I’m back with another terrific group of articles! The following share the themes of simple living and frugality. As an avid reader and writer about personal finance concerns, it’s interesting to see how reading more helps me focus on my goal of a better budget and savings. Hope these help you, too!
Thoreau, the First Declutterer by Danny Heitman
Have you ever read Walden by Thoreau? Well, if not, it’s about time! Thoreau is widely considered one of the foremost frugal fans of all time. He decided to move into a small cabin — isolated from much of society to write and reflect. In this article, the author points out how Thoreau modeled his life and can offer inspiration to others.
The Cloud Generation: No Longer Buys All The Things by Sheree Joseph
As technology has enabled people to forego physical clutter and fill cloud storage, minimalism is growing increasingly mainstream. The benefits are twofold: we’re buying and polluting less. Older generations have shown some hesitancy to trusting the cloud, while the younger, “Cloud Generation,” seems to be making the move in droves.
Stop Buying in Bulk by Eric Holthaus
It can be appealing to get 200 hot dogs, 20 bottles of ketchup, or a monster-sized jar of nuts. Big-box wholesalers such as Costco and Sam’s Club have made great businesses out of bulk sales. The math is generally simple: when you can buy more, you save more per item. But research is showing that we might not be saving as much as we hope.
The Best Waterfront Property Is Your Tent by Katie Jackson
This might be my favorite article over the last couple weeks. In a twist on tired travel guides, Outside Magazine proposes a waterfront property that isn’t yours to keep. But you’re welcome to have it tonight. Camping is one of the best ways to affordably travel, explore, and see the world.
I’ve pretty much always foregone buying in bulk. The few times I tried it because I thought I “should” be doing it, I ended up with too much stuff, and no place to put it. I mostly skipped buying bulk food – I’ve always been sure is toss out half of it! I think bulk buying makes more sense for larger families. Glad to see more people seeing the light!
Thoreau has long been an inspiration to me for the simplification of my life. I must be reminded from time that, as he said, we must take from the experience that portion that we can use. Thoreau lived very close to Emerson, went there often for meals and did his laundry there. It’s like Ghandi said: it takes a lot of people to allow me to live this simply.
Love that Outside piece. 🙂 And the bulk shopping piece is fascinating. Of course it shouldn’t be surprising that retailers are looking to exploit consumer tendencies, but maybe it is surprising that none of us have noticed. For our part, we stopped shopping at CostCo years ago, mostly because we found it obnoxious how much packaging was involved in everything we were buying, plus the whole experience of going to the store was just too much. We like to say now: shop the bulk bins, not the bulk stores.
“Stop buying in bulk” is such an interesting conversation. Because those deals really do seem amazing, but… (There’s always a but, isn’t there?) Even for our larger family, we only buy a very few things in bulk, mostly because I don’t want to store things that we don’t use often.