Like your home's closets, your financial clutter needs an overhaul every now and again, and the payoff will go far beyond the psychic satisfaction of neatening up.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I like things clean, and I have a biannual clean-out of my apartment. I throw out raggedy things and things I never wear, and there's a Goodwill around the corner for anything worthwhile.
If you have debt I'm willing to bet that general clutter is a problem for you too.
I went through all my electric bills, the water bills, the phone bills, elevator contracts, and I found enough wasteful spending without reducing any programs anywhere, without reducing any services, I found enough wasteful spending to pay my entire salary for three years.
You may never get to that perfect world that you're waiting for where everything's going to be perfect and you got that much money and your house paid off.
Some kind of clutter is difficult - letting go of things with sentimental value, sifting through papers - but some clutter I find very refreshing to clear. I drive my daughters nuts because I'm always wandering into their rooms to clear clutter.
I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.
In the scope of a happy life, a messy desk or an overstuffed coat closet is a trivial thing, yet I find - and I hear from other people that they agree - that getting rid of clutter gives a disproportionate boost to happiness.
I clean out my house weekly. I just keep a lot of silly little things that are meaningful to me.
I've lived so frugally for so long. I have to have that financial security or the world feels out of control for me.
The money has always been wasted on me. I don't care for beautiful things, funnily enough. I am my father's daughter. The things that excite me are the smell of a wood-burning stove, uncultivated fields. My house is decaying and falling to pieces. It's not had the love it deserves over twenty years.