9 Ways Minimalism Will Save You Money in 2025
I didn’t get into minimalism for the financial benefits.
Initially, I was drawn toward a simple lifestyle with less so I could breathe in our home again.
Minimalism promised less stress, less housework, and less anxiety. It guaranteed more down time, stronger relationships, and just an overall lighter life.
I’ve gotten all that and more.
When you stop striving to accumulate more and start enjoying the things you have, you build breathing room in another important area of your life—your finances.
While financial health is certainly worth pursuing, it isn’t directly encouraged by our culture.
“Marketers are really impressive in their ability to manipulate the mind and create a need or perceived need out of what was a want,” Dave Ramsey said in the documentary The Minimalists: Less is Now. “We live in the most advertised to culture in the world. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent telling us we need this, and it has an effect.”
In fact, the amount of money spent on advertising in the United States has increased from just over 5 billion dollars in the 1950s to over 240 billion dollars today. Advertisements feed us the lie that we, at our core, are not enough and if we only had that new beauty product, those new boots, or that new car, then we’d finally be complete.
And so we buy things, often without much consideration, in hopes that our next purchase will fill that void. But it never does. And our bank accounts take hit after hit.
Consider the following statistics:
· The average American has four credit cards in their wallet.
· The average debt for indebted households is more than $16,000.
· Americans spend more money each year on shoes, jewelry, and watches than on higher education.
· As of January 2023, 60 percent of US adults, including even four in ten high-income consumers, live paycheck to paycheck.
When we’re bated to believe that happiness lies in the next purchase and newer and bigger means better, we’re conditioned to spend.
Several years ago, our family lined up well with these “average American statistics.” Four credit cards, check. Debt that well exceeded $16,000, check.
When we decided to embrace minimalism, we began questioning our buying habits, examining our beliefs about our stuff, and began letting go instead of accumulating more. Today, our credit card debt is gone, our cars are paid off, and we’re able to live off one income.
Can aligning your lifestyle with the “less is more” mindset of minimalism pave the way for financial peace?
Absolutely.
Here are 9 ways minimalism will save you money in 2025:
1. Developing Self-Awareness
When you have less stuff in your home to clean and care for, you have more down-time. Margin makes space for prayer and introspection, which is needed for developing self-awareness and self-acceptance.
When you truly get to know yourself, you learn what triggers you to shop and what causes you to fill your life with stuff, and then you realize that nothing you buy can augment your self-worth. This self-knowledge leads to much less mindless consumerism and frivolous spending.
2. Not Renting a Storage Unit
The United States now has 2.3 billion square feet of self-storage space. (The Self Storage Association, a nonprofit trade group, notes that, with more than seven square feet for every man, woman, and child, it’s now “physically possible that every American could stand— all at the same time— under the total canopy of self- storage roofing.”)
Owning less means you won’t have a monthly storage unit fee, or in the words of Jerry Seinfeld, you won’t have to “pay rent to visit your incarcerated possessions.”
3. Thinking Outside the Box
Instead of buying something new, minimalists first see if something they already own could serve the same purpose. They think outside the box before spending.
Baby wipes can clean your TV, keyboard, and mouse just as well as pricey electronics cleaners. Coconut oil can remove makeup as well as any expensive product. And chilled metal spoons can alleviate eye bags as well as costly creams. By using what you already have, you save money.
4. Not Buying Duplicate Items
Why own seven pairs of jeans when you only love one of them? Why own five spatulas when one will do the trick? The “less is more” mindset that comes with minimalism counters consumerism.
5. Buying Multiuse Items
Minimalists look to buy items that can serve them in multiple ways. Mason jars, for example, can be used as vases, food storage containers, and drinking glasses. Owning one item to serve multiple purposes saves money.
6. Owning a Smaller Home
Minimalism may inspire you to downsize. When you live in a smaller space, you have a smaller mortgage and spend less on utilities and home maintenance costs in general.
7. Shopping Intentionally
Minimalism gives you the space and time to align your life with your values. When you do need to purchase something, you do it intentionally, making a purchase that supports the life you’re creating. You no longer feel the need to shop just for fun or to buy something just because it’s on sale.
8. Spending less on clothes
Minimalism often leads to living with fewer items of clothing. Owning a simple, intentional wardrobe, such as a capsule wardrobe, places guidelines on clothes shopping and defines your personal style. You won’t feel pressured by the latest fashion trends and won’t feel tempted to buy new clothes just to “fit in.”
9. Limiting the number of toys bought for kids
Before minimalism, I used to buy our daughter a new toy without thinking twice. I used toys as rewards and to shape behavior. After letting go of over 80% of these toys, I see daily that children play more creatively and deeply with fewer toys.
If we’re buying our children toys all the time, what are we teaching them? That advertisements are right and they really do need new stuff to be happy. Buying toys infrequently not only diminishes the message of materialism, but also saves you money.
In Conclusion
“We’re buying things we don’t really need with money we don’t really have to impress people we don’t really like,” Ramsey said in The Minimalist’s documentary. “We’re giving up our freedom for some stuff that’s going to be worth nothing in next year’s garage sale.”
When we throw more and more money toward stuff, we lose focus of what matters most and lessen our ability to pursue it.
Minimalism brings freedom—from the burden of caring for too much stuff, from the weight of comparing your life to others, from the stress of believing marketers’ mind games, and from the guilt of impulse buying.
Simple minimalist mindset and lifestyle changes can lead to financial freedom.
Let’s make 2025 the year we give ourselves some financial breathing room by choosing to live with less.
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Julia Ubbenga is a freelance journalist. Her online projects on minimalism, simplicity, and intentional living have reached over 50 million people worldwide. Julia also practices what she preaches in her Kansas City home. She resides with her husband and their four extremely lively young children. You can also find her on Instagram and Facebook.
P.S. You can now find my new book Declutter Your Heart and Your Home: How a Minimalist Life Yields Maximum Joy on Amazon!