Less Stuff, More Freedom?

Today I had an interesting talk with one of my coworkers, it was one of those post working hour, almost dorm room like conversations of yesteryear and it related to vision and freedom. The ability to do anything you want was the net net, the elusive early retirement. His number was 45, where I feel woefully behind. But he's a young turk. There are two ways of looking at this, one is to make more money which means being lucky or working your ass off and being lucky. Luck is underappreciated part of life, both good and bad but this isn't a karmic discussion.

The other way to early retirement, is to save and live on less. At first glance that seems onerous and a life full of sacrifice. But is it? A lot of why people want to make money is to buy more stuff, larger homes, and we equate that with power. But what if that stuff has power over us? This is the case with the larger homes we bought, as this New York Times article on how some people lose their mobility because they can't sell their homes. In this case, they've been trapped by the moats of their castles. This thought brings back to memory another co-worker of mine who related a camping trip he was on where the slowest backpacker in the group was not while he was on the trail but when he was packing up camp. He had to pack all his gear, and was always worried if had left something behind. The lesson was that sometimes our stuff owns us.

So why do we have all this stuff? Too much to go into this post. But like losing weight, your freedom comes from living below your means. In our current circumstance is less stuff more freedom?