One Foot In The Material World: Learning To Live A (Partly) Minimalist Lifestyle

*Collaborative Post

It’s not something that necessarily enters our mind as a parent. While we want to teach our children about budgeting and being sensible with the money, these days, with the ever-mounting costs, we still need to find a way to ensure that we live a good life, but not necessarily have a lot of stuff (as well as credit card bills and debt). The minimalist lifestyle can seem like an enticing prospect. But so many of us don’t find it practical to live with the bare minimum. So how can we start on this road to living a minimalist lifestyle without completely throwing everything we own out the window?

Cutting The Financial Corners

We have to start by looking at ways in which we can cut back on our general expenses. The first place is our day-to-day dealings. When we look at things like our utility bills, grocery shopping, and general expenses like the car, are we paying too much? The great thing is, you can find many websites to help you cut corners. You can use Latest Deals to find special offers in terms of general supermarket shopping, as well as other sites that can show you how to budget accordingly. And when we start to cut those financial corners, we can see how much money we’ve got to play with. So, when we think about the money that we have spare, the temptation can be to spend it all on material, but this is where we have to make the most of it in other ways…

Reducing The Material Goods

If you want to teach your children about money, you have to lead by example. As such, when we have spare cash, rather than spending it on material goods, the best approach would be to buy experiences. Living a minimalist lifestyle means that when you have an abundance of cash, you don’t necessarily have to spend it on stuff. As the saying goes, “you can’t take it with you when you go” but this doesn’t mean you need to buy piles of junk. If you really want to teach your children about what life has to offer, spending money on experiences is crucial.

Let It Become A Habit For Life

Living a minimalist lifestyle, for many, is all about getting rid of their home as well as reducing their worldly possessions, and if we want to teach our children good money habits, it’s a combination of reducing that temptation for material goods, understanding what we can do with our spare money to enrich our children’s lives, but also make it become a habit. Our children are going to be exposed to friends that have the latest toys, and seem to have everything. And no doubt our children will ask us why they have everything that we don’t, and we’ve got to play the long game with this one. Letting our children develop a minimalist lifestyle that suits them is crucial, but sometimes we have to remember that we can all fall off the wagon. Ultimately those kids that seem to have everything, are they truly happy? 

*This is a collaborative post. For further information please refer to my disclosure page.

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