less equals more

The Freedom of Limited Options

By Brad Beckstrom

I’ve been busy lately, limiting my options. Nope, not talking about stock options. I’m pursuing a simpler lifestyle built around fewer possessions and more time to enjoy what I already have.

The idea is simple, stop spending time and money accumulating, storing, and caring for stuff. Give it away, starting with the small stuff, knickknacks, unused toys and clothing. Later move on to larger items, eventually cars and houses. With each box of things we get rid of, each closet we empty out, there’s a sense of lightness. With each thing we wear out, then don’t replace, there is a feeling of freedom.

The closer you move to this limited lifestyle, the more things improve. If you limit your wardrobe, you’ll spend less time picking out what to wear every day, less time in the store replacing cheap sweaters and shoes. If you limit your diet to exclude crap foods and monster menu items, the payoffs include your finances and your health. Those “vintage” clothes will fit better.

Even the best restaurants serve crap food. If they don’t get you with the heavy-handed ingredients, they will get you with the portions. I do miss my weekly visits to the local BBQ joint with 100 different sauces. Now, when I stop in, maybe every few months, it’s more of an event, something I look forward to. My gut has not missed the weekly three meat platter at all.

Limiting options does not just apply to clothing, diet, or the number of cars you own. It’s something you can apply to any part of your life with benefits. I’ve learned to master investing by knowing less about stocks, bonds, and mutual funds and more about simplified lean index investing.

I’ve gone on a high quality, low information diet by using tools like Feedly and Flipboard to follow the best and most trusted writers I can find. Anytime I add a new source I see if there is one I can prune.

Time

Take Imperfect Action.

10/18 by The Frug Leave a Comment

How regularly screwing up can help you get stuff done.

By Brad Beckstrom

I’ve always liked taking action. Getting stuff done. A friend once told me, “The best way to fall asleep is to lay in bed and think of each thing that you did that day from beginning to end. Include the little stuff, washing your face, taking the dog out. If you’re like most people you probably do a lot of things even though at times it doesn’t feel like much. By the time you get near the end of the list, you will be asleep.” This trick didn’t work too well for me, sometimes I would lay there and think of the things I forgot to do which was a great way (not) to fall asleep. It’s okay that it failed. I was trying to do something that would help me fall asleep. I’ve learned something by trying this out, it didn’t really work, I’ll try it again, I took imperfect action.

What’s “imperfect action”? My first thought was doing something that didn’t work or trying something like a shortcut that just made the task longer. It could be something that was unproductive but got you 1% closer to reaching your goal. Maybe it wasted a good chunk of your day but you learned something from it.

Taking imperfect action is something that can help both the perfectionist and the procrastinator. [Read more…] about Take Imperfect Action.

Knowing Things Instead of Buying Things.

08/18 by The Frug 1 Comment

By Brad Beckstrom

What if every time you thought of buying something, you decided to know something instead? You’d probably build up a pretty good “store” of knowledge. You’d constantly be refreshing that knowledge whether you’re in a grocery store, online or shopping for a large purchase. I’ve used this strategy on large and small purchases. Something simple like “that health bar has more calories than 2 whole eggplants.” Now whenever you look at those 240 calorie health bars you’ll think about the equivalent of eating two entire eggplants.

Knowing things can impact larger purchases.

I’ve been putting off replacing our old car. We probably should’ve sold it a year ago but that time has not been wasted. Since then we’ve been learning about:

Making 30% more by selling a used car on craigslist instead of to a dealer.
How new cars lose 20% of their value just 6 months after you drive them off the lot.
You can find some really great cars using an app like Carvana once you know what you’re looking for.
Whether an electric car or a hybrid car is a better fit for our daily driving.
All of the benefits of having a car that’s paid for and skipping the commute.

You can even apply this thinking to investments. When you pay high annual fees on your investments, your spending money. Years ago I used to sell off underperforming mutual funds and search for up and comers. I stopped doing this and took a few years to completely revamp my investing strategy. I learned that many funds I had been buying had high fees of around 1% per year. I also came across a study that Fidelity had done about the most successful individual investment accounts. The winners were investors who were dead or had not touched their retirement accounts for years. After some research I decided to buy and hold ultra low-cost index funds with fees less than 0.060% and exchange them only when I needed to rebalance my portfolio. This one change has saved me thousands of dollars every year, and will continue as long as I hold these index funds.

Often when I’m interested in something, I decide to research it and by doing that I delay the purchase. I believe that delaying purchases is one of the best ways to cut your spending. Even a delay of one or two days to do a bit more research (learn something) can make you rethink that impulse purchase. I also have a simple rule of not replacing something until it is completely worn out or, in the case of perishables, gone. When you run out of something and stay out of it for a few days sometimes you realize you don’t really need it. If it was really amazing you’ll remember to replace it. (sorry kale snacks)

Here are some tried-and-true ways of knowing things instead of buying things. [Read more…] about Knowing Things Instead of Buying Things.

How To Prefer What You Have.

09/17 by The Frug 1 Comment

By Brad Beckstrom

Years ago I had a vision for what I’d like my future home to look like. It included stylish mid-century modern furniture, expensive rugs, artwork, and beautiful lighting. It doesn’t look like that and I’m happy about it. Instead of replacing and upgrading furniture over the years, we decided to keep the furniture we had. This included things like our original coffee table that’s been destroyed by kids, dogs, spilled beverages. I kept my furniture from my college dorm room, now in my son’s room and still going strong. We kept various IKEA classics from my various bachelor pads and wife’s early post-college years.The IKEA dressers had to be repaired and in one case reassembled. A few years back, we had a fun day running down to IKEA to dig through the parts bins for pegs, knobs, and brackets. I also grabbed a few Swedish meatballs. We’ve received a few pieces of furniture from relatives over the years, proudly displayed next to the IKEA stuff in the living room that we repurposed as a library.

With all this old furniture populating our home, something interesting began to happen. The furniture began to develop its own personality. Chew marks from pets that are no longer with us, wild rings, marks, and divots in our coffee tables that come along with raising two boys and having pets. I guess you could call them scars, but the good kind. We’ve actually created that distressed, weather battered look the people pay for. I like to think of it as sort of a slow motion destruction. [Read more…] about How To Prefer What You Have.

Perfecting the 4 Hour Workday

08/17 by The Frug 1 Comment

By Brad Beckstrom

What if you could wrap up your work each day by noon? Would it improve your life? Would you have more time for family, friends, exercise, and other pursuits? If you could work just four hours a day, would you ever need to really retire? These are some of the questions I had in 2007 after reading Tim Ferriss’s book “The 4-hour Work Week.” The book isn’t about working 4 hours a week, it’s about taking control of your workday, and your life, so that you’re focused on the part of your work that you really love.

Failing at the 4 hour workweek

I’ve yet to pull off the four hour workweek, but after 10 years of working at it, and about 5 years of writing about it, I’ve gotten to a place I’d like to call the 4 hour (workday). The idea was pretty simple. If I’m able to eliminate, commuting, needless meetings, the office, and other time killers, I’d already be part of the way there. Staying focused and eliminating distractions like breaking news, social media, and email could get me there.

So, I’ve done it. I’ve gotten to a schedule where I can start my morning’s early and be done right around lunchtime. I’ve realized that if more people could create four hour workdays, our working life, retirement, and even our education would look different.

Living like a Lightweight.

06/17 by The Frug Leave a Comment

By Brad Beckstrom

You still hear it occasionally. “That guy’s a lightweight.” When I was a kid, it may have meant you couldn’t hold your own on the playground. In college, this term was often used to describe someone who was a sloppy drunk or couldn’t hold their liquor. In business or politics, lightweight may be used to describe someone who can’t take a little heat, or bails out when the going gets tough. Today the word lightweight implies something very different. If you’re a lightweight who can compete or dominate above your weight class, then you have something. If you’re talking about a boxer like Roberto Duran, a legend like Bruce Lee, or the UFC fighter Conor McGregor then lightweight can take on a whole new meeting.

Look at any sport in the racing world, “lightweight” is the hottest thing going. Carbon fiber tubing is used to make incredibly fast racing boats to compete in the America’s Cup, and superlight racing bikes that weigh as little as 13 pounds. In a competitive world, lightweight can have great advantages.

If you’re not a professional athlete, or in the market for a $9,000 bicycle, you can still live like a lightweight. Let’s apply this term in three areas: Health, Life, and Work.

Health, Physical and Mental.

There’s a memorable scene from the documentary Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. The movie is about Joe Cross who lost 100 pounds juicing. You hear stories all the time about people losing tremendous amounts of weight. What Joe did differently is he that he visually demonstrated how much weight he’d lost by carrying around six professional bowling balls to represent the weight. This really clicked with people and helped him kick start the green juice trend. Most of us could not imagine carrying around even one or two bowling balls all the time.

The bowling balls Joe carried around are a great metaphor. Think of all the excess stuff we carry around, garages and closets full of stuff we don’t use, those extra pounds, guilt and regret about things that happened in the past, huge SUVs to haul all this around, while sitting in traffic. It’s time to start looking at the benefits of becoming a lightweight. [Read more…] about Living like a Lightweight.