But wait... there's less!

 The Minimalists' first documentary - "Minimalism" is now available to stream for free. If you'd like to know more, check out my original review of the movie. Otherwise, kick back and enjoy the movie...

Dan Ariely is an expert on human psychology and decisions. His book  Dollars and Sense is focussed on how to avoid "money mishaps" . That can include paying too much for something; buying something that doesn't provide value; or in some cases not buying something that we really should buy. We can be better spenders of money by avoiding money mishaps. We can get more value for our money - or get the same value for less money. So what are the mishaps? Here are some highlights. Opportunity Cost This is the idea of thinking about what else we could do with money - and whether that's better value.  In one experiment, people were given the option of (A) a $1000 stereo or (B) a $700 stereo and $300 cash. People chose option A. Then people where given the option of (A) a $1000 stereo or (B) a $700 stereo and $300 worth of music. Now they chose option B. In the first choice, people gave up the $300 because they wanted the more expensive stereo. But when forced to think of some...

"Why is it so hard to resist new things even when we know we already have too much. Can we find an alternative to the more, more, more mentality?" That promo got me hooked into the half-hour doco "Too Much Stuff". Australian viewers can see it online . Otherwise, here are some of my highlights. Host Sarah Wilson sums up the problem right at the start. "At every turn we're urged to possess the next thing that will make us feel smarter and more desirable. Anything we want is available with just one click. We're filling up our lives with stuff; yet ultimately, many of us feel empty, guilty and stressed out by our consumption." She sets out to explore an alternative. To see if "radically reducing our consumption" can lead to a better life. (Spoiler alert: Yes) Sarah says many people call her a minimalist but she's not so much about getting rid of things, more about not buying stuff. What's wrong with the Marie Kondo approach? Each ep...

We humans like to think we're smarter than monkeys. But we may be getting caught by a very similar trap. The future we choose The book I'm reading wasn't meant to feature here. It wasn't going to be one of my book reviews . I thought it was unrelated - until the subchapter on consumerism. The author mentioned the monkey trap - a fixed container of food with a hole in the side. The hole is big enough for monkey's hand to enter, but not big enough for a monkey's fist (full of food) to be removed. So many monkeys are caught because they can't bring themselves to let go. They thought they were holding food, but it was really the food (bait) that was holding them. At least monkeys do need food While it's understandable that the monkeys would desire food, our bait seems to be consumerism. It's not even the essentials - it's just things that we are told we need. And we believe it, even if it means we're trapped.  Or in the author's words, "...

Supermarket collectibles. Parents go crazy for them. This time I'm in it. Instead of rolling my eyes at the craziness, I'm purchasing, collecting and even trading. Why? Read on. The dogma of more A big key to happiness is to ignore the dogma that more is good. Instead, to be satisfied with what we have. To have enough, but not too much. To ignore the never-ending quest for more. The Little Treehouse series is a classic example of the culture of more. (To explain for international readers, an Australian supermarket is currently giving away a small kids book with every $30 spent in store.) Each book is about the size of a bank card and maybe 3 times as thick. Manufactured desire The (very) short stories are an extension of the Treehouse series of books, which are popular with Australian kids. If the supermarket had not done this promotion, we would all be blissfully satisfied with the original series of full-length books. But that's not how it is. Instead, swarms of parents, ...

Why do so many go mainstream? Once you discover the benefits of an alternate lifestyle (for want of a better phrase) it's hard to see why more people haven't taken it up. Whether it's minimalism, part-time work, frugality, financial independence or eco-friendly living; at some point we ask ourselves why so many people live the mainstream lifestyle. "Why do people own so much stuff?" we might wonder, "Surely they must realise how little joy they get from those items.". "Why do people (and companies) insist on working 40 hours a week rather than 30?" "Why do people spend practically all their income, rather than investing for a passive income that could last forever?" "Why do people drive so much when there are healthier, more affordable and eco-friendly ways to travel?" The wisdom of Solomon I recently read about the conformity experiments of Solomon Asch. He gave people simple multiple choice questions and record...

It's not often a company admits their customers are stupid, but here's one . Greg likes big things No matter how costly, useless, wasteful, or dangerous to his health. Greg seems to buy as much as he can. Buying an ice-cream as a kid? Get one so tall you can't start licking it without spilling the entire thing. Getting a hair-do in the 80s? Make you hair enormous by spraying 2 parts hairspray to 1 part hair. Going to the movies? Buy a popcorn serving the size of a small table. The movie will finish before you've eaten 4% of it. Going on another date? Impress your lady-friend by ordering a basketball-sized burger. Nothing says romance like leaving with 5 litres of food in your belly, bursting to get out (one way or the other). Why does Greg never learn? Apparently Greg "knows" that bigger is better. No amount of spilt ice-cream, boxes of leftover popcorn, or dates ruined by regurgitated burger can convince him otherwise. Perhaps that can of hairspr...

The watch-spend-work treadmill from the Story of Stuff. Ads tell us to buy things. We buy them. We go to work to earn back the money. Then the cycle repeats. Locking down the treadmill In recent times, the only shops open have been the "essential services". For once we could only buy what we actually need. That's a significant change from usual times, and (after a brief surge of stockpiling) our spending has gone way down. The treadmill strikes back Of course the online world means that we can purchase most things even when stores are closed. Advertising and business love smartphones. For them it's like having a cash register in every home. In normal times there's a gap between when we see and ad and when we make a purchase. Marketers like to close that gap because time allows us the chance to realise that the purchase isn't worth it. Purchase distancing In 2020 we all know that creating distance protects our physical health. The same things appl...

Cola wars? Not really. Both companies win. Perhaps it's the people who lose. Australian viewers can see it on SBS On-Demand until 26 April. It's retitled "Drink Wars" to sound less American. I'm fairly cynical about most advertising. This documentary, showing how cola advertising makes these companies 11-figure sums of money, just by selling brown sugary water, reinforced my view. Here's what I learnt: Big money Coke spends $6 billion a year on marketing. Pepsi is almost identical at $5.8 billion. At first we might think that their efforts cancel each other out, but it's more likely that the combined effect makes us buy even more of the stuff. The "Pepsi generation" In the 60s , Pepsi targeted the youth market with the phrase "Pepsi generation". Your parents drink Coke but the next generation is cool and drink Pepsi. They did it again in 1983 with Michael Jackson , and in the late 90's with the Spice Girls . It seems...

Go Fund Yourself is a basic money guide. Written for younger adults and usable for all, it covers many aspects of money - jobs, businesses, spending and investing. It's British, so some information is UK-specific. But this is far outweighed by helpful information that transcends national borders. Reason for being The Japanese word Ikigai means reason for being. It originates in Okinawa, where they view work not so much as a necessary chore that we retire from, but something that is innate to us as individuals. Ikigai is about fulfilling work by finding a combination of work we love doing something the world needs, while earning money and doing something we're good at. It's about finding the centre of the diagram where all the circles overlap. Ideal income It's easy to think that an ideal income is the highest one possible. Perhaps that's why we don't consider Ikigai as much as we could; why we sometimes just take the job or career with the highest pay. ...

I never need buy a pen again. Ever. The pen round-up. I searched the house for pens and gathered them up. We had 128. Woah - that's more than I expected. Then it was test-time. (You can get a lot done watching summer sport ;). Good ones went on the table. Broken ones in the box. Pen operations I saved a few 'broken' pens, by taking working insides and matching them with functional outsides. Particularly much-loved pens, for sentimental reasons, were given a life-extending 'ink transplant'. Final Tally We ended up with 67 broken pens and 61 good ones. And about 10 pencils. What to do with 67 broken pens? In my city Biome recycles pens . It's as easy as taking them into the store and dropping them into the giant collection box. Decluttering and recycling together - I love it. A lifetime of pens An average pen writes 45,000 words. So that dedicated shopping list pen on the fridge could write a 20-word shopping list for 43 years. Our 61 pens repre...

One of the secrets to this lifestyle is determining whether things provide value for their cost. Weighing up the cost Cost is not just money. It's the hassle of buying it, the space to store it , the time to clean and maintain it and, for the eco-conscious, the impact of disposing of it later. Is it worth all that cost for the benefit it brings? What ads say The trick is that society (particularly advertising) will tell you the opposite. Provided you have the money - and often even if you don't - something that brings any value at all is something we are urged to buy. Sometimes it's even just the slim chance of a tiny amount of value. This current ad is a classic example. Telstra, an Australian telco, is known for its comprehensive area coverage, particularly in remote areas. The proposition seems to be that you should pay for this extra coverage incase: You are a footy fan, AND you're in a remote area on game night, AND the power goes out during the game,...

We live in one of the richest countries but even the 'rich' feel poor. That's what Richard Denniss calls affluenza. Here are some of my highlights from his book. "Just as a fish can't taste the water it swims in" , it is hard for us to notice how weird our culture has become. "We have built a culture where buying things is increasingly unrelated to using things." Each year we "throw away mountains of perfectly edible food, perfectly wearable clothes and fitness equipment that has never been used." Advertising is a big infector He points out that advertising's aim is to make us feel insecure. While there are truth-in-advertising laws, they don't stop the big lie that "a new car, a new soft drink or a new credit card will make you relaxed, popular or sexy." We cure it by changing culture Culture decides the desirable options. This is why we pay through the nose ($14 billion in the USA in 2015) for bottled water (whic...

"There is something good about the life that explicitly identifies itself within certain limits" says Scott Stephens, co-host of The Minefield podcast. The Minefield covers philosophy and ethical dilemmas. This series is on good virtues that seems less popular today and this episode 's virtue is restraint. So what's restraint? We're not talking seatbelts. Restraint is simply the idea of being satisfied with what you have, even if you're able to have more. In today's culture it might almost seems like heresy - to suggest not getting, doing or buying every single thing you want. Consumer culture says to have as much as we want of everything we want, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. As I write this I have several leftover Easter eggs on the table - the tiny ones. I'm leaving one until I finish writing this. Even that felt a little counter-cultural. It's right there. It'll taste good. Why not eat it? Opting out Recorded durin...

Carl was chasing his dream of becoming a millionaire. He had severe anxiety and stress. His book, Less-Stress Lifestyle is his recipe for reducing stress. A lot his answers are about having less. Less Clutter Less Stress "The things we own end up owning us." Carl advises us to "start getting wise about the stuff you own and future purchases" . For instance he scaled down his wardrobe to only the items he regularly wears - and now only buys quality items that he wears often. He saves money by not buying things he'd rarely or never wear. "Clutter prevents focus" he says, and focus is one of his keys to having less stress. As well as the home and office, he say it's important to declutter the brain. Writing his problems down clears them from his mind. Then his brain can focus on dealing with each problem (one at a time) rather than getting anxious and stressed about them. Less TV Less anxiety "One of the biggest challenges we face to...

Make sure your munchkins become money-smart grown-ups. Barefoot Investor helped adults sort out their finances. Scott Pape's new book The Barefoot Investor for Families: The only kids' money guide you'll ever need helps parents raise kids who understand how money works, and how to make the best of it. Do we want our kids to be normal? Scott says normal (for an adult) is $4,200 in credit card debt, working a job we resent, to make payments on stuff we regret buying. Doesn't sound like a great future for a kid. What if our kids' lives could be better than normal? Less debt, less resentment and less worthless stuff? The Barefoot Ten After some introductory pocket-money advice - a great simple method - Scott outlines the "Barefoot Ten". Ten things he reckons your kids should do before they move out of home. Everything from cooking their own food (a great money-saver) to opening their own savings account and promising to never get a credit card. Ea...

What do you get your loved one when they don't want "stuff"? Why do we buy stuff? It's especially tricky at Christmas. All those Christmas images of big shiny box-shaped presents sitting under an enormous tree. All the ads and all the stores showing us objects that we can buy for each other. Everything points us that way. So much pressure to do the 'Christmassy thing'. Does it makes us happy? More people every year find they have enough stuff. Too much stuff. The thought of receiving yet more stuff is the opposite of a Merry Christmas. "I don't want any more stuff" they'll say. "But it's Christmas, and I want to give you something", you say. Here's the answer You can both enjoy Christmas if you give a gift that isn't "stuff". You can show you care. They get a gift they really appreciate. But we need ideas from outside the box. Ideas that we won't find in sales catalogues. That's what my new...

Black Friday is a contest. It's you versus the retailer. Read on to find out how to come out ahead. Here in Australia the 'Black Friday' sales have emerged in the last couple of years - but what does it mean? When is Black Friday? Black Friday is the first Friday after Thanksgiving. Yes, Thanksgiving - that American holiday we don't celebrate here. Pretty weird, huh? It's like having Boxing Day without Christmas Day. What happens on Black Friday? In the USA, and increasingly here, stores hold simultaneous sales in order to get shoppers into a buying frenzy. Some offer deals like 20% off everything. Other have big mark-downs on specific items in order to get you in the store - to sell you other stuff you never wanted in the first place. Isn't 20% off a good thing? Not really. There's a psychological effect called anchoring . If there's a jacket for $40 it's no big deal. But if the shop says it's on sale from $50, suddenly we think it'...

Buying things we don't need. It makes us poorer, so we have to work more just to break even. Often we'd be better off not buying. The biggest household expense , other than our house, is health / medical costs. Is private health insurance worth it? Finance expert Scott Pape ( The Barefoot Investor ) says in many cases the answer is no. He reckons if you're under 31, or earn under $90,000 ($180,000 for couples) you're probably better off without it. Why? Australia has "one of the best public health systems on the planet" that's already paid for; so you may as well use that. (Note: This may be a different story in the USA and other countries). The exception is if you're over 30 and a high income earner. What's wage got to do with it? Health insurance is one product the government punishes you for not buying. If you're a high income earner you'll be taxed more if you don't buy some. If you decide to buy some later in life (later t...

Minimalism: A Documentary About The Important Things follows the story of Ryan and Josh. Friends since childhood, they each found 'success' in the high-flying corporate world but were desperately unhappy. Until they discovered minimalism. The film is about the story we are fed - especially in the USA - that buying things will make us happy. That earning more, and working more, will makes us happy. That our lives are all about buying things. Ryan and Josh (The Minimalists) bust apart this myth - through their own story and talking to authors, economics experts and normal people who have decided that enough is enough. They say they're not evangelising or trying to convert anyone, but it's hard to see the movie and not be motivated to declutter your life. Perhaps I was already a convert. Either way, the documentary definitely opens our eyes to the consumerist message - how pervasive it is, and also how flawed it is. Check out the trailer and see if your local...