Living with less does not involve sacrificing. It’s about living smarter to have a higher-quality life. To do this, we must ignore the sales pitches in the media and chart a new course that truly serves our best interests.
Our society has been brainwashed into believing that larger size, more features, and more luxury are better for our biggest purchases—a car and a home. Is this true, considering the financial pressures these purchases put on a person or family? When you compare all the advantages and disadvantages, I would say no.
Living with less to have more is about choosing to ignore advertisements and social conditioning and consider car and home purchases based on pure economics and common sense.
The clever advertising messages by automobile manufacturers and home builders have done an excellent job convincing the public that buying the more expensive product is the best choice. They do it by attaching this choice to joyful, pleasure-filled images of ridiculously happy people enjoying their products. They also attach this choice to your ego by including images of envious friends and neighbors admiring your new car or home.
Remember that while you work 8-10 hours a day at your job, the creative staff at advertising agencies spend their days devising clever ways to sell you a product within a space or time measured in inches or seconds.
The film industry also contributes to building a social psyche that bigger and more elaborate is better. Movies depict stories about fictitious heroes living in huge homes and driving expensive cars. Then they promote their movies with extravagant premieres and award shows.
The television and news media love to take advantage of all the hype, drama, and larger-than-life celebrity images created by imaginary movie characters! It’s an easy buck for the media to place opinionated, mouthy commentators on the sidelines of celebrity events to produce the perfect environment for advertisers. Advertisers aim to get your brain to associate excitement, pleasure, and status with their products by showing their ads during celebrity events.
That’s a long explanation, I know. But I feel it’s necessary to override the brainwashing that exists in the minds of many people. Most of the information you receive from advertisers and the media is subliminal. Information received in this way is stored in your subconscious mind, which represents 90% of your mental capacity. When this happens dozens of times a day, over many years, to millions of people, it becomes part of the consciousness of society. In other words, it becomes seen as being true and needed.
So when it comes time to buy a new car or home, your advertising and news media conditioning will compete with your logic on the best choice. The advertising and media messages may be so clever and strong that they may masquerade as logical impulses in your brain. This is powerful stuff. By the way, there are subliminal programs for positive purposes, such as self-improvement.
Okay, let’s get down to what will bring you the greatest benefits when buying a new car and home.
Living with less regarding vehicle purchases
Automobile manufacturers and dealers make the most money from their high-end luxury vehicles. Therefore, they will go to great lengths to create an enticing image that persuades you to buy them.
The truth is that some of the components used on high-end vehicles are also used on low-end products and vice versa. For example, if a safety feature like automatic headlights were created for a high-end vehicle that could be installed on a low-end vehicle, do you think they would build separate systems? Absolutely not. Automobile manufacturers will share as many components as possible to maximize their profits.
Manufacturers work hard to differentiate the high-end vehicle from the low-end vehicle by adding many extra features, horsepower, and design elements. With higher-quality materials, does it cost more to produce high-end vehicles? Yes, but not as much as you might think. Most of the money they make is on all the extra bells and whistles they add to the vehicle, and your willingness to pay more for it because of its perceived value and prestigious image. The same marketing strategy determines prices for high-end vehicles’ maintenance, parts, and accessories. You will pay much more for these items than you will for low-end vehicles, even though it might be the same service, part, or accessory in some cases.
In addition to all that, you can add the higher cost of your vehicle license, registration, taxes, and insurance. In addition, fuel costs are usually higher due to the larger engines.
So your best bet is to buy a low-end vehicle with good gas mileage and add the accessories you want. With the extra money you save, you could personalize it by adding custom wheels and other items.
Another way automobile manufacturers get you to buy larger, more expensive vehicles is to show how they can accommodate “possible” future needs. For example, they often have advertisements that show the driver of their vehicle joyfully transporting their family to a reunion, friends to a restaurant, the soccer team to the game, or a new television home from the store. If you have a large vehicle, you will most certainly be called upon to perform these duties.
Most vehicles only have one to two people in them 99 percent of the time. Why pay so much more money for the other 1 percent? With all the extra money you save, you could afford to rent a van or truck for those rare situations when needed.
Another famous storyline by manufacturers is the advertisements that show their vehicles towing a trailer or boat to a magnificent alpine lake. The ones I like the most show a high-end AWD SUV driving off-road on incredibly rough terrain with stunning wilderness scenery in the background. No intelligent person would drive a brand-new vehicle off-road on topography like that. And it’s probably illegal anyway. All considered, you’d be better off renting a cabin, a boat, and an ATV when you get there, if you ever do.
Do not allow yourself to get caught up in all the hype, guilt-creating images, and fantasy storylines shown in automobile advertisements. Approach this decision logically, make the smart choice, and do what is in your best interest.
Living with less regarding home purchases and rentals
Many people make the decision on how big of a home they should buy or rent based on how much space they need to accommodate all their stuff. In this case, their stuff controls their purchase or rental decision.
Some people have so much stuff that what they are buying or renting is a storage facility. What ends up happening is buying or renting a home that is big enough to house all your stuff, and then you’re stuck with a huge mortgage or rent. “But I’ve still got all my stuff!” you rationalize. If your mortgage or rent is so big that you can’t afford to go to a restaurant occasionally, is it worth it?
If you buy, the land is the more valuable asset, not an enormous depreciating building. The more land you own, the more privacy you’ll enjoy and the more possibilities you’ll have for future uses.
Like high-end vehicles, all your costs go up when you buy a big house. Your sales tax, decorating, and landscaping costs all go way up. The same goes for your ongoing expenses like property taxes, utilities, and maintenance. When it comes to renting, you will, of course, have higher utility costs.
Most people’s biggest monthly expense is housing. The more you can reduce this expense, the more money, freedom, and peace of mind you’ll have. With your extra money, you’ll be able to do more of what you enjoy. You’ll also be able to save a lot more money, which will give you even more peace of mind and eventually financial freedom.
There’s another exciting advantage to buying a small house. You can decorate it exactly how you want with all the extra money you save. No compromising will be necessary to afford the mortgage. Do you want granite countertops, marble floors, premium appliances, energy-efficient technology, state-of-the-art central heating & air conditioning, and a spa in your backyard? No problem!
The smaller the house you buy, the better. Now, this may be a difficult concept to get your head around. We’ve all been programmed to believe we need a particular amount of square footage inside our homes. But are the dimensions in your head really what you need? For example, do you need a 3,000-5,000 square foot home? Do you need a family room, a living room, a multimedia room, a game room, a computer room, and a den?
How often do you entertain large groups of people or have overnight guests? If you have a big house, you will most certainly be expected to! Do you want the hassles and cost of hosting parties and caring for overnight guests? If you lived in a small house and wanted to host a party, you could afford to rent a room at a nearby community center, hotel, or country club.
So what about all your stuff? Think about it. Do you need seating, tables, place settings, cooking equipment, bedding, and towels for 20 people when only 1-4 of you live in your house? Get rid of all your stuff. Everything! Hold a garage sale and turn your stuff into cash! You’ll find everything you need to know for a successful garage sale here: “Garage Sale Tips for Making Serious Money.” Then, with the money you make from your garage sale, you can buy a few nice things that fit perfectly into your new small house.
Are you starting to get the picture? A smaller home equals a smaller mortgage or rent, which equals greater freedom.
Now let’s scale down more. Imagine an intelligently designed house, exquisitely appointed, with a mortgage that is a fraction of the cost of renting an apartment and is only 400–1,000 square feet. I understand that you’d need more space if you have a lot of children, but consider this from the standpoint of it being for 1-3 people. You can factor in the number of children you have later.
Once you remove all your stuff from the equation and adjust your thinking to living in a skillfully designed smaller space, you’ll begin to see how well it will work. Once you convert to this way of beating the system and living well, you’ll get excited about it.
Another benefit of small houses is that they have a much lower impact on the environment. This happens because fewer natural materials are used to build them, their footprint is much smaller, and their waste output is less.
If you’re interested in green living and/or renewable energy, adding these features to a small house would be much less expensive since your square footage and energy use would be so tiny. And you’d have the extra money to do it since your building cost and mortgage would be much smaller.
If you override the advertising messages and social pressures in your mind, you’ll see that small is smart regarding home purchases and rentals.
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There are many other ways to downsize your life. But vehicle and home choices are two of the biggest ways you can have more by living with less.