10 Minimalist Money Rules That Changed My Life

I used to feel really trapped, unclear, and kind of depressed about my finances. But minimalism has actually made some things really clear for me. It's improved my finances in a bunch of ways, not only spending less but earning more even in investing and my mindset. So I wanted to share some financial rules and principles that have really improved my life and hopefully can improve yours as well. Don't be happy. I know that might sound a little bit weird. There's nothing wrong with being happy about your finances or being proud of yourself. But much like other areas of your life, if you get happy with where you are financially, sometimes you can stop trying to get better. At a couple different points I've been happy with, you know how smart I was in a certain area of life and I stopped trying to improve myself. And that never led to me becoming happier or smarter or better at any skill. Just like stopping trying to improve myself or learning new things has never improved my life. So when it comes to my finances, I am happy with where my finances are now. I don't have debt. I have an emergency fund. I've been able to invest, but I'm also not happy in the state that I'm not going to continue to try to push new goals, try to improve myself, try to earn more money, try to simplify my finances. I don't want to settle and be happy. I feel like settling and being happy with something that you shouldn't necessarily be happy with is not a long term recipe for success. Like for me, I'm glad that I used to have a job that I wasn't happy with and I wasn't fine with just being OK, just being average. And I could have chosen to just be happy with where I was at, but I chose to enjoy that time, but at the same time not be happy with how much I was earning and having more sense of value and respect for myself, saying that I'm worth more than this per hour. I can do better things. I can have a freer lifestyle. I can do more for my family. I can have those things that I've dreamed about. And while I can enjoy the things that I'm having right now, the place where I'm at, I also don't have to settle for this for the rest of my life. And I'm not just going to stop making progress in the name of being happy and content and satisfied. I'm going to continue to have a growth mindset, which I think is a huge idea in minimalism of enjoying where you're at now but also trying to be the best version of yourself. And for me at least, that also applies to my finances. Less but better. The first time I heard this idea was from the book Essentialism, which I think I have. Apparently, I let somebody borrow it because I cannot find it. But this idea of less but better has changed so many things about my life, but also my finances and how I invest. When it comes to investing, I choose to simplify as much as possible and only have a few different buckets and investment types that I actually understand and I have proven track records. I'll get into some of what those actually are little bit later. When it comes to investing, generally the simplest thing to do is the best thing to do. If you look at like long term trends and stuff. And the same applies to a lot of things in life. When it comes to buying things, I made a mistake. I didn't follow the rule. Like a couple months ago I tried to buy a dishwasher for Black Friday and it was like a couple $100 dishwasher and it didn't wash dishes very well. So we decided to sell that because we couldn't return it because we used it. And I bought a natural dishwasher that actually washes dishes that was more expensive. But it's going to last a really long time. It's not going to annoy me every single day and it's just going to be higher quality. So it's this idea of like, stop trying to save money on every little thing and instead have less things but that work really well for the thing that they're supposed to do. Clothes that actually fit you, dishwashers that actually work. And by doing that, even cameras and laptops that are at the level that you need them to be. I've tried multiple times buying cheap stuff and it's always more expensive because that cheap stuff breaks, it doesn't work, and then I have to get the full price thing anyways, the stuff that already wasted money on the cheap stuff. And that's just something that I'm trying to really apply this rule of less but better to anytime I buy stuff and make sure that I am 100% sure I'm going to need that thing and want that thing and it serves a really good purpose. And then I'm going to buy something that's actually going to last and not break immediately. Zoom out. That's too far. This can apply to so many different things. If you're trying to decide what to declutter in your home, zoom out a little bit and ask, does this actually make a difference in my life? Will I think about this thing that I'm, you know, I'm struggling with so much right now if I should donate it, if I should keep it in five years, will it matter if I have this thing? If it doesn't, just get rid of it. When you zoom out and you have like a different perspective of your life, it can really make things clear of what is important to you and what you're just like kind of trying to get obsessed about for some reason or just thinking it could be a lot. I do this on most of my financial decisions now. Like if you zoom out enough, you can ask yourself that question of like, will spending $10,000 on a vacation make me more happy than $5000 on a vacation? No Will having a $600.00 shirt versus a $60.00 shirt make me happier? No. In fact, taking some of that money that I could be wasting on this stuff and putting it in an emergency fund will give me a lot more Peace of Mind, will lower my stress level. So when you zoom out enough, you realize the things that are truly important to you and will truly impact your life over the next multiple years and not just today or next week. Should you watch that business or start a new episode of, you know, the newest show that just came out? It's going to make you happier in five years. It's pretty clear. It's also like an old saying in Wall Street. When in doubt, zoom out. But you don't have to be some genius Warren Buffett or Bill Gates in order to make smart financial decisions. You just really need to think long term and not like the immediate short term. Investing is always going to be risky, but it's not always an either or thing. Investors at like every level can pretty much find ways to have growth and, and manage the risk as much as they can. In fact, BlackRock actually recently stressed diversifying in low correlation alternatives as one way to avoid volatility, and I was actually kind of wondering what those were. And Citibank separately found that ART had a near 0 correlation to the broad asset classes. And something that I found really interesting is that although there are significant differences between ART investments and stocks, over the past 23 years, ART prices have actually outperformed the S&P 500 by by 136%, which is kind of crazy. This is why some new Deloitte data found 58% of wealth managers clients considered their art collections as part of their overall estate planning strategy. But fortunately, you don't actually have to be like a billionaire to invest in art anymore. And actually the sponsor of this video, Masterworks, has given thousands of investors access to the world of investing in art. They've got offerings from legends like Picasso, Basquiat and Banksy. And well, obviously past results of anything aren't indicative to the future. Each of their 21 sales thus far have actually given a profit to their investors. It's not really a surprise that there's been kind of growing recently and they have over 900,000 people who have signed up and some of their most popular offerings have sold out in like minutes In honor of our new partnership, you guys can skip the wait list if you join with the link down below and you can start investing today. So if you're interested in checking that out, I have invested myself and I think it's pretty cool. There's a link down below and thanks to Masterworks for sponsoring this video. Use the pain. The first time I started the cluttering, I could get an absolutely amazing amount of stuff done within like not a lot of time because I was like angry. I was using the, the pain, the annoyance, the frustration of having too much stuff in my house being cluttered and and like all this pent up. I don't know, anger, whatever it is to get my house the way I wanted it to be. And you can use this same type of aggression with your finances. Don't like push it down and like, you know what? I'm accepting how my stuff is. If you are upset about your finances, if you're upset about not having enough money, not earning as much as you think you're worth, not being confident and proud of the things that you've done, not having an emergency fund, Don't just pretend that everything's fine. Be upset and make changes in your life, Build that life that you don't want an escape from. And in order to do that, a lot of times you'll need to be kind of annoyed if not good enough. If changing little things isn't working for you, then try going a little bit more extreme. If you have to try a 30 day no spend, something that I do once or twice a year. If you can't stop spending, try using cash. Try using the envelope system. Start going through your house picking up random things and asking does this bring me joy? And if it doesn't maybe try try selling. I can't. This is my only coffee cup. I can't sell this but when I first started decluttering I made like I think over $1000 just selling random crap around my house that added nothing to my life. Give it a try. Don't be a slave. I think we all kind of know that debt is bad, but as someone who has had a little bit of debt and then no longer has debt, I will tell you that it's much better not having debt. My stress levels went way down. It was like your body feels it a little bit. It weighs on your mind. You don't have as much freedom in your life, in your finances to do anything. It gives you more flexibility in your day-to-day life to like do different things. You can switch jobs. You can do other stuff that you cannot do when you have debt. Sometimes you can't even get your house or get a car. If you have too much debt, you won't be able to get more. It's just like so many things that can spiral from having debt besides the fact that you're like literally losing money. Like the Bible says, the borrower is a slave to the lender and it's really true you over stuff when it comes to minimalism. It's a very individual path like this. Coffee brings me an incredible amount of enjoyment, but my dad hates the taste of coffee. I'm not judging. I'm not judging When it comes to investing in stocks and everything about your finances, it's important to realize who you are as an individual and really take stock of yourself, why you're doing stuff, what your goals are, and then taking action off of that. Like some people are not credit card people. They cannot use credit cards. They can't control themselves when they come to it. They have to cut them up and get rid of them. Other people like me, I'm OK, I don't really buy anything. So I'm OK with having credit cards. I can gain the system, get some free flights for me. I know that works for some people, they need a spreadsheet and writing everything out on a budget. For other people, you don't. When it comes to investing, you need to realize what you are good at, what you understand and invest in that. I started off with investing in real estate because I was a real estate agent. I read like 10 or 15 books on real estate. So I really understood real estate investing that became a good investment for me, but if I knew nothing about real estate, it could have gone horribly, horribly wrong. So understand what your strong suits are. Play into those instead of trying to do a system that you see somebody else doing. Don't try to copy my system. Don't try to copy somebody else's. Take stock of what your strengths and weaknesses are and really change everything about your finances in order to amplify your strengths and kind of hide from your weaknesses. Also, who doesn't like coffee? Use the 1% rule and know this won't get you into being one of the 1% only available for for lizard people. The 1% rule is just that if something cost more than 1% of your annual salary that you wait at least three to 30 days in order to buy that thing. I prefer the longer one, but sometimes you can't always do that, so it needs to be a little bit shorter. Let's say you make $50,000 a year. If there are a pair of shoes that are over $500, then you cannot impulse those things. You have to wait at least three days, at least 30 days, whatever that rule is that you're set for yourself in order to buy that thing. A lot of times it is the small purchases that add up and end up killing people's budgets. But sometimes you're really good, really good, really good. And then you just over splurge on one thing and then you're really good, really, really good. And it kind of defeats the purpose of all the being really good things, which I just feel like I just said a bunch of times, these last few are actually from you guys. Don't buy crap. But it's very true. You don't want to buy stuff you don't need with money that you don't have to impress people that you don't even like. Doesn't make any sense. Doesn't make any sense. I'm going to keep saying it because I keep doing it too. And it's it's it's stupid. Take back your power. Do I truly need to buy this thing or could I borrow it from a friend or use the thing I already own? Quite rewarding to be creative as well. Jeez, thank you so much for helping. If I missed any other rules, throw them down in the comments below. What are they called? And don't forget to check out Masterworks with the link down below. As always, if you enjoyed this video, you can subscribe. It is completely and utterly free. I won't even charge you. It's it's it's one time deal. Can't get it anywhere else. Oh goodness, I got to end this thing.