Is Your Crap Really Worth It? By “It” I Mean Your Life

I was at an estate sale. Among the hundreds of cups and glasses, I bought a dozen for $3.

Inside the house, passing a glass-encased wall display of ceramic dolls, I went to the basement. It was wall to wall hardcover popular novels – read once and then occupying shelves beyond the owner’s death. I wouldn’t buy them for a quarter, and the library wouldn’t take them for free. At $20 retail, there was at least $10,000 worth of purchases.

Leaving the basement and seeing more commemorative glass sets for sports teams and other themes, I saw that this was a theme – whatever they had, they had a lot of.

All of it cost money, and each purchase was a trade-off that initially appeared to be cash for a Stephen King book, a New York Mets beer stein, and a fourth coffee maker.

But it’s not just money for a thing. It’s the physical space in your home, the effort to retain the item, and the trading away of that cash for whatever it had cost you in time to earn it.

This is a personal matter to me because my wife and I have recently begun re-evaluating how we live our lives. This past summer, we sold our 5 bedroom house and moved into a 2 bedroom apartment while keeping an eye out for (A) falling RE prices and (B) a 3 bedroom home.

During packing, we found things that had moved with us from 3 homes in North Carolina to 1 in Louisiana to what was about to be our 3rd place in New York. It was time to purge.

While making 15 trips to the Goodwill, we might have also put out 50 or more bags of trash and filled up the driveway twice with a sign that said: “FREE STUFF, PLEASE TAKE.” Some of it was really good, like bicycles we outgrew, but so much of it represented a complete waste of our lives. And as the clock winds down toward death, we must realize that our remaining time is precious.

In thinking about all our stuff we started to wonder, do we even need to replace the van? Could we have just 1 vehicle? Maybe. Looking around my kitchen as I type this now, I wonder, do I really need a garbage can to hold bags that I throw away? Maybe.

For the much that I do not know, I am sure that everything I keep, I have to keep (meaning, care for), and my life is worth more than caring for stuff that doesn’t make it better.

Everything you keep you have to care for, and in some cases add furniture to your home just to hold it when you never will again.

The remainder of this article will cover:

• • The definition of your life
  • The trade-offs you are making
  • Our possessions, and if they possess us
  • Finding peace with the life you make

Your Literal Life Force

For a 13-minute video summary of Vicki Robin’s Your Money or Your Life, click here. It is not my channel; the name “Chris Invests” is a coincidence.

Keeping it simple, you are alive, but will not be forever.

If you spend $2,500 on a couch, it requires a good deal of your literal life force to earn the money. If not yours, then someone else’s. Does this mean you don’t buy a leather sectional with a pullout bed? No. It means you should consider its worth and then make an informed decision about if it’s worth it. Having done this recently, we spent $75 on a used couch set with one piece needing a minor repair. After parts and our own labor, they might have cost $350.

It was worth it.

Alternatively, before deciding on the small apartment we currently occupy, we almost rented a big home for less money. Among the differences are that the apartment is rather nice and in the same school district we had been in, whereas the house was near-total dog-shit, but $400 less per month. I could have saved $400 on a terrible place away from the friends we’d made over the past 8 years.

But, with benefits outweighing costs, the nicer, smaller place was worth it. By “it” in this case, I mean the time it will take to make the extra money that could go toward retirement savings, which will buy me more time in the future.

The Trade-offs

I’ve mentioned my counter-cultural choices regarding my home and car in past pieces, so I won’t go into great detail regarding the specifics. I will say that living with less – while better and less stressful – is not all plusses with no minuses.

Obviously, a better car is better in at least some ways, just like a nicer home is nicer. Knowing this, you need to make clear distinctions on what is reasonable for you and your family.

Beyond that, you will be judged for what you have or don’t have.

As mentioned, we recently sold our home. We moved into a small apartment, which was quite perplexing to a good number of people. Some (hoping for the best) asked if we used to be renters but now own the apartment. Others worried that we were in deep financial straits. A few gossiped that we must be in serious trouble. The truth is that we had wanted to upgrade our home for quite a while, but construction was too costly. While looking around to buy something better, we found ourselves in a housing frenzy. And, we were lucky to have one of the very few homes in our town worth under $500k.

For an idea of how quickly it sold, we posted a single photo on Zillow, and our phone started ringing non-stop. We told all callers that more pictures would be up after it was painted, and no, they could not come over until the open house. And then someone offered cash at the full listing price, so we agreed.

Suppose you can withstand the social pressure to conform and the intense need to be loved and accepted based on things instead of who you are in your heart, mind, and soul. In that case, you will be able to accept ideas like this: While a nice car is nicer, at its most basic form, it’s just a tool of leverage to save time.

This means that you can carry a month of groceries home in just minutes with ease. But it also means that the 1990 Plymouth Acclaim I drove until 2010 did the job just as well as a brand new Tesla.

The challenge is cultural. Even as a poor lance corporal surrounded by other lance corporals who didn’t have cars, I was judged for my Plymouth. It started with some good-natured flak but continued on after I got promoted. Had Grumpus Maximus been my Commanding Officer back in the day, he might have been in charge of pre-holiday vehicle inspections.

Going home, he (GM) might have had the following conversation with Missus G (MG).

GM: Honey, do you remember my platoon sergeant, Sergeant Pascale?

MG: The one who can’t roll his sleeves properly, dear?

GM: That’s the one!

MG: And gets the type of haircut that makes it indiscernible as to whether he got one or not?

GM: Same guy.

MG: The one who’d be a total shit bag based on the state of his boots alone if not –

GM: Yeah, him.

MG: – for the fact that –

GM: Anyway! I was doing vehicle inspections this morning, and his car looked like a bag full of smashed assholes.

MG: Holy cannoli! That’s even worse than 10 pounds of shit in a 5-pound bag.

GM: Exactly!

The point is, people will talk about you.

Let them. It’s not like there’s anything you can do about it anyway.

Your Life Is Worth More than This

You must explore the following:

• • What You Drive
  • What You Own
  • Where You Live
  • What You Hold onto
  • What to Let Go of

It’s crucial to maximize an item’s utility. Use it up to the point that it’s worthless if you can. With few exceptions, the real value is never at the trade-in but on the road. The current van that we may or may not replace has an odometer at 175,000 miles. I can safely say I’ve gotten all that I can out of it and that every day after is a gift.

Your Home

Without a 15-year mortgage, you can’t make enough headway toward building equity.

EXAMPLES OF 15-YEAR MORTGAGES:

1. 1. My home in North Carolina originally had a 30-year at 5.75% for $778 per month. Every payment got me $100 closer to owning the home.

The 15-year re-fi at 3.5% cost $919 per month, and I was suddenly $500 closer each month.

1. 2. My home in New York had a 30-year at 3.375% for $2,200 per month. Every payment got me $500 closer to owning the home.

The 15-year re-fi at 2.75% cost $2,800 per month, and I was suddenly $1,500 closer each month.

If you can’t swing the extra cash on the payment, that means the stress, worry, and need to work more and more to just get through the 1st really isn’t worth it. Especially not over three long decades where you’ll have kids, nurture them, send them to college, then become a grandparent. Through every single one of those phases, you’ll be weighed down by the demand for a monthly payment.

For some, though, it’s not that they couldn’t afford the 15-year loan at all, but that they wanted the best home for their kids, so let me address this:

I previously mentioned that I owned a home in a part of town that some people did not think well of. One kid even told mine that she was going to come over, but her mom drove by and said we didn’t live in a good part of town, which is hilarious given the town where I live. Almost no one acts like this here, and we’ve had get-togethers with rich and poor friends alike. But, occasionally, some fucking asshole disqualifies themself from draining my literal life force by not making friendly with me based on the dirt under where the Missus and I ride the 30-second-merry-go-round.

And Speaking of the 30-Second-Merry-Go-Round

If you’re too stressed about money, your sex life is not as good. It affects 1 in 3 men, meaning that if you look to your left, then your right, you’ve just seen two guys who aren’t delivering the goods. Here are 7 reasons why. Meanwhile, suppose your house payment doesn’t make you charge up your credit card just so you can fool yourself about how well you’re doing during the first half of the month. In that case, you’re having full-body orgasms in between sharing wonderful joy and laughter with your partner, which is good for your heart.

Back to Your House

Likely, you’re already locked into a home or the idea of a home. However, consider this: you will fill every room. The more rooms, the more you keep (meaning, care for). Furnishing, painting, maintaining, cleaning, heating, cooling……with a big enough home, you’re paying to temperature-control rooms you don’t use.

Does this mean you shouldn’t buy a home with 9-foot ceilings just because you’re not that tall? No. It means you need to count the cost and compare it to what it’s worth to you. Same with installing central air (totally worth it), hiring cleaning people (a blessing, if I ever saw one), and cutting your own grass (no thanks).

I’m not saying don’t buy a home with high ceilings; I’m saying you need to count the cost.

Figure out what you need, what you want, and know which is which before making a mature decision.

It could be the difference between handling a housing crash with ease or becoming irreversibly impoverished.

Your Things

How many homes have dishes and cups that sit in a display cabinet, lit up like they’re museum pieces? A few years ago, I helped clean out my grandmother’s house, took home a set of cups and saucers that I’d never seen before, and proceeded to use them. Some got broken, but that’s much better than them sitting around to be dusted.

Recently, I was drying off after a shower and heard the towel rip a little. Carefully finishing, I wondered how many more uses I could get out of it. Hopefully 100, but even 1 more would be great because I know I’ve fully used it up.

Items you keep, you should use up to their full satisfaction. Honor the hard work it took to buy the item by rendering it completely useless. This goes for cars, bath towels, cell phones, and clothing. Don’t put yourself in danger with bald tires and a faulty hairdryer, and don’t wear clothes that make you look homeless, but don’t waste your money on things you don’t need.

Among the items I gave away this summer was a high-quality keyboard. I got it 21 years ago, and all of my kids have used it. No one plays, so why keep it? I can only imagine how many un-used pianos are getting tuned and dusted for no reason at all. Or how many guitars are in closets, possibly warping when they could be getting used by someone who would be grateful for the opportunity to play.

And I know you have a drawer full of old tech cables. Seriously, you gotta throw that shit out. You’re never going to need that Nextel charger. More to the point, you probably just bought a pack of AA batteries because you didn’t realize that behind all those wires were 4 perfectly good ones.

At best, those old Nextel cords are going to be what the robots strangle you with when they take over, just to add irony-upon-insult-upon-injury in their message in your last moments that even a Nextel charging cord is more useful to the next phase than you are.

Throw it out already!

THINGS I KEEP/CARE FOR: I am not without stuff like this.

Family Photos: I’m extremely lucky to have photos of my great grandparents. I also have both sets of my grandparents’ wedding photos. Could I live without them? Of course. They aren’t water and air.

Wine: A few years ago, I bought wine that was a surprise hit among my few friends who really know a good bottle from a bad one. While I couldn’t tell the difference, they couldn’t shut up about it. As the inventory of 2015 grapes was running out, I bought a case and am keeping it for special occasions. No longer having a cellar, I figured out the coolest place to store it in the apartment and even consulted with a friend if I should pay someone to keep it for me.

Is this ridiculous? Maybe. I don’t consider it an investment and personally cannot appreciate how good it is, but I do enjoy sharing it with particular friends who do.

Art: Like wine, the best art is art you like. When I saw this grand piece, I laughed out loud, and sharing it with you now makes me happy.

Especially given that I’d already bought this gem!

My wife also found this piece that we like. It’s from a blueprint of a New York City brownstone.

To keep them, we must care for them, and when we transport them, we give them special attention. When friends come over, we self-deprecatingly show them off.

But in the end, they are just things, and you cannot let things hang you up.

Your Hang-ups

If you treasure your possessions too highly, then you will be a slave to them. I own some things I’d like to keep forever, but in the end, they are just things. This includes my journal from Falluja, which is an account of every minute of every mission I was on in 2005. I don’t want to lose it and would mourn it if I did. But in the end, it’s just a thing and should probably be put into the public domain.

With any possession that possesses you, let it go, and be free.

Your Gucci bag, for those who have one, is just a fucking bag. Your closet full of designer shoes and clothes is the physical representation of a life traded away.

And unless you’re the designer, none of this is who you are. It’s just what you bought, and, in some cases, bought into.

Your Gucci bag……Your closet full of shoes and clothes is the physical representation of a life traded away……None of this is who you are. It’s just what you bought and bought into

Letting It Go & Finding Peace

Knowing who you are and loving yourself is worth more than just about anything, second only to good health.

I’m not saying not to have nice things – I live in a very nice apartment.

If you love a good cup of coffee, get a good coffee maker, but only 1. That’s all you need. Savor the moments of bliss that come from a first sip, and store that moment away; you’ll want it later.

If your bed costs less than the outfit you’re wearing, then you’ve got this thing called life backward, just like a 25-year-old who buys a new BMW while living in their parent’s house. You’re going to spend months in that bed for years, hopefully taking regular trips on the 30-second-merry-go-round. Still, you’ll very rarely get any hot action in a pair of Berluti Scrittos or Manolo Blahniks for reasons related to the shoes. For this same reason, you need to consider buying a quality pillow. Why? Because your head – holding your brain and connected to your spine – goes there for months every year.

If your bed costs less than the outfit you’re wearing, then you’ve got this thing called life backward

I wish I had a good ending for this article. Honestly, though, I’m lost in the process of discovering my own situation as I try to take better steps. As such, I’ll circle back and conclude like they taught us in school.

In Conclusion

What you buy can be measured in the trade-off of time to get the money it costs to make the purchase.

What you keep also requires your time, and it’s okay to keep something you don’t use, like my journal from 2005, the case of wine that is no longer being made, and my art collection. And it’s also okay to miss things you’ve lost. Missus P. recently purged our coffee mug collection, and with it went one that my good friend bought me for our nightly breaks at the IRS. I wish I still had it, but I must accept that it’s gone.

There are trade-offs to keeping things like cars, homes, and various tchotchkes. And it’s the tchotchkes that get us the most – just $20 at a time, adding up to tens-of-thousands of dollars that never needed to be spent. In the past, it was wrapped up in things like books, movies, and music that not only took up a lot of money but physical space in our lives. We had to make room for them and buy them unique furniture. While I still have some books, I can proudly say that I no longer own a bookshelf and will probably never buy another DVD or CD again. When The Golden Albatross came out, I bought it on my Kindle and recommend you do the same.

It’s the tchotchkes that get us the most…adding up to tens-of-thousands of dollars that never needed to be spent.

If driving a car that’s 10-years-old would embarrass you, you need to think about why. Why would you care what someone thinks of your car when they can know what kind of person you are? The same goes for your house. You should strive to give yourself and your family a nice house, but for every room you have, you have to keep it. You’ll have to temperature control it, so the furniture lasts. You might worry about it going out of style and find yourself replacing a room every year or two, and at what cost – literally, the monetary cost?

In the end, if you cannot live without a hutch full of dolls or dishes that no one is supposed to touch, you must recognize that these things make you happy. If you can afford to work that much longer to purchase and keep them, that’s okay. However, if you can let these things go so that you can unburden yourself of caring for them, you should. Or, even better, maybe you can use these things. At the next holiday, take out the Lenox gravy boat and serve gravy from it. Remove the Waterford wine glasses and pour something good into them – be it Sine Qua Non, egg nog, or Welch’s sparkling grape juice.

But, above everything, make peace and accept yourself for who you are. After all, if you’re not a complete asshole, then you’re probably alright.

Regarding your stuff, don’t let it hang you up too much because this is your literal life we are talking about.

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Have you really read this far? Cool! Don’t forget that Chris is the author of a book of poetry called War Poems: A Marine’s Tour 2003-2008 that touches on war, finances, and life. Buy it from Amazon in paperback or Kindle format, or ask your local library to acquire it. Don’t forget to write a 5 STAR review if you like it!