Guest Post: It’s Too Freaking Expensive To Even Be A ‘Minimalist’ In 2023 America
I’d call my philosophy Minimalism 3.0, but that’s too broey
This is my 107th week of writing Simple and Straightforward, so I think it’s high time we shake things up around here.
Enter
, my good friend and fellow Substack writer.Much like me and my husband did this year, Rocco is planning to move to Europe with his partner in order to start a new life that more aligns with what he wants and needs in life. In other words, his life completely jives with what we talk about here at S+S.
A life with more simplicity. Focus. Fun.
Rocco writes a Substack called Never Retire: Living the Semi-Retired Life which is, at its core, a thriving community of people who live life a little bit differently (or are aiming to at least).
I’ll leave you in Rocco’s capable hands. If you like what he’s saying, get yourself over to Never Retire here.
Charlie Brown crushed what has turned out to be one of her most popular Simple + Straightforward posts so hard, I asked her if I could do a guest post follow-up.
In terms of Minimalism, it’s easier to amass tens of thousands of followers through the curation of beautiful but heavily curated interiors or experiences than it is to get into the meaty nitty-gritty of what a life lived with less truly means or looks like.
It’s easier to regurgitate what thousands of minimalist blogs have written about before than it is to offer honest reflections.
Everything gets stuck at the beginning. How many articles are there out there called some iteration of “how to get started with minimalism” or “5 hacks to begin decluttering your home”?
Even few of the minimalist big-hitters (besides, arguably, The Minimalists themselves) move beyond this.
This is why Minimalism is at risk of dying. These “how to start” blogs are useful certainly. But if you never move beyond surface-level, you’ll eventually lose people.
Right on.
You lose people when you don’t evolve what becomes a widely popular concept from social media sensation to something people can apply - realistically - in their day-to-day lives. By day-to-day, I don’t mean hacks for the tasks of everyday living. And I definitely don’t mean asking the impossible by—essentially—advocating deprivation.
I mean lifestyle, in the broader and ultimately more important sense. On the ground, for my partner and I minimalism isn’t about decluttering or dumpster diving. It’s about living a fun, exciting and full existence minus the stress and expense so many of us in the United States, speaking from California, deal with just to do life.
My Substack newsletter deals with living the semi-retired life. I chose semi-retirement, as a lifestyle, after I came to the conclusion that I’d never amass enough money to traditionally retire. My partner and I are in the process of nailing down the final phase of our semi-retirement plans. A move to Spain as soon as next year.
We both want a simple and straightforward life. Sorry for the obvious play on this newsletter’s words, but it’s apt.
We do our best to live the life we want in Los Angeles. However, even with a relatively low cost of living and general affinity for this city, it’s simply not possible to live our best lives in LA. The culture and cost of living—even when you don’t pay market rate for housing—just doesn’t allow for it.
We want to walk everywhere. We don’t want to own a car. We want to eventually buy an apartment with a very low or no mortgage payment. We want to be able to eat and drink out, maybe more than once per day, multiple times per week. We don’t want a shit ton of unnecessary and financially and logistically cumbersome overhead. (Minimalism 3.0, maybe?). And it’s not just that we can’t do this in Los Angeles. It’s impossible throughout most of the decidedly urban America we’d be happy living in.
By moving to Spain, we will decrease—
Our transportation expense by close to 100%.
Our housing expense by roughly 40% to 50% (and maybe initially, definitely eventually, by more).
Our eating and drinking out expenses will likely increase. Though not by much.
However, for fun, let’s assume we went nuts and had a morning coffee and a snack, an afternoon drink and snack, and a modest dinner out every single day and night of the month in Spain. We definitely won’t do this because we're not gluttons and we enjoy drinking coffee and making meals at home. But it’s a worthwhile comparison to make the point.
We could do this in Spain for roughly 50 to 60 euros a day.
In Los Angeles, you’re lucky if you can get by doing the equivalent on $100 a day. That’s extravagant. To have to budget $3,000 a month to live that type of life is outrageous. That’s basically my entire monthly cost of living. That I’m actively looking to lower now and going forward.
Here in LA, we’re down to morning coffee out several times a week, practically no bar visits and two to four dinners out per month. If that. And we pretty much only go to the least expensive places we know we’re going to like.
So a cost increase to eat/drink out three times a day in Spain—30 days a month—versus doing it only a dozen or two times a month in Los Angeles speaks volumes about the cost of living between the two places.
In reality, we’ll probably average 25-40 euros a day eating and drinking out in Spain. If we call it 35 euros a day, we’re talking 1,050 euros a month. That’s more than we spend now in Los Angeles, however we made the decision to drastically pull back on this discretionary spending because we consider it an absurdly poor value, not to mention a bad personal financial choice.
Our idea of minimalism is hardly minimal. The most practical and applicable version of minimalism for most of us isn’t frugality or anything like it. Instead, it’s spending and consuming—within reason, but freely—on what really matters to you. About being able to spend and consume as part of the lifestyle you want. Because your lifestyle isn’t—at its core—an expensive one.
Instead of confounding minimalism with frugality, we ought to be contrasting it with extravagance.
Maybe my play on words wasn’t so cheesy after all. Maybe Charlie is onto something she didn’t even know she was onto. Or maybe she did.
Maybe minimalism—as we knew it—is dead.
And what those of us with an affinity for this type of content—and the lifestyle I describe—crave is little more than a Simple + Straightforward existence at a price we can afford without working ourselves to death and stressing over money.
We want to be able to spontaneously stop for a couple of beers and a few plates of food without worrying if it’s going to blow our budgets. We want this alongside affordable housing; myriad, cost-effective transportation options, led by walking; a vibrant public life; reasonably priced healthcare; and a tax system we don’t mind paying into.
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> "Our idea of minimalism is hardly minimal. The most practical and applicable version of minimalism for most of us isn’t frugality or anything like it. Instead, it’s spending and consuming—within reason, but freely—on what really matters to you. About being able to spend and consume as part of the lifestyle you want. Because your lifestyle isn’t—at its core—an expensive one."
This **isn't** minimalism, no matter how you want to rebrand it.
Instead, this sounds more like good ol' intentional living—and I'd argue that's a better philosophy than minimalism to begin with. I think that minimalism is a good, yet incomplete, frame for consumer purchases. But I also don't believe that less stuff is inherently better. At least not for the life I want to live.
An example: I live in Phoenix and enjoy kayaking the local Salt River on the edge of town, especially in the hot summer months when it's harder to hit the local trails. It's an excellent way to both cool off and recreate outdoors, and flowing water in the desert is a really special thing. But getting ready for a quick trip was a huge pain. It was tough to carry my 12' kayak from the back patio around the narrow walkway to my vehicle by myself, then set up the kayak racks on the blistering hot car roof, then hoist the kayak into position and tie it down, then collect all the things I need to bring. After a long day, it can just be too much friction, so I'd only make the effort maybe 2-3 times a year.
So I decided to solve the problem with some—according to minimalism—completely unnecessary and redundant purchases. I bought a cheap 10' kayak just to use for these specific river trips. And some shelving units for the garage, permanently vacating my car to the driveway, but allowing me to store the boats there and to keep outdoor gear much more organized. And also some dedicated gear that's just used for kayaking the river, like a specific sun shirt, hat, cooler, headlamp, dry bag, etc.
In all, it was probably 25+ new items in total—all redundant purchases, and decidedly NOT minimalism.
But what felt daunting before is now super simple. I simply put down the seats and literally *slide* the boat from the shelf right into the car (it fits perfectly and takes just 5 seconds). From the shelf next to the kayak, I transfer the kayaking gear bin, my river sandals, and a towel into the vehicle, walk inside to change into my kayaking gear, and then fill up my river cooler with a couple beers, water, and snacks. In roughly four minutes, I'm driving towards the put-in. I now paddle the river ~25 times each season, and even wrote the only guidebook for paddling it. My life is decidedly better for those purchases, absolutely zero of which I needed to paddle that same river.
It's easy to get caught up in buying too much stuff, of course. And in a hyper-consumerist society, minimalism feels like an antidote for that. But I think what many of us are actually striving for is just some more focused intentionality in our purchasing decisions. Spending money to solve problems like my kayaking one, or one new experiences like travel, or even on things like a daily coffeeshop ritual isn't inherently bad, as long as it fits your considered life strategy. It's defaulting to consumerism or other societal pressures without intentionality that perhaps we should avoid.
I agree that life should be about enjoying your life, and not paying for an infrastructure that does not suit you. Token minimalism is about having a clean, tidy Instagramable interior, but ignores the freedom of having less stuff to manage. Of having enough for your needs, interests and lifestyle. Of being able to see what you have, and not spend unnecessarily. Good luck in your move.