The

Undeniable

Ruth

®

…and the Ruth shall set you free!

  • Minimizing Debt

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    Ruth Carter

    I recently listened to The Minimalists’ Podcast episode about money. It inspired me to review my thoughts and plans about money in my life and revise my current plans.

    Day 178: Almost Full by Tom Small from Flickr (Creative Commons License)
    Day 178: Almost Full by Tom Small from Flickr (Creative Commons License)

    The Minimalists say, and I agree, “There is no such thing as good debt.” I took on a considerable loan when I bought my condo in 2014. I regularly pay more than my mortgage payment to pay off my loan faster. After listening to this podcast, I was inspired to play around with an online early mortgage payoff calculator. It showed me that I can pay off my loan significantly faster and avoid paying a substantial amount of interest by paying a bit more than I currently am each month.

    As a minimalist, my overhead expenses each month are not that high. I don’t mind foregoing some temporary luxuries if it means saving over $25,000 in the long run.

    Listening to this episode also made me revisit some of my other financial goals for the year – like fully funding my retirement account. I usually wait until the end of the year to do this, but there’s no reason to delay if I can do it earlier.

    To date, my savings have been part of my personal and business checking accounts; however, after revisiting my financial goals, I want to open a separate savings account as well. This will be an account to deposit money that is “spoken for,” like my quarterly estimated taxes, charitable giving, retirement, as well as building a “rainy day fund” that contains at least six months worth of expenses. This can also be the account I use to set aside funds to pay off my mortgage faster and to save up for big purchases and travel.

    Separating out my savings will make it easier to see how much I can save month-to-month and how much I really need to fund my life and run my business.

    If you want to know more about my experience with minimalism, I suggest you read about the “packing party” I did in 2014 and got rid of everything that no longer added value to my life.

  • Spring Cleaning – Decluttering Paper Again

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    Ruth Carter

    As a minimalist, I think I’ve done a good job of eliminating the stuff from my life that doesn’t add any value to it. Instead, I try to surround myself with things that make me more efficient and comfortable and I put more energy towards experiences than acquiring tangible stuff. However, my Achilles heel when it comes to being a minimalist, is paper clutter.

    Buried Again by projectbamboo from Flickr (Creative Commons License)
    Buried Again by projectbamboo from Flickr (Creative Commons License)

    There is a lot of paper in my life. I admit I kill lots of trees because I have to write down ideas in order to process them, and I’m that person who prints off stuff at work and writes notes on it by hand. It’s just how I work best. I understand it. I accept it. But it also generates a lot of paper clutter around me. And one of the things that makes me more anxious and less clearheaded, is having a cluttered workspace and a cluttered home. So then all my paper clutter ends up in piles  around the house and the office, and it takes me months to deal with it. I also have to deal with other paper clutter like receipts I have to save for tax purposes and business cards I get at events. I have systems for dealing with these things, but I suck at implementing them on an ongoing basis.

    I’ve done a minimalism project before around my paper clutter – I challenge myself to deal with every new piece of paper in my life within 24 hours. This time, for the month of March, I am going to use The Minimalism Game, invented by The Minimalists, to deal with the paper clutter in my home.

    The game is very simple and lasts one month. On the first day, you eliminate one item. On the second day you eliminate 2 items. Whatever day you are on, that’s how many things you have to eliminate from your life, so on the 31st, I will have to eliminate 31 items. The amount you have to remove each day is manageable (especially since I’ll be minimizing paper), but in aggregate, it has a big impact. If I follow the rules of the game, I will eliminate 496 items of paper during the month of March. (If I run out of paper to declutter (yay me!) I’ll move on to decluttering my inboxes.)

    I have 2 caveats for myself in regards to playing The Minimalism Game:

    1. The game does not apply to new paper entering my life. At the end of each day, I have to have a net loss based on however many items I have to eliminate that day. So if I get 5 pieces of mail on the first day, I have to eliminate 6 items to have a net loss of 1 for the day.
    2. I am allowed to work ahead. The goal is to eliminate 496 items over the course of the month. If I get on a role and eliminate 50 items on day 1, I only have to eliminate 446 more items during the rest of the month. This particularly makes sense for me because I will be traveling for a few days in March. I need to be able to work ahead were play catch up as needed, but I hope, for the most part, that I’m all eliminating paper clutter almost every day. The game is merely a guide.

    You are welcome to play The Minimalism Game with me. It’s a great way to get started with minimalism if you want to decrease the excess clutter in your life. My goal isn’t just to make my house look cleaner, but also help me feel less anxious and more creative as a result of having a space that is more conducive for my needs.

  • Getting to Fuck It

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    Ruth Carter

    Sometimes the best thing I can do is say, “Fuck it.”

    Phil - Monument Valley by Jared Eberhardt from Flickr (Creative Commons License)
    Phil – Monument Valley by Jared Eberhardt from Flickr (Creative Commons License)

    “Fuck it” may be the ultimate statement of commitment, saying “I’m in” or “I’m out” while blocking all other thoughts. It is a statement of acceptance – wholeheartedly embracing a course of action and its consequences.

    “Fuck it” is best used in situations where there’s no going back. As a person who struggles with indecisiveness, getting to “fuck it” is an effective goal for me. Honoring this makes it easier to block the mental and actual chatter around me and within my head. I used “fuck it” when I went skydiving, when I made the decision to go to law school, and when I went to my first flash mob when all my friends bailed on me. (“Fuck it” can also be used to make really bad decisions like getting wasted and putting my fingers down my throat to make myself throw up.)

    When I was a first-year law student, I wrote Seven Layers of Academic Hell. The seventh layer is “Fuck it.” Here, “fuck it” doesn’t mean I didn’t care about doing well in school. It meant I didn’t care about law school stress and other distractions. My mind got very quiet and I could focus on learning what I had to in order to properly articulate my understanding of the course material for the final exam. “Fuck it” can be a Zen-like state.

    “Fuck it” makes life more simple. As an aspiring minimalist, I embrace “fuck it.” To me, saying “fuck it” means releasing the superfluous mental garbage, mentally locking in to the one thing that needs to be done, and following it through.

    Getting to “fuck it” is simple, and not always easy. It often takes courage and the willingness to be uncomfortable in the process. But when I’m in a situation that requires me to say “fuck it,” making the commitment is less painful than mulling over the pros and cons. “Fuck it” takes me out of agonizing contemplation and into action.

    Once I get to “fuck it,” there’s only one direction to go – forward.