Money, Freedom and the Art of Happy Living

Seen at Rila Monastery in Bulgaria - a great place to get some distance between you and your job.


Saving is a key concept for anybody who strives for a frugal life.

Saving can add a lot of freedom and control to your life, because it means to think about what you really need, and to do spending and consumption more consciously. And it can free you from the rat-race, as it will curb your need to ever increase your income.

However, I am not a friend of saving on its own sake, and I am so far not yet fully convinced by the concept of early retirement extreme (ERE), which discussed a lot in the frugal community.

I sure respect this approach, and I find it very stimulating reading about it, as it teaches a lot on how to renounce unnecessary consumption and wasting money. But I see certain risks in ERE as well and generally in relying too much on saving alone.

Here are a few of my doubts:
...continue reading at my main blog

Climb the pyramid of needs. (seen in Palenque, Mexico)

As mentioned in my initial post, I started seriously and more or less systematically thinking on how to live a happy, financially independent and free life quite a long time ago.

But when I really go back, it probably all started when I was at school, 17 years old, and we studied "Maslow's hierarchy of needs" in Ethics/Philosophy-Education.

(I really like the German school system btw. It is often said that school and university take too long in Germany and people learn too much "unnecessary" stuff, but that's not true. Many of the things I learned proved to be quite helpful in a way one would not easily have expected. Maslow is one of them.)

And here is what Maslow said, what deeply impressed my that time and made me set the goal for climbing up his "pyramid" as high as I possibly could:

Maslow sais that human needs are arranged in a pyramid, with the most basic and necessary-for-bare-living needs being at the bottom, followed by more and more sophisticated needs further up.

The stages of Maslow's pyramid are:

1) Physiological Needs (food, water, sex etc.)

2) Security Needs (secure body, property, securing enough food, security from threats, having money)...

...continue reading in my main blog...

Disclaimer: This post handles jealousy and is based on my German/European experience. Jealousy is said to be a more common emotion in German society than elsewhere, so I would be interested how your experience is...

Your decision

Those of you experimenting with downshifting while working as an employee in a company might know the situation:

After thinking a lot about your work life, your consumption and the right balance in your life, you decided to downshift.

You decreased you costs of living, you found out about the pleasures life has to offer at little costs if you have a bit of spare-time. You understood the 80/20 rule, saying that 80% of the result are reached by 20% of the effort and that the remaining 20% of results need 80% of the effort.

You found out that after all you have enough or even too much money if you only manage to spent it the right way, but that you have too little time, to really enjoy today.

So you do the obvious, you cut down your work time as far as possible and you get some healthy mental distance to your employed work. You still do a good job but you decided to avoid being pushed and getting stressed by others.

You are ready to pay the price or are paying it already in form of less chances to get promoted or to get a rise. And you maybe earn already a bit less by not having over hours to hand in for cash as instead you are taking free time.

But that's fine, your life is much better than before, as your increased happiness by having less stress and more time far outweighs the marginal loss in income.


If the waves get too high at work - you'd better get out of the water before your energy is gone... (Waves seen in Malta)

Will others accept your decision?

But what's really annoying is your colleagues, who keep on mocking when you are leaving at 5 instead of at 7 as them. Or when you take a day off again, converting over-hours into holiday.

You might have expected that your bosses will complain, and you are prepared for that. But your colleagues?! Why the hell...
...continue reading at my main blog.