Why You Don't Need All Of Your Stuff! | The Minimalists

extra special day here at the ramsay show in ramsey headquarters our good friends joshua milburn and ryan nicodemus known as the minimalists are visiting with us we love these guys we love the work that they do and it is so akin to teaching you people to live on less than you make a concept congress can't grasp so uh honored to have my friends here in the studio guys thanks for joining us hey we're honored to be here thanks for having us dave we love you brother you too man so uh the new dock is out less is now on netflix and it's a huge hit i mean it's as always with you guys the only the only thing you had that harmed it was you put me in it but um and so all the dave haters now hate the minimalist it's mandatory to to cancel somebody for something but man but anyway it's it's fabulous it's very well produced i love the scenes and uh your artistic touch as always standing in front of the brick walls and stuff and the anger camera angles and the reenactments of when you were working and all that kind of stuff it's very well done guys did you have fun on it oh man so much fun i wish i could say that we had you know something to do with that art piece of it but really our director matt diavela he is a savant so yeah the videography really um i got to give it up to matt i got to give credible credit stu but yeah we had a lot of fun making it and i'm really glad to see it uh uh going across the tv screens all across the world yeah it's gone gone huge okay let's backtrack because there might be someone out there who just emerged from a cave and never heard who the minimalists are and so we should uh upgrade uh their knowledge and catch them up to where the rest of us are so minimalism and the minimalists uh give me the two-minute version of what it is and how you got here yeah so it really started with two events in my life my mother died my marriage ended both in the same month i was 28 years old sort of at the pinnacle of my corporate career i was ostensibly successful had all the trappings of the american dream but for me that also meant a lot of debt a lot of stress a lot of anxiety and of course in our world a lot of stuff the average american household has 300 000 items in it i had all of those things and more and it's not there's anything inherently wrong with the things the problem is that i had so much stuff that i was forsaking the people closest to me and i realized that all of my priorities were out of whack i was so focused on so-called success and achievement and stuff accumulating these things they weren't making me happy they weren't doing their job and i realized i needed to simplify my life and that's really where this thing called minimalism came in minimalism is just the thing that gets us past the thing so we can make room for life's most important things which aren't things at all that's not to say that ryan and i are against stuff the problem is we have so much stuff that's actually getting in the way of living a meaningful life you know i mean we're like most of us in america uh we're just stuff obese i mean we just have stuff coming out our ears when you move and you have a box i remember this when i was when i was a kid when we were moving you have a box that says seldom used kitchen items that might be a sign that you have too much stuff yeah sounds like another name for junk drawer to me yeah yeah in the kitchen junk drawer seldom used kitsch ronco apparently sold this crap i mean you know i don't know but we buy everything in sight and because we're sold everything in sight what did you call it in the documentary uh you called it stuff itis right tough ida yeah i mean we unfortunately uh we we look at these things as a shortcut we look at uh purchasing the new car going on the vacation buying the bigger house i know for me when i got into minimalism it was because i wanted to get my time back and the reason why i didn't have control of my time is because i had so much debt and to pay all of those debt payments i had to work a crazy uh crazy job 60 70 sometimes 80 hours a week and every time i got a promotion i never thought to myself oh here's an opportunity for me to pay off debt it was always an opportunity for me to buy more more yeah because i was looking for a shortcut to happiness i was looking for a shortcut to status a shortcut for um significance really in in some ways well and our messages have overlapped for uh probably close to a decade now uh where we just say stuff like you know it's okay to have a nice car it's just not okay for a nice car to have you that's exactly right and you know it's the same kind of vibe it's this whole thing no it's stuff is not evil but when you gorge yourself on stuff you're you're going to get satiated you're never satisfied yeah it's called called the hedonic treadmill right yeah we what we do is we we get something and that becomes our new baseline and so i went from the toyota to the lexus and so when i had a lexus i all of a sudden i needed two lexuses lex eye because it was right there one was not enough in our culture it's always more and more and more and more we never stop to consider less and the only way to consider less is to identify what is enough in my life and it when we identify we have enough things what are we making room for well we're making room for our values we're making room for contribution we're making room for our family and friends the people in our lives it's much more about that than it is about amassing more things into our ever busy lifestyles so less is more the old maximum is where you came up with less is now yeah because it's the it's so cool to be now and again when you want to read this is not a thing to say you're spiritually evil if you have stuff no no it's nothing to say stuff is bad at all no it's not the stuff's fault no it's that we put it on a pedestal right right absolutely yeah i look at uh it's easy to do the advertisements we see every day it's over 5000 advertisements that's a lot of noise it's a lot of things seeping into our subconscious so i mean the thing like minimalism really helps us kind of uh sift through all that noise and what i really like about our documentary lessons now is it's really it's about starting over it's about someone who is who is stressed out by their stuff stressed out by debt who really is looking to make a shift in their life uh we have uh well we're calling them everyday minimalists in this documentary uh everyday people who have been have found a way to start over whether they're single whether they have families and they've really been able to make some major changes in their lives to to live a more meaningful life it's impossible to sit and watch the thing the documentary though and not just go pause and go god there's so much crap in this house i'm sorry or you're welcome i don't know it's just useless you know i mean it's just useless think about this dave we've been using this word a lot lately essential essential businesses essential travel but now we're a lot of us have been stuck at home for more than we bargained and all of a sudden we're looking around saying what is essential in this house yeah and i thought i was gonna need all these things especially if i'm spending more time at home but it turns out i need it less than ever it's just getting in the way the documentary is less is now by the mental minimalists uh ryan nicodemus joshua milburn are with us and uh you guys be sure and check it out on netflix we're gonna come back and talk a little bit more about this but this is uh this idea of minimizing this idea of simplifying it's catching on it's a bit the minimalists have created a huge movement around this and and it gives you good pause uh psychologically to tap the brakes a little bit and just go okay what matters what is real i'm gonna be intentional with his life spiritually godliness with contentment is great gain let's breathe a little bit maybe if amazon didn't show up at your front porch for a whole week life would go on thank you bra who knew and gosh i mean you can whoo man i'm telling you wow all right we'll be back with these guys for one more segment here in just a second it's the minimalists so 240 billion dollars is spent on advertising today that's a lot of money yeah and when you think just about what is spent on a given item or we think about the power now of amazon or the power of uh facebook marketing or uh the power of the data collection that google has on individuals to custom offer you things that you just can't do without because the offer is so dialed in to exactly who you are right yeah i mean you really if you don't have a lot of intellectual prowess you are almost powerless to the sway that they put over the top of you in this and so we end up with just what we're talking about is the minimalists are about minimizing your life not stuff is evil not money is evil not you're a bad person if you have a nice car it's not that kind of stuff this is not gnosticism it's minimalism right and so but it is about make your stuff have meaning and when you've got so much stuff you've just gorged on it it's just like all you do is eat candy and you've got no no nutrition in your life your stuff is giving you no nutrients yes there's no happiness coming from it the documentary is less is now and with all this advertising money spent we've all got to put our guards up uh because otherwise we just get sucked into this vortex of consumerism materialism and and lost so you guys have helped so many people by giving them a guideline giving them a rule or a step so what's the first thing if you go yeah dave i agree with what you're saying i agree with what joshua and ryan are saying but so what do i do now because i got a house full of crap well we start the film with a question how might your life be better with less and the reason we asked that question it starts with the why too instead of the how to the how to sort of manifest as soon as you understand the why and that's what i love with what you do with your work is helping people understand the benefits of getting becoming debt-free the same thing is the benefits of simplifying your life understanding the why for some people it's financial freedom sometimes it's getting your time back sometimes it's improving your relationships sometimes just i want less stuff to clean in my house my house is so full of clutter but also realizing that physical clutter is just a physical manifestation of what's going on inside this if you have a bunch of material clutter you have spiritual clutter mental clutter emotional clutter all of this internal clutter and it starts with the stuff but as we start decluttering that stuff we're able to look inward we also have some rules like we have 16 rules for living with less on our website it's a free ebook people can download and i'll give you a couple of them here one's the seasonality rule we also call it the 90 90 rule if you look at an item in your house and say have i used this item in the last 90 days if not am i going to use it in the next 90 days if not i give myself permission to let go and that covers all seasons so right now if i use it in the winter nope okay am i going gonna use it in the spring nope am i using the summer nope all right let's get rid of it uh we hold on to so many items just in case another rule we have the just in case rule think about everything that's a hoarder rule right right that's the hoarder excuse for everything i might need this later yeah in some hypothetical future that doesn't actually exist and so anything that we're holding on to just in case we can let go of because we can replace it for less than 20 in less than 20 minutes think about this though you never have to use the rule once you get rid of it you don't miss the thing and you're able to move on as soon as you like it's really cheap insurance and it's definitely cheaper than you know renting out a storage unit every single month to keep all that just in case stuff that that adds up for sure yes it did yeah the just in case surcharge oh wow there's one more tax on just in case yeah spontaneous combustion rule so if you have an item that's feeling a little bit burdensome and you're struggling i put so much meaning in it of course if everything's precious nothing is precious right but if i'm putting so much meaning in this but ask yourself how would i feel if this item spontaneously combusted right now how would that make me feel and if you'd feel a sense of relief maybe it's time to let go yeah yeah you know that does not mean you can burn your house down no okay another good place to start um i think you mentioned uh your daughter rachel had uh played this game but the 30-day minimalism game or the hashtag less is now challenge it's a great great way to start because it helps you get that momentum that you need in order to start to decluttering your life so the way it works is you find a friend or a family member who wants to get rid of some stuff and and we know that decluttering can be a little bit boring a little tedious so this makes it fun because you bring someone else in and then you make a bet to see who can go uh the longest each day of the month getting rid of items so you start on day one you get rid of one item then you go to day two you get rid of two items and then day three three items and then okay so forth and so on you probably get it uh whoever lasts the longest wins if both people last the whole month they both won because they would have gotten rid of about 500 items each which is a great start yeah that's a lot of junk it is yeah but and you know watching the documentary it was just like a thing of you know scotch tape all right that's one thing yeah or what i mean it doesn't have to be like you you sold your car right exactly exactly and that could be a big item it can be it can't be you know i guess you could technically count like you know 12 paper clips on day 12. that's kind of cheap that's the box come on no cheating yeah that's right that's for sure so we're consumed with spending this economy basically exists on spending so i mean stimulus oh stimulate things yeah stimulate things and what this does rachel talked about it over dinner one night because rachel of our three kids is the spender and she's obviously the one that is on the television on the radio show does podcasts on best-selling books on money which is irony of ironies but the uh but rachel's uh her she talked about it it was almost like detoxing yes you know it's a cleansing sense a sense of i just feel better yeah i'm complete in an empty room and so there's nothing wrong with the stuff it enhances my life it augments my life but it's not me it's not part of my identity unfortunately it has become part of our identity i am this thing and we even use terms like i love my truck or i love my house or i love my bed there's nothing wrong with enjoying things we get confused when we love our truck but i also love my wife i love my daughter it's a little different yeah exactly a little different yeah the documentary is less is now it is on netflix both of the documentaries are still on netflix as a matter of fact you can go see the original and see the whole sequence that way if you want to joshua milburn run nicodemus are my guests this half hour and um you know we want people to take control their money we want them to get out of debt and how does minimalism fit into that i mean that's really why i started um i wanted to reclaim my time i was like i said earlier i was working 60 70 sometimes 80 hours a week to pay all of these debt payments and uh yeah i saw minimalism as an opportunity for me to simplify for me to get rid of as much debt as possible and really i mean dave my original plan was to go be a barista i was gonna go serve coffee 20 30 hours a week but in order to get there i had to get rid of some stuff and i had to get rid of some debt now uh the minimalist was a beautiful accident 10 years later i still hope to be a barista one day by the way okay just haven't got there yet we got a machine out here if you don't make it so much people coffee espresso machine all right yeah we let you practice but but you know i really just wanted to get my time back and that's that's what i think minimalism can help anyone do anyone who is dissatisfied with the status quo anyone who wants an opportunity to start over i think minimalism is a way that people can do that it's i don't i don't want people to mistake it for the way like we're not just saying minimalism is but it's a way it's a tool that people can use in an area that we're just so overwhelmed it's time to get a little underwhelmed i mean not minimalism hey new book coming out you guys come back in july when this comes out love people use things be watching for it and probably learn about it at the minimalist.com maybe a pre-purchase this is an advanced reader copy i got i'm not giving it back either love people use things because the opposite never works right amen we'll sign it for you absolutely do it right now thanks guys love you guys appreciate you hanging out with us man thank you so much

Channel: The Ramsey Show - Highlights

Views: 287,737

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Keywords: the dave ramsey show, budget money debt cash, real estate, insurance, how to make money, dave ramsey, save, credit card, compound interest, buying house, buy, snowball, Why You Don't Need All Of Your Stuff! | The Minimalists, minimalism, decluttering, minimalist, the minimalists, minimalists, joshua fields millburn, ryan nicodemus, finances, growth, simple, finance, personal growth, minimalist lifestyle

Id: 9IYP5xUoSBE

Length: 16min 4sec (964 seconds)

Published: Tue May 11 2021