you will end up getting rid of. It is difficult to think of everything when you are moving, and if you are just moving across town, it is probably cheaper to just move things that are questionable and decide if you need them on the other end.
Once you get to the other side, though, you need to get ruthless. You need to cut out all of the non-essentials, especially if the house is a lot smaller than your previous house. So how do you decide what you need and what you don’t? You use the same techniques as the ease-into-it method, which I will be covering next week.
If you are enjoying this series, please consider Liking us on Facebook or subscribing to our newsletter.
Thanks for reading!
TravlMor Series
How to Develop a Minimalist Mindset (TravlMor 1)
How to Get Rid of Your Stuff – The Extreme Method (TravlMor 2)
How to Get Rid of Your Stuff – The Ease-Into-It Method (TravlMor 3)
Minimalism and Family Life (TravlMor 4)
How to Save Money at Restaurants (TravlMor 5)
Read MoreHow to Develop the Minimalist Mindset
This post is the first in a series called TravlMor, which is designed to show you ways to redesign your life to enable you to travel more often. We begin by concentrating on how to reduce the number of things that you own so you can have more money to travel.
In order to travel more often, it is necessary to prioritize the things in your life. If travel is important to you, then it needs to be one of the things that comes first when you are spending your money. In other words, the more you spend on other things, the less you can afford to travel.
To save more money, it is helpful to develop a “minimalist” mindset. The minimalist movement is really catching on these days and there have been several good books written about it lately. The concept is very simple to explain, but sometimes difficult to implement.
Minimalism is simply the idea that you should own fewer things. The less stuff you buy and have to store and maintain, the more time and money you have to actually experience life. Think of all of the things that you have in your closets, in your garage, maybe even in storage, that you know you will probably never use again. Yet you keep it all, just in case.
Unfortunately, all of that stuff has already cost you money and if you are not using it, it is wasted. There is not too much you can do about it. You can sell it, but probably for pennies on the dollar. “So,” you say, “why don’t I just keep all of this stuff and from this point going forward, I’ll do better.”
My answer to you is that you won’t.
You will do better for a week or two, maybe even a month, but one day soon, you will get the urge to buy more stuff and will forget all about your pledge, rationalizing it all somehow.
I want to digress here a moment to tell you a little bit about myself here, please bear with me. My personality type is what some people refer to as Gamma. In a nutshell, it means that I do not like to be told what to do, nor do I like to tell people what to do. Let’s just say that I didn’t much care for the Navy because of this. What this means is that in this and subsequent articles I am going to tell you what I think works to illustrate the point I am trying to make. However, do not misconstrue this as me telling you that you “have” to do this, or you “need” to do that. This is just me sharing with you what works for me. You are free to take the advice that you think works for you and leave the rest. Sometimes I might seem forceful if I am trying to make a point, but, again, take what works for you.
Now, back to our story, already in progress…
I know from myself, that if I do not take action, my intentions, although honorable, usually fall remarkably short. In order to take action with minimalism, you have to get rid of your excess stuff. It’s the first step towards changing your life from one of mindless consumption to one of mindful experience.
When I was younger, it was easy for me to be a minimalist, even though I did not know what one was at the time. The reason was that I was dirt poor. I could not afford to buy anything, so I didn’t. In college, one of my best friends took pity on me and gave me National Geographic maps to put on my walls because they were bare. (Side note, I also went to highschool with her and she consistently gave me half of her lunch because I never had anything to eat – Thanks, Kelly!)
As I got older, I was able to earn a nice living and could afford to buy things whenever I wanted them, instead of waiting. So that’s what I did. If I wanted a Starbuck’s, I stopped and got one. If I wanted a bicycle, I bought it. If I got tired of my car, I got a new one. Earning more money became a goal of mine. Why did I want more money? So I could buy more things, of course. Once I even bought a Porsche to have as an extra car for fun.
Then, everything changed. Sara and I had travelled quite a bit already, but for my 40th birthday, she took me to Egypt. On that trip, we both decided that travel was going to be our mission in life. We made a conscious effort to curb our spending and save everything we could in order to travel more.
There are a lot of blogs on the Internet of travellers who sold everything and went on the road for a year, five years, forever, and that is certainly a goal that we have. But for now, Sara and I are trying to maintain a somewhat “normal” life while still travelling as much as possible. We have gotten rid of a bunch of stuff and in each of the past three years have spent a minimum of two months and as much as four months away from our home in San Diego.
So what is the first step to this minimalist mindset? Getting rid of your stuff. How do you do that? Tune in next week…
TravlMor Series
How to Develop a Minimalist Mindset (TravlMor 1)
How to Get Rid of Your Stuff – The Extreme Method (TravlMor 2)
How to Get Rid of Your Stuff – The Ease-Into-It Method (TravlMor 3)
Minimalism and Family Life (TravlMor 4)
How to Save Money at Restaurants (TravlMor 5)
Read MoreThe Way – Movie Review
Movie poster from the movie The Way
When Sara and I are not traveling, I try to recapture that travel feeling that I so enjoy by either reading a good book or watching a good movie. Unfortunately, sometimes it is difficult to find something that I like. I find a lot of travel writers to be a bit pretentious. They feel that their version of travel is the best and everyone else’s is inferior. I admit that I am guilty of this from time to time as well, but I really try to keep an open mind.
I have decided to start celebrating outstanding creativity on this blog by providing reviews of movies, TV shows and books that I really enjoy. You probably will not find any reviews here on things that I did not like because years ago I made the determination that my time is important to me and if I am not enjoying a movie or a book, I simply do not finish it. Consequently, I shy away from trashing something that I have not completed. A side note, I did actually finish the movie Mulholland Drive, so I feel confident in mentioning that, aside from one memorable scene, it is the worst movie ever produced.
So to kick off our new Review section on the blog, I would like to offer a review of the movie The Way, written, produced and directed by Emilio Estevez. The movie stars Martin Sheen, Emilio Estevez, Deborah Kara Unger, James Nesbitt and Yorick van Wageningen.
The cast from the movie The Way
The movie is about an American doctor, Tom (Martin Sheen), who must travel to France to collect the remains of his son, Daniel (Emilio Estevez), who was killed while attempting to complete an historic pilgrimage known as The Way of Saint James. After arriving in France, Tom decides to complete the journey with the ashes of his son. Along the way he reluctantly joins other pilgrims who each have their own reasons for completing the journey.
This could be my favorite movie of last year and might even be in my top 10 of all time. I will have to let it settle in my subconscious to be sure, but suffice it to say that I loved it. I feel that sometimes my love for travel is misunderstood by most of my family and friends. There is something about the pull of the road that seems to make me feel complete. Instead, maybe it is the constant change and innate incompleteness of travel that is actually conforming to my inner feelings, I’m not sure. The only thing I know is, I truly feel at home when I am not at home.
This movie is the closest representation of that feeling that I have ever seen in cinema. Daniel is that guy. Daniel is me. He feels the constant pull of the road and at nearly 40, he just goes. His father does not support his desire for travel. He feels it is frivolous and Daniel is wasting his life. He does not understand the pull. To Tom, life is about a safe and secure existence in California: a home and a successful practice as an optometrist. To Tom, that is how to live one’s life.
The Way is about Tom’s journey, both physically across Spain and emotionally to see how Daniel perceives the world. This movie is not for everyone. Those that do not feel the pull might not ‘get it’. I fully understand that. Everyone is different and life is about finding what works for you, what completes you. However, if you are one that feels this pull of the road or maybe you want to understand someone who does, I think this movie might be just what you need.
The Way is available on Netflix Watch Instantly or for rent on Amazon Instant Videos.
Read MoreWe Are Back!
Grand Canyon South Rim at Dusk
This is just a quick post to let everyone know that we are back producing content for Flying Coach. Sara and I have had quite a few adventures since our last posts and thought it would be a good time to share them. We are modifying our focus ever so slightly to include traveling with kids in our minimalist adventures.
Twenty years ago today, my life took a dramatic turn when I entered the U.S. Navy. After four years, I determined that it was not the career for me. However, if I would have stayed in, I would be eligible for retirement today. I have no regrets, but I thought it would be a good day to change directions again. The purpose of this blog is to show how Sara and I have changed our lives for the better over the past few years by pursuing our passion. We love to travel and try to do it as much as possible.
We have spent the last two summers overseas with our younger daughter (our older daughter does not like to travel, so we do not force her). Two summers ago, we spent six weeks in Taiwan, then four in SouthEast Asia, then two more back in Taiwan. This past summer, we spent almost seven weeks in Europe. We have learned quite a bit about how to travel frugally with a child. Over the next few months we will share our best tips. We will also have some tales from the trips as well as quite a few pictures. For those who need further motivation, we will be providing reviews of our favorite movies and books that inspire travel.
Please stay with us, and if you haven’t signed up for our newsletter, please do so. We will only send out about one per week and it will ensure that you don’t miss anything.
Thanks for reading!
Read More
The Gobi Desert – Trans-Siberia Episode 06
Our trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway took us through one of our most memorable countries ever. Mongolia was truly an unforgettable experience. The first half of this portion of our trip, the Gobi Desert, is presented in this brief 4 minute video. Also, you will learn that the toilets in the Gobi are almost as nice as those at home.
Read MoreThe Great Wall – Trans-Siberia Episode 05
One of the most impressive places to visit in Beijing is, without a doubt, the Great Wall. It was as impressive in person as you would imagine. The secret to getting the most out of a visit here is to arrive as early as possible. If you delay, the crowds will be huge, but the first thing in the morning, you will be one of the only people on the Wall. The second most important thing to know is, if you are visiting the Mutianyu section, you HAVE to take the slide off the Wall when you are finished. It is a four or five minute ride down the mountain and is quite fun. You can see more in the video.
Read MoreFeatured on
Follow Us!