Why this millennial quit his 6-figure job and gave away most of his possessions

By Jenna Goudreau February 3, 2014 10:44 AM

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Joshua Fields Millburn (left) and Ryan Nicodemus (Photo by Adam Dressler)

Joshua Fields Millburn, who at age 27 became the youngest director of operations at a large telecom company in the Midwest, had been asked to craft a plan to close eight retail stores and terminate 41 workers. But when he handed the report to his boss in early 2011, it included 42 names. At the top of the list he’d written his own.  

Two years before, Millburn had watched his mother die and his marriage dissolve in the span of a month. When he looked around at the life he’d built for himself — a six-figure salary, impressive title, and big house full of stuffed closets — he didn’t feel fulfilled. Instead, he felt weighed down by the things he’d accumulated. Working 80 hours a week trapped in a cycle of consumerism had ultimately ruined his relationship and left him with $100,000 of debt.  

Then he came across the idea of minimalism, a lifestyle dedicated to clearing the clutter in your life and making room for the things that are truly important to you. Over a period of eight months, Millburn stopped buying things he didn’t need, gave away most of the stuff he had, and downsized to a one-bedroom apartment in Dayton, Ohio.

When his longtime friend and coworker Ryan Nicodemus finally asked, “Why the hell are you so happy lately?” he realized he was onto something. Millburn explained his new lifestyle, and Nicodemus was instantly hooked. Together they launched a website about their journey, TheMinimalists.com, and recently published a book, “Everything That Remains.”  

“Once I shed the superfluous things I owned, it led to other parts of my life: my health, relationships, work,” Millburn tells Business Insider. “I had wrapped up my identity in my career and status, but started to realize that it wasn’t in line with my beliefs.”

Since walking away from the corporate world and dedicating himself to his writing, Millburn, now age 32, says he’s paid off all his debt, lost 80 pounds, and moved to a small town in Montana, where he surrounds himself only with things that are functional and bring him joy.  

On his website and in talks, Millburn shares his strategies for paring down, and he insists that embracing minimalism doesn’t have to be as dramatic or life altering as his experience. For some, it may be as simple as thinking more carefully about what you buy or how you spend your time.  He suggests these three steps for getting started today:

1. Ask yourself how your life might be better if you owned fewer material possessions. "A lot of people might want to declutter their closets," says Millburn. "But without understanding the purpose behind it, they will just get cluttered again."

2. Get rid of one thing each day for a month."This will help you build momentum," he says. At the end of the 30 days, you'll likely end up tossing a lot more than 30 items, since you've devoted that time to really looking. 

3. Recruit a friend to help. "The act of decluttering is fairly boring," Millburn  says. "If you can have an accountability buddy that’s helping you, it can make it fun." Plus, if you motivate each other, ultimately you both win.

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http://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-millennial-quit-6-figure-205835000.html

I reached a place a little like this when I was about 21. However, I decided not to give away everything but rather to just reinvent myself. This upset a whole lot of people including me, but the end result is: I didn't kill myself and was very happy by my early 30s and Okay by age 25 when my girlfriend got pregnant and we got married. However, I did barely survive 21 to 24.

Often if you don't engineer your life for quality all you get is exhaustion and an early grave. People might be proud of you but you have lost your health and life doing things that don't bring you quality of life. And in the end it is quality of life that makes you want to stay alive instead of committing suicide directly or indirectly through alcohol and drugs or fast living.

So, quality of life and a healthy environment and friends makes for a life worth living.

Minimalism is important in going for quality of life. Here is what I realized.

1. If you live in the country rent and property in really beautiful places is usually much less expensive than places like Los Angeles or San Francisco and often much much more healthy air and water and sometimes food wise as well. Though food costs a little more in the country often because of shipping and gas a little more too. The lower costs of rents and the price of property often helps mitiagate livign somewhere else.

2. The biggest problem living somewhere beautiful is that everyone wants to live there too, so often jobs are hard to come by. So, unless you can create a business, often you can't afford to stay in the country. But, you can adopt many country ways as you make friends in the country which can be helpful too.

3. for example, often you can go cut your own wood with a forest service permit that might cost you anywhere from 10 to 50 dollars. So, as long as you have a chain saw and know how to use it and have a truck or old van to haul wood in and are safe with chain saws, you can gather your own wood for your wood stove. So, often in the country it might only cost you 70 to 100 dollars (including all your wood, gas, and wear and tear on your vehicle and yourself instead of thousands of dollars to heat your home. However, you do have to learn how to dry wood in a safe place early enough so that it is dry enough to burn during the winters when it snows. Also, you have to get a good wood stove that is well installed for safety and including in the insurance where you stay(the insurance company has to agree that you are using a wood stove and has inspected it).

Then, you might ski, snowboard or ice skate or ice fish in the winters while staying warm with all the dead and down wood it is legal for you to take on your forest service permit.

So, living in this way your actual costs per month might be about 1/3 or less per person living in really beautiful areas with or near your friends. And often community colleges or full universities are nearby to increase your knowledge and degrees while you enjoy living a really fun healthy life with your friends.