Minimalism: More Freedom, Less Crap – Material and Otherwise

Minimalism is a tool that can assist you in finding freedom. Freedom from fear. Freedom from worry. Freedom from overwhelm. Freedom from guilt. Freedom from depression. Freedom from the trappings of the consumer culture we’ve built our lives around… Minimalists search for happiness not through things, but through life itself.

— The Minimalists, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus

In a medical office waiting room, I stumbled across a reference to a book that piqued my interest, Everything That Remains, a memoir by two Dayton, Ohio young men with working class upbringings and early adulthood, ladder-climbing, wealth-accumulating ambitions, about their gravitation from the timeworn path toward an illusory standard of The American Dream to something more introspective and streamlined called Minimalism.

I found it at the library and read it. You might think the rest of this essay will be a screed about the evils and vacuousness of materialism and consumerism, and the beauty and simplicity of deprivation and Idealism, and a door-to-door-Bible-salesman-like proselytization aimed at convincing you to chuck the former’s wanderings through a vast commercial wasteland in favor of a holier life spent in the latter’s pure Garden of Eden. Breathe a sigh of relief; it won’t be.

The book did put a name to the broad ideas about how I’d prefer to live, though. And I believe I’m largely putting those ideas into practice.

When people hear the term “Minimalism” applied to a lifestyle, it does seem to conjure the image of someone just barely better off than Fed Ex plane crash survivor Tom Hanks’ character stranded on an uninhabited island in Castaway, fashioning shoes from palm fronds, feverishly twirling a stick on a rock to start a fire, and squeezing meager marine nourishment out of a shellfish speared with a homespun, sharpened bamboo pole. They think Minimalism means living a Spartan, monk-like, stripped-down existence: doing without, possessing no things, having no fun, staring at four bare walls from a lonely chair, living in a quixotic commune, scraping by on the minimum, spending no money – hell, making no money! It doesn’t.

What Minimalism means to me, as The Minimalists describe it, is eliminating the clutter from my life – figuratively and literally – so that all I have left and all that I focus my attention and physical, mental and emotional energy upon are things that add value and meaning to my life. The Minimalists love the book/movie Fight Club, about an underground, subversive group of men breaking free from the soul-numbing shackles imposed by societal, cultural and corporate expectations, citing this quote from Fight Club’s charismatic leader Tyler Durden: “The things you own end up owning you.”

Eliminating oppressive, useless clutter that bogs you down applies to relationships, careers, meaningless pursuits and time-consuming obligations – real or imagined – as well as physical objects. That’s the freedom to which The Minimalists refer.

Minimalism is about breaking free from corporate and cultural influences that tell you who you should be, how you should act, what you should believe and how you should define success. It’s about the freedom to define your own path toward happiness and fulfillment, regardless of the disapproval and negativity you may receive from friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances. It’s about the freedom to take risks, the freedom to make choices, the freedom to make mistakes and fail, and the freedom to take full responsibility for all of that in service of living a more courageous, authentic, satisfying and inspiring life.

It so happens that my recent movement toward Minimalism – a transition to a new career in mental health counseling from public relations, a move to a smaller area with a simpler lifestyle – has coincided with a more Spartan lifestyle, more out of necessity than by design. I have moved from a 3-bedroom, 4-bathroom townhouse to a 1-bed, 1-bath apartment. I am earning a salary that is less than half of my last full-time job salary, the result of the career change and starting on a bottom rung in a region with lower wages. I am not “livin’ large” – I’m driving a 15-year-old economy car; watching the smallest-possible, decade-old flat-screen TV, donated to me by a friend, on a no-frills cable TV package; and sleeping on a real bed only after weeks on a constantly-deflating air mattress, because I had no bed to take on my move – but I’m livin’ free and livin’ well.

I have no debt, save for my mortgage, the house I moved from but still own, and which still adds value to my life. I feel a greater sense of meaning and purpose in my new career than my former, so much so that retirement holds no allure for me at age 54, which I consider a good thing. I am pursuing activities and relationships that enhance my life.

I am a proponent of Minimalism, not because I want to latch on to the latest fad or lifestyle trend that may be featured on the Today show or in chic lifestyle magazines, but because my  re-evaluation of the course of my life during the reflective midlife phase was pointing me in the direction of Minimalism before I realized the philosophy had been assigned a pithy label. I am striving to be a Minimalist – not impoverished, deprived, lonely, isolated, rigid, overly austere, Utopian, cultist, weird, eccentric, anti-social, anti-consumerist, or anti-technologist (think Unabomber) – but free to embrace and fully pursue the things I value.

This quote from Minimalism’s emblematic movie, Fight Club, captures the undercurrent stimulating the Ohio natives’ cum Montana entrepreneurs’ lifestyle movement:

Man, I see in Fight Club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. Goddammit, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables—slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man: No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war; our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.

Good Money

When I would tell people I got a new job to start a new career in another state and would be moving, one of the first questions they’d inevitably ask was, “How much will you be making?” Or, so as to be less crass, “Will you be making good money?”

In our competitive, capitalist, consumerist society, it is only natural that money is the first thing that comes to mind when someone accepts a new position. To be sure, why would anyone choose to move more than 500 miles and three states away for a job if not to make good money?

I had three answers for that question, and all had validity:

1. Yes, of course I would be making good money, because there’s no such thing as bad money.
2. No, I wouldn’t be making good money, compared to the much better money I had made in previous jobs.
3. None of your friggin’ business what kind of money!

The answer is not simple. My job as a therapist under a two-year provisional license pays considerably less than my previous positions in public relations. I am at the entry level in the mental health field, where salaries and pay, though variable depending upon many factors, are relatively low compared to many other professions.

However, my job pays considerably more annually than the series of Gig Economy counseling internships and part-time and temporary jobs I had pieced together for the final two years of my counseling master’s degree program after leaving my full-time job. So viewed from that perspective, my new job does pay good money, and I’m grateful for that.

In midlife, we evaluate what we’ve already done and what we’d like to do with our remaining years, which no longer seem infinite. Priorities change, as we shift from the achievement-oriented, ladder-climbing, self-focused goals of younger adulthood to an increased desire to make a contribution to others, pursue meaningful activities and leave a legacy. My change to a career in counseling reflects the internal re-evaluations of the midlife transitional period.

When you realign priorities and make a significant change, there will be sacrifices. For me, one of those was money – good money. I knew that consequence of my decision from the start, when I embarked on the graduate program nearly six years before actually entering the counseling field. But I ignored that inescapable fact at the time.

Now that my new level of pay is a reality, I’m adjusting my life and budget to match. I may not yet qualify as a full-fledged Minimalist, but I’ve moved closer to that end of the scale in my spending, decision-making and thinking.

I don’t want to minimize the importance of making money – good money – or pretend I don’t care. It certainly helps in many ways and I always endeavored to make good money – at least the best I could in any given circumstance. I’d certainly rather be well-off and feel secure than poor and living anxiously paycheck to paycheck. Wouldn’t everyone? Fortunately, I have some financial cushion, enough to allow me to overcome the financial anxieties of making a career change, but far below some golden threshold to claim money doesn’t really matter.

But making ever more good money – however one defines it — isn’t the end-all be-all path to an ever more glorious Shangri-La, as a 2010 Princeton University study concluded. The Princeton researchers found that no matter how much more than $75,000 per year that a person earned, their “degree of happiness,” or emotional well-being did not increase. It also found that, though earning less than $75,000 in and of itself did not cause people to feel more unhappy, it did magnify and intensify negative feelings from life problems they had.

Beyond the practical realities of how I spend and the reduced margin of discretionary money available to save or burn compared to my previous work life, I’ve had to make a humbling mental adjustment: Here I am, in my 50s, peak earning years, with two graduate degrees, making less than half of what I made at my last full-time job, and less than or equivalent to many workers with much less education or years of experience than I have. Yet, I would still contend I am making good money, not bad money.

I gain fulfillment and a sense of purpose and contribution from counseling people and helping them improve their lives. Work is stimulating, rewarding and challenging, which I couldn’t always claim before. I look forward to my future in this new profession, and its many opportunities for learning, growth and entrepreneurship.

For those reasons, I know I can take this to the bank: I am making good money, with the promise of better money to come. When you truly enjoy what you are doing for a living and apply yourself with a passion because of that, the money naturally tends to follow. Good money.

Do the Limbo. Or, How to Be ‘Comfortable with Ambiguity’

I am in limbo. Complete and utter limbo.

However, the bar is not set low and I am not trying to shimmy under. The bar is high and I am aspiring to clear it like a Fosbury Flop.

It’s not supposed to be like this as a 54-year-old, according to societal expectations. I’m supposed to be settled, stable, predictable, a rock, boring in my steadiness. I chose another path, paved with uncertainty. It’s come with a loss of income, stability and predictability. But I expect the payoff will come in the form of greater life and career satisfaction, and income growth ultimately will follow as I hopefully find passion in my work.

My limbo status is largely of my own design and in small part due to the bugaboo of bureaucracy.

I have 11 days left until my second summer teaching tennis at the Sea Colony resort in Bethany Beach, DE runs out on Labor Day and I return home, jobless and anxious but optimistic. I have spent nearly two years in the Gig Economy, ever since a non-amicable parting with a former employer allowed me to place more focus on a master’s degree program in clinical mental health counseling and the two years of internships required to complete it, as part of a midlife career transition from public relations to counseling. I have been scrambling to piece together part-time, temporary and contractual jobs since I dropped out of the routine 9-to-5 world.

I graduated in May 2017, and expected that tennis teaching for 3 ½ months would provide the perfect bridge to the new career, allowing enough time for me to obtain the state license I need to be eligible to practice, get hired and begin work. But bureaucracy has brought that plan to a grinding halt, possibly leading me to the unemployment office rather than a counseling office, at least temporarily.

A long waiting period to get access to my “official verified” National Counselor Exam report has left my state license applications – and thus job prospects – in limbo, even though I have already been notified that I passed the exam. The blood pressure ticked a little higher each day over the last six weeks as I awaited an email notification from the national counselor certification body that my school transcript met all requirements, along with my exam score, for certification.

One former boss wrote in my annual performance review that I needed to be “comfortable with ambiguity.” That was corporate speak for an organization refusing to accept accountability for its disorganization, poor leadership and incoherent, vacillating strategy. Ironically, now that I’ve left that organization, the advice applies.

My immediate future is ambiguous. I don’t know where I’ll be working as a counselor, or when. I don’t know how long it will take state licensing boards to review my applications and grant a license. I don’t even know what state I will be living in, as I have applied for license in Maryland and South Carolina.

So, what have I learned about being “comfortable with ambiguity?”

• Take things one day at a time, as cliché as that may sound. Thinking too much about unknowns in the future produces excessive worry but no solutions.
• Pursue aggressive actions whenever possible to address things over which you do have control, such as making networking contacts, applying to jobs and following up on leads. Taking action tends to boost motivation, confidence and attitude.
• Detach from the cell phone and computer for periods of time. It’s tempting when living with job and income uncertainty to obsessively check for email and phone contacts, which increases anxiety each time none have come through.
• Have faith that putting what you want to attract into the universe ultimately will materialize for you, with persistence, patience and a positive outlook.
• Continue doing things you like to do (that are free or low-cost) to keep your spirits high and take your mind off worries.
• Squirrel away your nuts (money). Live cheaply (the Minimalist lifestyle) while dealing with ambiguity, to reduce financial pressures.

Limbo is not a comfortable place to be when you have financial and family obligations, when you feel like you should be occupying a certain status and you’re not, and when you like to plan and predict your life with a high degree of certainty. But for me, my current state of limbo is a necessary part of the process of getting where I want to be, just another stage of the journey, another bar to traverse.

15 Principles for Surviving and Executing a Career Transition

In two months I will complete a graduate degree in clinical mental health counseling that will have taken 5½ years to finish, enabling me to take final steps to executing a fairly drastic midlife career change from public relations. I had made a career change before, from journalism to public relations. Though still jarring, that transition was significantly more seamless than this one, requiring no additional education and using many of the same skills.

I have been seeking to derive more meaning and satisfaction from my career, as well as the opportunity to self-direct my future, embrace an entrepreneurial spirit, contribute value to society and work flexibly, creatively, collaboratively and independently. I explored life-coaching, completing a series of training courses, but ultimately didn’t pursue it. But the idea of helping people with psychological, emotional and life challenges stuck with me.

It took me about three years of mulling the idea to apply to graduate school for counseling and another year after acceptance to enroll in my first class. Twenty-one classes and three internships later, I’m on the precipice of a career transition.

It hasn’t been easy. As I started my internships, I ran into a buzz saw at my PR job. It was miserable, and at the same time the best thing that could have happened. I couldn’t have done both well simultaneously, along with graduate classes. I would have burned out. I left my job, and the security blanket of a biweekly paycheck. That was 18 months ago. Since then, I’ve lived a much more itinerant, unpredictable and frugal existence, cobbling together temporary, seasonal and part-time jobs, and unpaid or low-paid internships.

In brief, these are 15 principles I’ve learned about making a significant career change, concepts that are valuable to consider while mulling a change or while bulldozing through the trenches:

1. Long-Term Vision – A career transition won’t happen if you can’t envision a different future, if you are too overwhelmed by the daily grind and stressors to dream about a new life.
2. Delay Gratification/Patience – Depending on how drastic the change and the amount of education and training required, the transition could be a long haul rather than a quick fix.
3. Risk (Tolerance/Acceptance) – You will be giving up something known for something new, with no guarantee of breaking in, or even being proficient at or liking the new endeavor.
4. Self-Knowledge – Become clear on what is most important to you, your values, how much risk you can tolerate, and how hard you are willing to work to make a change happen.
5. Courage – You’ll have to be brave enough to take risks and step out of your comfort zone.
6. Confidence/Self-Assuredness – Consider how you will handle other people in your life, including those closest to you and colleagues in your current occupation, questioning or casting aspersions on your decisions. How much would a wave of skepticism and criticism deter you or affect your thinking and beliefs?
7. Identity – Leaving a profession, especially one you’ve worked at for years and in which you’ve achieved a certain level of expertise, status and success, can significantly alter how you identify yourself. Can your ego withstand such an identity loss, while building a new and different piece of your identity?
8. Research/Network – It will be important to determine the costs and requirements (and barriers) to entry into a new profession, as well as occupational outlook, such as job growth and salary projections. Soak up all the information you can about your prospective new career while considering a transition and in the transitional phase by interviewing people in the field, networking with fellow career changers and professors, taking classes, attending conferences and reading industry journals.
9. Commitment/Persistence – A half-hearted or uncertain effort will likely fail to result in lasting change, like my foray into coaching. The urge to give up may hit, especially early in the process. You’ll have to constantly re-evaluate your commitment, revisit why you embarked on the effort in the first place and resist inevitable doubts.
10. Embrace Uncertainty/Unpredictability – Become comfortable with not knowing and embracing the journey as an adventure. View unpredictability as making life more exciting, stimulating and challenging. Here’s where faith and spirituality can come into play.
11. Sacrifice – Be prepared to pay costs in terms of money, time, effort, perceived security and status (you may go from being expert to novice).
12. Hustle/Scramble/Diversify – A career transition may not be seamless, moving directly from a job in one career to a job in another. There may be an intermediary period involving education, training, internships and the like. You may have to jump off the cliff during this period – leaving security behind – but with a parachute. You just won’t be able to be sure where you may drift or land along the way. You may have to be aggressive in patching together a living from various jobs that aren’t career jobs, but serve as a means to your end. You may have to call on skills you weren’t using in your current career, or adapt your skills to different positions that work within your new goals. For me, that meant working summers as a tennis teacher and applying writing and teaching skills as a university writing tutor.
13. Flexibility – A flexible frame of mind complements the principles of identity and hustle. If you are not rigid in your identity, you can explore varied employment opportunities, living arrangements and lifestyles that can help you manage the transition. If you are open to a wide range of income-producing opportunities, you can minimize your reluctance to try new things – perhaps jobs you would have once considered beneath you — and ramp up your hustle to get them.
14. Financial House – Your transition will be easier and less stressful if there is Order in the House, the Financial House. As much and as far ahead as possible, craft a financial plan for the transition. Build savings cushions and tuition accounts, if education is necessary. Consider becoming a minimalist in your lifestyle choices, to some degree. A transition likely will come with some financial pain, including possibly a precipitous income drop from your previous career once you start in a new occupation, but planning and frugality can mitigate the potential pitfalls.
15. Negotiation – If you’re lucky, you’ll have a current employer who respects, or maybe even encourages and supports, your career-change endeavor (I wasn’t). If so, see how you can negotiate to get what you need – time, a flexible schedule, tuition assistance, remote work arrangement – while continuing to fulfill your employer’s needs. You may be able to hold onto your job and income much longer (I couldn’t), helping to bridge the transition.

 

 

Divorced Parents with United Financial Goals

One of the toughest things about divorce is untangling and dividing finances, and planning and making financial agreements for the future that each party can live up to when kids are involved. Fortunately, my ex-wife and I have done a pretty good job at that, and it’s paying off now.

Money battles between divorced parents and short-sightedness not only cause intense acrimony between the former husband and wife, but almost unavoidably will spill over into relationships between the parents and the kids and cause more turmoil, stress and anxiety. Challenging enough that parents who once combined incomes to create more buying power and economies of scale have to double down on everything after divorce – housing, property taxes, furniture, electricity, cable, maintenance costs, health and car insurance and more – without negatively affecting relationships and kids’ attitudes, perceptions and sense of well-being and security.

My ex-wife and I are likely going through our greatest time of financial stress since our separation 11 years ago right now, yet we are weathering it well (I can’t be positive, but I think I can speak for both of us). This fall 2016, both our children will be in college at the same time. In addition, I am in a graduate school program for counseling, so I’ll be paying for three higher education degrees simultaneously.

But a few things have saved us from potentially extreme financial pressures and enormous debt.

First, we planned for the kids’ college education early in their lives, investing in Maryland’s prepaid college tuition program (for two years’ tuition) when they were 4 and 2. We also opened Education IRAs for each child around the same time. Second, when we divorced, we agreed to continue contributing to each fund on an arranged schedule, and each of us adhered to the agreement. Third, I opened Maryland 529 college investment accounts for me and both kids a few years before my oldest entered college to help fund my education and fill in inevitable gaps in theirs. Finally, each kid made wise choices to attend state universities, where tuition costs are half or less of private or out-of-state colleges.

My ex-wife and I each have had the discipline, cooperation and foresight to keep contributing to the kids’ college educations, even though we were no longer united or in agreement on other things. Sending both kids to college still will make a big dent in my monthly budget and annual cash flow. But as a result of our advanced planning and divorce agreements, I believe each kid will be able to graduate from college debt-free (and me from my graduate program without wiping out savings and investments). That will be a huge gift to each of them, and a big benefit in starting out their adult lives.

Working together with an ex-spouse after a divorce, as aggravating and imperfect as it may be at times, certainly pays off, both for the kids and the adults going their own ways.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes: The Midlife Transition

At midlife, I’m in transition…constantly.

Over the last year, in my early 50s, I’ve faced more challenging transitions than any other year of my life. It keeps me always somewhat on edge.

My life has been like a David Bowie song, minus the stutter:

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Turn and face the strain…

As my kids reached the ages of 20 and 18 and I pursued a second career change, I have:

Left a full-time job in public relations after seven years, been unemployed and learned to live without a steady paycheck

Become a full-time graduate student

Scrambled to find part-time work, even trying out as a “coach” for a company that teaches soccer and educational skills to pre-school kids, something out of my element

Completed an internship in a new field, mental health counseling (therapy)

Adopted, to some degree, the minimalism approach to life

Switched from graduate school and the counseling internship to a six-day-per-week job as a tennis instructor for the late spring and summer months for a much-needed cash infusion

Moved from the D.C.-Baltimore suburbs to a Delaware beach town to work as a seasonal tennis instructor

Transitioned from married and family life to bachelorhood, living with two single roommates for my summer hiatus at the tennis resort

Adapted to an empty nest, with one child in college and another entering this fall

Acknowledged that my 20-year-old daughter really has become an independent adult, observing her navigate a semester abroad in France and travel around Europe

It’s been a lot of change for one year; most of it was of my own volition and some of it was thrust upon me. Overall, encountering transitions has been positive, though sometimes admittedly nerve-racking. It has kept me motivated, challenged and stimulated. One thing’s for sure: I have never been bored or complacent during this transitory period.

The transitions have required me to look within and summon my confidence and belief in myself, which has been something I’ve often struggled with. I’ve had to do this on a daily basis in both my counseling internship and tennis teaching job, working in environments that were completely unfamiliar and in positions where I’ve had to try to project confidence immediately with strangers.

The transitions will keep unfolding. I expect to graduate with the counseling degree in May 2017, and then embark on the new career for real, but in what capacity, I’m not sure. My son will move out for good to his campus dorm in August. I’m even thinking of moving from the area I’ve lived for the past 28 years to a smaller locale in the South, as I transition to the new career and seek a warmer, slower-paced, more gracious lifestyle more befitting of the minimalist philosophy.

Transitions have been healthy for me. At a time of midlife when many may be stagnating and biding time until a retirement of unknown purpose and activity, I feel optimistic and excited about my future and the opportunities and meaning transitions will bring.

For anyone contemplating a meaningful transition in midlife, I recommend taking the risk, or you may regret missing your window down the road.

Living on the Cheap

Since I left my full-time, public relations job last October to focus on my unpaid counseling internship and a full-time course load as a master’s degree candidate in pastoral counseling, I’ve adapted to living on the cheap.

I can’t say I’m living a deprived life or even struggling. I have everything I need and much more. I can’t say I have any idea what it’s like to live day-to-day, hand-to-mouth, wondering where the next meal will come from or worrying about losing my shelter. Comparatively, I’m well-off, not one of the “1 percenters” but probably closer to that than the bottom 75 percent.

But I am more aware of, and closely monitoring, my discretionary spending, much more than when I knew my bank account would be replenished with an equal amount every two weeks. I am subscribing to minimalism, at least to some extent, as described in the book, Everything That Remains by The Minimalists.

Still, just as I’m transitioning careers in midlife, I’ve hit a time of financial stress and challenges. In addition to my own graduate school tuition, I’ll have two children in college in the fall. Three simultaneous higher educations will blast a cannonball-sized hole in any family budget. I am not so many years away from typical retirement age – though with my new career, I plan to work as long as I want and don’t ever envision really retiring. And if the theory holds true that you will need $1 million in retirement to last, I have a long way to go. And I have an aging parent who could need financial help in the future.

Despite my income needs, I reached a point where I knew I couldn’t adeptly handle a full-time job, a part-time internship and graduate school classes, and perform any of them well and with full focus, without suffering from stress, exhaustion and dissatisfaction. Trying to handle them all might have doomed completion of the counseling master’s degree after a four-year investment.

Luckily, I have a wife with stable employment (though with a company known for frequent layoffs and restructurings) that has provided a financial anchor while I scramble to produce more erratic income from various sources.

That’s what brought me to the Sea Colony Tennis resort in Bethany Beach, DE to work as a seasonal tennis instructor for the summer. Though it required me to be away from home, it provided the greatest earning potential for the short period between internships and semesters.

I found the cheapest place I could rent, no easy feat along the shore, and am living with two roommates. One roommate is another tennis instructor who is living similarly frugally. He turned me on to the Dollar Store, where we’ve bought a lot of our food, toiletries, medications and household items at half the cost of the grocery store. We found the Atlantic Community Thrift Store, where I got a cool Old Navy bathing suit for $2 and he found a Pinehurst Golf jacket for pennies on the dollar and a desk chair for $3. My roommate has found a way to play several holes of golf for free by walking onto a course near our house after regular hours.

I’ve been here for 15 days, and have gone out for a meal only once, my first night. It’s tempting, with all the restaurants, seafood and pizza joints and junk food establishments at the beach, but I’ve held off so far. I question each expense to determine if it’s necessary, while still allowing certain indulgences like Dollar Store sale-priced Doritos and ice cream bars.

The tennis teaching season has started relatively slow, while school is still in session and most tennis-player vacations are planned for July and August. That’s when I’ll make my money and the investment to live away from home pay off. I’m conscious that going out for a beer and appetizer plus tip can wipe out the earnings of a one-hour tennis clinic, and what would be the point of that?

My one other indulgence was the clunky, antique, heavy-as-hell cash register I bought on a whim on my way to move to the beach at a roadside antique and junk shop. Even then, I bargained the proprietor down from $50 to $20. I have no idea its worth and it needs some refurbishing, but it looks retro-stylish. I think the guy just wanted to get rid of it, an indication it’s not worth much in its worn condition.

Living cheaply means living more simply. I like it. As long as I have enough income to meet my needs and preferably a few wants, I’m happy. It’s less stressful than trying to make more money so I can live bigger, have more and maintain more. Living cheaply, I can focus on the things that matter – relationships, pursuing fulfilling work, helping others and doing things I enjoy with my time, which will be more possible when my income needs are less.

Living on the cheap was brought about for me largely by necessity. But it is a lifestyle choice that I embrace.

Reliving Youth

Tomorrow I leave home for my summer job. It feels like I’m back in college, when I worked one summer in Nantucket, MA and another in Los Angeles. Except now I’m 53.

I’ll be working as a seasonal tennis pro at a large tennis resort in an East Coast beach town. I already had a taste of the resort tennis teaching life for my first long weekend in May. It was a welcome break from the career grind and mundane office environment.

This summer’s job reflects the saying, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” It certainly was not part of a long-term plan, but born out of necessity to change course, re-imagine life and re-adjust on the fly in response to circumstances.

At midlife, I’m embracing the idea that life does not have to be lived only one way. You can have a grind-it-out, 40-hour per week job, year-in and year-out. Or you can find another way to make a living in this gig economy, while trying to steal back more time, flexibility and independence. And with that, more purpose, meaning and passion.

I’m also embracing the philosophy of minimalism, or at least trying to limit my spending, cut costs, reduce my income needs and live a simplified life that maximizes enjoyment and meaning and minimizes stress. That’s what this summer will be all about.

My full-time employment in public relations ended in October 2015, for various reasons. One was that reality sunk in about the challenges performing a full-time job, working a part-time internship in a new field as a counselor at an outpatient mental health clinic, and taking graduate school classes in counseling, not to mention trying to function as a father and husband. I soon realized that trying to do all of these would be to do them all half-assed, and be constantly exhausted and over-stressed. My job had gone south anyway, so the break was a relief.

But I left that job with no clear plan on how to produce income while I completed the final two years of my counseling program, including two intensive nearly year-long internships. I fell back on teaching tennis, which I had done during previous job layoffs. I was lucky to pick up weekend hours with a Baltimore-based tennis academy. Then the idea occurred to me: Why not apply to resorts that need additional instructors for busy summer tennis seasons, while I was in between semesters with no internship or classes? With the help of a good connection, I landed the Sea Colony position.

I’m looking forward to it. It should be a great summer. Being at the beach in a resort town, working outside doing something fun, working with a team that has a passion for tennis, getting paid to help people improve at what they enjoy, meeting many people, making new friends. Hard to beat that, and sure as hell beats sitting at a desk in a stuffy office staring at a computer screen for eight hours a day.

Of course, it won’t be all fun and games. I need to make money to fund me and my wife’s living, my education and my two kids’ college educations. So I’ll have to hustle and promote myself to line up as many private lessons and clinics as I can, in addition to the many clinics the resort schedules every day. That should be great practice for the when I become a counselor with an independent practice.

A friend referred to this time in my life – a summer teaching tennis sandwiched by counseling internships, classes and part-time jobs with no full-time job as an anchor – as a “reset.” It sure feels like a step back in time for me, all the way to the relatively more carefree and low stress days of college. Make no mistake, there’s some scrambling and anxiousness involved. But I’m grateful for the respite, happy, excited about the challenges, and optimistic about the future. You can’t really relive your youth, but if you can add some youthful exuberance and new experiences to your life – and even some motivating uncertainty — you can recapture some of those feelings. And that’s healthy at any age.

A Full Pension But Half a Life?

What is of more value to you: Your money or your time?

I had an interesting, offhand discussion about this with a classmate in my counseling graduate program. She is in the engineering field, working for a power company, is probably in her mid- to late-50s, and has three grown children. So she is aiming to be a career-changer later in life, similar to my path, going from journalism to public relations to counseling.

The difference between us is that, after grinding through the counseling program at a slow pace for four years, I am now trying to make a stronger commitment to serving my internships, completing my degree and making the transition. My classmate, also proceeding slowly at one course per semester, said she is considering working for five more years at her company so she can get a full pension instead of two-thirds or more of the pension’s value if she leaves sooner.

We talked only briefly, but since we are in a counseling program, we are accustomed to talking about life issues that really matter. Essentially, I asked her whether, if counseling truly was a passion for her, was it worth trading five more years of her life doing something she was not passionate about to have a somewhat higher income in retirement or old age? Or could she figure out how to make do with a smaller pension as a tradeoff for making a complete transition sooner and bringing more joy and inspiration to her life?

She studied my line of questioning for a moment and seemed to re-evaluate her priorities. She offered that she knew a man at her company who stayed long enough to collect a full pension. Problem was, within a year of retiring, he died.

None of us know how much time we have. It would seem a shame to have a full pension but half a life.

In the few moments we had before class, I suggested an option that might reduce my classmates’ perceived need for a larger pension: minimalism. I had just read a book, Everything That Remains, by Joshua Fields Millburn, espousing the benefits of living a minimalist life. Essentially, that means getting rid of everything that in your life that does not have real value, does not improve your life and is not needed, which could mean material possessions, unnecessary living space, services, relationships, jobs and other things we imagine we cannot live without, when we really can, and better. Instead of arranging your finances to fit your lifestyle – the one you think you need – you imagine and create the lifestyle that will make you happy, and adapt your finances to fit that.

How many of us could live a downscaled lifestyle and fill it with things that really make us happy and inspired, if we only really examined what that would mean and took actions to make it happen? How many of us live with more stress and anxiety because of all the things we need to maintain and hold onto even when we don’t really want them, much of the time out of fear, and then compound the stress by feeling the need to make enough money to maintain the things that don’t really make us happy and free?

I don’t know what my classmate will decide to do. But I’m at the point in my life where I would gladly exchange some degree of financial security for the risk and reward of pursuing a passion – or at least something close to it – and creating a life that I can truly say that I want, not one I feel obligated to soldier through out of some sense of being secure or safe, or doing what I believe society expects me to do.