Stuff

As Tyler Durden put it in Fight Club (possibly the most important movie ever made), we're "chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need." And, even worse, "the things you own end up owning you."

He's right. Very few, if any, of our possessions actually make us happy. On the contrary, they often make us quite miserable. They enslave us to having to maintain them and they trap us in fear of having them damaged, stolen or destroyed. Plus, we just don't need 99% of the stuff we own.

Over the years I've been cutting down more and more on stuff, and you know what? There's little that feels more freeing than getting rid of things I just don't need. I'm also buying a whole lot less. If I don't need it I try not to buy it, and does this ever save a lot of money.

Learning to live with less stuff is the first step on the road to freedom. The funny thing is, while it sounds like it would be difficult to do, at least at first, one quickly learns that it's actually one of the easiest things in the world to do and that the less you have the richer your life becomes (not to mention the richer your bank account becomes, if that's something you care about).