I've never pursued a particularly unfrugal life, or a conventionally materialistic one...
I mean, Mother's side of the family is from rural New Brunswick, and Father's was out of Cape Breton, and Maritimers do frugality without more than half thinking about it.
As did most settlement northerners from the Eastern Arctic, through the '60s and '70s, when we lived there. Think high, high costs, and not a lot of cash.
And I would say I got a hard, LOUD wake-up call about pursuing minimalism while cleaning up after my mother, as her executrix, back in 2003.
But it's having started over as a new homeowner in the fall of 2015, an estimated 3 years out from what I'm still hoping to make retirement at age 60, that has me thinking it's time to make both frugality and minimalism higher priorities in my life.
Especially now that I'm getting into projects like insulating a 100% un-insulated basement, having a dubiously DIY'd basement bathroom reworked, and replacing a deteriorating back deck, all before I retire. Retirement might be by age 62-63, instead...
This seems like a good place to pursue ideas and learn.
Greetings!