Just before I retired in 2011 I sold almost everything I owned. It wasn’t because money was tight, but because I wanted to spend my life as an adventure, traveling the world, pursuing my passions of writing and photography and most of the things I owned weren’t going to fit into that lifestyle. I didn’t intend to become a “minimalist” , but I wanted to make the most of my retirement and it was the best thing that would make things work smoothly.
I didn’t intend to become a “minimalist”, but I wanted to make the most of my retirement and it was the best thing that would make things work smoothly.
Like most people in the western world, I had spent most of my life as a blindly accumulating happy baby boomer consumer, so getting rid of almost everything was not a casual decision. I had accumulated a lot of things over the years, but I knew experiences, being creative and relationships were things that brought me true happiness; not my stuff. Yes, I could have put everything in storage, but the real problem was that at the age of fifty I had outgrown most of my possessions. The thought of a retirement filled with a lot of stuff, but a finite amount of adventures and experiences, brought me fear.