5 Minimalist Money Moves to Tackle Inflation and Boost Your Budget

In this episode of the Less House More Moola podcast, Laura discusses the relevance of minimalism in the context of inflation and economic uncertainty. She shares her personal journey of downsizing to a tiny house and reflects on the importance of mindful spending. Laura provides five practical tips for aligning spending with personal values, encouraging curiosity about financial habits, and addressing consumer debt. The conversation emphasizes the need for thoughtful consumption and the impact of our purchasing decisions on both personal finances and the environment.

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Transcript

Less House More Moola Podcast (00:41)
Hey, welcome to Les House More Moola podcast. Laura here. I want to say hello to new listeners. I was just in California at TinyFest . So if you grabbed a sticker and you checked out the podcast, so grateful to have you with me today. Thanks for listening and welcome any new listeners from my hometown of Abiquiu, New Mexico.

I just sponsored the Abiquiu news. So if you're listening because I sponsored the news and you saw Less House More Moola podcast in the Abiquiu news. Thank you so much for listening. Super excited to get to share this podcast with folks in my community. For listeners who don't know I'm in Northern New Mexico recording in the loft of my tiny house. New Mexico gets a bad rap sometimes.

It has some challenges for sure, but some amazing treasures as well. This tiny village of Abiquiu is just an artist's Mecca. Just lots of amazingly creative people, very community minded. We have an amazing farmers market, a fantastic general store, a couple of great restaurants, ice cream shop, some pizza worth mentioning.

And of course, all the hiking and biking and rafting and just outdoor adventures that you could ever want. So it is definitely aligned with what I like to do for fun. And that is why we're here for sure.

So this week I was thinking about all the news that we're seeing, all of the inflation uncertainty, all of the worries about markets, about the economy. And I was thinking, you know, there are some amazing parts of minimalism that are so apt for this moment in history. And I thought we would explore a little bit of those together.

I wouldn't call myself 100 % a minimalist. I definitely learned by being in the military about how to get less attached to things and how to pack up and move on and let go. And that is a skill that was really useful when moving into the tiny house.

I've talked about my downsizing journey before, but we moved from a 1300 square foot house into 300 square feet. There was 30 months of downsizing. So a lot that went into that. And it taught me a lot about minimalism, about the usefulness or utility of the things that I have, and about how to be curious and help

myself do better when it comes to spending. So just sharing a little bit of my own thoughts about that here today. I was really thinking about this because I had this wondering today. I wonder if inflation that we have seen for the last number of years and that we're still hearing a lot about now has reduced waste by reducing consumption.

Ultimately, everything that we buy is just hanging out with us for a time before it ends up as waste. And that crosses the full spectrum of everything that we purchase from things that are more short-lived, like a can of Pepsi, all the way through a home that we purchase. Ultimately, that will end up being torn down and thrown away as well.

And so if everything in our lives is just here with us for a time on its way to a landfill or decomposing back into the earth, we can really think about how useful those things are for the time that they're with us.

Some things stay in our lives longer and have more utility like the house or maybe a really great Irish wool sweater. But there are other things that get used up pretty quickly. They'll wear out. All of our technology becomes obsolete so quickly. And then there are things that we buy that never show us any usefulness in our life, either because they don't perform as we expected. We don't like them.

or they were redundant to what we already had. So think about those things that are sitting around collecting dust that you say, one day I'm going to put that to use, that day may never come. Of course, we know that our society and our economy are based on production and consumption of both goods and services. I get so annoyed.

all the time hearing over and over again that 70 % of the US economy is based on consumption. Like golly gee, could we not find anything else more useful to do with our one wild and precious life than be consumers? I guess not. But in any case, people have a range in their frugality. And so you are probably somewhere in the range of someone who

behaves with frugality like it's an ethic. There are folks out there that are really drawn to minimalism because they are thinking about all of that waste. They maybe grew up in a family that just never threw anything away. They try to make use of everything. And then there are folks out there who behave as if consumption was a marker of their value. They're out there competing to make sure that they've got the latest shoes, cars.

toys, golf clubs, technology, what have you. And I think there's a range of that spectrum where we can land. And we have all been taught in some way or another that in order to have a good life and to take care of ourselves and those around us, that spending is how we do it. We spend on experiences for ourselves and others.

we spend in order to make our lives more comfortable. That's why we have all of the gadgets that we have. so spending is just no matter where you are on that frugality spectrum, it is something that we're all doing. And so right now, as we're thinking about our spending in light of rising prices, and we're all thinking about how can I make my life a little bit more

safe or secure when things feel so uncertain. One thing that we can look at is basically how we're spending the money that comes into our life. We all have a finite number of dollars that is going to pass through our household in our life. And so figuring out how what we're doing with those dollars at this moment in time seems particularly apt.

So I have five tips to share with you from a minimalist perspective about ways that we can think about consumption and spending right now and tips that can help us.

Number one is matching spending with value. So a lot of stuff comes through our life, a lot of stuff we bring into our life. And if we will understand what is most valuable to us and spend there and minimize spending in areas that don't bring us value or in areas that aren't useful, that don't make our life significantly better.

then that would be one way that we can narrow our spending to focus on what is most important to us. So what brings us the most value, utility, happiness? So that's going to be different for everybody. So a Starbucks coffee is often an example that folks use when they talk about budgets. And I particularly think this one is quite interesting because for some folks,

a really great cup of coffee, if Starbucks is your really great cup of coffee, is a sublime treat that you can sit down for, that you can be mindful, that you can get a little caffeine high. It is worth every penny. And for other folks, it's like a routine thing that they do when they are on their way to work. It takes out extra time. They maybe don't even enjoy it all that much. And so really understanding

what gives you the most value for the dollars that you're spending and really focus your dollars in on things that give you a lot of value. This of course goes for the roof over our head, which is the whole focus of this podcast. Do we need all those square feet for our home or can we narrow that down to

where is the most valuable space in our house? What are the most valuable rooms? And have a living space customized around that. If you don't need four bedrooms, why continue to heat and air condition four bedrooms? Why continue to pay interest on a mortgage for four bedrooms? Let's have a home that represents the value that we need.

I love the idea of thinking of our past history and thinking about things that we spent a full day's pay on and did not enjoy because that was a full eight hours. If you work eight hours or 10 hours, if you work 10 hours or six hours, if you work six hours, whatever it was, you had to get out of bed. You had to put on your motivation and you had to go to work for an entire day and to use that amount of money on, on something that you

didn't even really enjoy that much seems like a waste of a beautiful day that could have been spent doing something far more interesting for you. So matching spending with value and thinking about things that don't bring you value and eliminating spending there. Maybe there's two or three things that you could pick out and say, hey, I'm not really getting any value out of these things. I'm buying them on a regular basis.

or these experiences that I'm spending on on regular basis. I go out to eat so much that I don't even really enjoy it. These are examples. Number two, let's be curious about our spending rather than judgmental. Let's dig into it a little bit. One of the things that holds us up sometimes is we don't even really have a good understanding of what our net income is and what our expenses are. And these are easily

created calculations that we can use a variety of different cool new apps to help us figure this out. And every time I think about my spending, in fact, just today, I was recalculating how much money I spend on groceries every month, because it has shifted a little bit where I've been sourcing things from. And so just thinking about, how much I'm actually spending on this every month.

I had to recalculate it. And I'm a numbers person. I do this all the time for a living, but sometimes our brains get twisted up when it comes to money. And so being curious to say, Hey, how much am I really spending on all my subscriptions? As an example, right when we were moving into the tiny house, I did a lot of sort of chopping, you know, of spending, thinking about how do we get our income and expenses.

lined up as best we could, making this huge transition. And one of the things that I cut was Amazon Prime. I cut Amazon Prime because I realized that we were going to be in a place where we really wouldn't get the value out of the quick shipping turnaround. I felt like we would hopefully be doing a lot of more outdoor physical projects and hiking and things, and we would be watching less Amazon Prime Video.

And I just felt like this was something that possibly could leave and that we would be better off for it because what it did is it just made it a trigger for us to just shop. When we had Amazon Prime and you you could get free shipping, that was like a motivating factor for, hey, let me just buy that thing. And so what I have found since we have been almost a year now without Amazon Prime is that when we do need something that we feel like we can best get from Amazon,

All we have to do is lump up a few of those purchases together and get over $35 and we still get free shipping. It takes us a lot longer here in our rural place to get it, so we wouldn't have gotten any of the speed out of it anyway. We do watch less TV, so we don't need Amazon Prime Video. And that was a huge subscription that was going up every single year that I was paying for. And I didn't really know what the value was there until I cut it out and realized that there wasn't any.

Another thing that I've noticed is that I sometimes have idealistic versus real realistic spending. So when I was headed out to Skooliepalooza recently, I was thinking, I should get a really nice lavalier set up so that I can record podcasts outdoors on the fly with people that I run into. And the reality is I'm kind of an introvert and to just walk up to somebody and say, Hey, let's sit down and record a podcast.

is really idealistic and not at all realistic. So instead, I just bought a fuzzy cover for my microphone and a better cord that allows me to connect it to my cell phone. And that was a much less of a purchase, a much less expensive purchase to get those two little gadgets. And that kept me from spending a few hundred dollars on a really fancy lavalier setup.

So thinking about our shopping, sometimes we shop and we buy things to make us feel like our life is gonna be better in some way, in an idealistic kind of way that when we think deeply about ourselves, we'll realize actually, I'm probably not gonna do that thing or be that way just because I have that thing. And so thinking about realism about ourselves can be helpful in keeping us from just buying things that we think will make us

be somebody different than we are.

I enjoy a good off price, go shopping, search for the treasure as much as anybody else. And I know that shopping feels good. It definitely gives us a nice little boost of mood to go out and just look through all of the great and amazing products and colors and styles and all of that. And it can really feel good. And so if we can know ourselves well enough to know what other activities feel good to us.

and do those things for a part of the time that maybe we would be shopping. This can be useful. What other activities make me feel that good? Because sometimes shopping can also be exhausting and you can end up coming home with stuff that you've got to deal with and unpack from the car and put to good use. And so there's work involved there. So what other activities make us feel good and how

we prioritize those activities?

Tip number three is to trick yourself. This is really fun. Actually, Eric and I were talking about this earlier. Window shopping doesn't have to be shopping. So like I said, I enjoy going out and looking at things. I like going to thrift stores, but if you're picky and you're looking in the wrong places for the things you want, you might not be able to find anything to buy, but it can still be really

fun. So I enjoy going to thrift stores and looking around at things, but I'm kind of picky about what I want and I'm probably not going to be able to find it anyway. So I just enjoy the

Another idea is to have an impulse buying cooling off

screens all the time are making so many recommendations to us about things that we have to have. They know us very well, those algorithms, and they know the things that we like or the things that we have or the things that might make our life better. And so they're definitely very accurate. So if you see something online that you think you have to have, you can do what Eric and I have done before, which is to put it in your shopping cart and leave it there. And after a few days,

Look at it, see how it feels, see if it seems like it's something that you have to have. If you're not sure, you can save it for later. This is another feature of online shopping carts, save for later. And then after a few days, check it out again. If it's not something that you think is going to add significant value to your life, you can just remove it at that point. And very often putting something in your cart will feel about the same as if you had actually bought the thing.

So this is something I do all the time on eBay, my favorite shopping place. I go on there and look at vintage denim or what have you, and I'll put things in my cart and hold onto them and check them out later and see if it's something that still seems to make a lot of sense to me or it's something that would really make my life better.

Another tip, especially from Eric who still has a lot of stuff, a lot of tools and equipment. If you have a lot of stuff, if you have a lot of stuff in your closet, if you have a lot of stuff in your spare room, if you have a lot of stuff in your garage, go shopping in your own collection of stuff because you might find something that you totally forgot that you bought and you pull it out and all of a sudden it feels like you just bought it all over again.

Idea number four is to buy better, higher quality things that are meant to last. There is a tech gadget out there for every single problem that we have in our life, but unfortunately all the tech gadgets don't actually solve our problems. They may look like they're going to solve our problems and we may buy the tech gadget, but in reality it comes with too many different connections or downloads or

set up processes or just simply doesn't work. Here at our tiny house, I bought a tech gadget that was supposed to tell me the level of water in our rain collection cistern. It's a dud. It doesn't work at all. I'll never get my $60 back. And that was a complete waste of money. So thinking carefully about whether technology is going to solve all the problems in your life is a really important

part of buying better higher quality things meant to last. Another idea in that same vein is to get creative with what you already have. This creativity of thinking about what do I already have that might serve this purpose feels really good. And then it's worth telling somebody else about, hey, I use this thing to solve this problem. It's a really cool feeling. So recently I got really

caught up with this shopping about having a hip pack hiking canteen that would carry the dog treats for the dogs and some water. And my camelback, I felt like didn't carry enough water because my dogs drink like a half a gallon while we're on a hike. And so I needed a way to carry more water. So I'm shopping, shopping, shopping, looking for all the different, you know, hydration packs and all of that. And so then I said to Eric,

And he's like, oh, I've got like 15 canteens. Why don't you just take one of those? And I strapped it on and off I went. And that was awesome. I just used something that we already had to solve the problem that I would have spent $50 on.

Another thing that I learned when I was going through my downsizing of my closet to move into the tiny house was to hone in on what I think looks good on me and hone in on my style and to narrow my wardrobe and my expectations for my wardrobe. So having been in a corporate office, I had an entire corporate wardrobe, I had my

flower child wardrobe, I had my working on the house wardrobe. I just had so many different types of clothes and really a lot of stuff that I had, I didn't really love on me anyway. And so while downsizing into the tiny house and trying to narrow down to the eight bins or whatever I have of clothes, I wanted to just really focus on what makes me feel fantastic. What do I really love?

what style really speaks to me and just keep my wardrobe very narrow to that. And that means that there's less to shop for because I'm not gonna be going out and buying a bunch of polyester stuff anymore, because I'm kind of a cotton wool gal now. And so this was a really interesting process and part of the learnings from downsizing into our tiny house.

As I mentioned before, we should all be aware that whatever we're buying is ultimately headed for the landfill. And so we should think carefully about what we're buying, how long it's going to be in our life, how useful it is, because ultimately it's going to be trash at some point. And we don't want to be filling up landfills with a bunch of stuff that we're buying. think all of us that are listening to this podcast are thinking about sustainability and our footprint.

And buying a lot of stuff just leads to more waste.

In episode 31 of this podcast, shared with you a little bit about my alcohol-free journey. I interviewed the podcast creator who inspired me to go alcohol-free in 2020. And I was curious to learn by Googling that alcohol spending in the United States in 2023 was $89.8 billion.

So lot of money is being spent on alcohol. And if we think critically about the utility that alcohol is bringing relative to the cost, we may notice that alcohol consumption doesn't add important nutrition to anyone's health or well-being. It has vast negative side effects. Alcohol, as I know, is highly addictive.

And the utility of dealing with a stressful day, that whole idea around, I need a glass of wine to help me get over my day is really largely avoiding the hard work of processing life's challenges and doing the hard work of self development. And also the idea that alcohol makes you more fun or able to have more fun is just a damn myth. So alcohol is one area of

life for many people that they are spending a good bit on that maybe deserves a little bit of critical thinking.

And the fifth and perhaps the most impactful thing that we can note about dealing with inflationary and uncertain times and looking at it through a minimalistic lens is getting rid of consumption debt, consumer debt, credit card bills.

Credit cards of course have no utility in the sense that you are paying really high interest rates for the use of large corporations money in order to continue to pay over and over again for things that you have bought in the past. When you have credit card debt, is costing you far more than you are getting out of it. By the time you get done paying that compounding interest on that thing that you bought,

You have paid far more for that thing than you ever would have agreed to in the beginning. So there is no utility to that credit card debt when it is being used for ancillary or additional consumption spending beyond what we need just to survive. And of course, there are folks out there who are having to use credit cards just to get by. And I certainly understand that.

credit cards are often used to purchase things that we just simply really don't need. There are some great strategies out there for eliminating credit card debt, making meaningful progress. There's things like snowballing, consolidation, balance transfer, negotiation with the credit card companies.

So there are some great strategies to tackle this and in a world in which we feel perhaps uncertain and worried about rising prices, being closer to or debt free helps free up more income in order to pay for necessities instead of continuing to pay for compounding interest on our past purchases. So tip number five is probably the most impactful.

Our life decisions have a much larger impact on our financial outcomes than many of the smaller things that we do. And so I think that getting rid of our credit card debt and focusing on managing our spending when it comes to consumer debt is really, really impactful because most credit card companies are now up to 30 % interest. This is like

payday loan companies. is so extraordinarily high and you end up paying so much for the things that you would have bought for so much less if it wasn't for the use of a credit card. So this is really important. So just wanted to share some ideas about being minimalistic in times of inflation and uncertainty. I am hoping that perhaps

This moment in time, the silver lining will be all of us to think more thoughtfully about our consumption, about where that stuff ultimately ends up. What are the trade-offs of having all of these gadgets and things in our home and where they ultimately end up.

So thanks so much for joining me for five minimalist tips in times of inflationary uncertainty. Super excited to continue to talk about my thoughts as I am learning more and more about spending and how to keep spending in line and what are ways that we can be more thoughtful with our spending. So thanks for joining me. I have

Lots of great guests coming up from TinyFest and gathering folks from that community that were there. So looking forward to exploring some great builder journeys and traveler journeys. So make sure you come back next week for another episode of Less House, More Moola podcast.