About

Welcome to But Wait There's Less. You've probably guessed what inspired the name.

It starts with the infomercials

It's their catch-phrase. "But wait, there's more" they say, knowing how that lures us in.

Does the "more" bring any extra value. It seems not to matter. We've been conditioned to think that more must be better - so out come the credit cards.

They say it every time because it works every time.

The "more" world

It seems there's no problem for which the answer is not more. Buy more stuff, you need more space. Buy a bigger home, you need more debt. To pay off more debt you need to work more. More income also means more of it goes in tax.

More work means more time away from friends/family. More spent on childcare. More of our life traded away for dollars. More of our life spent complaining about the boss/work we don't like.

Does "more" make us happy?

Often we just have more clutter, more maintenance, more debt, more stress and more worries. Perhaps it's time for a different way.

A life of less

We've reached the point of realising that generally less is better. Less clutter. Less stuff. Paying less for a home. Spending less time at work. Less stress. Sounds good doesn't it?

Who are we?

My name is David. My wife and I discovered just how much stuff we had (way too much) when we got married and combined our apartments into one. How on earth did we accumulate so much stuff?

Jerry Seinfeld is right - it makes senses that the words garage is almost the same as garbage. It's the place we put those things that will be handy "someday" (ie. never).

Our declutter

We discovered joy in decluttering: extra space in the home, the cash from selling unwanted items (grab my free ebook of tips), and the joy of someone else appreciating the item we give them. It's been said that decluttering is getting rid of what you don't want, minimalism is discovering how little you need. That's probably where we are now.

Minimalism

It's not about depriving ourselves, it's about discovering what brings us value. Spending less time and money on things that don't really add value to our lives (even if advertisers insist they do) frees us up to focus on the things that do.

Finance

Recently I've also been sharing what I learn about finance. The better we manage our finances and invest our savings, the less dependent on work we can become. It's amazing the difference that a few small changes can make.

If you'd like to follow our journey, subscribe to my monthly-ish email or follow us on facebook.

Comments

Ethical Investing for Australians

I write about investing, because it's a key part of life. Spending less and investing means an automatic income. An automatic income means we can work less (if we choose) and definitely stress less. But where to invest? What to invest in? Many people expect their money to be invested responsibly and ethically - rather than making money through things like cigarettes, weapons, casinos, adult entertainment, environmental destruction, and pollution from fossil fuels. Those are all things we could probably do with less of. So how do we invest to get good returns - and to have a positive effect on the world? Here are some sources I've seen: Ethical Investing in Australia At Frugality and Freedom , Michelle has done a fair bit of research into Ethical Investing in Australia . For herself, she's chosen Bank Australia for banking, Australian Ethical for superannuation, and two exchange-traded funds ( FAIR and ETHI ) for her share investing outside of super. She also gives detail...

How to waste a year's wages

A friend recently asked me why it is that so many people (on good incomes) are struggling to save. Often the big three money areas are housing, transport and food. In one sense these are necessary items. But what we spend on them is often way more than necessary. I crunched some numbers on how much extra my wife and I could spend on these things - if for some reason we wanted to burn our money. 1. Housing Our apartment is fairly nice, but also cost-effective. I've mentioned how choosing it saves us $1,800 per year , compared to a similar one we saw. The high end of 2-bedroom apartments in our suburb is $305 per week more than our apartment. Not $305 per week. $305 per week more than ours is. I cannot get over that. Sure it's new and modern-looking, but that's a lot of money. It's an extra $15,860 per year above what we pay. 2. Transport The Australian Automobile Association lists the costs of owning and running a car. It includes many often-overlooked c...

Don't dump on charities

Netflix causes mass dumping. Here's an alternative. January is usually a big month for physical donations to charity. In 2019 it's been over-the-top (literally) as charity donation bins have been overflowing with items. The Netflix series "Tidying Up" by famous declutterer Marie Kondo (see her book ) has inspired many to declutter their homes. But in the process they've cluttered the streets. What's so bad about donating? When the bins overflow the extra items are thrown away. Having been in the weather, the rain and on the ground, they are classified as contaminated and cannot be sold. To make it worse, much of what fills the bins is not good enough to sell, and is also dumped. Bad donations hurt charities 13 million dollars. That's how much it costs charities to deal with all the junk we dump on them - 60,000 tonnes a year. Lifeline says half its stores have stopped accepting donations. We might think we're helping, but that's a lot ...

But wait... there's less!

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