Ma ch\ufffdre - I think you've Got It. The rain in Spain Indeed! falls mainly on the plain.

May you find the 'paring down' as comfy and satisfying as have I.
Starting Now ... sounds like what shall later be called, Prescience - for the few who heed the unravelling; those accreting details we're daily reading about.

I left a satisfying 1:10000 career (compared with the sum-impressions of every Office-story I'd yet heard), mainly with the aim to be truly Rich: ie to Own My Own Time. (The conventional-minded $$-rich have less and less of that priceless Time in which to spend the More + endlessly-More:) than do those who managed to opt out of the tradmill, as I had observed often enough, earlier.

It was tough in several senses, at the point of decision - my work was both interesting and 'did no harm': there was no Profit demanding of me that daily lying of the mercantile pursuit. But, Time was passing.

Of course, such a plan would have been unthinkable in US, in one's mid-40s - with children, other dependents. Still, even much of that anticipated burden, on into each's 20s? (say, the Disneyland Dream of an MBA from an Ivy League preppie school at half a Mil or so) can be evaded for a mere liberal education in a Great but unheralded small college. This, providing one's POV about ~conspicuous consumption and its folly -- has taken within the tykes' psyches, too.

[???] - so Many animated, shrieked Inducements! to begin the hoarding-Stuff at age 5 or so: it takes a kid with nascent Character to resist the din of the finer&finer psych-tuned Corporate Ad-heroin, screaming: BUY! (or be: _One-Down, Sucker!)


Anyway.. welcome to The Club. It really does become (almost smugly ..Easy) to eschew the color glossies and to derive personal satisfaction (as opposed to all that Satisfiction) in buying Used, originally well-designed things of all kinds, maintain them and Never-ever - "go shopping for recreation". :-0
(I was luckier there too. I've always Hated 'shopping'; the process and the word-massaging -- the web makes research now ever so easy; no need ever to parse a salesperson's spiel, again.)

And besides.. IF.. Magically, the rest of the world continues financing the Gargantuan US debt [??], forgives US for the Neoconman little-Jesus Catastrophe.. and sometime next, the Econ paper-profits seem to suggest that we Can? Grow --> with More/More a tad longer, in this Ponzi Scheme of 5% using 30-40% of the totality: those same habits can let you win That Game, too!

Hey..! wouldn't the hip-Suits call that, Win-Win?


Cheers,

lo-income / a sneakier caste of the idle-Rich