Is living as a Minimalist the same as Off Grid?

[OracleSummonParticipant 179]

I have given living as a Minimalist a thought this morning and liked the idea that Society would not be able to get much from me. Not just that, but I am able to only live with the basics and no motivate to buy very expensive stuff, besides video games occasionally.

Would you say that living as a Minimalist is the same as being Off Grid or is it just the last step before going Off Grid?

[Ned TrentParticipant 4894]

It’ll be close enough to being off-grid I’d say when you really think about it.

I'd rather die a natual death with a clear MGTOW conscience somewhere off the grid than one within "modern" civilisation with a big stress mark on my forehead and a couple of dozen tubes plugged into my body. Back to the plantation..? Me..? Hey, literally: I won't ever fucking kid myself...YZERLMNTSIC

[Anonymous 42]

I think “minimalist” is a matter of conserving, I’m almost finished adding LED lighting to conserve electricity, that way when I loose power (rural) I can run a 4,000 watt diesel generator (runs all day on 1 gallon of fuel) instead of running an 8,000 watt gasoline generator that uses 8 gallons to run all day. It’s a matter of running your life on compounded savings. This year I cut my heating bill in half by burning wood plastic and used motor oil in my hot water rocket stove, next year I’ll cut my consumption of heating oil down to 10%, a 90% savings, and the wood comes from the land I’m farming that was abandoned to the laws of nature. I think it could be summed up as “work smarter not harder”, use things in a way that they serve you best and give compounded dividends.
A man making $20,000.00 can live much better than a fool making $100.000.00.
Knowledge combined with learned skills in the application of serving yourself will give you the option of rejecting the dollar as a primary source of income, you’ll live better for cheaper, all it takes is the willingness to learn things you don’t already know, less chance a bad economy will knock you down, more chance a good economic time will lift you up. It’s all about what you do with your time….

[BoarParticipant]

I tend to think of minimalist living as more of a mindset than living conditions. What I have gleaned from various sources and my own observations is that the basis for minimalist living is clearly separating needs from wants. The second basis is cultivating the ability to NOT turn wants into needs.

Most resources on minimalism focus on material goods AKA decluttering the house. (Frankly, I have not encountered a women-authored book on minimalism that did not include a chapter on cleaning out the closet!) I found this to be largely vapid advice as it does nothing to address the mindset to needlessly accumulate goods.

I prefer to focus on my time and energy to maximize my experiences while limiting my exposure to a gynocentric society. And this is where MGTOW dovetails so nicely with minimalism. The needs you fill are YOUR needs, not ‘OUR’ wants that have been manipulated in to needs. The time you spend is YOUR time, not borrowed or begged (or even bought) from a ‘better half.’

Untamed wrote: Quit complaining and Go Your Own Way in whatever manner suits you best.

[Anonymous 42]

Disney Nazis Epcot death march.

Ha ha ha ha ha! So you walked around the lake of dismal desire? Where the only excitement is feeding the seagulls your greasy french fries? Cattle corrals a mile long at each feature?
Epcot death march Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Around the world in 80 thousand steps! The Norway feature smells like a mixture of locker room and MOLD!
And they wonder why I like back country skiing better?
NO PEOPLE! NO DEATH MARCH, NO MOLD!

[RiargsParticipant 320]

As always MG-TOWER is right…especially about the man making $20,000 that is smart vs. the fool who makes $100,000 and squanders it.

If minimalism is your goal then a single man can live in just about any city outside of the big urban areas on the Left and Right coasts of the USA like a king for $2,000 cash per month – and actually be saving up money from time to time. It’s all a matter of priorities.

15 years ago I bought a mountain “survival” cabin on 45 acres from a chiropractor that thought the world was going to end when the Y2K bug shut down all the computers overnight at midnight on December 31st, 1999.

That never happened, obviously. The world kept turning and the internet stayed on…

The cabin is a steel building – bearproof – in the high mountains of SoCal (Southern California). It was originally 1,000 SF in size and it and the land cost me $95,000 cash to start with.

In SoCal.

On 45 acres.

47 miles up a dirt road and at an elevation of 6,000 feet.

I then immediately bought another 200 acres around the cabin offered to me by folks who were never going to do anything with it for $500 an acre. The cabin is in an area surrounded by a National Park, but the “grandfathered” private property in the middle of it is transferable and goes with logging and mineral rights to boot.

Once I got the 200 additional acres I simply contacted some logging companies and the first folks I called made me an offer to log the acreage. I contacted three companies in the end, and the first was the best as their offer came in the highest at $3,000 an acre to take half the trees off the land. And they replant in a ratio of 5-to-1 with new trees for every tree they take out…

I took the profit from that transaction and over the past 15 years have added 3,000 SF to the original building, a 4,000 SF bombproof garage with a serious basement, a Helipad (my previous career was flying Helicopters), triple 1,000 gal. propane tanks, two new wells powered by solar and wind power and a spring box water supply system, a threesome of nice serious generators and 2 years ago some new ChiCom made solar panels, an ex-NATO fully tracked APC (Armored Personnel Carrier) called a BV-202 that runs on gas, a used Bobcat skip loader, a large fuel dump and a myriad of other useful systems and supplies. Including a lot of firearms and ammo.

I’m still struggling with the communications setup – trying to upgrade the current satellite based system. Right now it costs about $10 a day to use the satellite phone system and download and upload internet access, but some new technologies coming down the pike soon will hopefully cut that in half – or more.

I have stored plenty Mormon type survival food up there, but have also been experimenting with high altitude seeds in a big fenced garden I’ve been playing around with. The results are promising, and there is also plenty of game up there and the official hunting season is 4 months long – plenty long to bag plenty of deer and put them in the deep freeze.

And I’m still ahead of the curve on spending the profit from logging of the 200 acres with all these additions to the property.

Now I’ve been offered another 450 acres up there, for a little more per acre and with even thicker tree growth, and am working on that deal now.

In the end I’m going to own that whole mountain.

I wouldn’t call my setup minimal – but I would call it comfortable.

If Hag Hillary gets elected I think I will just go up there for the duration.

With some reason and planning, a man can make the world anything he wants to make it.

It’s only a matter of setting priorities…

"In my many years I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two are a law firm and three or more is a Government..." - John Adams

[BrujahParticipant 579]

I feel if material wealth is your pleasure, you should gun for it. If anything, going your own way enables you to do so since all your resources are spent on yourself. As others have mentioned, probably not a good idea to rack up debt either way otherwise you’re never truly free,

For me personally, going off the grid in a tiny land starved country, my choices are severely limited since I can’t just buy a plot of land and build whatever on it. A minimalist lifestyle emulates going off the grid to an extent as you’re yanking yourself out of the drudgery of modern living.

[Darth TyrannusParticipant 349]

Complicated question but in some ways you can argue minimalist is not as different from off-the-grid. However they’re both extremely different in goals so minimalist is just saving money and living within your means but off-the-grid is about cutting yourself off from societial dependence as much as you possibly can.

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