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Free Fridge!

One barrier to minimalism is large, heavy possessions — too big to easily move or ship.  And since you’re a minimalist, you just sold your truck.  Doh.

Craigslist is spectacularly effective at quickly eliminating these white elephants — if you’re willing to take a haircut on price.

I didn’t bother to post this before, because I thought it too obvious. Not so: when I eliminated several large items yesterday — in less than 4 hours, with only a few minutes’ effort, and no heavy lifting — amazed friends and onlookers wanted instructions. So here they are.

  • Find out what your item is worth: visit eBay, find similar items, and click “show completed items” to see final selling prices. In seconds, you’ll know what the market will bear.
  • Post your item on Craigslist, with photos.
  • Set your Craigslist price at half the eBay market price.
  • If less than $25, just price it at zero, and post it in the “free stuff” section.
  • In your item description, write, “This is cheap because I need it gone. I will not hold this item for anyone. The first person here with the purchase price gets it.”

You may not be aware that bargain-hunters are constantly trolling Craigslist, looking for situations like this. They are waiting in their trucks, motors running. If you set the price and description as shown above, the resulting feeding frenzy will move just about anything within a few hours. Or even minutes.

Last year, I got rid of a truly decrepit refrigerator in 40 minutes with this post:

“Free working fridge. It’s old, makes a loud buzzing noise, ices up easily, and the door doesn’t seal well. But it works, and I’ll give it free to the first person who can get over here.”

Yes, I might have sold it for $50 with more effort. But such optimizations take time. Consider the value of that time.

The best, and maybe most unexpected part of this gambit is that it makes everyone so happy. The buyer/recipient is ecstatic at getting a great deal. The seller/giver is relieved to be rid of the white elephant. Everyone walks away literally grinning. There is not just efficiency, but shared joy.  This is the essence of Fewer Nicer.

 

More aesthetics of macchiato

Following up on an earlier post, here is an example of what you can get by looking around a bit.  This cost $2, just like everywhere else, but is far tastier (fresher ingredients) and prettier (barrista training).

Kean Coffee Macchiatto

Typical Kean Coffee macchiato, this from March 27 2010.

You shouldn’t drink coffee.  But if you do, it might as well be this.

Choosing the minimal car

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.

The Elements of Style, by Strunk & White

How many empty seats do you drive around with?  Be honest.

If you’re like most, your car is not just a top expense, but also a top activity, and thus a critical decision to get right.  Here is the Strunk & White perspective.

I have a spouse and three small children.  We thus need at least two cars, at least one able to hold the entire family, including three immense (and possibly counterproductive) plastic child seats.

So the first car must be a minivan or SUV.  I’ll leave that choice for a different post;  here, let’s focus on the second car.

Most choose a sedan.  Why?  Few sedans accommodate three plastic seats abreast, and the rest remain impractical compared to a van. So in practice, families never use the back seat of the sedan. Every outing with children happens in the minivan, while the sedan is used only to commute, alone, accompanied only by a forlornly empty back bench.

Which is why our second car is a 2-seat convertible.

We get interesting reactions from other families.  “Isn’t that impractical?” they ask.  Well, yes. But no more impractical than a sedan.  The only truly practical choice would be two minivans. Short of that, you might as well get the roadster.

We chose the Honda S2000, because it is the second-most minimal car you can buy today, truly a Strunk & White of motor vehicles. Here is a partial list of what it doesn’t have.

Rear seats. Rear windows. Navigation system. Satellite radio. Seat heaters. In-glass defroster. Controls on steering wheel. Cup holders. Cargo space to hold anything larger than a case of beer. Automatic transmission. Suspension control. Climate control beyond basic AC.

Except for the Lotus Elise/Exige — which we avoided due to durability issues — this is the leanest car you can buy. In return for such crippling inconveniences as the lack of in-dash DVD player, you get a car 500 pounds lighter than any competitor, and correpondingly more agile. An adult-scale, street-legal go-kart.

The dashboard is almost unnaturally unobstructed. No constellation of indicator lights. No whack-a-mole field of pushbuttons. There is basically nothing to do but drive.

And that ain’t so bad.

Eat at Joe’s

Savings:  $50/week, 1 hour/week, and health benefits.

You can think of food markets as competing on three basic features:  healthiness, price and selection.  Each tends to sacrifice one to maximize the other two.  Supermarkets sacrifice healthiness.  Whole Foods sacrifices price.  Trader Joe’s sacrifices selection.
Few Americans are willing to sacrifice selection.  They want it all, and assume they will get it.  For example, one might pull out a cookbook, choose a recipe, and then buy ingredients, implicitly assuming the market will have everything required for the recipe.  If you follow that route, you absolutely must have a wide selection, forcing you to sacrifice either healthiness (supermarket) or price (Whole Foods).
The solution, as Carl Jacobi or Charlie Munger would say, is to “invert, always invert.”  Shop only Trader Joe’s (now well represented in major US metro areas).  Design your meals around what they have, rather than painting on a blank canvas.
You will save a ton of money versus other natural food stores, yet sacrifice nothing in the quality of organic foods.  You won’t waste time hopping among multiple stores.  You’ll save time in the store (Joe’s is more compact).  And you’ll get more variety in your diet as they rotate their offerings.
This is a classic Pareto (80/20 principle) optimization with huge benefits.  Give up just a little control over your dietary selection, and win huge benefits elsewhere.

Aesthetics of Macchiato

Savings in this post:  $50 / month, 150 high-carb calories / day.

The inaugural post of Fewer Nicer sings the joys of fine barrista-prepared espresso.

WHAT?  the generalized frugalista blog may shout.  Nothing is a bigger waste of money than that four-dollar cappuccino.  And that’s completely true from a pure cost perspective.  Yuban is cheaper.  But Yuban, dear readers, blows.  I chose this subject precisely to differentiate Fewer Nicer from a pure money-saving site.
Fewer Nicer, unlike pure cost-cutting sites, seeks affordable aesthetics — situations where you can save money while simultaneously increasing quality of life.  Nearly every time, the solution is to simplify.  Fewer.  Nicer.  Get it?  Now let’s talk specifics.
Two mysteries about cafes.  First, milk is oddly priced.  Second, cafe aesthetics are free, or better than free.  Crack these two mysteries, and you are well on your way to Fewer Nicer.
Milk is oddly priced
Hiding on the menu next to that four-dollar cappuccino is an item you may never have tried: the espresso macchiato.  Oversimplifying a bit, it’s like a cappuccino without the milk, but with the milk foam.  Tastes like a really strong cappuccino.
Here is the milk mystery.  Macchiato costs two dollars, or half as much as the cap, for the same amount of espresso.  The only difference is the milk.  In buying a cap, you’re paying two dollars for milk.  Yet right behind you, at the napkin counter, there is a big jug of milk available free. Connect the dots, man!  Buy the macchiato, turn around, pour in the free milk, and you have a cap for half price.
Alternately, you can do what I do:  enjoy unadulterated macchiatos.  Espresso is delicious, and even if you disagree with that, it requires almost no milk to blunt the edge.  Put in just a teaspoon of milk (or none, as I do).  You get improved taste, save two dollars, and cut 150 calories of pure high-glycemic-index carbs (lactose) out of your diet, all at the same time.  The savings vs caffe latte are even bigger.
Cafe aesthetics are free
Cafes vary in their aesthetic quality.  I’m not going to bash the chains here, but instead describe Kean Coffee, near my office.  
Kean is operated by Martin Diedrich, the founder of California regional chain Diedrich Coffee.  
He made money in the Diedrich IPO, then went back to his first love:  making great coffee.  The place is spectacular.  Ever seen those photos of decorative espresso drinks, where the barrista uses foam and espresso to create a signature design on the top of your personal drink?  This is one of the places that does that.
What do you pay for that, and the occasional chat with Mr. Diedrich, a third-generation lifelong coffee expert?  Nothing.  It’s the same two-dollar macchiato as everywhere else.  Better, actually, because they mix it somehow with half-and-half.
You see this paradigm repeatedly.  The quiet cafe with outdoor seating and landscaping costs no more than the one setting next to a roaring six-lane meat grinder.  Silence, nature, art — these things have value, but are priced at a marginal cost of zero in this context.
Action items
If you routinely go to cafes, switch from cappuccino or latte to espresso macchiato.  Add free milk if you wish.  And troll your neighborhood for an aesthetically charged cafe.