10 Things I Buy As A Financial Minimalist

so in the past few months I've been selling a lot of the items I own for two primary reasons one of them being for financial purposes I found that I don't need as much stuff and if I can free up cash in my budget it's going to allow me to spend more money on areas in my life where I actually want to spend money but the other reason was to sort of take a minimalistic approach on life to simplify everything that I'm doing in my life so when I buy items today it has to fit one of two criteria and I still buy things I still pay for things but it has to fit one of two very strict criteria it either has to be something that's going to end up saving me money and I'm gonna show you some of those in this video or even potentially making me more money by spending a little bit of money on some of these items or it has to be something that is going to provide some type of value in my life where it's either bringing some joy to my life or it's something that's going to simplify it and speed up the process of something that I'm doing so if there was something that took me 15 minutes before and now this item can do it in two minutes and that's something that I will consider getting as well because time is money and we all have the same time in our day and it's very important to take very good care of your time so let's talk about this let's talk about some of the items that I pay for some of the things that I buy one of them the first one that we'll bring up here is actually I pay for a bike membership program now for a lot of people they might just be better off buying a bicycle but this really kills multiple birds with one stone and my point is here that not only are you gonna be saving money by using your car less it doesn't mean that you don't need a car whatsoever I know a lot of people need cars but by having a bike if you have to go half a mile down the road somewhere consider it as biking instead of driving it's gonna do a couple things first of all it's a lot healthier it's a lot better for the environment but also it's going to save you money by not ranking up the miles in your vehicle by not using gas and it's gonna be better you're gonna be healthier by deciding to bike places instead of drive everywhere that you go so I pay for a bike membership program here I know not everybody's gonna want to do that but for myself I found it was just easier to do that instead of actually having a bike where it would probably get stolen especially here in the spot that I'm in it would probably get stolen I know a lot of people have had their bike stolen so it's just easier for me ten is $10 a month bike membership program now another thing that I will buy that I that I have bought it probably cost me about $30 it was a very simple water filter now this is not a Brita filter this is kind of a better one but it filters out most things in water and it saves me so much money because now I don't have to worry about drinking tap water with terrible things in it because a lot of city water or even in rural areas if you have your own well people don't have great water and because of that they go out and they buy jugs of water it uses a lot of plastic but it's also just a waste of money I hate paying for water I never pay for water I just think it's not something that you need to do and there are very very strong filters out there as well for people who live in an area where the water is not good whatsoever there's things that can filter out lead filtered out a lot of different things that you need to filter out and it's gonna save you a lot of money in the process now something else that I pay for is actually haircuts so for the longest time for the first 18 years in my life I never went to a barber like literally the first time I went to a barber I was 19 years old I was in college before that I used to cut my own hair sometimes my mom would help me with it as well and it was horrendous it was absolutely terrible and I cringed thinking about it how bad my haircut was that I would do for myself and it wasn't really to save money I suppose it I just never thought about going to a barber but now I realize that it's important to put a little bit of money into your appearance I'm not saying that I have the best hair and now it's still not that great but I think it's important to invest a little bit of money into your appearance I think that people who totally neglect it and they wear raggedy clothes and they just trying to save as much money as possible but they have some money in the budget to spend a little bit of money on their appearance maybe get some nicer dress clothes instead of some $10 dress shoes that you can tell or from Kmart getting something a little bit nicer is going to help you because there is so much truth to that term when people say a dress for success there's a lot of truth to it and if you dress well if you look good then you're going to find more success all around that's just from what I've found maybe that's anecdotal but this is what I've seen now I also think that paying for some type of health insurance is important if you're outside of America you probably don't even thought might not even cross your mind especially if you live in Europe we're not gonna get political here but my point is that I think everybody should be paying for health insurance or should have health insurance because I've seen some of my close friends or even one of my cousins who in their young 20s said you know what I don't need health insurance because I'm young I'm healthy and something happens and one of two things happens they either go to the doctors or the hospital and up paying thousands of dollars for this health problem that they have which they don't have that money so they end up in a really big problem or even worse in some cases is that they have some type of medical problem but they don't go to the doctors because they know what's going to cost them money so then they end up with long-term health implications because they didn't have health insurance now there's a lot of different types of insurance out there some people choose to not have insurance that's up to you obviously some people don't want dental insurance some people don't want homeowners insurance but in general I think insurance is a pretty good idea for most people for what I've seen and I feel better about myself going throughout my day knowing that I'm insured with pretty much every area of my life and it just gives me a little bit more peace of mind for myself that I know if I get hit by a bus some type of insurance is gonna cover me for all of my medical bills and I'm not going to go bankrupt from that so I also bought this drying rack it's very simple what I love about this is that sure it does save me probably about two dollars per week whenever I do laundry which is usually on a weekly basis sometimes maybe every 10 days or two weeks if I really stretch it for my laundry but generally speaking it's gonna save me about two dollars a week which adds up to a hundred dollars per year which honestly it's that's not that much money a hundred dollars per years not very much I really kind of do this just because I don't like using that much energy I think that using a dryer is kind of pointless that's just my personal opinion it really takes the same time for me to throw some clothes onto this rack then it does for me to throw clothes into a dryer and then wait 45 minutes for it to dry so I just like doing this for those reasons to save a little bit of money but more so just because they just don't need to use the dryer it's the same reason why I don't use plastic bags at this store I just don't really need to use them now I also think that paying for some types of educational materials can be worth it in some cases so I know for myself that I don't like spending like thousands of dollars on education I think there's so much free education out there but let's say that you are about to get on a flight it's a twelve hour flight you're going across the world and you want to buy an e-book for twelve dollars and it's a business book or a honestly any type of book for that matter I think that's a great investment I think it's something that you should always be willing to spend some money on because increasing your human capital it's hard to put a price on that you're investing into yourself into your own brain and that in my opinion is almost always going to be worth it another thing I love to do wrapping it into this sort of paying for some types of education and they should be sponsoring this video I should just reach out to them but something like you to me or even Skillshare with you so those somewhat inexpensive online courses that you can take for ten dollars and you can learn the basics of Adobe Photoshop or you want to learn how to edit videos you can just take some very inexpensive courses on there and get the basics the groundwork of it if you want to get into photography there's all kinds of different things out there to get the basics of learning different skills on something like a udemy for ten twenty maybe thirty dollars for an online course I think those are worth it in my opinion like I said they're not sponsoring this video I really wish they would now I also think that paying for really nice Wi-Fi is important for myself is a personal decision but I know that when you think about how much time you spend waiting for something to buffer if you have slow Wi-Fi you know exactly what I'm talking about especially when you think back to like dial-up internet you don't have to wait forever right well even today I really feel like I need fast internet because I do a lot of work from home now if you're in the position where you only use your Wi-Fi at home for Netflix and watching YouTube and movies then maybe you can get away with using some lower speed Wi-Fi but for me because I do so much work from home with it I need to have fast Wi-Fi and I'm willing to pay for it and now speaking of Wi-Fi there's something else that I think is important we're just gonna throw this in here very quickly is having some type of VPN so a virtual private network we're not going to get too deep into it but essentially if you're using Wi-Fi at your local library airports at cafes Starbucks McDonald's wherever it is if you're using public Wi-Fi you probably want to have some type of VPN I'll leave a link for it down in the description below on this video I use Nord VPN I got you guys 75% off discount when you use the link down in the description below they're not really sponsoring this video they kind of are but they're not they didn't reach out to me but it is a link that does help this channel supports the channel so if you're interested in getting a VPN and protecting all of your information when you're using public Wi-Fi check out that link down in the description below so there's some other things that I think are important for myself I know that I spend money on Tupperware I don't have a lot of it I think there's a nice balance here but I don't use Ziploc bags it probably saves me like a dollar per month I don't really care about the money but it really saves me money is because I have this proper we're a more incentivized to pack a lunch if I'm going somewhere for the day and I'm not gonna be back for a while I have Tupperware so I can just throw sandwiches in there I can throw some other types of food in there and then throw in my backpack and go instead of doing what a lot of people do where they don't have any Tupperware or even ziplock bags and they end up just leaving the department leaving their house for the day and then come lunch time they go out and they buy some Chipotle or they buy some lunch somewhere because they don't have any food on hand so topping where it actually saves me a lot of money in that specific case so I still haven't bought a French press yet I'm thinking about it I've been feeling a lot of pressure on it but I do pay a little bit more money for some higher quality clothing I'm not talking about 1,200 our Gucci jackets and $1400 Louis Vuitton boots what I mean by this is getting some clothing that's not $2 t-shirts from Walmart because I used to buy those especially when I had no money whatsoever especially in college I would buy the cheapest clothing possible but now as a little bit of money freed up in my budget I decided that it's better to buy some someone middle-of-the-road clothing where maybe I spend 10 dollars on a t-shirt instead of two dollars and this way I can have fewer shirts they last longer they look better and it's just all around better for myself to have fewer clothing items but of higher quality for all of those items now wrapping into you can also think about style and how you kind of what types of clothing you're buying I think that people who buy the things that are super in style say you go to Urban Outfitters right and you're binding like champion sweatshirts well you know what in twelve months those things are gonna be out of style you're gonna look like a fool so what I do and this is really because I just don't have style I don't understand it and I don't know how to match clothing I'm just not good with that so I just wear very simple clothing you probably notice I wear a lot of black and wear black pants black shirt pretty much every day the reason for that is I suck at style I'm not good at it so I just wear simple clothing and it's hard to mess up wearing a black t-shirt or a maroon shirt it's just very simple all right so that's how I keep it and it's kind of timeless so buying timeless clothing as well it's gonna save you a lot of money all around instead of kind of like trying to keep up with the trends all the time it's gonna end up draining in a while what happens to so many people they're spending thousands of dollars on clothing well you can just get some simple clothes that will last you for years and so the final kind of message in this video that I wanted to really bring across here is that if you are going to spend money on something say you get a year-end bonus you get $2,000 at the end of the year from your employer and it's just really burning a hole in your pocket you want to spend it you don't know how to spend it you've already saved a lot of money this year so you say you know what you want to treat yourself with it now you can do whatever you want I spend plenty of money on travel and things that don't make much financial sense but what I always try to keep in the back of my mind is if I can take this money that I want to spend and I can spend it on something that retains its value or even makes me more money that's a win-win all around the board so a great example of this is when I was younger I was probably 10 years old maybe 11 I took all of my life savings and I bought a metal detector for a hundred and twenty some dollars I love this idea of like treasure hunting and so I took this metal detector and I literally made money with it like going to the beach and going to parts and finding rings and all kinds of different jewelry and I found a lot of coins and a lot of junk too but I made money from a hobby so if you want to spend money see if you can find a hobby that retains its value versus a hobby that can be incredibly expensive I know people who have hobbies that cost them so much money versus people who are indifferent about the hobbies both of them make them just as happy they're just as satisfied doing either hobby but they choose the one that costs them so much money instead of the other hobby that might retain value that's just my opinion on it so that's what I want to share with you guys today if you enjoyed this video if you found any value in it make sure you subscribe to the channel share this video with other people who are kind of interested in this field thanks for subscribing thanks for watching the video I really appreciate all the support and I'll see everybody next time

Channel: Nate O'Brien

Views: 318,114

Rating: 4.9309263 out of 5

Keywords: financial freedom, financial tips, how to save money, how to save money fast, manage money, money, money management, money saving tips, nate obrien, personal finance, save money, save money 2019, saving money, spend money, ways to save money, things I don't buy, things i buy, spending money, simple living, minimalist living, things i dont buy anymore, minimalist money

Id: Q0xjk9k3MR0

Length: 13min 53sec (833 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 24 2019